Both a mentor and one of my best friends, in early 2008 I sat down with Mikiki to talk about what it means to be gay in various Canadian cities, how he adjusted to his own sero-conversion and whether or not AIDS killed all the cool people. This is part 3 of 4.
Part 1
Part 2
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Mikiki: My straight friends – yeah, it’s petty much exclusively my straight friends – think that I’m dealing too well with this.
Nico: (laughs) “Cry harder!”
Mikiki: I know. They’re sort of saying, “No, but this is serious.” I think it’s indicative of the fact that they don’t have an experience of thinking about HIV in their daily lives.
Nico: Do you think gay people think about HIV in their daily lives? For me the jury’s still out on that one. You and I live in such a bubble that sometimes I have troubles imagining what life is like outside of it.
Mikiki: Like real gay people who aren’t like us?
Nico: All kinds of gays. Shopping mall gays, Public Service gays, weekend gays…
Mikiki: I think that there’s no way for a queer person, for a gay male specifically, to think about their sexuality without having AIDS flash in their head as an image.
Nico: True. That’s basically what I told that nurse. How can a man who has sex with other men not think about it?
Mikiki: Yeah. No matter how young you are, still there have been stories, cover stories, HIV still makes news. Consistently.
Nico: “Well there’s that Tom Hanks movie…”
Mikiki: So that was something that struck me. I’ve had a number of friends sort of take me aside. And not in terms of health stuff, you know, cause I feel, “If you wanna know about my health stuff then fucking ask.” Cause I‘ve also had friends disclose to other friends on my behalf.
Nico: That was helpful.
Mikiki: Yeah, totally.
Nico: I’m so busy these days I just can’t disclose to everyone fast enough.
Mikiki: So I’ve decided to start a phone tree.
But it kind of blew me away. “You don’t think that I’m torn up enough?” Or I’m too comfortable too soon? Is it that I’m too comfortable too soon or just that I shouldn’t be comfortable at all? “How dare you” is kind of how I feel about it. “How fucking dare you ask if I’ve really thought this through? If I’ve thought about what it means.” Are you sure you’re ok? You seem really ok. You’re not putting up a front for us, are you? Cause you could talk about it. I feel… ok I appreciate that sentiment of “you don’t have to be brave for us – if there’s stuff you’re going through we’ll be here for you.” But to say you are in disbelief that I am ok with where my life is at, including my sero-status… I feel it's a little hard to take.
I had a great conversation with a trans friend of mine, who says, “I don’t want to be the fucking educator all the time. It’s not my job. I didn’t sign up for this. I’m fully willing to subvert and fuck up the goals of the movement if it suits my personal goals for my life. Sure, I’ll be a trans activist but when it comes to living my life, I’m gonna live my life. And if that means that one person is not going to receive the information or is going to receive misinformation because I’m pissed off at the way that they phrased the question --"
Nico: About HIV?
Mikiki: About trans stuff specifically. I’m not gonna give someone misinformation about HIV because trans identification and sero-status are not analogous.
Nico: Alright.
Mikiki: But I like to remember what that trans friend said. I was chatting online the other day and some dude said, “So how’d you get it?” That’s a really fucking personal question. We’ve been chatting for all of ten minutes. I think you’re really cute, you seem pretty cool, I disclosed because if we’re meeting online I feel pretty comfortable disclosing if we’re just gonna fuck. But do I really want to tell you this history of sexual assault that led to the point where I was more willing to make a decision with a casual partner that we were gonna have an unprotected relationship?
Nico: Well what does it matter?
Mikiki: What does it fucking matter? Thinking about relationships… and how HIV is this thing that underwrites and undermines, but also supports and builds at the same time... HIV creates these new ways of relating and of understanding and creating reality among gay men. It allows us to forge new identities and relationships. I find that really exciting. But I also think it forces us to compartmentalize stuff or to ignore stuff or to fracture our identities and relationships. And that’s not serving us as a community.
Nico: Take that idea and boil it down because I’m not sure I got it and I want to.
Mikiki: HIV does two things in terms of how we construct stories and construct relationships. It allows us new ways of forging bonds. Like the people that I’ve met through this type of work and the types of connections I make with men when we’re having a negotiation based on risk or based on sero-discordance – those are the pomegranate seed. Those are the beautiful gems of “this thing”. But at the same time, it creates these objects of fear, which are what condoms have become. Fear, distrust, disclosure, blame, guilt…
Nico: Distance.
Mikiki: Distance. Physical barriers. And also these types of ideas like, “Oh but there are people going around infecting others on purpose blah blah bah.” The inclination to point out the exception to the rule that creates these urban legends and myths that take on their own life. Just like when we talked about the remote possibility of transmission, there is a remote possibility of someone being really pissed off and fucked up about their status and going out and having unprotected sex with people intentionally, knowing that they’re putting them at risk – doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re infecting them and the people who are choosing to engage in unprotected sex with that person are also making an informed decision that they are taking a risk. The issue is that when the HIV+ person does not disclose, the HIV- person is not able to make an informed decision. But they are making an informed decision that they don’t know this person’s status.
