Link and Think Tomorrow is World AIDS day.
Link and Think is asking everyone with a weblog to participate by linking to AIDS resources on the web and telling their own AIDS stories during World AIDS day. I'm not sure that I will be able to make a blog entry tomorrow, so I'm going to be a little premature (thankfully not a common problem in my life).
Personally I have had very little contact with AIDS. It has directly affected my life only in the smallest of ways. One of my best friends is gay. Until he was 30 he kept the fact hidden from everybody, including me. Consequently he couldn't have a long term partner and was having regular casual sex. (I always thought it a little unfair that gay men could find casual sex just about anywhere but straight men had to work so hard for it. Then I settled down and realised that casual sex is really not all its cracked up to be.) A lot of this sex was unprotected and, by its very nature, risky. It wasn't until he came out to me (the first person he did so with) that he finally sunk admitted to himself just how much risk he was taking. There was a tense few weeks whilst he took a test and awaited the results but thankfully they were negative.
Indirectly though, AIDS has had quite and impact on my attitude towards sex, as it has for most of my generation. AIDS became big news at almost exactly the same time as sex became something I thought about. The realisation of the attractiveness of the naked female body was juxtaposed with the powerful AIDS awareness adverts (Brits of a certain age will remember the iceberg and/or the falling gravestone). Sex became, as with every pubescent boy, something you just had to have if you could get it and a possible killer. I lost my virginity at 16 but it would be sometime after that before I experienced unprotected sex such was the worry about AIDS and pregnancy.
A couple of links:
AIDS101 - Suggested by Link and Think. An online resource about AIDS.
Cowboy Frank - A more personal account of living with AIDS. Quite short.
that's a nice rock!
me:
sex:male
age:30
status:married
children:3
Listening:
Barry Diston:Unreleased Stuff
Reading:
Weblogs
Terry Pratchett
Maps
Watching:
Bugger all at the mo, to be honest
reach me
my other sites
recommended
