AIDS and HIV did not become big news until I was about 17 years old. I had already been having sex for several years when stories began to fill the news paper headlines and posters appeared on the walls of clinic offices around the country. I clearly remember how scared I and many of my friends were over this epidemic that could take your life after one night of fun.

Up until this point, safe sex meant avoiding The Clap, herpes and pregnancy. Yes there were more horrific STDs out there like Syphilis, but those were not talked about much. In fact there was not much talk at all about STDs except for your doctor reminding you to use condoms and handing you a sack full of them. Most of those were used as slippery water balloons, I was on The Pill, I did not need condoms… or so I thought.

I remember people being panicked about the possibility of becoming infected with AIDs by using a dirty fork, kissing another person, getting bitten by a mosquito or flea that had bitten an HIV positive person and so many other ridiculous scenarios. I also remember the level of hate toward homosexuals increasing among friends and acquaintances.  Hate that I never understood, I had homosexual friends and they were good people, not the evil perverts everyone was making them out to be. In fact many of them were better people ethically than many of the heterosexuals who were aiming their weapons of hate against people who never did anything worse than be attracted to someone of the same sex.

I was terrified to have an HIV test, terrified they would find I had HIV. I was 25 years old before I had one. Since then I have had one after every sexual partner. At this point I would rather know and be responsible about it than not know and possibly spread it to someone else.  I also took more precautions, using condoms during sex and having sex a lot less regularly.

Today, I have HIV positive friends. I watch them suffer with the disease and the side effects from the early medications like AZT. I see the way they are treated by hateful people, not only because they are gay but because they have HIV. One even had his medical records released to the community by someone that worked at the hospital because she felt it was her obligation to let the community know who in town was infected with HIV.

I watched two children grow up without their father because he was infected early on with HIV and passed away.  He was heterosexual and died in 1998 his sons were 8 years old and 14 years old and his loss impacted their lives tremendously. The way that he died, wasting away before their eyes for years also impacted them as children.

This week I learned of a new drug that has been developed which may lower the risk of contracting HIV. Truvada was tested on healthy gay men and showed that if taken faithfully they were 90% protected against contracting HIV.  This medication could truly be a miracle, but at the cost of $1000.00 a month I doubt it will help end the epidemic. While I can understand research and marketing costs behind medications I truly cannot understand, that if this drug can truly prevent HIV and AIDS infections, why it is beyond the means of so many who could benefit from it.

We could be entering a new era where the fear of HIV infection no longer plays a role in our lives, that is, of course if you are one of the few who can afford the preventative medicines. It is truly reprehensible that this drug is so expensive. It could save millions in medical expenses and millions of lives, but will not be given the chance because of the cost.

He died the year after he graduated.

I didn’t know him very well. He was in special classes where teachers could keep a close eye on him, making sure he was taking medication for the ailments that caused him to need a blood transfusion in the first place as well as the ones he needed since he became HIV positive. He was a very sweet boy and it was sad to find out he died, but I really never imagined I’d hear about anyone else I knew having to deal with it.

After I graduated and got married, my brother came out as a homosexual. I realize that now homosexuals aren’t the highest risk group for HIV, but at that time I had only been exposed to the views of the Southern Baptist Convention. I just knew that my brother was going to contract the disease and die because of his ‘sinful’ lifestyle. It really didn’t help that he was, in fact, having unprotected sex and was very promiscuous. I think a lot of guys sort of gravitated towards him because he was so obviously gay. The guys he messed around with weren’t out yet and I think they knew he would be someone they could trust not to judge them for who they were and that he’d be easy to get into bed.

Then, on his prom night as he walked home from his date’s house, he was raped by a man. I was terrified and enraged. The police took a rape kit, but the rapist was never found. My family waited for results of his STD screenings, hoping and praying that if he had caught anything that it was curable.

After that, he seemed to go crazy. He began having more sex, always unprotected, with random men he would meet. He moved away, couch surfing, job hopping and started using drugs. Even when he had a steady boyfriend, a great guy who was stable and was taking care of him, he wouldn’t stop having risky sex. He left his boyfriend and moved in with an older man who was HIV positive and an intravenous drug user. He wouldn’t tell me at first, but it eventually came out that he was sleeping with the guy. Since my brother wouldn’t keep a job, he would exchange sexual favors for things like rent, rides to places he needed to go, and things he wanted.

