Original subtitles

When I thought being positive,

It was A positive thing.

I thought I was just gonna have a lot

of un promiscuous, unsafe sex.

I didn't know it was gonna change so fast.

No one to hold.

The gift pulls you in

because it seems like it's, it's like the biggest box

of the whole room of presence.

It's got the best bow, it's got the best ribbon,

and it looks like the biggest in the funnest.

And you open it up and it's just like a ball of nothing.

And it just sucks all the life from you

Give the gift, then I don't have to worry about it no

More. I have one friend,

uh, who is always like, I want

to be like all you guys, you know, you all have it.

I don't help. What's wrong with me? You know?

I wanna go out there and get it. They

Want to be in the in crowd.

It definitely is not a gift to get it.

I would definitely be gifted if I didn't have it.

I have no desire to give this gift to anybody.

Some people have even said, you know, oh,

I'll give you your dad

Game rodeo. Got

it. Okay. Put in.

I'm very aware of the Barebacking

parties that are going along.

I'm Disgusted by them.

It's like the silent killer because no one talks about it.

No one asked me if I'm positive or not. No one cares.

Just 'cause they're positive

and I'm positive doesn't mean you can have unprotected sex.

There's different barebacking going on today in the

community than there was in the rodeo years ago.

Their backing basically is having unprotected sex,

which, um, is right up there with sticking a bullet,

you know, sticking out a loaded gun in your mouth.

It's, it's a little insane. I never heard of bug chase.

I have heard of bug chase. I didn't know the bug.

I have heard of bug chase of on the internet.

I've seen people under heard people on the internet

who do want to get, actually get taste, get,

get HIV from their partner, which I do not understand

that it sounds like it's trap made from raid or something.

Well, you know, deliberately, deliberately saying, yes,

I want you to gimme HIVI want you to give me aids.

It's why dot they call it bug chasing.

I don't know, but it's a bug. The HI v's a bug.

What about the people that haven't deliberately spread it

around and know it?

What do you call them? That's a bug, A gift gift giver.

And they're all people that way.

There are people who are evil. Bitter table.

I never, never thought of it. That bitter table for one.

It is wrong, but again, like I saying, you know

that I'm being a two face since I do have unsafe sex.

Yeah. 80% of the time a gift. Get a gift and a bug chaser.

I did the survey on the internet

and that was a really new medium

because a lot of people were seeking out bareback sex on the

internet because it's anonymous

and it allows them to share with other people

that they had never spoken to before.

You don't walk into a bar

and know that someone bareback has bareback sex,

but you can go on the internet and have bareback sex or,

or know someone who has bareback sex.

So really the chat rooms have become the new gay bars.

Most of my friends, I know bareback, almost every one

of 'em I know has bareback.

Everybody that I know does bareback.

Um, I think in the gay community, um,

realistically I think 80 to 90% bareback.

You are in my dungeon talking about barebacking.

We started bareback parties, uh, a couple years ago.

It was just a group of friends. Is is all it was.

And I suppose the first one had maybe 15 guys.

Bill, my partner and I have been together, um,

for, for nine years now.

And about two years ago we started having

sex parties. They're

All positive, you know, we all, uh,

uh, knew the situation.

Those friends went and told other friends

and they would call to see if they could get

invited to the next party.

And when was it we did and having anything scheduled.

So we started scheduling them once a month.

The internet has become a, a meeting ground of people

who have all types of sex.

And they're even meeting places for people who have parties

associated with bareback, sex parties

who advertise themselves as solely for men

who are negative parties advertise themselves as for men

who are solely positive, people who have both negative

and some people positive going to the party.

The last party we had here in the dungeon, we had 167 guys

that were here, and we probably turned down 50 or 60.

And we all have fantasies about what we'd like to do

or like to try and, and,

and most of the time in our

lives, I don't think we really can.

And guys come here and,

and they can, we have guys here,

21, 22 would be the youngest and we've got 'em 70.

Just trying to provide a, a play space for guys to do

what guys wanna do and, and do it safely.

Most of us think we we're already infected, so

what do we have to lose?

We, we can't get HIV again.

And we get guides here from the various AIDS organizations

that are volunteers or employed by them,

and they're not using condoms.

There are also the conversion parties that happen

where people advertise to become infected.

For many, the virus has become eroticized

because they actually see the virus as something special,

where it used to be something very negative.

It's now something that defines them or makes them different

and allows them to participate in forms of sex that they

otherwise could not participate in

for fear of getting the virus.

How do I feel if people convert here?

Well, I'd probably feel real bad about it,

but it's not something that I'm aware of.

We don't have a disclaimer at the parties.

The the attorneys have said we probably ought to have.

Um, but what we tell the guys is that you just have

to assume that everybody here at the party is positive and

therefore you need to act responsibly or

accordingly to, you're a particular situation,

but we're not gonna have a sex party.

