“Even if the rate of HIV infection among MSM remains at the current level, by the time a group of young MSM (18 years old) reach the age of 40, 41% of them will be HIV-positive. We cannot make any progress in fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the U.S. unless we find ways to lower rates of HIV transmission among MSM.”

Positively Aware 

Ed pulls out a condom from his pocket and says to the crowd, “We’ve always had the answer all along. We couldn’t figure out how to use them.” As an international HIV/AIDS educator and one of five subjects of the award winning AIDS documentary, We Were Here. Ed Wolf reminds us that waving our finger at each other to use condoms never worked and never will. 

This is the second interview to inquire how the film impacted younger gay men.

Roy is 25, bright, reads Nietzsche and graphic novels and spends most of his time in the cyber-sphere from where he predicts a future he can get behind. He’s an artist saddled with a student loan he says he’ll never pay back from an arts program he never finished. After washing dishes in Toronto he’s moved to our place on a small west coast gulf island for several weeks to work in our quarter acre garden. On the surface the exchange was a few hours of daily labour for room and board. The inter-generational mentorship will last a lifetime.  For now he’s planning to live in a tent tucked away in the woods for the summer, read and make art. A reasonable choice considering how disconnected much of his cohort has become from the natural world. 

My husband and I are the first out poz men he’s got to know. He was only peripherally aware of the history of AIDS. From the beginning of our time together we have ruminated over the relationship between gay past and queer future. Today we talk about the documentary, chaos and condoms. 

Birch: Having seen the documentary on the SF history of AIDS what questions emerged for you? 

Roy: It was more of an exposition of what happened. No questions. It showed people reacting with their best from a crisis. I got to hear their stories of their triumph and suffering. I’m trying to relate it to now.  The audience was made up of people who care about the subject already - because they are emotionally attached, mostly people who had history with it. I came because I was told to come. I love stories and I love stories that paint people as human beings. It was about authentic stories. Later, I went to my friend’s house to tell him about how great the film was. We realized we have no contact with people who lived through it or are willing to talk about it. It is important for young men to see this film early on before being introduced to the disease-focused sex education in high school. It’s important to hear stories of the people who have HIV before you scare them about it.  

My friend said, “Maybe they shouldn’t all have had sex with each other.” I reminded him that it was a completely different time. The condom is taught in school because of what happened, and yet it creates such a naïve outlook (without the context of what happened). It has created an us vs. them rationality (especially in gay culture) because we are not exposed to people who are positive and their stories. It is no surprise then that there is so much prejudice within the gay community toward positive men, especially in younger generations. 

Birch: Do you think younger gay men blame positive men for having to wear a condom today themselves? 

Roy: No, lots of them just do it because we were taught to do so. It depends on your upbringing. Some of them go bareback, they see it in porn, or someone fucked them bareback. It depends on what version of sex ed. you got. Some of us were imprinted; as a teenager I heard ‘always put it on’…and now that I’m here (at 25) it is more to do with the guys I’ve been with…. 

Birch: How would you describe the sexual culture you have inherited as a younger gay man? 

Roy: Sex is more clinical. It’s not just about the condom anymore. Sex is very fearful now - in every regard. It is not about connection in the way it should be. Not on a level that makes people feel good. A temporary thrust, bam and quick see if the condom broke or not. Gasp. Fear. It is clinical. I look to porn to see where guys are having great sex. Mr. Steeds Bareback blog. He just talks about all his bareback connections. Maybe it’s all fiction. He’s a good writer. It’s entertaining. Maybe it’s not all fiction. It is fascinating. He makes it sound a lot more fun – a lot more connective. 

Birch: How do you relate to condoms?

Roy: The condom represents boring sex. Every sexual encounter that started off potentially great, the ones that felt more connected, always wanted to go bareback. Then I told them to put on a condom. I always have the fantasy to go there (raw sex), even drunk as a mess…so, sex ed. did a good job. But when I told them to wear a condom the sex always became more lacklustre, putting order on chaos. 

Birch: What is it about ‘chaos’ you desire? 

Roy: It’s more free. More connection. It’s not antiseptic. It’s sweating. It’s nasty. It is so scary to try. The ‘order’ is so…I have a condom on my subconscious, on my being. When the fear is so ingrained the bodies are manipulated into ‘over-thinking’ and then (by default) we end up masturbating on each other. I’ve only had mutual masturbation. I’ve never had bareback sex which I equate with real sex. Condom sex, at least the mentality that comes with it, is like two people masturbating – we’re so caught up in our heads. I’m talking about my fantasy world. I’m not going to say you can’t have great sex with a condom. 

The people who risk themselves will fuck you. There are not there to masturbate. It’s not just about condoms and bareback. Its what the whole thing represents. It’s all about order and chaos. Dionysus has always had a big hand up. You know what I’m saying, darling. The maenads fuck better than the congressmen - unless of course the congressmen are a little crazy. Never mind - congressmen are probably all fucking bareback. 

