Are Black Gay Circuit Parties A Hotbed for HIV?

via Living Out Loud with Darian

As the winter months disappear and summer approaches, the change in weather provides the perfect opportunity to strip off all the layers and wear as little as possible as you revel in the compliments of both male and female admirers as they fawn over your chiseled physique.

There’s a list of beach parties, cookouts, and annual events on your calendar and none of it will start until you arrive. Your biggest dilemma is making sure your chosen wardrobe for the weekend will turn heads the minute you step out of your hotel room-pardon me-your suite.

You’re black, gay, single, sexy, and free and you have a plethora of choices, from the breathtaking beaches of Miami and the sexy men of Sizzle, to the sinful allure of Tempted 2 Touch in Las Vegas, to the exotic island of the Dominican Republic, home of Inferno DR. Everything you could possibly want in a vacation experience and more is at your fingertips; men, sex, drugs, alcohol and HIV, an undesirable party favor but available nonetheless.

Black gay circuit parties have long held a reputation for offering more than is appropriate to be placed on advertisements. The organized and costly events taking place during the day may be a draw for some, but the prospect of experiencing multiple sexual encounters over the course of the weekend is at the top of the “to do list” for many attendees.

It should be understood that with any large gathering of people the opportunity to engage in sexual intercourse is always present, besides we are sexual beings with a desire to connect on an intimate level. But with every unprotected sexual encounter there’s a risk of being infected with a sexually transmitted disease, and in the case of black gay men who are heavily impacted by HIV, circuit parties catering to this population can easily become a hotbed for transmission. Well, at least that’s one theory.

Read more.

dmdp.3 - mo Miami (Miami part two)

[david's
menu-driven planet]

the third in a series of semi-lucid
rants by david,
only on LifeLube

<<< here
for miami part one



Picture it... January, 1986...

a free moonlight cruise up and down the Intercoastal Waterway between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale; my buddy-- then attending UM Coral Gables (where he routinely showered with Vinnie Testaverde) and his YUCA Lawyer boyfriend had won it as part of a radio promotion. The boyfriend was falling for the "Skipper" (- an old white man of completely unattractive appearence, and I like Old White men) in an obvious, queer, amusing way. It was a magical evening- January, North American Continent, 76 degrees at midnite- remember, we're Illinois People-- with that dense thicket of a zillion hotel rooms and suites, glorious penthouses offered up to Sea and Sky. Almost made up for my Buddys' cramming me into the trunk of his (ostensibly rented for my visit) subcompact to drive his unraveling dealer to Lauderdale and back, or scoring me some shit to take back North- to which he reacted upon tasting-

"...IT BURNS..."!!!...and then proceeding to step on it repeatedly.

I laid in an adjacent bedroom, still closeted, whilst Buddy and boyfriend snorted and porked each other (I guess) . Very Pastel, very Reagan, very Jewish, Juban, Chinese, those days. Everybody walking around South Miami metrorail station froze-faced. I was abstaining then. Miami was already well- rehearsed as crime-addled, third world urban snakepit...a big part of it-- I thought-- was they refused to give up those crank- turned series of glass- slats and get real fucking doors.

The COCONUT GROVE ORGANIC FARMERS MARKET IS PARADISE. There's a rule with Farmers Markets and hot springs--- the more difficult the Journey, the Sweeter the Potential rewards. Taxis are plentiful and forthright but expensive, and we see the meter blasting skyward so early on this long trip as we head towards the Mainland Miami, my shower has already evaporated in the subtropical heat. I know enough about the "GAY GROVE" of Old to know that there IS NO "GAY GROVE" anymore and hasn't been in decades. Even South Beach has only 2 gay pubs left- TWIST has 5 bars in one, yes, but...TWIST was about to open the last time I was there with Larry..1991? We of course got an opening -night party invitation (had a pinwheel) and I remember our dejection at the thought that we had to return to a grey, cold, much less indolent Chicago.

