The lovely story in total from Rolling Stone
JP
The men who long to be HIV+
Photo Illustration by Matt Mahurin
Carlos nonchalantly asks whether his drink was made with whole or skim milk.
He takes a moment to slurp on his grande Caffe Mocha in a crowded Starbucks,
and then he gets back to explaining how much he wants HIV, the virus that
causes AIDS. His eyes light up as he says that the actual moment of
transmission, the instant he gets HIV, will be "the most erotic thing I can
imagine." He seems like a typical thirty-two-year-old man, but, in fact, he
has a secret life. Carlos is chasing the bug.
"I know what the risks are, and I know that putting myself in this situation
is like putting a gun to my head," he says. Some of that mountain music
that's so popular is playing, making the moment even more surreal as a
Southern voice sings, "Keep on the sunny side of life" behind Carlos. "But I
think it turns the other guy on to know that I'm negative and that they're
bringing me into the brotherhood. That gets me off, too."
I met Carlos in New York's Greenwich Village, the neighborhood where he
usually hangs out. He is tall, with a large build, and plenty of gay men
find him attractive. His longish, curly-wavy hair is jet-black with golden
highlights, and his face is soft and just a bit feminine. He has a very
appealing smile and laugh, and he's a funny guy sometimes. The conversation
veers from the banal -- his fascination with the reality show The Amazing
Race -- to his desire for HIV. Carlos' tone never changes when switching
from one topic to the other.
When asked whether he is prepared to live with HIV after that "erotic"
moment, Carlos dismisses living with HIV as a minor annoyance. Like most bug
chasers, he has the impression that the virus just isn't such a big deal
anymore: "It's like living with diabetes. You take a few pills and get on
with your life." Carlos spends the afternoon continually calling a man named
Richard, someone he met on the Internet. They met on barebackcity.com about
a year ago, while Carlos was still with his boyfriend. That boyfriend left
because Carlos was having sex with other men and because he was interested
in barebacking -- the practice of having sex without a condom. Carlos and
Richard are arranging a "date" for later that day.
Carlos is part of an intricate underground world that has sprouted, driven
almost completely by the Internet, in which men who want to be infected with
HIV get together with those who are willing to infect them. The men who want
the virus are called "bug chasers," and the men who freely give the virus to
them are called "gift givers." While the rest of the world fights the AIDS
epidemic and most people fear HIV infection, this subculture celebrates the
virus and eroticizes it. HIV-infected semen is treated like liquid gold.
Carlos has been chasing the bug for more than a year in a topsy-turvy world
in which every convention about HIV is turned upside down. The virus isn't
horrible and fearsome, it's beautiful and sexy -- and delivered in the way
that is most likely to result in infection. In this world, the men with HIV
are the most desired, and the bug chasers will do anything to get the
virus -- to "get knocked up," to be "bred" or "initiated into the
brotherhood."
Like a lot of sexual fetishes and extreme behaviors, bug chasing could not
exist without the Internet, or at least it couldn't thrive. Prior to the
advent of Web surfing and e-mail, it would have been practically impossible
for bug chasing to happen in any great numbers, because it's still not
acceptable to walk up to a stranger and say you want the virus. But the
Internet's anonymity and broad access make it possible to find someone with
like interests, no matter how outlandish. Carlos surfs online about twenty
hours a week looking for men to have sex with, usually frequenting sites
such as bareback.com and barebackcity.com, plus a number of Internet
discussion groups. Most of the Web sites use the pretense that they actually
are about barebacking, which is in itself risky and controversial but still
a long way from bug chasing. For the Web sites, that distinction is at best
razor-thin and more often just an outright lie. "We got Poz4Poz, Neg4Neg and
bug chasers looking to join the club," the welcome page to barebackcity.com,
which claims 48,000 registered users, up from 28,000 about a year ago,
recently said. "Be the first to seed a newbie and give him a pozitive
attitude!"
Within this online community, bug chasers revel in their desires, using
their own lingo about "poz" and "neg" men, "bug juice" and "conversion" from
negative to positive. User profiles include names such as BugChaser21,
Knockmeup, BugMeSoon, ConvertMeSir, PozCum4NegHole and GiftGiver. The
posters are upfront about seeking HIV, even extremely enthusiastic, possibly
because the Web sites are about the only place a bug seeker can really
express his desires openly. Under turn-ons, a poster called PozMeChgo craves
a "hot poz load deep in me. I really want to be converted!! Breed me/seed
me!" Carlos' profile on one Web site lists his screen name as ConvertMe, and
he says he wants a man "to fill me up with that poison seed." His AOL
Instant Messenger name is Bug Juice Wanted.