Birch: So how would you describe the culture of raw sex?

Roy: The whole thing represents more masculinity to go bareback. It just comes with that. The straight community never wears condoms. So you have to wrap yourself to go have sex? It feels cheated. Like we’re not having sex. Straight guys can fuck at the party. Being a gay man we are seen as disease carrying vessels. With a straight guy, it’s just a guy fucking. You have no condom-tations with it. Wrapping ourselves up as clinical specimens - it’s not sexy. AND we hear stories of the 70s where gay men were having sex: breakfast, lunch and supper, sex, sex, sex. How orgiastic. Then the pendulum swung back to order. Now we want to swing back, it’s just that natural swing of things and we want an orgy. We never had that. 

The word mafia means “a bold man.”

The idea that we might need a ‘Gay’ Mafia emerged from a group of grassroots activists who were trying to imagine new ways to engage communities of men who have sex with men. Institutions that support and inform gay men’s health and wellness have certain limitations, especially since we rely on the public purse. When I envisioned a video blog from a bathhouse with performers eroticizing safer sex negotiation, funders graciously turned down the idea. After all, we are not here to offend Joe Q. Public. Being polite and sanitizing sex however, has been indicative of much of our HIV/STD prevention history and the Gay Mafia felt like it was time for something bolder . . . and more risk-tolerant. So we partnered up with the Gay Mafia, an emerging group of man lovin’ man activists, to step in to help Victoria’s gay men to re-imagine who we can be in today’s climate of political and financial uncertainty.

For our first outing we brought a select group together to watch the extraordinary film, “We Were Here: the AIDS Years in San Francisco.” (Director David Weissman is seen below right.) The documentary depicts gay men and their allies rallying to the call, by all means necessary, to counteract and respond to an unimaginable crisis. In the early 80’s, governments turned their backs on us (as they still do in many parts of the world). It was local activism that changed the world. While under siege, men and women, many of them already sick, declared, “GLBT and HIV+ lives matter.”

The San Francisco model of public-private partnership for prevention inspired successful programs elsewhere and showed the world how loving we can be. Members of Act Up! fought the social order of the day and showed the world how fierce we can be. Angry, community-loving AIDS activists put queer lives on the world map.

So earlier this year the Gay Mafia printed souvenir tickets that read, Gay Mafia presents…We Were Here. On the back of each ticket, against a smudge of 80’s gritty grey, written in sparkling pink, are the words, “We’re recruiting.” We know we need to connect younger queer men with their elders, those who lived through the nightmare years. As an educational release, we were only allowed 50 seats. 105 more people wanted to come see the film. A third of the audience were men over fifty, a third were men under thirty and the rest were women, mostly lesbian allies who knew their herstory was also woven into the story of AIDS.

International AIDS educator, Ed Wolf, one of the five subjects of the film (see previous article) introduced the film and hosted the Q&A afterwards. We were curious to see how viewers would react. Can the genius of this 2011 documentary break through the seal of frozen grief to help today’s generation reclaim the treasure of who we are as a ferociously loving LBGTQ2S movement?

When the film ended and the lights came up, one long-term survivor stood and shared his gratitude for the many men who risked their lives in the early clinical HIV treatment clinical trials. Viewers acknowledged the role of women in the crisis and how they longed for a deeper re-connection with the womyn’s community. Andrew Shopland, a 24-year-old practicum student with our prevention program gave Ed Wolf a gift and said, “Thank you for touching our lives, for being here tonight and for all the work you have done over the decades. Having seen the film and heard you speak I have a much richer understanding of what happened.” Then he added, “I still don’t know if I’ll ever really understand what it was like.” To which Ed responded, “You don’t need to completely understand. Thank God you don’t have to have that experience in your body. The important thing is that you are here to pass our history on to. That is what you need to know.”

Do today’s young queer men and women need to more intimately know about the AIDS crisis? When nearly a quarter of those infected don’t yet know it, when 1 out of every 129 Torontonians now live with HIV, I say, ‘Hell, yes!’ However, when I look back on how Boomers were silently impacted by their parent’s experiences of WWII, I begin to comprehend why smart, caring men like Andrew and his cohort will never fully get the hugeness and horror of the AIDS epidemic. At 45, I feel as if I am just waking up. Population trauma takes generations to heal.

Perhaps the best we can do is draw lines of connection and communication between the past and present. My work as a middle-aged cocksucker is to make cultural and historical connections and in-roads to more resilient sex positive futures. As the GLBT2SQ movement steers toward mainstream assimilation, the need to reclaim our queer history feels acute and urgent. Now I’ve begun to see, like the Russian dolls of old, where yesterday’s stories fit inside todays’.

I’ve begun interviewing older and younger men about their experience of the documentary, asking them how the themes in the film interconnect with their lives today? Here’s one of the interviews.

