Russell
Fleet
ALIVE AND KICKING
PIG PIT AND PING PONG
Just what is all the fuss about? So there’s a sex club for HIV positive
men where they don’t have a problem with guys barebacking? To read some
of the gay press, you’d think these guys spent their evenings eating
babies and developing new and more intricate ways to torture small animals.
Here’s a notion to consider: the only difference between this club and
most of the other big name sex-on-premises venues, which get on their high
horse about barebacking, is that at least these guys acknowledge that it happens.
Moreover, they even take steps to reduce the potential harm, whereas the big
clubs often don’t even provide hot water and soap so you can clean up
afterwards.
But why would people start a club like this, knowing how much flak they were
bound to get? Because barebacking happens and there’s no point in stamping
feet and squealing: “Well, they shouldn’t be doing it!”
They are, get over it and deal with the reality, not the fantasy. The facts
speak for themselves. Last year the annual Gay Men’s Sex Survey reported
that 37 to 49 per cent of gay men with HIV have had unprotected anal sex at
least once in the last 12 months with someone whose HIV status was definitely
or probably different to their own. It also reported in 2002 that over 60
per cent of HIV negative gay men expect a man with HIV to disclose his status
before having sex with them, and that over 40 per cent of all negative men
would refuse to have sex with someone who disclosed that he had HIV. In these
circumstances why wouldn’t people set up a club like this? What this
club has dared to do is break the conspiracy of silence that demands we all
pretend that all HIV positive people are willing to accept total responsibility,
not only for our own state of affairs, but for all HIV-related suffering in
the world and accept that certain things are forever lost to us, such as the
intimacy of unprotected sex, even with one another.
But the truth is, if all of us with the catflu only ever had sex with one
another, this epidemic would stop dead in its tracks. How terrible would that
be? Now, of course there are obvious practical reasons why it can never happen
that way; not least because about a quarter of people with HIV in the UK don’t
even know they have it, but surely this club is a start? I’m well
aware of the reinfection/superinfection controversy and we know it happens,
but it is so rare that when it does happen, it merits a special mention in
PN. So if you’re worried about reinfection, you’d better tie a
length of copper wire around your ankle in case you get struck by lightning
because there’s more chance of that happening. Then there’s the
‘public health’ argument which holds that the club asks you to
sign a declaration to the effect that you are HIV positive but they don’t
ask for proof, so anyone could just sign up and get infected. Surely any bugchaser
determined enough to lie to get into a sex club for poz guys will lie to poz
guys on Gaydar or anywhere else to get what he wants. Shutting the club down
doesn’t solve that problem. If anything, this club is likely to lessen
the number of occasions poz and neg men have unsafe sex with one another.
I support this club unreservedly. I’m a member of it. They do the hard
work for us, they save us from the lottery of disclosing our status, they
‘normalise’ HIV in a way no other HIV organisation does. They’ve
even brought in health promotion specialists to ensure guys get all the info
they need to make informed choices about their sex lives; about LGV, hepatitis
C and syphilis, all of which are far more likely to affect us than ‘superstrains’
of HIV. And it’s actually not ALL about sex. It’s refreshing to
be in a room where you know everyone is poz that’s not a dreary drop-in
full of the ‘ain’t it awful’ brigade. There’s something
liberating about standing naked at the bar chatting, even if there are guys
humping in the background. It could almost be a scene from one of those 1960s
nudist movies; table tennis anyone?
But that’s not what this is about. What’s at stake here is not
the health of the nation or even the participants, but the reputation of the
Eliza Doolittles whose indignant howl of: “I’m a good girl, I
am!” rises in pitch at the mere mention of barebacking. It’s these
people who want to police everyone else who make the fuss, those who think
there’s only one way to be HIV positive and that’s to be a plaster
saint, always taking your meds on time, always disclosing your status to any
potential sex partners, always using a condom even with other positive people
(only because the radiation suit is at the dry cleaners!), never admitting
to anything which might give the Daily Mail any grounds to criticise. Well,
they might have internalised society’s HIV-phobia to the extent that
they can’t bear to be thought of as anything less than the perfect victim,
chastened by their own immorality, but I haven’t. And you know something,
I’m sick of letting them set the agenda.