It's not uncommon to see people post replies to the profiles encouraging the
men to seek HIV. One such comment reads, "This guy knows what he wants!! I
would love to plant my seeds :)) Come and join the club. The more we are,
the stronger we are." A Yahoo! spokeswoman confirms that the company shuts
down such sites when it receives notice that the subscribers are promoting
HIV infection or any other kind of harm to one another, but the company
doesn't go looking for bug chasers in its thousands of discussion groups,
most established by subscribers themselves. Recently, it was easy to find
two discussion groups on Yahoo! that promoted bug chasing, one called
barebackover50 and one called gayextremebareback. The first discussion group
was established in 1998 and had 1,439 members at the end of 2002. Yahoo!
closed the group after Rolling Stone inquired about it.
Condoms and safe sex are openly ridiculed on bug-chasing Web sites, with
many bug chasers rebelling against what they see as the dogma of safe-sex
education; constantly thinking about a deadly disease takes all the fun out
of sex, they say, and condoms suck. Carlos agrees and says getting HIV will
make safe sex a moot point. "It's about freedom," he says. "What else can
happen to us after this? You can fuck whoever you want, fuck as much as you
want, and nothing worse can happen to you. Nothing bad can happen after you
get HIV."
For some, the chase is a pragmatic move. They see HIV infection as
inevitable because of their unsafe sex or needle sharing, so they decide to
take control of the situation and infect themselves. It's empowering.
They're no longer victims waiting to be infected; rather they are in charge
of their own fates. For others, deliberately infecting themselves is the
ultimate taboo, the most extreme sex act left on the planet, and that has a
strong erotic appeal for some men who have tried everything else. Still
others feel lost and without any community to embrace them, and they see
those living with HIV as a cohesive group that welcomes its new members and
receives vast support from the rest of the gay community, and from society
as a whole. Bug chasers want to be a part of that club. Some want HIV
because they think once they have it they can go on with a wild, uninhibited
sex life without constant fears of the virus. Getting the bug opens the door
to sexual nirvana, they say. Others can't stand the thought of being so
unlike their HIV-positive lover.
For Carlos, bug chasing is mostly about the excitement of doing something
that everyone else sees as crazy and wrong. Keeping this part of his life
secret is part of the turn-on for Carlos, which is not his real name. That
forbidden aspect makes HIV infection incredibly exciting for him, so much so
that he now seeks out sex exclusively with HIV-positive men. "This is
something that no one knows about me," Carlos says. "It's mine. It's my
dirty little secret." He compares bug chasing to the thrill that you get by
screwing your boyfriend in your parents' house, or having sex on your boss'
desk. You're not supposed to do it, and that's exactly what makes it so much
fun, he says, laughing.
Carlos carries another secret that he says heightens the thrill of pursuing
HIV. Sometimes he volunteers in the offices of Gay Men's Health Crisis, the
pre-eminent HIV-prevention and AIDS-activist organization in New York. And
about once a month, he does outreach volunteering in which he goes to clubs
to hand out condoms and educate men about safe sex.
Carlos should meet Doug Hitzel, but he probably never will. A year ago they
might have been online buddies, both sharing a passion for HIV that few
others understood. Now Hitzel understands all too clearly what bug chasing
can do to a young man's life, but it's too late for him. After six months of
bug chasing, Hitzel succeeded in getting the virus. He's now a
twenty-one-year-old freshman at a Midwestern university, so
wholesome-looking you'd think he just walked out of a cornfield.
Hitzel's experience started when he moved from his home in Nebraska to San
Francisco with his boyfriend. When that relationship broke up, Hitzel was at
the lowest point in his life, and alone. He sought relief in drugs and sex,
as much of each as he could get. At first, he started out just not caring
whether he got HIV or not, then he found the bug-chasing underground and
embraced it. He was sure he'd get HIV soon anyway. He thought he would
always feel exactly like he did then; he was certain that ten, twenty,
thirty years later he'd still be partying every night. It lasted only six
months -- then Hitzel got sick with awful flulike symptoms and lost a lot of
weight. A doctor's visit cleared him of hepatitis and other possible
problems, but the clinic sent him home with an HIV test he could do himself.