Recruit: Dan, age 29

Daniel is bi-curious. He’s never had sex with a man. He sat alone through the film. Afterwards he signed up for future events and then contacted me to make more of a connection to the queer community.

I asked him what made him want to see WWH?

“I knew it was something that happened that you know you should be part of…. I knew that it was a huge event in our recent history.  I know that I have a personal connection to it - that I can empathize to a certain degree with the people who were there. Parts of my sexuality or otherwise my politics have been on the fringe. I have an idea of what it means to be pushed out of society. Not being there, not knowing what it must have been to have a vast part of your community dying, without knowing what the cause of it was, I can’t imagine how hard that would have been. I have a gay uncle living in SF, estranged from the family, he was there….

I also came to the film to explore my identity. Knowing history, all of our cultural history, of what happened to our brother and sisters…we learn about the world war, why not about this very tragic event?”

How did the film impact you?

“Hearing these guys stories, the feeling of loss, oh my god, that people can have lost so much. What would it have been like to have your friends and your partners dying all around you? I just felt like fucking crying. The film helped me appreciate the politics around the struggles queer people have gone through over time, like the Stonewall riots, how queer people have been purposefully ignored.”

From your perspective, what was the ‘invitation’ of the film?

“Recognize this! The film spoke to the desire for recognition. We invite you to come here to this story because it is important. The fucking resilience, it was a wild time, incredibly tragic, but we made it through and we’re doing good.  It gave me hope. Ed talked about today’s kids committing suicide, their feelings of despair, is this directly linked? Resilience and hope go together and for generations we have stood up against oppression to the benefit of everyone.”

At the end of the interview we hugged and promised to keep in touch. I walked away uplifted. And yet doubt lingered. I wondered if those of us who survived the AIDS years could really inspire a new generation of queer activists? Then I thought of We Were Here and said to myself, “Bet your well-lubed, condom-loving ass we can.” But how? By being bold. By telling our tales. By actively listening to one another and showing interest in who we are we change the plot line. Let’s make that our gay agenda. 

As we build more generational bridges, we may discern what is needed today and what work is yet to be finished from ‘way back when.’ The past holds secrets necessary to the health of our queer future. As Daniel and I parted, I felt such gratitude for the power of sharing stories. Next time I see him, I’ll tell him that he would make a great addition to Vitoria’s growing gay mafia. I stepped out into the night sky and thought for the first time, “Survival is sexy.”

“Of all the cinematic explorations of the AIDS crisis, not one is more heartbreaking and inspiring than WE WERE HERE…  The humility, wisdom and cumulative sorrow expressed lend the film a glow of spirituality and infuse it with grace… ONE OF THE TOP TEN FILMS OF THE YEAR.”  Stephen Holden, New York Times

The Gay Mafia presents…[episode one]

Once in awhile a film changes lives. Does it also have the potential to transform a culture? I’m going to advocate that the feature length documentary We Were Here: the AIDS years in San Francisco could evolve the health and well being of Western queer culture. The challenge? No one wants to watch an AIDS film. The solution? Show it anywhere, anyhow, anyway.

Upon arrival, each of the unsuspecting 160 university students received a ‘sex pack’ complete with condom, lube and safer sex information. Their course explores creativity from multiple perspectives and disciplines. The theme for the evening’s lecture included ‘creative resistance’ and ‘finding your tribe’. As their instructor, I threw out the night’s curriculum and introduced these fresh faced youth to my dear friend and mentor, international AIDS activist and educator Ed Wolf (right, with Robert Birch). We turned on the documentary and let history do the teaching.

We Were Here documents the coming of what was called the “Gay Plague” in the early 1980s. It illuminates the profound personal and community issues raised by the AIDS epidemic as well as the broad political and social upheavals it unleashed.  It offers a cathartic validation for the generation that suffered through, and responded to, the onset of AIDS. It opens a window of understanding to those who have only the vaguest notions of what transpired in those years. It provides insight into what society could, and should, offer its citizens in the way of medical care, social services, and community support. - From the film’s web-site.

Ed, one of the five subjects of the film, We Were Here, was there - at the epicenter of the disease in 1981. Fag fresh to the Bay area he stepped into the maw of the bio-cultural leviathan of G.R.I.D., ‘the gay cancer’, HIV/AIDS. And yet, in the most horrific of days he found his calling: helping hundreds and hundreds die with dignity; consoling friends, lovers and family members by the thousands - all the while navigating his own gay life and the pain of his own personal losses. From volunteer to peer counselor to global educator introducing new prevention tools, Ed has survived and thrived through more than most of us can possibly comprehend. How? By loving our community while taking care of his own health. To fully understand what that means we would have to experience a form of empathy most of us have been highly de-sensitized towards feeling.

A few years ago the SF chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence bestowed upon Ed the title of Saint Sequoia. He responds to this and many acknowledgments with a, “Thank you” and an unveiled invitation to the rest of us, “I answered an ad in the local paper asking for volunteers.”