Then ask guys to sign, you know,

legal documents before they can get in the door.

That kind of vers the mood.

The fantasy isn't that either you're gonna kill this guy

or that you're gonna be killed by this guy.

The fantasy doesn't include unattractive things.

You know, I mean,

no one's fantasy man has a virus like this.

The message is so muddled at this point that

I think it's fair to say we're just

not even doing prevention.

There's a recent thing from the San Francisco AIDS

Foundation about how do you know what,

you know, what does that mean?

How do you know that you're really negative?

How do you know that your partner's really negative?

And what are, what are they talking about there?

Well, I don't think that's necessarily true as someone

that would tell you that if

they're, uh, they're negative or not.

Uh, I think for the most part,

they probably would if you asked,

but I don't think a lot of people ask.

And so I don't think you're gonna

get an answer either way at that point.

But, um, I there,

but there obviously would be people that would lie.

Like people do lie at different times.

So I think people would lie about it. Yeah,

I mean, it's pretty transparent in some ways,

but I also hear horror stories about people

who are practicing unsafe sex.

No. Yes, I have. And I, I totally trusted the person.

Like the ad says, it wasn't, oh, I'm,

I'm pretty sure he's safe, you know?

But I knew for a fact for many per, for many reasons,

knowing the person's history,

you know, through other people.

So it wasn't just a firsthand count

or a one night, whatever.

Even for me, I am always gonna have sex with a condom.

Um, unless I'm specifically with someone like married

or together or that kind of thing.

And otherwise, it's not gonna be an issue.

And I don't care if I've known them my whole life.

For some reason, we hook up. I'm still gonna use a condom.

'cause I, I mean, I don't know. He

might not know, you know? So

Absolutely monogamous.

Absolutely 100%.

There's a lot of pretty boys out there,

but if you can't get what's inside

and underneath what's what is there?

I had a friend who was, uh, 18,

um, straight outta high school.

Um, first time he ever had sex, and he got HIV.

Um, he tested positive for it.

He had sex one time, unprotected

to someone he thought he loved.

He died this past year.

I don't know the, the virus spread

through him like a grass fire.

A 24-year-old friend of mine called me and he was in tears

because he had just tested positive

and I did all the politically correct things.

I was compassionate and supportive.

And I said, you're not gonna die anytime soon.

And I hung up the phone and I'm sorry,

but the first thing that went through my mind was,

you dumb ass.

He loved me so much. There was no way I was gonna get aids.

The longer we were in into the relationship,

the more fearful fearfully got.

I Had a niece, she was about 11 years old,

and I remember going up to her and going to kiss her,

and she turned her cheek to me.

I watched him die, or it took

18 months.

How could you be so stupid in these days?

Everything that's out there, it's just stupid

to be testing positive today.

There's, there's no reason for it.

I mean, there are reasons. Low self-esteem.

It's, it's, it's, it's glamorization of aids.

It's because of a misperception of aids.

They're living longer. You know, we're living longer

and we don't have the outside obvious signs of it.

We're faking it. We're getting real good at

faking it, but we're dying.

It sucked.

It just didn't seem fair that, um, I I was 19.

I felt lost. I wanted help and I didn't have it.

If someone came to the party

and wanted to use condoms, they were pretty,

they were almost, it was, it was a stigma.

They were stigmatized. I mean,

no one wanted to deal with them.

It was like, well, let's put that freak in the corner.

You know, the one that wants to use condoms.

So shouldn't, growing up in dare

and aids awareness make me smarter than this?

After all since fourth grade, my head had been pounded

with just say No and practiced abstinence

after spending my sexed out year here, all I can admit is

that the pressure is no longer to have safe sex.

Instead, the focus lies on

to simply inquire on the lubricants someone's using.

Because I mean, if you pull out the wet

or the Safeway brand, one more

time. I'm heading for the door.

I it's the Central drive. Central Drive is strong.

It overcomes so much sanity. Yeah.

But for a while, the statistics were showing

that AIDS infections were, were going down.

People were not a certain group of No. Across the board.

Really? Yes, across the board AIDS was scary enough

to overcome that sex drive to, to some degree.

It's not that people stopped zero zero converting,

but the rates were going down

and now for some reason, that's not working anymore.

And now it's like you're positive,

oh, well, what else is new?

Um, I think people sort

of take it in stride now more than they used to.

It's, it's such a 180 degree turn from

what it started out.

The, the shame, the hiding it, the, the not mentioning it.

I mean, the word's much less.

It hasn't been mentioned Un Will

and Grace that I'm aware of.

It's still not mentioned the way it should be mentioned

because it's, it's, it's light, it's AIDS light.