I don’t say these things from a judgmental standpoint, but from a factual one. I realize that anyone can contract HIV(or any STD), even people who have only had one sexual partner, but your risk factor does increase when you’re exposing yourself things like unprotected sex (particularly with known infected individuals).

These facts were never more real than the day my brother called me and told me he was sick. Over the course of maybe a year, he had dealt with various ailments. Such as flu-like symptoms, exhaustion, swollen lymph nodes and glands, fevers, sore muscles, rashes, and he even had a pretty nasty case of thrush. I hadn’t known about any of it because he lives in Arizona and I live in Georgia. He finally went to the doctor to discuss his symptoms and they started running tests. I’ll never forget that day when he called me and told me that he might be HIV positive. I cried hard, nearly hysterically. After I calmed down, I asked him if he’d talked to our mother about it yet. He said he hadn’t and that he was scared to tell her. I encouraged him to call her. She needed to know too. He didn’t want to do it alone so we called her on 3-way and I broke the news to her. She was upset as well. Of course, we talked about the fact that the tests hadn’t come back yet and that his doctor had said it could be mono, but the fear that he had contracted a deadly disease was very real.

As it turns out, he was HIV negative and it was mono. We were very lucky. He was very fortunate that the risky choices he made in the heat of the moment hadn’t stuck him with a lifelong struggle with a disease that would eventually weaken his immune system and kill him. I think that was his wake up call. He’s straightened his life up. He’s holding down a job, taking care of his responsibilities, using protection with his partners and not putting up with physically and emotionally abusive men. He’s avoiding drugs and drug users (well, anything harder than pot) and he’s getting himself tested on a regular basis.

On top of all of that, he’s coming to me for advice about safer sex and using toys. He realizes that condoms aren’t the only tool he can use to protect himself from exposure. He can make sure to use lubricant and warm up with manual stimulation or toys before anal penetration. I’ve recommended several products for him to try and intend to send him a nice package full of them for Christmas.

I am glad we’ve finally reached a place where we can openly discuss sex and safety. I’m happy that my brother lives in a community with programs available to help uninsured people get the healthcare they need, including tests for STD’s and free condoms. I’m glad to be able to help him learn about safety, and that he has helped me accept and understand how wrong the views we were raised with regarding homosexuals were.

As I sit here, many years after my youth and introduction to the Slings and Arrows of Sexual Activity, I feel almost preternaturally lucky to have not been seriously touched by HIV, AIDS and their related horrors. By all intents and purposes, I should have been touched. I had (still have) many Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans friends now and in High School and college. I also took chances with my own health that, if I had known, would never have taken.

In High School, I hung around with the “Freak” crowd, we accepted most people, I also participated in the Theatre Scene. I remember realizing, as a young and innocent 13 year old Freshman,  that many people involved in the Theatre Scene were GLBT. Although we didn’t  call it that, back then. Most were closeted to all but their closest friends, for protection from homophobic Jocks, Thugs and Greasers. And at first being a bit shocked, as I didn’t think, as most people, that I “knew anybody like that.” I found as time went on I enjoyed my “different” friends, although being Hetero myself.

In college, I was considered a full blown “Hag.” Again, involved in the  Music and Theatre Scene, I made good friends with a number of young gay men who played an important part of my social life and introduced me to things I had only read about in magazines up until that time.

Geoff (names have all been changed) took me to what he called “My Bars” and I danced and partied with the then Chicago Gay Elite. Within limits. Geoff hung around with and introduced me to a good friend; a 6 ft 5 inch, 235 lb, muscular and very sexy gay African American man called “Tiny.” My parents were glad for my friendship with him and close contact in the city, due to his size and ability to defend us, if the need arose, his ability to intimidate any gay bashers on sight. Together they took delight in introducing this once innocent suburban girl to the decadence and thrills of bars, clubs, house parties, drag shows and virtually anything short, in the gay world at the time, to bath houses. I remember Geoff and Tiny taking me to McDonalds if I needed to use the restroom while dancing in “their bars” saying, “Honey, you don’t need to see what goes on in there.” “But,” I protested, “There’s a Ladies room here.” (At the “ManHole.”) They both answered with only a laugh and we ran through the freezing Chicago streets to the closest fast food restaurant so I could pee in relative innocence.

