AIDS and Axelrod's Bad Medicine: One Way to Kill Off Straights
hey're like the homosexual sex clubs used to be, heterosexual haunts like Plato's Retreat and Le Trapeze. That is, pleasure is the apple of their patrons' eyes, not the horror of disease.
Not to say that swingers aren't aware there's a danger brewing in the intercourse of cock and cunt. Herpes, just for one, is now a chic concern. But heterosexuality is good, in and of itself, and must (the commandment is in Genesis) be exercised. If some germs which can be spread by fucking maim or kill, well, disease and death are risks one has to take to do what's right and natural. (Here's an explanation: What fags do in bed isn't rooted in the propagation of the species; so, in the face of catastrophic STDs or AIDS, it's reasonable-responsible-for homosexuals to give it up.) Illnesses conceived in making love, for straights, are caution yellow, never stoplight red.
Steven, on December 6 (the night Ed Koch's boys closed down the New St. Marks Baths-they said for letting gay men violate the new state health regulations prohibiting butt-fucking and blow jobs in sex clubs, ostensibly to curb the spread of AIDS), was getting sucked off by a woman friend at Le Trapeze. His girl (not a wife, he'd said, and not a steady) and he had asked if I would join them in a little mattressed room. I watched, lying by his side (her hair draped on his stomach). Her technique was deep, her tolerance good.
He wondered if my girlfriend (borrowed for the evening) would come in. I said, “I think in time." (He'd left the door ajar for anyone to peep or enter, unworried, I assumed, by any threat of leering sex inspectors from the city.) His hands were clasped behind his head. While his swollen cock was being swallowed, he began the interview. "Do you have any social problems?"
"Social problems?" Dry-mouthed with excitement, I asked back.
"Yeah," he said, dispassionate, watching his hard prick appear and disappear. "You know, social problems. You know. Things goin' around."
"Oh, social...," I gasped, both words and credibility catching in my throat. "Not any social problems." He began to look at me, as mesmerized as he had been admiring of his pampered penis just before. "Not that I know of."
His eyes returned to his obsession. 'You bisexual?" he queried flatly.
I wanted to be honest, then thought better. "Yes. Is that okay?"
"I'm not into that part of it. What about your girl?" Up till now his female's cylinder had not slipped off his piston.
"You'll have to ask her that," politely I replied.
"I just don't want any social problems. Right? Otherwise, we can work things out."
Soon afterwards, my escort (a lesbian) came in, looked, and didn't touch. We three others played. Steven plunged his lady (without the interruption of a rubber, though he'd said that they were only casual sex pals, neither really lovers nor exclusive). I stuck my finger in her hole to feel his cock.
Now, I have a conscience, certainly enhanced these days by being gay and therefore cognizant of how a moment's passion, however innocent, can turn into a viral terror. Had I been so moved and had she let me (I'd asked her toyingly and she'd said no, she'd want to get to know me first), I would not have fucked her anyway, unless my prick were wrapped. But consciences are not born perfect. They are educated. Steven's obviously has not been.
Steven was not to blame. He is, I assume, your average heterosexual. Except for herpes -now almost a yuppie's pride of having been erotic-and the petty pestilence of
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While AIDS has killed some 7,000 Americans in the last six years, hepatitis kills as many as 25,000 annually. According to the CDC, vaginal intercourse can transmit hepatitis.
syphilis or gonorrhea, he's learned he hasn't much to fear. The cultural mythology that
heterosex is sacrosanct (and therefore by its very nature healthy) has biased him to deadly ignorance. The media's rhetoric, the politicians' laws and enforcement, have corroborated that. New York's governor, Mario Cuomo, its health commissioner, Dr. David Axelrod, and New York City's mayor, Edward Koch-they've taught Steven that.
Their lie: AIDS is the only horrific disease fucking spreads. It's transmitted by buggery and blow jobs. A chance, but a chance in hell, of getting it otherwise. Gays are the ones who get it.
The truth: While AIDS has killed some 7,000 Americans in the last six years, hepatitis kills as many as 25,000 annually in the United States. According to the federalCenters for Disease Control (CDC), buggery to climax can transmit the germ that causes AIDS and hepatitis, but so can vaginal intercourse (egregiously missing from the New York State health code's definition of "high risk" sex for AIDS). The CDC states further that the risk in blow jobs is tenuous and theoretical; not one case of AIDS has been directly linked to sucking cock or getting sucked. As for who gets sick, as of this year in New York City, the rate at which AIDS is rising among gay men has leveled off; the rate at which straight folks and their children are becoming ill is climbing.