Now,

When I started having unsafe sex,

and people were like, wow, he is just cute, fun 19-year-old

who has unsafe sex and he's funny needs nice.

It seemed like, uh,

wow, I fit in.

You know, people were calling me

and saying, Hey, we have four guys over

here and we should really come.

We've told 'em all about you. And I thought, wow,

people are talking about me.

The rule is, you never talked about HIV like I said,

um, you never talked about that.

There was just, you didn't wanna talk about it.

I don't know why. I was desperate to have female friends

to, to make it work.

And I was so different from all of them. For years, I tried.

I'm like, how do I fit into, how do I click with you?

What, what do we have in common?

When I would go to clubs and everyone was so built up

and things, you know, I wasn't,

and I'm like, so how do I fit into all of this?

How do I fit into this image of

something I can't quite fulfill?

So that made me think, well,

if I don't fit here, I have to fit somewhere.

When I was still living in Illinois,

I answered an ad on the web about a sex house.

This guy wants to open up in la.

I answered it, and I came out.

I was the first one that moved in,

and a few weeks later, someone else moved in

and just started throwing parties.

Parties just kept bigger and bigger and bigger.

The la sex house was 99% bareback.

We lost count, but we estimate

that there were over 20,000 visitors

and a month we would have eight parties.

Our policy on HIV status was we don't ask, we don't tell.

And we had a sign up that says, assume

that everybody is HIV positive.

Everybody came to our party,

couldn't tell if they had HIV or

Not. I'd been cruising

online for a long time.

And, um, nothing had really come of it.

And I was just getting really frustrated.

And I started to think, you know,

if I wanna have bareback sex,

and if that's how I really want to be,

then maybe it would just be easier if I would go ahead

and find someone who is positive.

I. The second I did that, it opened up a whole world

of people to hook up with.

In San Francisco, I've struck the ja,

I've struck the pot of gold.

Steve even made a checklist that you had to go through

in order to get our email address later on in the year.

Like, do you feel like you have to give us your HIV status?

Yes or no? And if they said yes, then

they could not get the email address for like five hours.

And it kind of kept the condom users away.

We did things that people dreamed of, no drugs,

just lots of sex.

It didn't take long before I stumbled upon

the idea of bug chasing.

Um, people had talked, one person had talked

to me about it on the phone line

before I started hooking up with positive Tops.

Um, and I told him he had to be negative.

And he said, well, he is positive.

And, um, I said, well, you know, uh,

and I was still like, well, I guess maybe we could hook up,

but you know, you can't come in me.

And he would say, oh, but I want to.

And, um, he,

and then he said, um,

I'm sorry, it's hard.

Uh, he would say, well, well, uh,

he said, well, I'll, he goes, he goes,

no, I'll charge you up.

And that's just really hard to say.

I didn't know exactly what that meant.

I knew he meant he would infect me, but I hadn't.

And the idea sort of started to make sense

and clicked together, but I kind of pushed away at it.

The initial part of me said, no, that's not right.

That's not what we do. That's, that's not how

Doug runs his life.

Uh, Doug Aimes to say negative

and live a long, healthy life.

But, uh, something in me, I kind of went like, hmm.

Dealing with the conflict about having a group

of positive men over here wanting to be supportive of them,

wanting to tell 'em that HIV isn't the end of their lives.

That there are possibilities and so on.

And then taking this group of negative men over here

and saying, listen guys, it's very important not

to be like them.

Before then, there were very explicit messages about not

getting infected about, um,

what happened to people when they got HIV and so on.

And we had to stop doing that

because it was frightening to positive men.

And it induced guilt and negative men.

It was a, it, it felt rejecting.

We never talk about the objective of prevention.

We've pretended that the objective

of prevention is safe sex.

That's not an objective.

That's one method for doing prevention.

The objective of prevention is

to keep uninfected men uninfected.

The minute you introduce the idea that it's better

to be uninfected, some positive men become hurt and angry.

And the response is sort of like, what do you,

you implying there's something wrong with me,

something wrong with my life?

Well, the answer is yes.

The guy who said he wanted to charge me up, uh,

I think it felt like to him it was a means of control.

Like, here's this 19-year-old kid who's healthy.

And, um, he could take that away from me.

He had what I wanted and, uh, and, and,

and what I wanted in terms

of he was interested in the prospect to gift community.

He liked that he had padded walls.

I mean, literally padded walls.

He had pads like on the wall.

And I was like, this is a little too Jeffrey Dahmer for me.

Um, but I didn't care.

I didn't go there to be his boyfriend. So I stayed.

And he was actually nice.

So that was, that was that we had sex.

I mean, you know, no blood, no guts.

After a couple months at throwing parties at the A X

House, I got sick and really sick.

So I went to the doctor

and had all the work done, all the blood tests work done.

I'm still negative. I decided to go ahead

and throw a conversion party

to become HIV positive bug chaser.