I also, was not allowed in the back rooms, where films were being shown in the private clubs. I was a bit interested in gay porn, (this is before VCRs and rental movies were as common as they became in just a few short years)  but my friends felt that I was best kept in the main areas of the clubs, where I could dance with a multitude of beautiful boys, and giggle when my butt was pinched or one of my boobs squeezed in a packed room. “HEY!” I once yelled on a crowded dance floor, over a booming house beat, “Who pinched my ass? I’m a real girl!” Again gales of laughter were my only answer and I sometimes felt like a queen hag in the presence of these men who accepted a pretty, young naïve het woman,  showed me an interesting world, opened my mind and generated more tolerance in my thinking than even a formal education at a liberal arts university could give me.

I also was in an open relationship with my Man. I was so young when I met him, had no experience with sex, other than what he had introduced me to, and although he had some experience with women (he’s a bit older than I am) we both felt that opening the relationship was preferable to either breaking up or waking up one day, decades later, still together and thinking, “What did I miss?”

So, back then I had relationships with what are referred to now as “Friends with Benefits” “Informal Boyfriends” or “Fuck Buddies.” As with most sexual relationships in those days, the woman was usually on the pill (you were considered irresponsible if you didn’t get yourself to the clinic for the pill, or at least for a diaphragm. Birth control was considered a woman’s job. Disease prevention was not really thought about in the days of penicillin.)  And asking a boy to don a condom was considered an etiquette gaff, not to mention old fashioned. After all, we were all on the Pill. What could go wrong?

HIV and AIDs were in the news, but at the time it seemed foreign and we felt insulated from it. Jokes were made, by my gay and straight friends alike about “the gay plague” “The gay cancer” and (sorry) “butt fuck fever.” I didn’t have anal sex then, and I didn’t have sex with gay men, and I didn’t use inject-able drugs, so I felt the need for condoms with straight boys, while on the pill, was superfluous. Most people, including most of my gay friends, felt the same way at the time. “That’s just in New York and LA.” Or “It’s just a rumor to scare us away from being gay.”  Or, “A condom? Sugarcheeks, I’m not worried about getting pregnant!” These and other justifications were used regularly to help assuage our growing discomfort with what was beginning to perhaps look like an epidemic, at least from the media’s standpoint.

My Man once bought a condom with a “french tickler” while I was home on a break, in a gas station rest room. We laughed hard when he put it on, and it broke after only a few strokes. I was on the pill, so neither of us was worried.  Unbelievably, despite being sexually experienced, he had never used a condom before. This was not uncommon in the post free love days of the pill, when most of us felt impervious to harm, after all, with the exception of herpes, everything you could “catch” could be cured with a few days of penicillin.  “Trich” an itchy, foaming, evil smelling vaginal infection, that has no symptoms in men (although they can pass it on and it can cause infertility if not treated) could be treated with a 3 day course of an anti-parasitic drug. The side effects of this drug could make one violently ill if alcohol was used while the drug was being taken and that was considered a serious “side effect.” Still, latex and condoms was rarely seen in these heady days of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Unless they were being used to smuggle cocaine in people’s asses or digestive tracts.

My friend Debbie, whom I met while living in the same dorm at that liberal arts university, changed lovers like most girls our age changed their clothing. Like most of us, she was on the pill, and felt adequately protected. She never felt the need for condoms, either.