David Weisman, writer and director of WWH, describes his film as a love letter to San Francisco. He lays out a potent vision of gay male SF history, one that reminds us that for a single brief decade gay men were sexually liberated. For these primarily straight identified students (we anonymously polled their sexual identity at the beginning of the semester) this feature length documentary introduced them to a vibrant, erotically gregarious and politically active queer culture. It also provided visual evidence to the nightmare of near genocide of gay men, including terrifying images of kaposi sarcoma, wasting, and blindness of young men their own age. 

Since showing the class excerpts from the film, many students expressed their gratitude. All of them said, “I had no idea. Our limited sex education tells us nothing of the history of AIDS.” They had never seen men en masse as nurturers, let alone gay men so deeply loving each other. They never knew about the countless women who helped us. Not one of them knew that because of our queer AIDS Ancestors universal health care practices are now available for them today. How could these students have possibly known that thousands of activists, artists, teachers and cultural change agents were ignored by the politicians of the day, wiped out, and in many cases erased from historical memory?

So many young people may never perceive queer folks as powerful, loving, creative warriors of community spirit. How could they when so many of us, even those of us who are Poz today, don’t really proudly claim or even know our own near history, either?

Our society has yet to seriously ask, “What are the cold hard consequences of AIDS on today’s global culture?” Who dares to imagine how the world would have been different today? To do so means to awaken a grief only those who have experienced war or cultural genocide could remotely understand. People do, however, want to understand.

After showing the film I was told by one female student that she brought her boyfriend to class last week. His immediate response was, “I will never make a homophobic comment ever again.” While appreciative of the sentimen,t we know for this young man the work of social justice has only just begun.

Another straight identified journalist student requested an interview of me, his queer Poz professor, for publication because he wanted to “correct his ignorance of AIDS.” After an hour and a half I left him in my office to watch the Men’s Wellness Program’s 30th year on-line retrospective of HIV/AIDS made by a caring 18 year old female and new ally. He thanked me repeatedly and left with tears in his eyes.

Ed said this class represents the first group to watch the film that did not know what they were about to see. Imagine what the world would be like if young people knew the real queer history of HIV/AIDS? Think how the stories of those young terrified fags and their many loved ones who sacrificed so much, who took on the established order and created a new paradigm, could inspire a new generation! Having seen such a profound template of youth power, how might the youth of 2012 step out, fight back and change the world for the better today? This movie needs to be seen.

[Episode 2 explores two other local viewings of the film We Were Here, introduces the Gay Mafia and asks the question, “How do we mobilize today’s young queer men?”]

Visuals: www.wewereherefilm.com

http://edwolf.net/about/ for photo of Ed Wolf

Film shown to students about tribe: How to start a movement:

http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html

One hundred years before the onslaught of AIDS, James Kent, a brilliant philosopher and homeopathic doctor, defined health as freedom. Now that HIV stigma has been institutionalized to the point of criminalization, Poz people are under attack by our own judicial system for not disclosing our status with sexual partners. To be healthy one needs to burn fever bright to fight off the oppressor within and without. To be healthy we need to fight for our mutual rights to be free.

From a psychological perspective when we deny pain, life goes sideways; we create or are vulnerable to negative external circumstances. Pain also enters our dream state where the unconscious attempts to reveal that which has been denied. Chronic denial leads to repression. What we repress we then project outward, onto the world. We see and are seen as the other. We lose our we. I want my ‘we’ back. 

Wet dream from hell

Enter if you will my shadowy dreamscape: imagine, row upon row, black and white striped chain gangs forced to do the ‘walk of shame’ down Pride Parade routes all over North America. Hot n’ sweaty former disco queens, their once manicured feet calloused as they sport loudly clanging chains. Behind them they drag an enormous lead ball that reads "Sex Offenders: 10 years + for non-disclosure". As they pass by we see HIV+ roughly branded over their once man-scaped chests, fresh whip marks slashed across their backs. Former gym sculpted, testosterone-laden bodies’ now broken, scarred with track marks from weekly anti-psychotic medications.

Of course, I’m not in the line-up. Yet. I am the bystander horrified and fascinated by the wreckage of our once proud GLBT movement. I panic. Daring to believe that history could save us from chaos I desperately try to remember when we lost our dignity, our cultural inheritance of righteous resistance. Was it the assassination of Harvey Milk? No. We rose up against the oppressors then. The AIDS genocide began soon after his murder. Are we rising up against each other? Think! Rocks fly out of the crowd. I scream: “Remember Stonewall!” We rose up against the oppressors then. Then I recall the horror of reading last fall that a gay man was bashed in the bathroom of Stonewall Pub. Around me, I try to tell people about Aaron Webster, the gay man murdered in Vancouver’s Stanley Park ten years ago, how some suburban gays now blame him for his own murder. This sick fantasy turns all Nightmare on Davies Street. Now it’s too late.

n the early years of the millennium we didn’t fight back when it was mostly Poz black hetero men and aboriginal women who stood in the police line-ups for not disclosing their status. We were just catching our breath from the horror of AIDS. A few years passed, marriage rights were won. Then I heard from some gay men that being gay was passé. Had mainstream privilege put us to sleep? Had we lost our social justice edge? Did AIDS kill off all our frontline wyrd-warriors? Others aged and disappeared. Forgetting our fierce history the rest of us stepped to the sidewalk. We assimilated. We repressed our fabulous selves and the world withered and turned dark.