Looking for 10 to 15 positive guys

for my conversion party this Friday night.

I'm scared of not knowing.

I'm HIV positive than knowing I'd rather know.

It's just not worth getting yourself all worked up over.

If you're gonna bear back, you're gonna get it.

You're gonna get it anyways. Why not have fun?

I put an ad on bareback jack.

They call a conversion party, bareback sex party.

About 10, 15 guys have replied to it. Really hot guys too.

Only positive people out at my party do gimme their pause

loads and leave and hopefully get the gift.

So I don't have to worry about HIV anymore.

I hate condoms, man. Give me the gift.

I am a bug chaser. I want to get the bug this weekend.

No, I'm not afraid of aids.

None of us chose this virus.

These people, and these people are

Choosing it. And to call it

a gift just blows people, right? Yeah.

Do you know what I just thought about?

I wonder if the kids that are negative that go

to these things, they feel like maybe it's just

inevitable they're gonna get it.

So why not? Oh, absolutely. Make a party out.

It absolutely. That's, that's what their mindset is. They

See no other option that eventually they will get it. So,

But they also don't know what the reality is.

They're not seeing it.

And I don't blame them

for being tired and worrying about it.

But you know what, get the f**k over it. Okay. Sorry.

But you know, you gotta worry about nuclear war.

You gotta worry about terrorism. You gotta worry about aids.

And I'm sorry if you're tired of it.

I'm tired of worrying about when my heart's gonna stop.

I'm tired of wondering if my liver might

explode someday down the road.

I'm tired of it. I, I mean, mean, you know, these,

these excuses have been made and made and they make sense

and it's very sensitive,

and it's politically correct of us to say,

but we're running out of excuses.

When the zero conversion rate is rising

among young gay men

Tends To people saying,

Planning a birthday party at Palm Springs.

August, August 4th, Saturday.

And it'll be about a hundred guys there.

It's all bear backing.

If you are positive and you don't use rubbers

and you don't use protected sex, you'll be infected

with another person's virus.

People are know that, you know,

it's not really a Destin anymore.

There'll be a,

I've known three people that have died

because they had another partner that was HIV positive,

and they decided, well, we're both positive.

We can go ahead and have unprotected sex.

One virus combined with the other virus together killed them

before they met the person. They were fine

Inviting people off the internet

that answers the ad wants to come.

So they have to send me photo and their stats.

How could you live with yourself knowing that you infected

that person when it only took one second to put a condom on

one minute of the whole experience to put the condom on

and feel reassured that you are a good person,

that you do respect yourself,

and most of all, you respect the person that you're with.

Yeah, San Francisco,

happy gay pride, everybody.

We now have generations who were virtually

unconscious and became conscious in an era of HIV

and you come to San Francisco to be gay.

And HIV just part of the scene.

It's part of what it's about.

Uh, you go to the Gay Pride Parade.

I mean, it's all about aids.

You know, what were the floats about before,

before the epidemic?

You know, no one can remember.

It's the AIDS health projects,

San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Ashanti Project.

These floats are all from the, the 75 agencies

that address people with, uh, HIV and aids.

There's a lot of entanglement.

It's, and it's a, it's a very destructive one.

How many bug chasers have I chatted with online?

Probably we've been talking anywhere 50 to 60, uh, people.

The bug chasing groups, I would say 15 to 20,000 members.

There's a lot of people that are getting curious.

I said, what, what is that? It looked like a little like

skeleton with, I don't know.

Um, he said, well, it's a bio biohazard tattoo.

And I was like, okay, are you chemically altered?

And he was like, well, yeah, and a big way.

And, uh, he said, A lot of people look for that,

and they put it just above their stomach,

like about the underwear line, maybe even below sometimes.

So it's not real obvious.

Um, and it lets people know, uh,

he's HIV positive biohazard, HIV positive.

They want to just not have to ever have to discuss it.

Um, I saw people with HIV negative,

and then I saw people with HIV positive, the negative looks

for the guys with the positives and vice versa.

And then, uh, after that, uh,

after the guy converts, he gets the pos,

he gets the line drawn through the negative

Somewhere. There's

a fabulous 45-year-old guy who has stayed

negative all these years.

I don't know him. I haven't met him.

Well, why isn't he and I That's a great campaign.

Why isn't he on a poster?

The thing is, I don't know if there is that man out there.

He's out there who's, he's out there

and we need to find him.

He is out there. He's not a prude.

He's not an ugly nerd who spends his life in the library.

He's a vital, alive gay man who cares about himself.

And he has stayed HIV negative how he has practice.

I'd love to hear his story, but we don't hear his story.

You think there's someone out there who's

practiced safe sense completely.