Hitzel waited before doing the test and decided to go home to Nebraska, to
give up the bug chasing and the rest of the life that was killing him. Once
he got home, he did the test and found out he was positive. He now wakes up
each day with a terrible frustration that's just below the surface of his
once sunny demeanor. He hates the medication he has to take every day, and
he realizes that HIV affects nearly every part of his life. While he was bug
chasing, Hitzel couldn't imagine ever wanting to be in a relationship again.
But now that he's getting his life back in order, he realizes that being
HIV-positive can be a roadblock to new relationships.
"Whenever I have to deal with things like medication, days when I'm really
down," Hitzel says, "I have to look myself in the mirror and say, 'You did
this. Are you happy now?' That's the one line that goes through my head:
'Are you happy now?' " He says it with a snarl, full of anger. "Some days I
feel really angry and guilty. I'm pretty much adjusted to the fact that this
is my life, but about forty percent of the time I look at myself and say,
'Look what you've done. Happy now?' "
Looking back on it, Hitzel says he was committing suicide by chasing HIV,
killing himself slowly because he didn't have the nerve to do it quickly.
Hitzel is ashamed and embarrassed that he actually sought HIV, but he's
willing to tell his story because he hopes to dissuade others who are on the
same path. He gets angry when he hears bug chasers talking in the same ways
he talked a year earlier. The mention of "bug chasing" and "gift giving"
sets him off.
" 'Bug chasing' sounds like a group of kindergartners running around chasing
grasshoppers and butterflies," Hitzel says, "a beautiful thing. And gift
giving? What the hell is that? I just wish the terms would actually put some
real context into what's going on. Why did I not want to say that I was
deliberately infecting myself? Because saying the word infect sounds bad and
gross and germy. I wanted it to be sexualized." He's particularly angered by
the idea of HIV being erotic: "How about you follow me after I start new
medications and you watch me throw up for a few weeks? Tell me how erotic
that is."
Though he's older, Carlos lives a life that has a lot in common with
Hitzel's in San Francisco. Carlos estimates that he has had several hundred
sex partners throughout his life, and he routinely hooks up with three or
four guys a week, all of them HIV-positive or at least uncertain about their
status.
That's a common trait among bug chasers, says Dr. Bob Cabaj, director of
behavioral-health services for San Francisco County and past president of
both the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association and the Association of Gay and
Lesbian Psychiatrists. Cabaj (pronounced suh-bye) calls bug chasing "a real
phenomenon." Some bug chasers are more likely to have a defeatist attitude,
to think they'll eventually get HIV anyway, whereas others are more likely
to add the element of eroticizing HIV, Cabaj says: "For kids who have had a
really hard time fitting in or being accepted, this becomes like a
fraternity."
As a public official, Cabaj is familiar with how the topic makes people
uncomfortable. Most AIDS activists prefer to deny that the problem exists to
any significant extent, he says: "They don't want to address that this is a
real ongoing issue."
When I asked about bug chasing, leaders of groups such as Gay Men's Health
Crisis in New York, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Stop AIDS
Project, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation weren't
interested in providing much education or increasing public awareness. To
the contrary, most were dismissive of the issue and some actively dissuaded
me from writing the article at all. A spokeswoman for the Stop AIDS Project,
Shana Krochmal, characterized bug chasing as "relatively minor acting-out"
and aggressively encouraged me to drop the article idea altogether, saying
the issue is "not big enough to warrant a trend story." Krochmal cautioned
against focusing on "just a bunch of really vocal guys who want to continue
this image of being reckless, hedonistic gay men who will do anything to get
laid. I think that does a disservice to the community at large." The San
Francisco AIDS Foundation labeled the issue "sensational" and would not
provide further comment. GLAAD spokeswoman Cathy Renna was more helpful,
saying she had heard enough about bug chasing to be concerned, emphasizing
that her group's focus would be whether people use bug chasing as an easy
way to disparage all gays and lesbians as sex-crazed and reckless. "The vast
majority of the gay community would be just as surprised and appalled by
this as anyone else," she says.
