MEN WHO WANT AIDS
Matthew Laza talks to the young homosexuals bying to find lovers who will infect them with HIV
THE posting on the Internet message board is headlined, 'I want lots of Christmas Gifts: Leeds UK'. The message wasn't left by a child who had been anxious to maximise his return from Father Christmas. It had been posted by Jon. a gay librarian from Leeds. The 'gifts' this 28year-old is after don't come wrapped in shiny paper, and, unlike the average Christmas present, they will last way beyond Boxing Day. The gift that Jon wants is HIV, came across Jon and other 'bugchasers' while working on a television documentary about the search for extreme pleasure in a risk-averse world. Last week Rolling Stone magazine claimed that 25 per cent of all new HIV infections in the United States come from 'bug-chasers'. In the past few days controversy has raged in America — the Christian Right taking delight at this confirmation of all its beliefs about the sinfulness of promiscuous homosexuality, and liberals getting angry at the exposure of a practice that even the most open-minded find at best distasteful, at worst criminally selfish.
Whatever the true percentage of new infections caused by bug-chasing, there can be no doubt that the phenomenon is real. There are bug-chasers throughout Britain. Alongside Jon the librarian are Ewan the corporate lawyer and Simon the nurse — to mention only those whom I got to know best. These otherwise ordinary citizens believe that their desire for disease is rational; it is their way of achieving the ultimate intimacy that guides all human relationships. For them getting 'pozzed-up' — acquiring HIV — is the greatest gift that they could possibly get, a spiritual experience.
I first met Jon on his recently deleted website, where he went under the name of Pookie'. His homepage was as twee as his nickname. Amid the garish graphics there were pictures of him enjoying Christmas lunch with his mum and gran. Then, almost casually, Pookie invites you to participate in a little questionnaire. Echoing the cheesy Spice Girls hit, he asks, 'So you want to be my lover?' Multiple-choice questions follow: 'I love bareback [anal sex without a condom]?'; 'I am HIV Poz?'; 'Pookie is neg. I will still fuck him bare?' Answer yes to each of these, and the screen flashes, 'OK, so Pookie thinks you are the hottest thing since sliced bread and wants you to plow his arse Now!' His email address is offered to allow speedy contact.
Pookie — Jon — told me that he had thought about 'chasing' (seeking HIV infection) since he first realised that he was gay as a teenager. To begin with, he used condoms 'because that was the thing to do'. But he always had a 'nagging feeling' that he didn't want to use them: 'The only way I can explain it is that there is a whole mixture of feelings and emotions rolled into one. It's love of bareback; it's excitement; it's fear; it's control; it's individuality; and a whole host of other emotions as well. A lot of guys have said to me, "Why not just keep barebacicing and it will happen sooner or later." Yes, that would probably be true, but I want to know exactly when it happens, and I want to know who it is that helps me out; a kind of history if you like. I wouldn't get that from some anonymous fuck.'
Jon is not alone. Other men I talked to also want to be aware of the moment of infection. As far as the 'bug-chasers' are concerned, the man who gives them the gift' is a hero, brave enough to ignore convention. One man told me that he had taped his 'conversion'; it had pride of place in his VHS collection — just as videos of the birth of a child do in millions of suburban front-rooms.
These men know that what they want is overwhelmingly likely to hasten their death. 'The excitement, I guess, comes from the risk aspect; as does the fear, I guess,' says Jon. 'I don't want to reach 70 or above! The control aspect is that with something as final as HIV I have to take focus of what is left of the time I have,' The language that he uses is macabre, very like that of the patient told he has unwittingly caught a terminal disease. 'Yes, it could only be a matter of a couple of years, or it could be 15 or 20; however long, it will make me put some focus to my life.'
The bug-chasers want to belong to the most exclusive club of all, one that will make them feel special permanently, and from which they can never be ejected. Ewan, the corporate lawyer who 'chased' and then 'converted', said to me, 'I got to the point where I want to live my life, not worry about what other people think. I want to be who I am, out of the rat race. I am fed up with my life being about work. I want to be a real man.'
Real men such as the bug-chasers are not frightened of unpalatable truths. Jon told me, As for the repercussions when I do "convert" [become HIV positive] — yes, it will be painful both for me when I get ill, and for my family and friends. I know I will die from this disease — assuming no major jumps in medical science in the near future. I know it will be extremely hard on those around me. . . I know it will be very painful.. . . But I still want to do this.' It may seem bizarre but the 'chasers' see themselves as responsible in that they are planning and thinking about their conversion. They draw a distinction between their behaviour and that of those who 'bareback' casually, knowing the likely consequences but desperate to pretend that it won't happen to them.
Getting 'pozzed' is not as easy as one might think. HIV is difficult to catch. In an age when so many positive people are being successfully treated with combination therapy, unprotected sex with a positive man is in no way an automatic ticket to infection. Post after post on the Net speaks of the desperate search for the elusive 'high viral load' needed to improve the chances of infection: 'London. Irish lad here wants to be converted by a hung pozy top. Make me positive now so I can collect as many strains as possible. Want gentle top, want nice easy conversion.' One chaser even describes how before his conversion his poz impregnator had abandoned medication for a fortnight to increase the potency of his seed.
The desire to have unprotected sex free from fear is undoubtedly part of the attraction for the bug-chasers. The pro-barebackers believe that gay sex has been sanitised and medicalised by the practice of safe sex, and are desperate to reclaim it. They even have a logo, a play on no-smoking signs, that shows a condom-covered penis with a big red line through it.
But for the bug-chasers I spoke to the search for HIV was about a good deal more than the enhanced pleasure of raw intercourse. They wanted HIV to change their lives. Principally they wanted to emphasise the otherness of 'queer identity'. Not for them the gay image of the soap-opera hero, 'out. entrepreneur or reality-TV winner: 'I don't want to be a straight gay, with a his-and-his Ikea chargecard and a standing order to Stonewall,' one told me.
It is this rejection of acceptance, this two fingers to tolerance, that frightens the mainstream gay lobby. The bug-chasers are not afraid of desire, and they are not afraid to pay the price for expressing themselves so totally. I reaffirmed this with Jon via Instant Messenger: 'Matthew: u r prepared to die? Jon: yes. Matthew: crumbs — how come? Jon: well if i wasn't then I wouldn't be chasing — i don't think you can be a serious chaser without accepting all the eventualities of your actions — sickness and death are two of the major ones.'
Bug-chasing is out there. No amount of outrage can stop it. For Jon and those like him, 'the gift' is the ultimate high. These are determined men. As Jon says, 'Each time I arrange to meet a poz guy and he doesn't show up, it's like a huge kick in the stomach, and I start all over again.'
Matthew Laza works on BBC I's Politics Show. The names of the 'chasers' in this article have been changed to protect their identity.
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