Maybe the reason that this, this person

who's been HIV negative all these years is not emerging is

because it's really not okay for him to say,

I'm HIV negative.

You guys aren't, you guys might or might not be,

but I'm HIV negative.

That's not cool. Wait. Yeah.

In our culture that's so insensitive.

How could you throw aids in our faces?

When I went into someone over 30 that isn't positive.

I'm, I'm impressed. That's why we need

to elevate these people who are HIV negative.

They need to get out there.

They're the ones who need to be talking.

We need to, they, they,

they are the ones who need to be glamorized.

When I went to get tested last time in March, 2000,

um, I was expecting a positive reading.

And it was, I was

the feeling I could say I was relieved

that I finally got it.

And I don't have to worry about do I have it? Do I have it?

Do I have it? And if so, do I need to be careful?

Not anymore happy,

relieved I can breathe again.

I don't know anybody that's on medication who wants

to talk about medications during a sex party.

Not me. Everybody.

I know my internet friends

or party friends,

we don't discuss HIV because we don't care.

If it happens, it happens.

So why waste time talking about it?

Close friends. I don't have

any really close friends except for one.

And we never talk about HIVI don't even know if he

is, he doesn't know I am.

If if my, I had a best friend that became positive

and he told me, I would say, oh,

that's too bad.

Don't you feel better that you're positive

Now You don't have to worry about it.

I'm sure he would say, yes,

If I get sick, I'll take the medications.

But I don't see that happening for

at least 5, 10, 15 years.

I always thought that I would be more content

and I would, I thought I would be better off

if I was positive.

When I wake up, when I look in the mirror

or when I remember that I'm positive

and I look in the mirror or something,

there's this little voice in my, the back of my head

that looks back at me and goes, happen now,

Happen now,

happen now.

And I'm not, I've made a terrible mistake.

Mistake. I've made an awful mistake.

And there's no fixing that.

There was a couple that we knew,

and it kind of almost sounds like your scenario

of you taking care of your lover and, and everything.

And the final week of this guy's life, wife, his lover,

who was HIV negative, was so distraught

over the thought of losing him.

And he was being cared for at home by nurses coming in.

He had IVs and that sort of thing that I think it was like

death was so imminent.

They were so in love. They were such a couple.

They were so united.

Um, and he just could not stand, he could not let go

of his lover, um,

and didn't want to be on this planet without his lover.

And he pulled the IV out of his lover's arm

and jammed it into his own arm.

And he became HIV positive.

That kind of loss just went on and on and on with people.

Um, for negative men,

it was very hard to talk about.

They, they were the ones

who didn't have the problem was the feeling.

And it's, it's like saying to someone, you know,

you may be dying, but I'm very upset by that.

But the truth is that, uh, negative men who had sustained

these just I think really unimaginable losses,

friends of my age who had these largely gay male social

circles who literally

have lost everyone that they knew.

Yeah. Have lost two relationships where, um,

going into the person knew I was

positive they were negative.

And one was seven years.

The longer we were in into the relationship,

the more fearful he got.

And I think it was just seeing me go through the drugs

and go through the diarrhea

and the fatigue and everything else.

He just got more frightened.

Frightened to the point that sex stopped completely.

He just completely pulled away to the point that, um,

one day he was going to work and he had shaved and I went up

and kissed him on the cheek goodbye.

And he freaked out that I kissed him.

And he was like, whatcha trying to do Be the aids? Yeah.

And I couldn't believe that we'd gotten to that point.

This awful grief and depression

and anxiety that people experience in the early years

of the epidemic has just submerged a little bit.

It's just underwater. It's like a submarine

with a periscope out.

I've lost two lovers to aids.

I've had an HIV negative lover who told me

during our honeymoon that he loved me so much.

There was no way I was gonna get aids.

He wasn't gonna let it happen to me.

And he was gone two years

later 'cause he couldn't deal with it.

Yeah. It was too scared. It was too frightening for him.

I've been single for nine years now

and people wonder why I'm single.

And you know, I, I don't want someone

to get that close to me.

I don't want to take a chance on losing 'em,

and I don't want 'em to have to bury me.

You know, that's just gonna have

to f*****g do me till it's over with.

Maybe the most painful thing that's happened with

HIV in gay communities is that it's divided communities.

And at a smaller level, divided people.

I mean, it's divided couples. It's,

it's unimaginable to be

that different from someone they love.

When Rob found out he was positive, it was very incidental.

Um, he was getting a visa to go somewhere,

and they needed an HIV test

and he believed that he was negative.

And I came home, I saw

on his face that he was stricken.

He said, I'm positive.

And, uh,

my life has not been the same since he said that to me.

I'm talking to my very old friends, John

and Ella, I'm telling them about this.

You know, Rob is HIV positive, Ella Shrieks.

And she keeps saying to me, but what about you?

And I didn't even know what she was asking.