At GMHC, where Carlos is one of more than 7,000 volunteers, spokesman Marty
Algaze calls bug chasing "one of those very underground subcultures or
fetishes that seems to have sprung up in recent years." The assistant
director of community education at GMHC, Daniel Castellanos, acknowledges
that bug chasing exists but claims there's not much need to discuss it
because it involves such a small population. But would he try to talk a bug
chaser out of trying to get HIV? "If someone comes to me and says he wants
to get HIV, I might work with him around why he wants to do it," he says.
"But if in the end that's a decision he wants to make, there's a point where
we have to respect people's decisions."
Cabaj, the San Francisco psychiatrist, says those arguments sound familiar.
Then, without being asked, he adds, "But I don't know if it's an active
cover-up." He pauses for a moment, then continues, "Yeah, it's an active
cover-up, because they know about it. They're in denial of this issue. This
is a difficult issue that dredges up some images about gay men that they
don't want to have to deal with. They don't want to shine a light on this
topic because they don't want people to even know that this behavior
exists."
Public-health officials also tend to dismiss the bug-chasing phenomenon, he
adds, assuming that it is just an aberration practiced by a few, nothing
more than a curiosity. Cabaj adamantly disagrees, though he admits numbers
are very hard to come by. Some men consciously seek the virus, openly
declaring themselves bug chasers, he says, while many more are just as
actively seeking HIV but are in denial and wouldn't call themselves bug
chasers. Cabaj estimates that at least twenty-five percent of all newly
infected gay men fall into that category.
With about 40,000 new infections in the United States per year, according to
government reports, that would mean around 10,000 each year are attributable
to that more liberal definition of bug chasing. Doug Hitzel says he fits
that description. Though he now says he was a bug chaser for six months, he
explains that he would not have admitted it to anyone outside the
subculture, and he sometimes even lied to himself about what he was doing.
Even if you consider only the number of self-proclaimed bug chasers and not
the overall group of men seeking HIV, Cabaj still sees cause for concern
because of the way one bug chaser's quest can spread the virus far beyond
his own life. "It may be a small number of actual people, but they may be
disproportionately involved in continuing the spread of HIV," he says.
"That's a major issue when you're talking about how to control the spread of
a virus. A small percentage could be responsible for continuing the
infection. The clinical impact is profound, no matter how small the
numbers."
The problem is not restricted to any one community. Cabaj's counterpart in
Boston reports a similar experience with bug chasers. Dr. Marshall Forstein
is medical director of mental health and addiction services at Fenway
Community Health, an arm of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center that
specializes in care for gay and lesbian patients. Forstein is on the
medical-school faculty in psychiatry at Harvard University and chaired the
American Psychiatric Association's Commission on AIDS for eleven years. He
says bug chasers are seen regularly in the Fenway health system, and the
phenomenon is growing. He adds that bug chasers can be found in any major
city, though officials might be reluctant to discuss the issue either
because it is unseemly or because it has escaped their notice. A spokesman
for the Los Angeles County Department of Health confirms that bug chasers
are known in its health system. Public-health officials in New York refused
multiple requests for comment.
One standout in public-health circles is the Miami-Dade County Health
Department in Florida, which is taking steps specifically to address bug
chasing. Evelyn Ullah, director of its office of HIV/AIDS, readily admits
that bug chasing is "a definite problem" in the Miami area, having become
more common and more visible in the past few years. Miami health officials
regularly monitor Internet sites for bug chasing in their community, and
they keep track of "conversion parties," in which the goal is to have
positive men infect negative men. The health department also is launching
new outreach efforts that include going online to chat with bug chasers and
others pursuing risky sex.
Cabaj and Forstein stress that more should be done, particularly on a
national level. For starters, federal health officials will have to
familiarize themselves with the problem. Dr. Robert Janssen, director of the
division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention in Atlanta, says he has never seen the Web sites that promote bug
chasing and does not know of any organized efforts to spread the virus.
