I came out of the closet in the late 80s and I moved to SF shortly thereafter and I've been here ever since. Becoming sexually active in the age of AIDS and living in San Francisco where the prevalence of people with HIV is pretty high, I was always aware that it's important to know my HIV status and ask about the status of guys I date or fuck. After almost 10 years of living in SF, I started playing with crystal and looking back I remember still bringing up the topic of HIV whenever hooking up with a new guy.

It was hard at first. There was and still is stigma attached to HIV. Talking about HIV can be a buzz kill on a date and sometimes can ruin the spontaneity of just wanting to fuck. I'm pretty fearful, though, of getting fucked by someone who is positive, but...you know I think maybe once or twice while high I would let somebody just put it in for a second just to feel the intimacy but not cum inside me or go for long. When those situations would sometimes happen, I would say to myself, "Well fuck now I have to get tested, now I have to wait three months..." and I'd go through all those complications. So it just became routine to talk about it, I tried to create an atmosphere so that I could just fuck without any having any "after sex" concerns. I've always had a strict rule though; I don't discriminate on the basis of HIV. I had a boyfriend who was positive for 5 years so I don't believe in doing that. In the end I think it is just abject fear of HIV that drives me to...yea, bring the discussion up.

Even when I was really high, I didn't lose all of my wits about me. There were certain parts of me that still kept working you know? Fewer emotions surrounded the subject of HIV when partying with meth. It kind of became easier to bring it up because it was more like something to check off on the list before getting together with somebody rather than you know, being aware of the gravity of the question as you ask it. With guys who use it's a little harder though and I think there is more resentment about that question because a guy might have been up for 3 days and that's not exactly something he'd want to hear. I am a bit of an outsider too being negative and using speed, people just assume I am positive. If I hooked up online I have that up on my profile and there were some people that were cool about it when I brought it up.

When I started thinking about really discussing the topic and putting it into motion, I had a positive outcome - I felt very awkward bringing it up especially since I was 20 years old at the time. He was older than me, my first boyfriend, and I had to basically admit that I thought he was hot and fuckable by asking about his HIV status. He viewed it as being umm...as my having integrity so like in terms of dating it was a plus because I brought it up and he thought it was a good thing.

I would say that in those feverish heat of the moment situations like at a sex party or bathhouse was when talking about HIV was tough. Some people clearly give off an attitude so that made it difficult. I remember when I went to a particular sex party, I was the new guy with 4-5 other guys -so they were all running the show and I was just along for the ride. I couldn't bring up anything out of pure pressure and/or because of what was going on I just didn't feel like saying "oh hey everybody..." you know? They had their own agenda and they had GHB so it just became difficult to suddenly check in with everybody. It would have been a terrible buzz kill plus I was a guest in their house, brought there by a friend of theirs so I also didn't want to be you know...nobody fucked me though...but I definitely fucked somebody. Ultimately I just have to take responsibility for myself in my own behavior and I think in that instance it was well beyond expecting other people to take care of me in any manner on that topic of discussing HIV.

I think one of the things I have learned is that sometimes you have to be very nonchalant, you know you're with a guy and you start kissing and you just kinda go "positive or negative?" and just throw it out you know? So I say it right off the cuff and not make it a big production like, "Can we talk about it something for a minute?" Otherwise it can turn into a buzz kill.

Whether it is harm reduction from the standpoint of how you use your drugs to the standpoint of the rate of HIV infection...there is a huge component that needs to be addressed of our self esteem, gay man's self esteem. Part of the battle is that we are not equal people and I think that wears on you after a while. I remember that when I wanted to come out to my dad, I was going to say, "Dad...I'm gay but I'm not a faggot" -- there was plenty of internalized homophobia there. So that type of feeling could send me to put myself in risky fuck sessions and you know because at some point there I'm denying a part of myself. I'm judging myself and I mean I would have to numb that pain and you know I would probably get sloppy. So it's a sense of self respect that you matter and have not been discarded and so talking about it actually is in a way a fundamental feature to healing yourself in our current society.