You know, I was very, I I didn't even know.

I, I, she kept saying it, but I kept not answering it

because I didn't, I didn't know what the question was about.

Finally, she just insisted on it. She said, what about you?

Are you positive? And I realized

that in a way I hadn't thought of it.

That I, you know, I hadn't thought of it

or I just assumed I was.

And, but it wasn't that simple either.

There was something else going on and I thought about it

and I realized that I hoped, I was assuming

that if he was positive, well, I had

to be like him about that.

I mean that I couldn't be different

about something that important.

So Rob wanted to get another test, and then,

and I wanted to get a test.

And when I think about it, uh, I wanted to get the test

to confirm that I was positive.

The county worker said, your test is negative.

And I immediately burst into tears. It was like instantly.

And I drove immediately to John and Ella's house.

John answers the door,

and I'm standing there like, like this, like,

you know, help me, I think, You know,

help me and crying with it in the helmet.

And John, they knew I was getting a test

and John said, oh my God, Walt is positive.

And he said, no, I'm negative.

And John kept saying, Walt is positive. And I kept negative.

And when they finally understood this,

I'm just reliving all of this.

You know, it's, this is like 15 years ago,

why are you crying?

And it's negative because,

and Rob is not, I couldn't pair it.

You know, it's just, I'm amazed at

how powerful this is to me.

All these years later, I stood there.

I, you know, wanted John to help some way,

you know, help me for this.

None of this to be true.

And then seven years later, Rob died.

I've never officially been to a gift giving

or a bug chasing party, but I've been to Barebacking parties

and they say specifically, don't ask status.

And don't tell status. And that's just the rule.

If you do what you're asked to leave,

and really, they know

that they're gonna be bug chasers there.

They know they're gonna be gift givers there.

Kim boy has rented the dungeon to have a party tonight.

About 150 guys are coming and they're from his list.

He's invited guys.

And then we have a list and we've invited them

and they're coming here for our standard f**k party.

That, that we generally hold here once a month.

I mean, the rules basically have always been no drugs, uh,

no attitude, no condoms, no clothing.

We do allow condoms.

Now if guys want to use them, and we have no problem,

but a hundred guys, 120 guys at the party, we'll find two

or three condoms the next morning on the floor.

That's it. Well,

do you wanna see the new equipment and stuff?

We've got, we have three portable slings out here in

the yard on the guys love coming out and,

and having sex outdoors.

It's really kind of romantic.

Well, we actually call that the f**k few.

If the southern bastards wouldn't take two pounds to do

that, but, uh, you know, it's made exactly the right height.

Little bottom boys can get on it

and the tops do their thing.

So we designed it and, uh, it's been pretty popular.

And Johnny, the parties are, are split between f*****g

and fisting and the fisting guys will tend

to stay over in this area here.

Um, and then the guys every here, just for the f*****g,

then we will take care of the rest of it.

I have been in the hospital three times

whenever we spoke since then,

I've been in the hospital twice.

Parties are very popular

and there's no judgements made one way

or the other about the type of sex that

that guys are gonna have. And

Bill Will will say

that bareback didn't have anything to do with it.

However, I, some somewhat disagree,

But the action is pretty hot and heavy here.

It starts just almost immediately,

You know, I still do it.

It's my choice. I enjoy it.

You know, I don't like to use a condom.

There are a lot of, uh, dangers to Barebacking.

I don't play at the parties as much as I used to

because I do tend to get, get sick easier than most people.

Um, and some of the diseases I have,

like I said, they don't know what they are.

The party tonight is a birthday party for one of the guys.

Uh, that's also one of our models.

He's been in several of our videos.

And, uh, we're gonna set this room up so

that it's, we can film it.

He wants us to, to shoot his, his birthday party.

Um, and he's gonna be here in the, the sling

and guys will just come in and have sex with him and

Thank Okay, open, be present.

There it is

Here. This is

gonna be his birthday present.

I guess they'll just come open these drapes

and unwrap their present, you know,

so it's gonna be a wild time.

Um, as you can see, it's a small room,

so we're not gonna be able to get the probably

12 people in here at a time.

And I will be 28 on the 7th of August.

Why? I'm not,

I'm not worried right now about getting anything else,

like any STDs.

'cause I'm gonna have fun right now.

I don't wanna have to worry about it.

Hopefully it'll be around 300 people. Hope they show up.

Kenny had a great time.

You know, he got, uh, his goal was to take

as many loads as he could take.

I, I don't know how many times he had sex

that probably 40, 50.

There were beautiful men surrounding us.

Happy birthday kitty. Two from Paris

Fisting And one from Germany,

Dual men, Two from Amsterdam.

This is something that my dreams are made up,

So it gives them a place to come and have sex

and not be worrying about somebody saying, are you positive?