Nico: When it comes to criminality, I can come to terms with someone being charged if… say I asked a partner, “Have you been tested recently?” and the person said, “Funny you ask, I was tested last week and I tested negative which means that up until at least three months ago, I was HIV-.” And if I asked the person, “To the best of your knowledge, have you engaged in any high risk activity in the three months since?” and they said, “No, not at all. I have no reason at all to think I might be positive.” And the person knows full well that they’re positive, I would have troubles going to bat for that PHA. (pause) Oh god, can you imagine having that stiff a conversation before fucking??
But in the absence of that… Here’s my experience, Mike. I hook up with all kinds of people and nobody asks my sero-status and I rarely ask others their sero-status. I don’t ask others about theirs because for the most part I don’t do high risk activities and I’m comfortable doing low risk activities with positive guys. So it doesn’t really matter what their status is, positive or negative. Plus, it's the undiagnosed poz guy who's more likely to pass on the virus, not the poz guy who knows his status, monitors his viral load, blah blah blah. But what amazes me is that, for example, I work at an HIV drop-in centre where most of the guys assume I’m also positive and when it comes out down the line that I’m not, at least a few of them are pretty surprised. They assumed I was positive like them. Whereas with my lovers, they all appear to assume I’m negative. I’m quite up front, I talk to people about where I work. To me, if I heard a guy say he worked at an HIV drop-in, I’d think at least there’s a chance that he’s positive.
Mikiki: Yup.
Nico: Now maybe they don’t give a shit. Maybe they’re like me and they don’t give a shit about my status because they're informed, know the sort of risks they're comfortable with, all that. In which case, fair enough. But I think that because I’m white and I wear fancy clothes and I’m well educated and I can chitty chat for tea time well--
Mikiki: And you’re also happy.
Nico: I think it’s a case of, “He seems negative.” They never ask and it blows me away. Because I don’t volunteer my sero-status to people if they don’t ask. I figure it’s their choice if they don’t want to know. Maybe they don’t want to know and that’s their business.
Mikiki: Yeah. I love that you have the luxury to do that. Because I participate in high risk activities. And now even with lower risk activities that I participate in, I have that thing where I think, “Ok so if it’s just a blow job… uhhh… but I brushed my teeth a half an hour ago… do I really need to think about… oh but my gums bleed when I brush my teeth because I don’t floss regularly, you know?”
Nico: Yeah I have long suspected it’s flossing that’s at the root of this epidemic.
(laughter)
Mikiki: I want to talk about something else related to the perceived necessity to disclose.
Where I do most of my random hooking up online, I feel pretty comfortable just disclosing flat out pretty early on. I’m pretty sure that all of my fuck buddies now are positive. And that’s been acknowledged and we talk about our health and we talk about our ability to disclose. It’s actually a beautiful set of relationships I have with these people where we talk about how we deal with other hook ups.
I talked earlier about trans identification and sero-status, and I don’t feel like they’re analogous, but I’ve had conversations with a good friend about disclosure of each. He identifies as trans and I do too. But we also present as males and that’s the genitalia we have as well. For the most part we present as males. But my trans-identification is very strong and dear to me and it’s something that becomes a point of disclosure. And there’s an interesting similarity between sero-status and trans-identification when you don’t necessarily identify as what you’re presenting. I don’t identify as the HIV negative person that others might read me as. And recently I’ve been having some lengthy chats with someone online where it started off as just, “I think you’re cute but not really looking to hook up so let’s just chit chat,” but now the online relationship is getting more involved and invested and I’m thinking, “So now there’s this point where, if this relationship is going to move into something more serious, now there are two things that I need to disclose.” Because it’s been an issue with me in the past with other significant, long-term love relationships where, if we’re going to be boyfriends, you’re going to need to know that I’m trans. And if we’re going to fuck, you’re gonna have to know that I’m poz. I’m finding there are these two threads that are woven in the same direction.
Nico: And in your experience, is one of those more readily accepted than the other?
Mikiki: Poz status, for sure.
Nico: Is more readily accepted?
Mikiki: Yup. Me being a drag queen doesn’t get me laid. Me being poz gets me laid.
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Click here for part 4.
2 comments:
I have definitely made the mistake of assuming how a newly diagnosed person is feeling. That was a major fuckup on my part. It pretty much turned off all conversation between me and that person. And rightly so. I wouldn't want to talk to someone who assumed how I felt about anything.
Shannon
At parties I was always worried to disclose that I worked in research for HIV cause most people would then assume my status. Everytime it did come up it shifted the conversation and made things a tad awkward. Which brings me to the "Do different gay guys think of HIV?" ... I'd say most gay guys are probably thinking of swine flu before HIV when they're screwing around.
-Brock
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