There is virtually no research on people who intentionally seek HIV, he
says, but he notes that several studies have shown a growing complacency
among gay men and the population in general about the risk of HIV and a
misconception that HIV infection is completely manageable. Ongoing outbreaks
of syphilis and gonorrhea (which Carlos recently had) in large cities
indicate a tendency to forgo condom use, he says. Recent data from the CDC
show that syphilis rates among men in the United States rose 15.4 percent
between 2000 and 2001, which the researchers attribute to outbreaks among
gay and bisexual men in several U.S. cities. Janssen says the CDC has not
addressed bug chasing in any way but might if researchers determine that it
is a significant method of spreading the virus. "I'm interested that you're
saying there's that much out there on the Web and that it's easy to find,"
Janssen says. "If we can confirm that it's happening to any real degree
beyond just an anecdote here and there, we may need to address it."
What frustrates health-care professionals the most, Forstein says, is that
"gay men who are doing this haven't a clue what they're doing," he says.
"They're incredibly selfish and self-absorbed. They don't have any idea
what's going on with the epidemic in terms of the world or society or what
impact their actions might have. The sense of being my brother's keeper is
never discussed in the gay community because we've gone to the extreme of
saying gay men with HIV can do no wrong. They're poor victims, and we can't
ever criticize them."
Furthering the epidemic doesn't bother Carlos. Bug chasing requires a great
deal of self-delusion, and he easily acknowledges the contradictions in what
he's doing. He notes that while he seeks HIV, he doesn't eat junk food or
smoke, and that he drinks only socially. "I take care of myself," he says
proudly. He also notes the hypocrisy in his doing volunteer work at GMHC, in
which he tells other men to use condoms and practice safe sex, while he's
hunting for partners for his secret hobby. The conflict doesn't bother him
in the least.
Forstein says that attitude is disastrous for gay men. "We're killing each
other," he says. "It's no longer just the Matthew Shepards that are dying at
the hands of others. We're killing each other. We have to take
responsibility for this as a community."
After several phone calls to work out a time, Carlos is ready to go see
Richard. He's had sex with Richard about thirty times in the past year.
"Knowing he's positive just makes it more fun for me," he says. "It's erotic
that someone is breeding me." Richard is in the entertainment business, in
his mid- to late forties.
"Lots of guys want to know who breeds them," Carlos continues. "When I have
sex, I like to always make it special, a really good time, something nice
and memorable in case that is the one that gives it to me."
Carlos offers, not for the first time, to have me come along and watch him
and Richard have sex, but I decline. In the taxi to Richard's place, the
conversation falls silent. He hasn't been tested in a couple of years, and
he's reluctant to get a test now. He might very well be positive already.
But as long as he doesn't know for sure, he can always hope that tonight is
the night he gets the virus. Every date is potentially The One. Stepping out
of the cab into the rain, I ask what he will do if he finds out one day that
he has succeeded in being infected -- ending the fun of being a bug chaser.
He stops, then says he might move on to being a gift giver: "If I know that
he's negative and I'm fucking him, it sort of gets me off. I'm murdering him
in a sense, killing him slowly, and that's sort of, as sick as it sounds,
exciting to me."
GREGORY A. FREEMAN
(February 6, 2003)
Mark
> Bug Chasers
>
> The men who long to be HIV+
>
> He takes a moment to slurp on his grande Caffe Mocha in a crowded Starbucks,
> and then he gets back to explaining how much he wants HIV, the virus that
> causes AIDS. His eyes light up as he says that the actual moment of
> transmission, the instant he gets HIV, will be "the most erotic thing I can
> imagine." He seems like a typical thirty-two-year-old man, but, in fact, he
> has a secret life. Carlos is chasing the bug.
How peculiar! Well, whatever. I'm all for ridding the Earth of idiots.
And I couldnt care less what their sexual preference is.
tom .
the statistics cited in this article are being questioned all over the place. for a
little perspective (remember - this is rolling stone magazine we're talking about) --
- http://www.salon.com/opinion/sullivan/2003/01/24/rolling/index.html
from newsweek -
Is Rolling Stone’s HIV Story Wildly Exaggerated?
Magazine says that 25 percent of all newly infected gay men are purposefully seeking
HIV. Now sources quoted in the story are disputing that
- http://www.msnbc.com/news/863259.asp?0cv=CB20
'Bug chaser' AIDS story disputed
By Ellen Sorokin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
- http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030124-89194739.htm
Peter Stone Brown
" tom ." <blin...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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jer
sensationalism aimed at selling papers.
rs should stick to selling soft core porn interspersed with concert,
album and movie reviews.
jer
JP
"jer" <family...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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