In her definitive Miami true -crime book "THE CORPSE WORE A FAMILIAR FACE" Edna Buchanan described "THE GROVE" as a community of "Old trees and young people"...that's sort of reversed, what with gentrification and cyclonic defenestration but much of the Market Grounds are snug in the toes of old survivors. GLASER FARMS is much of the market- they grow locally, have their own lines of products from other countries, and have ready-made meals that smart Miamians on-the-go flock away with. The best stuff is in back- nutmilk booths, raw cacaos, fruit juice rainbows, discreetly and accurately seasoned plates of local vegan soul food. The peak comes with a ONE LOVE LIVE FOOD CANISTEL(EGGFRUIT) TART with SPROUTED ALMOND/ APRICOT CRUST and PULVERIZED CACAO DRIZZLE ($13). It's as close as you can get to eating a Miami sunset. It doesn't matter if you're seeing it from atop the onetime CENTRUST TOWER ( a rare rave for I.M. Peis firm-- is it a Truman Era refridgerator or a Brazillian reactors' cooling tower?) ) or from BAYSIDE MARKETPLACE (Miamis' Fishermans' wharf...just uncool, Man) : DUSK IN MIAMI IS PROOF THAT THERE IS A GOD.

The canistel grows from Mexico to Brazil and has an impossibly lush orange flesh that (to me at least) recalls mamey or papaya. Much of the stuff sold in these booths has backyard/ neighbor/ enthusiast/ hobbyist origins. LIke the best foods these are bittersweet- we are quickly back to 2007 via the newspaper and a recently completed $250 million hwy that has choked the natural rhythm of the ocean and is causing blooms of deadly red tide. So great the need must be to facilitatate another 10, 000 rich white guys and their manatee- ramming boats, Naples gated communities.

Here we are, 2007... We additionaly manage to biovac in the VERY HEART of South Beach, a DAMRON selection with the "Gay" scratched off their proferred card on arrival. The young black man at the desk is friendly and has a great smile however, so we don't take offense when he has no card of his own. We are across the Street from MTV -- about to move half its' Latin American operations to Buenos Aires. When we arrive at that same City (for Argentina is super-annuated Florida) it is announced that Frances Ford Coppola and Daughter had bought a hotel in the fashionable Palermo area...so that tells you where Miami-- expensive, hassly Miami-- just like L.A.- again, -is going. Conversely, any action that goes to South America South Florida gets a piece of-a vast amount of Capital right there.

We see some of that Capital on the bus ride (RIDES, plural, for me) between Miami Beaches north and south. Original Modern estates, baby bauhaus -on -the -sands, splendid revivals here and again, landscaped to the 9s, canopys cautiously resurgent, with a rare giant inching towards oldgrowth between big blows. Miami is a city of proud ancient wrex, like Carlos Zapatas' "Everglades Post-Industrial", or "Mosquito Chic" house on a nearby' beach, or his nascent Soldier Field corroding in the middle of a thronged pedestrian thoroghfare, a consumer cafe causeway. We are going to the north beach Sister establishment to the "scratched-out gay" SoBe hostelry.

Our room is expensive, EVEN LESS beach- adjacent than I'd thought, in more of a buzzered complex than hotel; housing pressure is high in MIAMI, the '6th BOROUGH' with added onus of being subtropical. Obviously a lot of less-wealthy people have been forced to North Miami Beach from other areas, yes, So Be comes to mind. There is no shortage of thug live among the immensely modest stoops, diverse and pleasant peoples. Kiss a lot of that bye-bye- the whole block across the street is about to fall to, has mammoth signs for- glowing luxury townhomes, multistory jobbers with humanoid forms perched on top. On top, very important. Not in but ON. Our building is vintage as promised and we do the universal pizza or chinese delivery, crack open some of our COCONUT GROVE ORGANIC FARMERS MARKET papayas, watch tv on a bed that's as voluminous as any we've encountered- and correspondingly saggy- middled. We wait for the bus to not- too- too- far HAULOVER BEACH for a while but it doesn't come as scheduled...then doesn't come at all...and we give up for the night.

