Talk Amongst Ourselves

John Peller keeps sex real, only on LifeLube

“You’re negative.”

Right before Christmas, I got my HIV test results back from my doctor. Negative. For the 11^th year in a row.

How should I react to the news? Should I run down the hall at the office shouting the news? How would my HIV-positive friends and colleagues react? Would they feel alienated? Judged?

Miss LifeLube in the office next door once commented, “We don’t do enough to celebrate gay men who stay negative.” He’s right. Partly, I think it’s because we sometimes don’t even know if it’s right to share the news.

I’ve never enjoyed taking it up the rear, so right there, the biggest risk factor for HIV is off the plate. No matter how much lube I use or how patient I am, it’s excruciating. Yeah, know I’m missing out, but it just ain’t for me. In the biz, we call this “strategic positioning”, a risk-reduction strategy that gay men can use to reduce the risk of HIV infection (but not STDs).

The fact that I’m white takes another risk factor off the plate. There are a number of individual, interpersonal and social/structural factors that play into risk (as much as whether you use a condom or not) and that disproportionately affect black gay men (check out Greg Millett’s presentation for more on this).

My mental health is under control, and I don’t have a substance abuse problem – two more risk factors that, thankfully, don’t apply to me. And because I have a partner (yes, we play around, with some rules), I don’t mess around with other guys – much.

But the temptation to fuck guys bareback is omnipresent. Neg, poz, didn’t ask/didn’t know… bang bang and four days later, the dripping began.

This year, I walked away with an STD that took two courses of antibiotics to clear up. Oh, and then there was that staph infection. And that other one.

Let’s be honest about this. Yes, I did something I wished I hadn’t done that put me at risk for HIV. There’s lots of things I regret and shouldn’t do. I overeat, despite more junk in my trunk than J-Lo. I ignored that “no right on red” sign yesterday. I jaywalk all the time. Sometimes I don’t recycle. I don’t floss every night. My cholesterol is high, but I still eat cheese. I’m not perfect, and I’m betting you, my dear, aren’t perfect either. Maybe if we talked more openly about those slip-ups and why we have them, we’d be better able to make sure they don’t happen again.

I’m dead set on making sure I never hear the words, “You’re positive” from my doctor. No way, no how. No matter how much I hate using them, this will be my personal Year of The Condom—Every Time, Every Body. More than a quarter-century into the AIDS epidemic, condoms are the only option we gay men have, and Laura Bush and her As and Bs don’t work for me. All I got is the C. Let’s hear it for rectal microbicides!

I want to find a way to talk about being negative and staying negative. Not how I’ve managed to do it, because it’s nothing but my rosebud that just won’t open, the accident of birth as a white man, and the luck of having a job with health insurance that allows me to manage my mental health. Oh, and a partner who I love who keeps me at home cuddling most nights instead of prowling the back alleys for a quickie.

I want to talk about what it means to be HIV-negative and to stay that way. I want to talk about it in a way that doesn’t alienate gay men who are HIV-positive, but includes them in the dialogue. After all, us neg guys have a lot to learn from them, beyond what happened on “that night”. When you strip away the +/- labels, we are all gay men trying to strengthen our community.

So, come on fellas, let’s talk. Leave a comment below, or email me.