Chaos before change

I try to escape with nowhere to go. Everywhere I turn I see the same cattle-like branding. We are all branded HIV-positive. We are all criminals. Rights? What rights! Lawyers counselled people not to get tested lest they too be put in jail…the virus mutates again and again…a tsunami of new infections…more and more private jails needed… I scream, “It’s not my fault!” I plead, “I was a good boy. I am innocent!”  Aren’t I? Daily headlines make me doubt myself. It was my fault. On my wrist a barcode: I’m a statistic. Statistics get manipulated. The crowd mindlessly attacks. Rainbow flags get torn down and replaced with blood stained pink triangles. Behind the swelling street mob, up in the stands, the lawmakers dance maniacally; the über-elite sip champagne and congratulate themselves. Gladiator thumbs squash us down and chant, “Die!”

As I fall, just before I wake up, I say to nobody, “We wanted to love. We wanted to be loved.”

Choices

I could grumble and say, “I need to change my meds. These violent dreams are killing me,” or I could say, “These dark visions upset me enough to wake me up.” I hate feeling powerless. Who doesn’t?  My mind curdles at the thought of someone clutching my fate with distant hands. I seethe at the thought of four new Harperites sitting on the bench of the Supreme Court deciding our fate as their first major case. This sex-starved Poz faggot is about to erupt from pent-up frustration.

Like my dream I don’t know where to turn. In Victoria, I haven’t found a gay male therapist. The Poz support group I finally got my ass to? No one showed up. With some of my gay negative brothers I feel patronized when I get political. While wonderfully appreciated at the AIDS Service Organization I work for, as the only gay man and the only Poz person on staff, when it comes to criminalization I often feel too close, too vulnerable, too alone to get strategic about these issues.

Breaking ‘out’ of the self-imposed prison

As one smart female epidemiologist stated at the B.C. Gay Men’s Health Summit last November, to disclose one’s HIV status is to self-quarantine. Stigma turns and locks the key. We need to break out. The money used to throw us in jail must be used to find a cure! We need renewed collective action. This fight has always been about denied human rights. Alice Walker wrote: resistance is the secret to joy. Let’s rise up in joy.

Too many friends have died for our freedom. The politics and legality of HIV disclosure slaps us awake again. It shoves our red stinging face in the direction of collective action. We are neither victim nor criminal. We were infected. We were tested. We got on meds. We are not infecting others. Did we charge those who infected us? No! Our anger demands respect. Everyone needs to ‘Ask and Tell’.

Standing up for our rights and the rights of others is the responsibility of every generation. Yes, this includes disclosing or learning how, yes, this includes the long hard road of social education, yes, this includes forgiving ourselves, each other, standing up and once again proclaiming, “Poz and Proud!”

It also means thanking all our amazing allies who once again stand with us in this fight because they know shared human rights benefits us all. They know that when one person loses their rights we all lose.

Dark before dawning light

In my dreams I’m looking for the us again. I want my freedom back. To find it I must want all of us to be healthy. I need to de-stigmatize my world, inside and out. The shared road to freedom enlivens us as a community. The danger lies when the loneliness, when the anger turns in on itself, triggering an avalanche of shame. A former Poz lover hung himself last week. Like many of us he exuded a bright, kind heart. He just couldn’t do it anymore. There was nowhere to go. His world caved in on itself. His downtown Vancouver hotel room became his prison. He was so very beautiful, and haunted. Now, he’s free. Another queer positive man paid the ultimate price.

Help. In asking others for help to wake others up I am helping myself wake up. For me writing helps. Dancing up an endorphin drenched sweat helps. Making love helps. Making love heals. Ranting with my four Poz buds helps. Like gathering around the glow of a hot bon-fire, the flame of well-tended anger can be mutually supportive, even liberating. Healthy anger re-establishes healthy boundaries. Creative anger focuses necessary actions and gives us the energy needed to make change happen. James Kent called it way back when. When we are free to express our multi-faceted imperfect selves, the bells of freedom ring loud enough for everyone to hear and heal.

