World AIDS Day exists because sometimes we forget to reflect. How many days of the year do you think about AIDS, besides Dec 1? In the ‘80s and the ‘90s it would have been hard to find someone who wasn’t in some way connected to a person who had HIV. Everyone had a story. But for my generation, HIV and AIDS have become like a distant horror story. The monster under the bed that nobody really believes in because if Tumblr can’t catch it then it doesn’t exist. I even knew a guy who tried to dispute the pros and cons of HIV with me. He literally wanted to share the pros to a life-terminating disease. He said it wasn’t so bad, it’s a “manageable” disease now, and the government gives you money. And he was sober. Unfortunately, so was I. Sobered by the reality that for my peers, a virus your computer catches is more alarming than HIV.
Because my generation wasn’t around to see firsthand the instantaneous horror of AIDS in the 20th century, we do not understand it on the same level. There is no history class that can truly teach us what it feels like to lose someone you love in such a dark and mysterious way. Suddenly, AIDS arrived. Like a true diva. A true bitch. She took the spotlight. She demanded it. And despite our best attempts to pull the curtain on her, she still shines.
We died first, and we died the most, and that’s why the war against HIV and AIDS is personal. We, as a community, a culture, a group of really really fabulous people — whatever the fuck you want to call us — we need to be an example of how to live in a world with AIDS. We have to practise safe sex. That is our responsibility, whether we like it or not. Yes, it’s a total mood-kill to find a rubber and to put it on. I always find it the most dramatic moment of sex. Where’s the condom? Find the condom. Hunt. Hands shaking. Don’t stop. Got the condom! Shit, no, just more lube. Don’t need more lube. Focus. Focus. Foc-ussssss! Got it. Yay. Try to open it, fuck, fuck, fuck, hands are shaking. Damn hands. Damn. You. Hands. Got it open, put it on, shit, fuck, mother fuck, damn you hands, wrong fucking way! Blow. Blow like they taught you in high school health class. Blow to find out which way to roll the condom on your big pulsating cock . . . Got it! Thank you Mrs Callaway!
At least that’s the mental train I imagine choo-chooing through my boyfriend’s mind on date night. The point is, condoms are a bitch. But so is life. Trumped only by the biggest motherfucking bitch of all: death. She’ll cut you!
Put that at the end of a hash tag if it will help get it through your brain, which used to be in you, before it was on your monitor.
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