Once, while very very drunk, our friend Geoff asked if I would have sex with him as he “hadn’t fucked a woman in years.” And “Almost forgot what if felt like.”  (He, like most young gay men back then, attempted to deny his orientation when young by dating a litany of women and forcing himself to have sex with them. He told me was almost always very drunk or very high when these encounters occurred, “To help ignore the gag factor.”)  I told him I didn’t think it would be good for either of us, and I didn’t think it would be good for our friendship, plus I was about to get my period and… Obviously, I wasn’t attracted to Geoff, sexually, and there were several nagging reasons why I just didn’t feel right about having sex with him. Far from the least of which, I thought both of us would regret it, for slightly different reasons. Our friend Debbie got stoned that evening, and dragged Geoff to her bed.  Sans condom. The next morning, he was suitably embarrassed, and somewhat humiliated and begged Debbie not to tell anyone. She did.  (Bagging a gay guy was thought to be an accomplishment in certain circles back then.) When a few days later she developed a raging bacterial vaginal and urinary tract infection she jokingly told me, “The doctor at the Student Health Clinic said it was due to E Coli. OMG. I may have the gay plague!” She thought this was humorous. I was starting to think it wasn’t so funny.

She never told Geoff about the infections, and to her credit, they could have been due to any of the great number of her interesting activities, as well as due to being on the pill. To this day, I still think she should have said something to him.

Shortly after, I came very close to a three way with two lovely yummy bi boys named Timmy and Rick. Rick was dreamy looking and very funny, men and women alike flocked to him. Timmy was quiet and studious and they were both good friends of mine, Geoff and the rest of the crowd. They shared an off campus apartment, and were lovers in what appeared to be a bisexual open relationship. They were attractive boys, I liked them, and I had never had an experience like the one suggested. Out of the blue, my Man showed up that weekend, and I felt such a sense of relief at the nearly planned encounter with these handsome boys being cancelled that none of us mentioned it again.

By the time I graduated college, the jokes about “The Gay Plague” were heard less and less frequently. Stories in the media about just how serious HIV and AIDS were become more frequent. I  then knew at least one young gay man to positively die from AIDS. I had known him since first grade. His father was a conservative, a homophobe and a cop. He was kicked out of his parents home, while viciously sick with hepatitis the very day he came out to them. His father said “no son of mine was gonna choose to be a fag.” And Mike was on his own, sick and scared.  Friends found him an apartment. We stopped by with groceries and brought him to the doctor and picked up his meds from the drug store. Later, he moved and I lost track of Mike, as although his older brother was good friends with my Man, little was said about him by the brother and looks were thrown if he was mentioned in the brother’s company. Mike was the first person I knew to die of AIDS and one of his younger brothers committed suicide a year or so later. No details on why this tragedy also occurred were forthcoming from Mike’s other brothers or his family. Mike’s picture was on a wall of remembrance at our high school reunion many years later.

I have no closure on Geoff, or Tiny or Timmy and Rick or my other friends from college. My Man and I closed our relationship, became monogamous, bought a house, and became legally married, moved to the suburbs, popped some babies out and taught our own children many things, including the necessity of owning and using condoms, even while on the pill.

I have no idea if my once close friends are alive or dead, sick or well. I hope and pray they all survived the years of ignorance and bliss and refusal to use latex or other protective materials as my Man and I and so many others likewise refused to. I also have no news on Debbie, as she found seducing young gay men a fun game for herself. The last I heard, many years ago, she was on her way to dental school. I also hope and pray that she was lucky enough to remain healthy and is still among the living.

I kept track of many of them for a few years. At last encounter with each, all were healthy and safe. I remember the last time I talked to Geoff, shortly after I was married, asking him “Are you healthy?” He said yes, he and his partner (he also ended up with an older man, and fell into a quiet suburban life as a sometimes working “housewife,” oddly similar to my own life) were healthy, happy, monogamous and safe.

My Man and I have both been tested for HIV several times, thankfully, we remain unaffected and healthy. I feel blessed by this.

Life got in the way, and as our family grew, we ventured less and less into the city and it has been over a decade since I have seen the inside of a gay bar or a drag club. This was once a big part of my life. Babies and breastmilk, preschool and gifted programs, buying our houses and making them our own, broken septic lines and children’s doctor appointments, teaching our own children about love, and then my Man and I eventually “rediscovering” of our own little slightly insulated, yet interesting and increasingly dynamic sexual adventures have kept us busy. But at times still wondering how we managed, how we got so lucky, lost so few friends and survived ourselves.

Our children have much more knowledge about sexual safety than we had at their ages. They were raised in the age of computers and latex and none of the older ones would think of leaving the house without a condom any more than they would leave the house without their cell phones.

Some progress has been made.