Illustrations by Lore Schmidt 

I finally understand the genius of the Village People. It took a few decades. Back in ‘78, I discovered my first pubic hairs moments before the comforting thrill of masturbation. Like the average pre-teen I spent after school hours in the basement bathroom of our banal suburban Ontario home. In the evenings my younger sister had a sick habit of walking in on my evening joystick sessions. Each night I patiently hid under the covers, right ear cozied up to the A.M. transistor radio. Invariably the DJ would make some snarky comment about the Village People before playing “Y. M. C.A.” I never got the remark, or the song. Feeling vaguely turned on by the album cover, I remember being repulsed by the seemingly nonsensical lyrics. I confess to flailing my arms in the same ridiculous manner other people did while dancing to it at weddings. They obviously didn’t get the man-lust reference to it either. A few years later, after visiting the downtown Toronto Young Men’s Christian Association and ‘flirting’ with several once famous now dead homos, the Village People started to make sense. 

Mid-flow forties and only now do I begin to truly appreciation the necessity of embracing queer history. Much of which is oral history. My Elders share with me what textbooks never could. They have taught me that we have always infiltrated mainstream society. We will continue to do so. Not just for us but for everyone’s benefit. Not as consumed by parenting we have the time and space to add our creative flavour to society’s evolving conversation of itself. The last few weeks have taught me the danger of not knowing where we come from. I am amazed how queer history has rapidly transformed from scintillating stories to medical nightmares before being reduced to culturally limiting statistics.

I workout at the Victoria Y. This sometimes amounts to a long soak in the steam room. The pattern follows: straight guys loudly banter on about last night’s game, give us all a headache then leave. Next the old-boys and their stock n’ bond prodigies talk money; (since Jack Layton died and the Wall Street protests however, they are finally a little more discreet about their greed.) Then around 6:30 as they too totter off to their family dinner other guys linger. I linger the same way I use to in T.O. twenty years ago. Sitting in the corner of the same steam-room doing the same stretches, crunches and other related poses, I pump-out the same amount of sweat I used to on the dance floor. 

Steam Room Fever 

We’re both distracted. The young guy busts a move right in the middle of a meaningless conversation I’m having with this long-term queer acquaintance. A decade younger than us, he starts massaging his body and as if he were on some solo tantric-trip. He circulates his hands to all parts of his lithe, attractive body. The Scorpio tattoo underneath his thigh becomes more visible as his routine takes up more physical space on the slippery tiles. My curiosity is more than piqued, so is my friend’s. The door opens and interrupts; towels quickly swish over our excitement. We expect this; factor it into the erotic experience. Titillating but that’s about it.

Towelling off in the dry sauna the younger guy compliments me on my body part and suggests I meet his partner sometime. I smile. Then he asks, “You clean?”

So much happens between the split second of a much-hated question and the stilted response. I look into his eyes to see if he has caught me over-thinking my comeback. “I get tested every 3 to 6 months for STI’s.” Cool, he says. Before the moment’s lost and because I don’t want to be sent to jail, I say, “And in the spirit of transparency, you need to know I’m undetectable.” Then he affably responds by saying, “Oh, so that means you’re clean/clean.” Setting aside the double offence I am polite, “Do you mind if I ask how old you are?” Twenty-nine years old, a year younger than the discovery of the virus. The guy has never heard the term ‘undetectable’. Clearly sexually active, in an open relationship, he hasn’t a clue what undetectable means. I inform him. He leaves. He now knows. It takes a village to raise a fag.

Cold Sweat

An anomaly? Here’s an attractive, uneducated guy sheltered in a relationship where he doesn’t know his condom-covered dick-head from his well-lubed asshole. Then I think back to a week earlier and a conversation I had on Grindr. Again, a highly attractive smart kid, twenty-five and working in an upwardly mobile, affluent career. I say something about queer community. “What’s that?” he says. Disoriented I say “You don’t know what ‘queer’ is?” He laughs, “No, I’m gay. It’s the ‘community’ part.” The kid has NEVER heard of or put the two concepts of ‘gay’ and ‘community’ together. If I weren’t so angry I’d break out in a cold sweat. I piece together anecdotal evidence of the past several months since moving back to the Victoria, B.C.

Gay Rights? “We’ve made it. We’ve got everything we asked for, we won.” I’ve known this friend for a quarter-century. He came out to me at the same age I am now. “I see these younger men fitting in, they don’t need to define the same way we use to. It’s just not an issue anymore.” I think of the book The End of Gay that I refused to read. I desperately need to catch up.

Only recently returning to the city from a quiet rural life I’m troubled to find out many gay men here don’t have gay friends. The only party going seems to be the annual Pride event and a monthly drag show. I learn that the homo programs only have a few guys showing up. “I have more in common with my neighbour’s garden than I do other gay men,” says one former wanna-be trick. I chat with him on Squirt. “Is gay even relevant anymore?” asks another middle age man. He confides in me that members of the local Prime Timers even told him to go back in the closet if he wanted to get a job in Victoria. My blood sours. I want to hurl. Not in anger or disgust, all of which I feel, but more out of fear. Having taken care of my Poz body and my Poz-bodied man for so long in welcome rural isolation I never would have imagined gay culture to slip so quickly into the dark ages again. Others argue that we live in enlightened unlabelled times. We’ve got Glee. We’ve outgrown our past and that’s that. I’m nauseous because like any member of a minority I know that to forget our history means we risk our future and the future of those for which we must stay vigilant. Is gay relevant? Bet my sweet ass it is!

