Of (un)truth

Voltaire: "Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices"

and

"Everything's fine today, that is our illusion."

Biggest sexual surprise

First time having sex: The girl did NOT want to use a condom. This was 2004, in North America. I had met her at a bar that night, and we were at her place. I refused to cooperate until she found a condom. She later recoiled in horror during coitus because I checked to see if it was on properly. Told me that she was "not a dirty whore". Then she left the bed. Never met her again.

Second time having sex: She couldn't speak English, but she too was vehemently opposed to using a condom. This time, I used a condom once, but as my sleepiness increased my fortitude slacked and she convinced me to do it again skin-to-skin. Thus began my 10 1/2 months of uncertitude.

Parents! Please educate your fucking children. It was my fault for being drunk and tired, no blame shifting going on here -- but what the hell? I always hear stories of guys pressuring girls to go without, but in my own experience 66.6666% of the girls I've slept with (that's right, just 3) have tried to convince me to be unsafe.

From "Bugchasers -- myth or reality?"

I am a counsellor as well as a journalist and first met a young gay man who admitted he’d thought it might be better to have HIV in 1992. “I just feel like I’ve got no direction in life,” he said, “and I see my HIV positive friends and it, like, gives them a kick up the ass. They feel they’ve got some meaning back, something to live for.” He didn’t really want HIV. What he did want was to stop feeling aimless and empty.

This isn’t a bizarre or pathological reaction. What about the grieving lover whose boyfriend has died, and wants to join him? What about the HIV negative guy who can’t face 40 years of rubber-insulated sex with his positive life partner? If these people were heterosexuals, we would be nodding sagely and taking about ‘the difficult choices facing couples’."

What I'd be interested to know, is how many mothers have secretly wished their sons were dead, rather than homosexual or HIV-infected... honourably knocked off in a good war, perhaps.

Or... how many closeted guys have been terrified that this might be true.. frightened ever-deeper into the closet of Avoidance of Shame for Others.

The fact is, Love can have sharp teeth when it's coated in religion. *sigh* more incoherence.

dissatisfied wimps

Jessica of Death writes: "Rent makes me want to move to new york, barely scrape by, become a lesbian, get addicted to drugs, contract AIDS, fall in love, drop out of rehab, live on the street, almost die, but come out happy in the end.
poor, but happy."

I once joked about living on the street as a last resort, and completely offended a woman who had broken free from her 'street life' and started an organization to help others do the same.

Seth Godin's culture of dissatisfaction is all over that. One day I'm so frightened of HIV I can't eat. A few months later I'm equally uptight... I'm HIV-free, but I'm now one class short of getting into the top uni program in my field. Orders of magnitudes difference in seriousness. Decimal-point-differences in emotional reaction. We're all unhappy. Our emotions are hyperbolic. We exaggerate the significance of our decisions because we're afraid of having nothing in our lives that's worth getting seriously depressed over.

Tying it all together.

Fear.

Humiliation.

SHAME.

Regret.

10.5 months.

November to October: 10 1/2 months of the breaking up of my brain.

Coherent blog? No. Just tidbits, likely unintelligible.

If you've wondered whether you had HIV, if you were getting tested for HIV, if you were scared shitless about AIDS, then maybe, this will mean something. I don't know.

Goethe was right; earth is the mental institution of the universe.

Today is the retro-launch.

All of the posts are dated when they were written, back to the fall of 2004.

If new posts follow, so be it. No promises.

"No one writes a poem unless he wants to get out of hell, but do you get into hell in order to write the poem or do you live the life that makes the poetry that gets you into hell?" - Irving Layton