HAULOVER BEACH IS PARADISE. A legal nude beach in North Miami. I go solo, meet a man named Don who is big on flicking himself (!) --from DuPont Circle D.C. We chat after he strikes up a conversation about how briefly I am in the water- and before and after I dip I'll be the one wearing hooded sweatshirts in the subtropics- I don't like skin cancer nor glomming the ocean with suntan oils. It is only early March but with the surging sunlight, blue sky and warm waters I'm in the Caribbean. That Miami Magic again. The water in San Francisco sports a litany of reasons not to swim. Here it's just the 300 mile long-ball of worms (more distastefull than dangerous) which lives on Florida Sewage and feeds the Stone Crabs (a renewable fishery, BTW). On our return leg home we have a 5 hour MIA layover and I come within a hair of cabbing us back to HAULOVER for a welcome -back- to- America bask but the cost of the sortie climbs past $100 and I deciede against, just as well - a brief but ruinous tropical cloudburst commences out of thin Equatorial air.

dmdp.2 - Lady Miami Magnificent and Morose (Miami part one)

[david's

menu-driven planet]

the second in a series of semi-lucid rants
by david, only on LifeLube

Finding
Sacred South Beach
requires sifting
thru a lot of Shit

Versace is dead. Perhaps my closest brush with fame came in 1991; staying at, with, my newly- Exed Ex (quite a trick right there) at his condominium on Lenox. Back then it could take a queen an hour to walk two blocks, so pervasive was the street cruising. I emerged from the Sea, wearing nothing but a pair of white painter shorts. Gianni Versace lived and died at the News Cafe, and as I approached he was at his table looking down at the Street and the Drive and the Beach and the Ocean. His eyes lit up with the look of Love (slight chance also that it was cocaine, or a combination of the two) as he saw me. I entered and perused the extensive magazine selection, all the time he and I stealing glances of each other. I know- hard to believe in 2007 that you could enter a commerical establishment without a shirt.

As I said, I was down there with a newly exed- and not happy about it- Ex AND I was newly, seriously enamored with someone else as well. The Man situation was already complicated enough without adding another, no matter HOW famous and rich. And in those days I wouldn't even consider sex - any kind- with an HIV positive person. I would have been floored to discover Versace was HIV negative. Just common sense. As much as I could tell from a couple looks into his eyes, Gianni Versace was a decent man.

So here it is, South Beach 2007. Caricatures run rampant- the fake I.D. crowd - BREEDER TEEN URBAN POOR BEACH BAR PARTY- run to make reservations NOW- blasting their music while cruising or crawling down Ocean Drive; fagaphobic Amer- Cuban kids, visible 'Ho and Pimp combos (like the less-Desirous aspects of Las Vegas, more on that later), a gay circuit beach party replete with bull-horn blasting protesters (tho the cops show up and make them spew unamplified Hate only)...almost full circle from my first visit here, maybe 1986; I'd never seen an abandoned City before and just my Buddy PULLING OVER- not even putting the car in park- caused me to become very disturbed indeed. We walked to the ocean, me just about walking backwards as I was sure somebody was going to come between us and the safety of the car. There was already the pastel orange- aptly named -SOUTH POINTE TOWER up-- my Buddys' YUCA lover had the brochure in their Coral Gables apt. - so the writing even then was very much on the wall. Miami Beach needs to be re-, no THREE-Gentrified but seeing as how every last single HOMO in South Florida has moved to LAUDERDALE, that ain't going to happen.