One has to pity straights like Steven, who haven't been advised that their quickly enflamed erotic joys can just as suddenly be drowned in grief. But how is he to know? He
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by Darrell Yates Rist
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might expect to get his warnings-if not from Cuomo, Axelrod, and Koch, men entrusted largely with the public's welfare in this state-from the sex clubs where he plays. But their managers are victims, too, of the epidemiological lies. So, although Le Trapeze has posted signs about the law-no anal intercourse or fellatio allowed-there's no notice anywhere about disease, AIDS or any other kind. Thus unanchored by the meagerest information that might give it an appearance of good sense, the law seems nothing but a whimsy not worth minding. And while Steven's woman blew him in a private cubicle, seven other women gave their partners blow jobs in plain view. If the CDC is right, these women risked no more than angering the power of the state to legislate how citizens enjoy their genitals. But one woman in the orgy room was getting it-two men at once, no condoms, front and back; her ass act, an infraction of the law and the common sense of healthy sex, her pussy play, a dangerous game the state preserves for men who want a female for their prey-erotically, politically approved Russian Roulette.
There is, of course, another reason swing-
ers aren't obeying New York State's new sex law. New York City won't enforce it-that is, if the offending acts are straight. Since October 25, when Cuomo's and Axelrod's sexual prohibitions became law, two gay clubs have been padlocked. But not one heterosexual sex club has been shuttered for infractions of the health code. In order to claim that his enforcement isn't anti-gay, Koch sent cops to close Plato's Retreat-but for prostitution. The affidavits filed against the club swore that sex inspectors didn't see one "high risk" sex act taking place. But such coy ploys don't wash. On the very night, two weeks later, Plato's, by court order, was allowed to reopen, there was sex aplenty which would catch any scrupulous sex cop's eye. One young couple lay beside another just inside an open cubicle. One man's smooth white ass thrust deeply while his girlfriend rubbed the labia of the other woman, kneeling, sucking on her prone man's dick. A crowd grew by the door to take advantage of the public show. For, most sex was behind closed doors, but even then there was a chance to see. Unlike gay clubs, Plato's bores its doors with holes, and not everyone tapes peep paper up inside to block the view. Patrons lined up at one room to see a lady get it from behind.
That the city didn't see such things is no surprise. Gay men know that sodomy laws, under any guise, will always come down hard on them and somehow always miss the straights. But enforcement really is beside the point-that is, if AIDS or other often fatal ailments really are the point. Since 1983, New York's gay community, with the vigorous help of places like St. Marks Baths, has bombarded its constituents with information on AIDS and STDs-without much more than condescending winks from state and city government, who cried penury when asked why they weren't doing anything to educate people. The result has been phenomenal. While VD rates (assumed to be a gauge for new infections of AIDS and hepatitis) among heterosexuals have been leaping (gonorrhea's up 11.9% among straight women), they've dropped among gay men by as much as 80%. The payoff is the trend we'd desperately been waiting for: the rate at which new AIDS cases are reported among gay men has flattened out. All this homosexual education's saving lives. Cuomo, Axelrod, and Koch know that. But education's passive, doesn't make a man look strong. And these three ruthless politicians go for what looks good, not what does good-no matter that their medicine may up the body count. There is evidence, in fact, that legislation which compels gay sex clubs to close will, in this epidemic, kill. Since San Francisco became obsessed with regulating sex acts in the baths instead of propagating information there, the gay VD rate has risen.
On December 20, Axelrod will go before the New York Public Health Council to make his sex law permanent, to alter it, or dump it. If he's not the idiot he seems to be, he'll chuck it and in its place propose a law requiring education in the sex clubs on the model of what St. Marks Baths had done before the mayor locked it up-lots of safe-sex pamphlets, condoms passed out free, seminars on healthy sex (which were conducted twice weekly by the Gay Men's Health Crisis). The bottom line is this: Nothing but education will stop AIDS, or hepatitis, or STDs. Simply bringing his new sex restrictions more in line with science-dropping fellatio, adding vaginal intercourse-won't do. For no one, gay or straight, is going to give up any kind of fucking just because the state won't teach its citizens about safe sex.
As for lessons, Cuomo, Axelrod, and Koch must learn. A proper function for a statesmen is to act as pedagogue. Tedious and boring though the job may be, it does inspire respect. But no one's rallied by the leadership of men whose vapid policies achieve the deadly opposite of their announced intent and are, when stripped of all bombast, nothing more than panting fantasies concocted in the minds of Peeping Toms.
NEW YORK NATIVE/DECEMBER 23 29, 1985 19