Yes, I bear bike last night. It's stupid. But I did.

I think nowadays it's a choice that we make.

We're not as afraid of it

because sometimes we have a lot of pressure.

Whereas nowadays, as everybody is an H-I-H-I-V positive,

Actually I'm not HIV positive, negative

I am negative.

I am, um, I'm positive that I'm negative.

You're telling me you're not HIV

Positive. I'm not. I'm

negative. So you're

Not gonna, you're not gonna cop up

to the fact that you're HIV

Positive. Yeah, I'm not. No, I'm h

HIV negative.

So you think people lie about their HIV status?

Yes, I do. I so, so do IEM right now. I do.

And I, I'm not, see, that's, that's the thing.

And he might think that I am,

Oh S**t, I have grown away now

from the feeling of warming.

HIVI think, you know,

when I cry this much about Rob, I wonder.

But I think I've grown away from that feeling.

But not until after he died, you know,

you feel you failed someone when you let them die.

That that's just plain and simple. The feeling.

If you can't prevent them from dying,

the next best thing is to do it with them.

Negative men can't talk about all kinds of things.

And this is a community problem.

This is what's driven our prevention

and the way we do it, how we've

conceptualized it, all of that.

The real normalization

of HIV has occurred in gay communities.

That's who's really tried to normalize it.

It's like a shadow that people live with

You guys, I want you to meet true rarity de Jones.

De is, uh, a rarity. First of all, how old are you?

37. 37. Um, he's HIV negative Surprise.

They're still out there. Thank goodness.

Um, one in three gay black Americans

is HIV positive in this country.

And each is not.

Just knowing the statistics about

one in three gay black men being HIV positive is,

is is a frightening thought for me.

And it just feels like

that this has my name written all over it.

And it's only a matter of time

before I'm the next statistic.

I mean, every time I'm with a guy.

I think about that recently, a close friend

just told me last Friday actually, that he tested positive

and that was very devastating.

And I mean, for me, even though I'm, it wasn't me, but just

because it was him and we are that close. Did

You talk about sex with, do you ask, do you find out the

Status? Sometimes. Sometimes

I do and sometimes I don't.

I mean, I always try to watch what I do and, um, be safe.

But it doesn't always happen. I mean,

Something has made you stop

from doing un having unprotected sex.

It's not like I have a calculation.

I can give you the formula. This is what makes me do it.

Mm-hmm. I really can't. It

Sounds like fear is making you not do

It. Thank you. Yes.

It's, and having a close friend tell you

that he's HIV positive, does

that make you feel more vulnerable,

that it happened to your friend? It could happen to you.

Yes, exactly. It's like death knocking on the door.

I mean, I hate say death.

Say death. We need to hear death.

There's no cure for aids.

Now this I find amazing in there.

Like I said earlier, all they,

all they make me wanna do is have sex. Yeah,

Exactly. That

one's giving me a bone right now. Got a while.

They're pretty, they're, uh, incredible. Incredible.

And now one of them looks still,

They look like they have the gift you

want. That's what they look like.

Oh, yeah. You know, of all these posters, there's only two

that I think are, are relevant.

Don't throw in the towel. It's there, there, you know,

there's no naked guys.

Yeah, but what is, don't throw in the towel, man.

Don't give up being your vigilance. Don't get complacent.

Stay safe. And then this one bang, you're dead. You're dead.

No, I like that. Better than don't throw in the towel.

The point is, it's not working.

The statistics are going up. These aren't working.

We need something different.

One of the reasons upstairs,

I said something about why do HIV negative people

need beer busts.

And I, I I I, I think the reason I, I've always thought

that is because I've always thought

that HIV negative people had it easier.

They have it so much easier.

They all they have to do is not get

It. Where do HIV

negative guys get to go and hang back

and talk about how hard it is to stay?

HIV negative, what it's like dating someone who's h HIV v

positive other than some can relate to

that other than some support.

Well, you need an h HIV V positive beer bus to,

because H HIV V positive people need to know

that this is a place where they're gonna feel very welcome.

That they're not going to worry about the stigma of,

of having Wendy HIV status.

But why can't we make the leap

and have HIVH an HIV positive beer bus

where it's anticipated there's gonna be some H HIV V

negative people, I think, and vice versa.

Basically what you're saying is no, HIV positive men wanted,

I'm suggesting that HIV negative beer bus

or HIV v negative life is there.

It's, it's, that is the world positive.

World is is the exception. It's 50%.

But you don't feel a need

to talk about being negative, do you?

And a bunch of other negative people, do you?

That's only if I know. Well, no,

I do feel a need only if I know they're negative, but

They don't talk out loud about that.

Why would I, I don't know. Because that's not,

I'll tell you why. Because

if you were positive,

that would be insulting to you.

That hurt our feelings.

