People living with HIV are starting to create safe social
spaces to call their own. PN checked out two with completely different approaches
It is eight years since the late-lamented club Warriors lost
its regular Sunday night slot at Turnmills. Many HIV positive gay men still
mourn its passing and yearn for another safe space to party. This wish was
answered last month when two of the three original ‘warriors’,
club promoters Spike and Taz, returned with i-Warrior at Crash.
“Warriors was not only an amazing club, but it broke through the silence
and social stigma of HIV and made open discussion possible,” says Spike.
The new club has a similar vision and purpose, he says, but with an added
mission statement fit for the 21st century.
Spike said the ethos behind the original Warriors club was to create a ‘brilliant
clubbing event with a social conscience’; a place where it was safe,
for the first time, to discuss your HIV status. The other aim was to encourage
the positive community to ‘get out and dance’. The club also broke
ground by presenting positive images of openly positive people. It unquestionably
achieved this aim, but folded after 18 months when it lost its slot.
“Back then we called on the ‘Rainbow Tribe’ to gather, unite
and become ‘warriors’ to stand together to make a difference,”
said Spike.
Today it’s ‘i-Warrior’: to suggest individual responsibility
and individual decisions.”
Spike is big on responsibility. He feels strongly the time has come for a
closer look at the image the gay community is projecting, to younger gay men
and everyone else.
The new club is men-only because Spikes wants to retain the sexual tension
that evolves between men on the dance floor, which he feels is missing in
‘poly-sexual’ clubs. And you won’t find a dark room at Warrior
either.
“I have no intention of bringing another ‘casual sex’ club
to the scene,” he says.
“In one week in London, I counted 54 different ‘cruise’
events where guys could go to and get everything laid out on a plate. Add
saunas and internet sites, then the opportunities to have instant casual sex
are a million times better than 10 years ago, which is great, but whatever
happened to cruising and the thrill of the chase?”
“Nowadays it’s more like: ‘I think he’s up for it
- if he follows me into the darkroom, great, but if he doesn’t, well
his loss, I’m sure I’ll find someone in there who will oblige
me’.”
Spike says he has heard too many stories of guys being shunned or belittled
for wanting to wear condoms. He thinks this, coupled with the proliferation
of GHB, GBL and crystal and the large number of gay men having risky sex who
are unaware they are HIV positive, spells big trouble for the scene.
“There is a real danger that the anti-gay press and politicians will
seize on these things and use them attack the gay community. This could set
the scene back some 30 years and lead to an explosion in hate crimes. The
messages we are sending out are that diseases like HIV and hep C are no big
deal and that gay men don’t have any respect for themselves.”
As a long-term survivor who has lost many friends and lovers to Aids, Spike
is well qualified to speak. He has been human guinea pig for seven combination
therapies that have all failed him. He now injects himself with T20 every
12 hours to stay alive.
“In the past I always looked up to older people on the scene for guidance.
At the age of 47, I now feel I am in a position to offer guidance.”
He feels strongly that more young gay men need to hear the truth about what
it is really like to live with HIV.
“I like to think I have a role still to play and should use the platform
of being a club promoter to be a constant reminder to all that HIV is not
a ‘life-style’, nor a club that anyone wants to be a member of;
it is still a chronic illness and a very unpleasant one at that.
“I have no idea what the long term effects of these drugs are on my
body or how long before they may fail me. The diarrhoea can be so bad I daren’t
move from the toilet or leave the house for fear of an accident. Then there
is the vomiting till your guts ache.
“When you see me out it is because I feel fine, but sometimes I am in
pain, as stomach cramps return, announcing the arrival of toxic reaction’s
caused by medication.
“I wear braces, not because I’m a ‘skinhead’ who won’t
act his age, or as a fashion statement, but because they keep my trousers
loose and prevent the material from rubbing my injection sites around my waist,
which can be sore.”
“In world where many gay men feel obliged to have unsafe sex or risk
exclusion. We believe there is a need for a club that brings back those elements
that are missing from the scene today: a sense of brotherhood, decency and
most importantly respect. And one that supports safe sex, honest and open
discussion of status and provides an alternative option for personal responsibility
and sexual behaviour.”
“‘i-Warrior’ is a membership-led club, which means members
have a direct input into the club’s policy and ethos and by joining
‘i-warrior’ you will be making a ‘pledge’, based on
personal choice and opinions that are at the very heart of this club’s
ethos, as well as creating a sense of belonging to a club which upholds the
same ideals.”
• i-Warrior is at Crash, 66 Albert Embankment, London every first Friday
of the month. www.i-warrior.com
Controversy has raged ever since the gay press got wind of the UK’s
first private members club for HIV positive men.
PigPitMen has run private parties in east London for almost a year. But it
wasn’t until the end of last year that the issue blew up, when Boyz
magazine mentioned the club in an editorial.
An HIV negative reader wrote in: “Is this the way HIV positive men fight
HIV/Aids? By opening a club that is not only discriminating against HIV negative
men and all those who practise safer sex, but also promoting barebacking?”
One HIV positive reader hit back with: “He clearly has no clue of the
issues, prejudice and unwarranted hatred negative men/untested men place upon
men who are honest about their poz status.”