“Help! Fire!”

Privilege puts people asleep. So to lovingly slap folks awake again I forcibly tell them about the latest harrowing statistics: compromising safety and education, 64% of queer Canadian youth do not feel safe at school. Like chalk scraping down a blackboard I press on about the suburb kid who committed suicide two months ago, that no one knew he was gay until a friend of mine, his teenage lover, went to the 23 year old kid’s funeral, and outed himself to the blabber-mouthed, bottle-blonde haired cousin who asked him who he was and why he was there.

I tell the gay-naysayers amongst us about the latest hanging of two young 18 year old boys caught kissing. Right now, consensual queer sex between adults are illegal in about 70 out of the world’s 195 countries (approximately 36%); in 40 of these, only man-on-man sex is outlawed; State-sanctioned murder of our kind. I remind them that historically, before the end of an era, such as the late 20’s in Gay Berlin we fags were all the rage before thousands of us got scapegoated, too.

I remind them that their tax dollars are being used by the self-called “Harper Government” to build future privatized jails (my dark prophecy) that have to be filled by someone. All this in a time when crime is at an all time low and the court system is backlogged and throwing out cases. Then I put it all in the context of criminalization of HIV Poz people: our kind thrown to the neo-con lions of small town judges and going to jail as sex offenders only to be starved and regularly beaten by Poz-phobic brutes. This is what the inmates tell me. I can be persuasive. Their faces remain impassive.

“Undetectable, what’s that?” Maybe an acceptable question many generations from now. “Gay community? What’s that?” Never. I never want to hear that question again. Lives, past, present and future depend on us to keep our stories, symbols and society-refreshing silliness alive. Help! Fire! Where are the Village People when you need them? Are they all dead? We need sassy-cultured, stereotype twisting, super-queer weirdoes now more than ever! We need the play, pleasure and partying of a consciously loving community in order to keep the spirit of our people alive. Gay culture needs a renaissance now. 

 

“Thank you. I’ll set up an appointment next month, Doctor. It must be hard to pass on the news of yet another diagnosis.” I hang up the phone, wonder if I needed to apologize, instead think back to January’s flu. Get dressed. For some of us shock is a wonder drug. “Get to work.” I jump into my doc martins and roll into my rust coloured suede Wild West winter coat. “Shoulders too wide, sleeves too long,” the same thought occurs to me every day. Then I remind myself that the extra long fringe highlights the shoulder length dirty blonde hair. I wrap that big coat closer around me and step into the mess of March’s mushy greyness. I’m scared but I think about how bizarrely blessed I am. I work alongside six amazing people, two of whom are my best friends and long time co-facilitators, the other three identify as gay actors living with HIV, one of whom is my partner.

The day is supposed to start with a three-hour workshop supporting poz gay men to share what it means to live with HIV. One courageous guy shows up. We cancel the workshop. As artistic director I request we carry on with the day’s guerrilla street theatre. Good friends do crazy things together. Having chosen the title two months earlier I imagine crying out loud: “Gentlemen! Ladies! Welcome to this afternoon’s performance, aptly named, Happy Virus Day! We hope you see the show!”

Joey, my poz partner, bites his lower lip. Daryl, my musician Krishna friend quietly plays his flute, while, our token het-female, Nancy, lovingly rants on about something. Stunned, the others watch me talk about getting ready for the afternoon gig. The media arrives. I forgot about the pre-planned photo shoot. Welcome to my inner traveling circus. I was recently dubbed a media slut for sending out press releases rolled up in non-lubricated condoms. Talking to the reporter I reflect on how the genesis for the project, Latex Café, comes on the heels of an earlier high impact community performance art project called, As deep as Your throat.

Come out, come out, whoever you are!

Conceptually, both projects unlock Pandora’s box in an attempt to witness and release some of the silent torture and outward violence of social stigma and internalized oppression from the queer man’s world. The previous summer’s success stemmed from a plethora of fun and outrageousness including a) a mountain side retreat for 16 gay men co-detoxing from the swallowed lies of homo-hatred; b) dumping fake blood in front of the police station after yet another queer bashing; c) a queer kiss-in on the doorstep of a smelly fast food chain; and as a bonus, d) my early eighties Datsun, painted bubble gum pink and decked out with same sex symbols got gay-bashed by some skater dude. A lesbian couple placed a rose on the dashboard with a little love note saying, “Keep going guys!” We cried. We got angry. We went back to rehearsal. A faery friend craftily shaped the smashed windshield glass into a fabulous diamond Tierra. Whereas the car only cost fifty dollars, we whored that crown for thousands of dollars worth of free press. Next, e) we devised a cabaret event called Coming Out Inside where the audience, before entering the theatre, walked up a set of stairs decorated with wedding-like rosettes made of old porn magazines.  Our growing audience base watched us dance or play out scenes of compassion and discovery. From the pain of relationship violence to the thrill of anonymous sex, an actor even ritualized his own healing using empty AZT bottles -we performed to exorcise our queer-loathing demons. We simply told our queer-boy versions of the ugly duckling story. I talked about an unsafe sexual encounter with a long-time crush of mine. I thought if we don’t talk about it nothing changes.