And that's why we're having this conversation now.

And actually, this is the longest conversation

I've ever had with the guy.

That's positive.

We have to quit worrying about upsetting positive

people, f**k upsetting them.

That may give me a lot of backlash.

That may give, people may think that sounds cruel and mean,

but you know what?

I'm willing to risk my being a little maybe

scared when I accept the reality of

what I've brought into my

Life. You've had a cardiac

arrest, you,

but you had a cardiac arrest.

You almost did. I've had a cardiac arrest.

Um, John and I were talking just the other night,

and I said to him, I said,

you don't really think you're gonna die of aids, do you?

I mean, you know what you're gonna die of.

Yeah, it's gonna be cardiac,

It's gonna be a heart attack.

That's been the real dilemma lately.

It's like, take the drugs and develop more cardiac symptoms,

or not take the drug.

You know, it's like you end up taking pills for the pills

and the pills for those pills,

and it just gets out of hands. It's

Going through them all from the beginning,

from the very first combinations

and dealing with all those side effects and switching, going

and trying, dropping.

I, I don't know if I'm gonna die from AIDS or not.

And the heart attack was complete surprise. My

Heart attack was at a major heart attack about five months

Ago. Now people have

developing diabetes.

The last time I saw my physician, he said

that my blood sugar was at point.

I need to be very cautious that

diabetes might be on the horizon. And like

I, I'll tell you, I I am fearful about the things

that I might develop because of these drugs.

The wasting, uh, syndrome

that a lot of people are going through.

Uh, there's so many unknowns out there.

All of these drugs are so new, they don't know

what the long term effects are.

Yeah. We all walking in news, right?

They don't know what, you know, our heads could fall off,

But here's what the future is, okay?

Death certificates are no longer going to be, say,

death due to HIV infection.

Death certificates are gonna say death due to rectal cancer,

heart attack, two drugs, diabetes and liver.

And that's gonna dumb down the whole AIDS thing.

The consciousness of it, the awareness of it,

it's gonna make it polite. Again.

When I saw the, the HIV drug ads around town,

they were muscular and they looked

strong and they were cute.

And there were people I wanted to date.

I never understood what the point was.

I mean, who is it informing?

Why do I care that this medication give

has less side effects?

I'm not taking it from what it seemed. It seemed great.

Like, oh, well take this medication

and look, you'll, you'll be fine.

You'll take, you'll feel good. You'll feel much better.

When I saw the hepatitis ads, which happened to be, um,

a muscle man's stomach and it says Hepatitis c ro

or Hepatitis Romantic,

and it says, uh, like, nausea is so bad, you wanna die.

Uh, and then just all the symptoms, I mean, just the listing

of the symptoms, I was more frightened to getting Hep

hepatitis than HIV.

Uh, it's that I saw

for smoking campaign scared the hell out of me.

I am not a smoker today. Never have been, never will be.

But I'm HIV positive.

I don't know who should be doing prevention.

You know, my, my personal experience is that, um,

heterosexuals have done better prevention for gay men.

And gay men have done, they're not in the middle of

the war of politics and feelings and guilt

and identification

and this whole thing that all of us are entangled in.

I'm doing Mets now.

Um, it's a pan, but no, almost says the same thing. All.

You'll get used to it. You'll adjust, you'll get better.

Think about my life before that,

and

it was a lot easier.

We have to recognize that

HIV status has some effect on

how we feel about things and

therefore how we think about things and

therefore on what we do and don't do.

And that given the history of prevention, which, you know,

I don't know if it's a miserable failure,

but it, it's pretty close.

My mom, my mom's

great all my life.

It's always been my mom and me.

There's my, my little brothers.

There's my big sister, there's my dad, there's everyone.

It breaks my heart. The thought of leaving them.

I just can't believe that it seemed like it

was a livable thing to me.

There was no benefit in this.

And that's just what really needs to be said.

It's so hard

Going to college and everyone's

as along, and I'm just

middle day, end of day one, middle day two, I'm running,

done not, I don't want

to get tired so fast.

I still, uh, in school, you know,

I find myself holding back, making friends.

I'm in a small town

and i's hard not being like gay sitting,

but being gay and having HIV

and being around people of my own age

for the first time in a really long time.

It's just they don't, it's hard for them to understand.

And I just don't want to risk them not understanding.

Ladies and gentlemen, we ask that you join us now.

As the Golden State Gay Rodeo Association performs the

ceremony of the Riderless horse, the ceremony

of the riderless horse symbolizes the end

of the relationship between horse and rider.

One last ride into battle,

one last march down the parade route, a farewell

to Comrades left behind.

We perform the ceremony today to honor those members

of the international gay Rodeo community

who have been taken from us by the disease.

We've lost so many. We love you and we miss you,

and we know you ride with us today.