Boyz editor David Hudson defended the club, arguing it was wrong to assume
PigPitMen was “solely concerned with bareback sex” and pointing
out that the THT’s sexual health team LADS “play a regular part”
at PigPitMen events.
It was important to arm people with information about their sexual health,
he said, but what they chose to do and the risks they took were up to them.
Censoring or shaming people was rarely the best way to persuade them to change
their behaviour, he added.
Sex and social chit chat
PigPitMen’s website describes the club as: ‘A positive concept
towards safer sex and HIV control’, but is it really? Its organizers
said HIV positive men experienced “indifference, rejection, opposition
and hatred,” like many minorities.
“People think we’re a barebacking club and we’re not,”
says PPM coordinator BJ. “We’re just a club for positive men.
If you go to any cruise clubs you’ll see barebacking. If people choose
to do so, that’s their personal choice, but you’d be surprised
the amount of people who come to PPM and don’t. We supply condoms and
lube at all our events, and I’m there when we’re clearing up.
I see that lots of them are being used.”
So why run a cruise club for positive men if it’s not about ditching
safer sex?
“Positive guys often don’t want to disclose because they don’t
want to risk being rejected,” says BJ. “And we just thought it’d
be good to have a club where you don’t have to disclose. There is a
sexual side to the club,” he admits, “But the social aspect is
very important. Quite a few members meet at the club and get into stable relationships.”
Inside the Pit
Inside, the club PPM is a slightly surreal. On my first visit to The Fallen
Angel, in Walthamstow, just after Christmas, people were certainly friendly
enough.
There was certainly some seasonal sex going on, some of it on the snooker
table. And I won a book of erotic photography in the raffle. The exhibitionist
sex, juxtaposed with the holiday season and the fact that the place was emptying
out made it all seem quite sordid. It wasn’t till I visited a more typical
night in Vauxhall, in February that I actually began to see the point.
There was definitely some barebacking going on, but also a lot of socialising.
I ran into some guys I knew slightly from the Positive Health scheme at my
gym and got to chat properly with them, and even got introduced to some new
people. It made me realise I didn’t have any openly positive friends
that I hangout with. It was refreshing to talk to non-medical personnel about
living with HIV without it being an issue, with them understanding exactly
what you were saying and, most importantly, without a look of sympathy creeping
over their face.
BB - not just a poz thing
For the PPM team, the link with barebacking probably won’t go away.
I recently learned they were initially refused advertising space in a gay
publication which said it “didn’t promote barebacking”.
It seems everyone makes assumptions about the club, which may mellow once
they’ve visited themselves. I have to say, I’ve been to other
sex clubs and where a degree of barebacking took place, with little discussion.
BJ makes the point that, unlike HIV negative men, PPM members regularly visit
their doctors to keep an eye on their HIV counts and sexual health. It is
easy for negative men to demonise the PigPitMen as promoting risky sex, but
with HIV and STD infections on the rise there’s clearly plenty of unsafe
sex going on outside the confines of this particular club.
What is perhaps more worrying are private barebacking house parties where
the status of each individual is unlikely to be known, and the international
barebacking websites where you can hook up with local guys for unsafe sex.
On one, I found an ad from a negative guy who was looking to “take a
load from negative guys only”. How can that guy know for sure the guy
who responds hasn’t unwittingly contracted the HIV virus since his last
test, or may only be assuming he is negative? He may even not have been tested
at all. Or he may be lying.
Super-infection - the risks
While negative guys seem foolish to consider barebacking at all, the fashion
for BB, even among some positive men, may be down to confusion over whether
it’s actually harmful.
Sure, we know STIs can be more problematic for HIV positive people, especially
syphilis which progresses more rapidly and is harder to treat. But what of
HIV itself? Is super-infection myth or a reality?
PN treatment editor Robert Fieldhouse said the first case regarded as ‘unequivocal’
evidence of super-infection was presented three years ago.
“A guy was shown to be infected with two different subtypes of HIV,
two-and-a-half years apart. After spending two and a half years on a clinical
trial, the guy took a treatment interruption and went on holiday to Brazil,
where he had unprotected sex with a number of men.
“He had previously been shown to have a subtype B infection; following
the trip to Brazil he had been re-infected with subtype C,” he explains.
“The real nightmare was that his previously well-controlled virus began
progressing more rapidly, his viral load shot up and CD4s plummeted.
“Re-infection might mean your HIV treatment may suddenly stop working
and your course of infection changes from one that is fairly benign to one
that is fast progressing,” says Robert.
He points to a 2004 study which looked at the rate of super-infection among
people recently infected with HIV, found five per cent (three) had been re-infected
between six months and a year after first becoming HIV positive.
“Two had initially been infected with a resistant strain and the second
infection they acquired was completely responsive to all antiretrovirals.
But the other guy was more unlucky as he got a resistant strain the second
time that caused this treatment to fail.”
“Some work was done to explore how frequently re-infection occurred
among those on treatment. Researchers found absolutely no evidence of it among
a cohort of over 700 people, all of whom were using HAART.
“What’s important is that positive men are aware of the range
of evidence that exists, so they can make an informed choice about the risks
for themselves and their sex partners.
• At PN we know not all our readers, gay or straight, are hardcore clubbers.
So we would love to hear from those who have found ways to create a safe social
space for people with HIV.
