Bay Windows - December 11, 2003
Mubarak Dahir

I'm on a site where men go to meet other men, and so it's not surprising that the talk quickly focuses on sex. My suitor wants to fuck me. I'm open to the idea, and type my main requirement.

"No barebacking," I write.

"Oh that's too bad," he responds. "That's my specialty."

"I'm HIV-negative," I type back, "and want to stay that way."

"Me too," he tells me.

"How do you expect to stay negative if you bareback?" I ask.

"Hey, buddy, I respect your position," he responds, dodging my question. "You should respect mine." I don't hear back from him again.

But I am left wondering: How am I supposed to respect a position that gambles with gay men's lives?

Since I moved a few months ago to the gay resort town of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., I have had variations of this same conversation over and over again with other gay men-online, in the bars, at private parties.

The level of unprotected sex here, one of the gay Meccas of the world, is astounding. It happens at such a high frequency that I am convinced it is the norm, not the exception. Mars McMillan, a 33-year-old outreach worker for AIDS Project Florida, the largest local HIV/AIDS organization here, confirms my worst suspicions. "It's absolutely mind-blowing," he says. "There's no taboo to it here anymore. It's become normalized."

Of course, barebacking is hardly a problem unique to Fort Lauderdale. It's happening everywhere. In New York City, for example, several hundred people packed a public forum on the subject held Nov. 16 at the city's gay and lesbian community center. The discussion was lead by gay icon Harvey Fierstein, who was so alarmed about the new HIV infection rates among gay men that this past July he penned an op-ed piece on it for the New York Times.

But it's interesting to look at the situation in Fort Lauderdale because it is a distilled microcosm of the gay community.

Broward County (which contains Fort Lauderdale) is third in the nation for the sheer number of new HIV-infections, according to 2002 statistics. That's shocking if you consider that other localities with such high figures are major metropolitan areas-big cities where you would expect the numbers to be highest.

So why is it that Fort Lauderdale rivals cities like New York and San Francisco for new HIV infection rates? The answer is simple: because there are so many gay men here.

According to the 2000 census, there are an estimated 25,000 gay men in the Fort Lauderdale area. In 2002, there were an estimated 6800 HIV positive "men who have sex with men." If these numbers are accurate, that means roughly one in three gay men here is HIV positive. Some experts I've spoken to, including HIV doctors and AIDS workers, suspect the number is even higher.

I remember a time when the gay community was held up as a model for how to combat the spread of AIDS. But now, it seems, we've slipped back into a situation plagued by apathy, nonchalance, and irresponsibility.

To find out why, I talk to some of the gay men who are having unprotected sex.

I am at a dinner party in a swanky high-rise condo, with a towering view of the ocean. Over drinks, the conversation turns to barebacking, and Sam - a highly educated, handsome man in his early 50s - admits he's done it, too. Why? Because he can't keep an erection when wearing a condom - a common complaint. "Of course, there's always Viagra," he says. "But who wants to spend ten bucks every time you want to fuck?" he asks, referring to the expensive diamond-shaped blue pill.

Sam rationalizes not using a condom because he's the "top," and thus is at lower risk than a "bottom." And he's not putting his partner at risk, he rationalizes, because he's HIV negative.

"But a lot of men just assume everyone who barebacks is positive," says McMillan. They use the opposite rationalization of my friend Sam. "The attitude in those cases is, 'If you're not positive, why are you playing like this when you know a lot of us are? Play at your own risk; we're not responsible.'"

Other reasons for barebacking are as numerous as the number of sexual positions in the Kama Sutra: fatigue after battling the disease for two decades; an explosion of crystal meth, which alters men's state of mind and their ability to make sensible judgments; young gay men who haven't witnessed the disease ravage their friends and lovers; and a new sense that HIV infection is now somehow a "manageable" disease.

One acquaintance, a 33-year-old HIV negative man I'll call Bob, tells me he engages in barebacking "because I enjoy getting cum shot up my hole."

I ask if he ever worries about sero-converting. "I try to be careful," Bob tells me. "I ask [HIV] status. If I know someone is poz, then we probably won't fuck."

Probably?

"I guess I don't ask every time," he admits. "I've been ultra lucky. I don't know why I do it, except that it feels great," he continues. "It feels incredibly different when someone shoots a load in you" compared to when a rubber is used.

This is a professional, college educated gay man who knows all the dos and don'ts of HIV transmission. It's neither a lack of education nor a lack of awareness that keeps him from using a condom.

Bob first started barebacking in 1999, when he was living in Boston. "It was a thrill then," he says. "Now it's just commonplace."

McMillan fears that living in a social atmosphere where barebacking is considered routine, even normal, can have a devastating consequence: "Living in a culture where it's the norm, where it seems OK - that definitely makes it likely that more and more people are not going to protect themselves, and are going to take risks they might not otherwise take," he says.

I know he's right, because in the first few weeks after I moved here, I, too, was tempted into unsafe sex. Twice. In the eighteen years between the time I became aware of AIDS in 1985 and the time I moved to Fort Lauderdale at the end of September 2003, I had unsafe sex only twice. Yet in the first two weeks I was here, I also had unsafe sex twice. I know that the atmosphere of temptation and availability contributed to my poor judgment.

Like my friend Sam, I rationalized it at the time because I was the "top," and knew it was less risky than being the "bottom." Both times, however, a nagging voice in the back of my head refused to let me get away with my indiscretion. I knew what I was doing was wrong, and both times it caused me to lose my erection before completion.

Some readers will no doubt accuse me of being a hypocrite for writing a column so unabashedly opposed to unsafe sex, and then admitting I slipped up, too. But the point is that it's easy to fall into unsafe sex. I think anyone who's honest would argue that it just feels better to have skin next to skin rather than skin next to latex.

But it is precisely because unsafe sex can be so alluring that we as gay men must all work together to prevent it. That means we have to take personal responsibility for our actions. It also means we have to take collective responsibility to look out for each other. Yes, you do have responsibility to the person you are having sex with. And to your friends and lovers and the gay men you care about.

Talk to them about unsafe sex. Remind them that you love them and you want them to be around for a long time. And pledge to yourself and to the men you love that you won't gamble with their lives.

031211
BY031202

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