Our First night finds us in a Jordan Mozer- rehabbed hotel-er, bedsit. Small. Expensive. Centrally located. Then it's the MARLIN HOTEL, former home/studio of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell. Back in '93 I used the toilet here on a quick cab sortie from MIA, on brief layover between the Cayman Islands and O'hare....like I said, (toilet) brushes with fame. Also noted that last flash visit was the disheveled sands, courtesy of hurricane Andrew the previous year. We are happy to have this suite at the MARLIN- our trip is almost in the "last minute" catergory- and the present owner/operator is salacious and sails the ship smoothly during our stay- however there is a strong smell of vomit in the suite, right inside the bedroom door. As much as the roaming bar party that South Beach has become (Marlin ground floor included) I blame for this the immense disease incubators called CRUISE SHIPS- zillions of them, magnificent to look at as they round the tip of SoBe in the Government Cut. THe new downtown Miami performing arts center isn't named after CARNAVAL for nothing. Our ANCHORAGE AK. relatives say when Summer comes and the ships return everybody is frequently sick, as they contact the passengers at their jobs and bring pathogens home. SICK SCHMICK- SoBe has its' priorities straight- pop a bottle or can into any reputable lodgings' fridge and 2 minutes later it's not merely FROZEN- it is CRYOGENIC.

I talk with a black woman in a cafe about how there are no jobs anymore. I drink cuban coffee, which makes me psychotic. We got to JOES STONE CRAB several times even though my Partner doesn't eat crab. Sort of like Miami Beachs' BERGHOFF (R.I.P.) and lying in what was once known as SoFi (South of Fifth; does anybody remember the club JUNKYARD?). If nothing else it is venerable, capacious enought to make reservations an afterthought, and has rank after rank of servers that give a taste of how 'It Used To Be". The Food in South Beach is awful (another shared trait with Las Vegas); we get thru a meal (nice silver) at PACIFIC TIME, on a busy pedestrian thoroughfare. It too smells of puke. In back I find an article framed on the wall from a magazine that declares PACIFIC TIME one of it's "Best New Restaurants"...for 1994...I want to cry. Doing some research yields an eatery tip, and despite the fact that it's named after a person (always a bad sign- cult of personality and ego, ya know) and we go check it out. It's in what looks like a drop-dead gorgeous renovation of a historic hotel...from a distance. The lobby reveals all sorts of expensive woods and tarting up...this in a building, a district- originally constructed for the middle and (cough cough) working class Fantasy-ers. All these charming sows' ears down here that the Clueless - Madonna and the surviving, HETERO half of Studio 54 come to mind- destroy in their quest for a silk purse. It's a wonder we don't walk out of this place with the subversive sleekness, young Cuban bartender that blasts us with a nanosecond of pure resentment for distracting him from the TV, and desserts so sugary that they're almost inedible. I found this place mentioned in one of the glossy food magazines yesterday; the article was expounding on why the wine scenes in Las Vegas and Miami suck so bad (they don't care about building a clientele or repeat customers, evidently) and this place is specific was sited for marking up some of their wines 5 times wholesale- which the author says should be criminal.

Architect Michael Graves is wasted on South Beach, his condo building unfortunately similar in size to it's neighbors and probably forced to tone down by a local "design review board" as well. If Las Vegas and South Miami Beach have the worst food of any US Tourist meccas, Metropolitan Miami has the most all-abundant awful modern architecture. Witness how, over a decade ago, a design for twin condo towers from Chicagos' very own Helmut Jahn was rejected for being too "radical"- a rare occasion when perversity would have been appropriate, like smoking MARINOL pills, but ended up being-- like Irony in Miamis' overgrown, omnipotent and Evil Cousin Los Angeles- useless. The Should-be-fantabulous BASS MUSEUM is undone by its' small size and evisceration (again) of a historic library. In all fairness to architect ARATA ISOZAKI, there's a model here of what he WANTED to build, funds permitting. And South Beach can be solemn - the lustrous little clip of coral rock that constitutes the BASS is mere steps from the Ocean- how may treasures would YOU want to heft when invariably you flee, Florida being as perfectly mated to Atlantic Hurricanes as Mexico is to funnelling narcotics to the United States? The whole point maybe moot as Miami in general- South Beach in specific- are about a holy trinity of Beach, Body, and Party; if you want art, go to Buffalo.