Welcome to My Neighbourhood

The most notorious event of our Victoria month long queer-fest took place at midnight in the park by the ocean. As two rave-sized speakers blared out the Mr. Roger’s favourite, “Welcome to my Neighbourhood,” twenty cars popped on their high beams and lit up our grassy stage. The drivers ran into the centre of the field and began to unfurl a hundred foot long Rainbow Flag. One of the actors and several other less suspecting audience members yanked up their gonches and stumbled out of the bushes and into our carnival. The globe-printed beach ball proudly bounced in the middle of the GLBT flag. Squealing in clamour-glam delight, a few wobbly drag queens and fifty gay men clutched the fabric while kicking the can-can. When the music shifted to the Gregorian chant we re-enacted an ancient 15th Century Orthodox Greek same sex marriage to honour our close friend’s fifteenth anniversary. For a quickie-finale we tranced-out to U2’s “Lemon.” We hauled away the speakers and screeched out of there, screaming with laughter all the way to the bar. Moments after our exuberant escape four cop cars were seen peeling across the grass, jumping out to inspect an empty moonlit field.

Drinks raised, we congratulated ourselves for our 18-minute artwork of awakening. We even made the front page of the Times Colonist. Whether other local fags celebrated our hijinks or not gay was the topic du jour. We thought, “Not bad for closeted, bureaucratic Vic-town, with our two basement boy bars” We were pleased with our very own ‘super-natural B.C.’ performance art, circa Victoria, 1995.

Life is Art

So, why not do it all over again but focus on another taboo topic, HIV/AIDS? Nine months later, grant money delivered, we set out as artists to research how the Virus has forever changed and not yet fully changed our local gay community. Youth temporarily protects us from history’s horrors. We knew we had inherited generations of shame about man-sex with the added holy terror of a condom tearing.

Finding one’s tribe amidst this pandemic while dodging hypo-thermic health-scare messages is no small miracle. Gay history seems to be written now in statistics and other sorrowful symbols. Gay men stopped talking. During the outset of the project few people speak about their relationship to AIDS. The dependable A-gays (‘A’ for action) have little time for us, they already volunteer or work in ASO’s. We imagine and talk about infected men hiding in terror of being outed, of infecting others, and/or of not ever having real sex again, let alone feeling love. Friends of the dead however begin to show up and risk sharing their stories. Where else do they get witnessed? Where better than to put these men’s sacred stories on stage in an attempt to make any riddled sense out of so many losses? We spontaneously perform the stories of resilient men, many exhausted by a decade and half of fear and grief, many self-preserving by normalizing their survival, other’s numbing out to it. Latex Café shows us how community heals. The project proves we need one another now as much as ever.

At the end of the show we ask if anyone wants to ask a question, an invitation for a kind of performance divination process we call, ‘Wise Being’. One man joins me on stage and blurts out, “Yeah, I have a question. Why did AIDS hit the gay community first?” The actors writhe, scream, cajole, unsettle, and erupt, before lifting each other up, before settling into a vulnerable but calm sigh. The performers follow their authentic impulses and just make shit up. I turn to the ‘supplicant’ and ask if he has an interpretation of their performance. “Yeah, I do.” We wait. “Because we could handle it.” Confident in his soul scrying he reclaims his seat. I’ll never forget his anger and poise and wonder if he’s still alive.

When in doubt dress up

Six hours after my own diagnosis generation studio, my little theatre company of “les enfants terrible” dress up, hit the streets and channel some wyrd viral dance before an unexpecting public. Part mime, part seventies happening, we confront the stigma of HIV/AIDS in ourselves and on our streets. While my cohort plays music and gyrates all over again I don fishnet stockings over my face. Camera hovering over my shoulder and with microphone in hand I saunter up to the makeshift audience, “Excuse me, sir, what do you think is happening here?” After a failed guess I inform them about the goals of the project and then ask, “Have you ever met anyone living with HIV? -No? My name is Robert.” I shake their hand. “You have now.”

Just ahead lays another big weekend community workshop for gay men we’ll run called Blood Bros. It’s part of the Vancouver International AIDS Conference of ‘96. It’ll be a week after the paradigm changing news of the coming cocktail I will find myself confused, depressed, stuck for three days in a corner of our apartment, chair back to the world, numbly mouthing the words, “Happy virus day to me.”

Robert Birch now works for AIDS Vancouver Island as the Men’s Wellness Coordinator in Victoria, BC