A college HIV quiz brings a daily double of "duh" and despair
OK, how do you get infected with HIV?” I ask, staring at a sea of blank
faces. I’ve been touring high schools and colleges across the country
since September, and as the academic year ends, the first class of kids
schooled over the past four years in Bush’s useless “prevention”
tactics will soon enter the real world. My safe-sex show began 12 years
ago as an informal rap session; it’s morphed into an interactive,
scripted production, teaching negotiation and communication skills and
how alcohol and drugs can muck ’em all up. Today’s victims: a couple
hundred college freshmen in Iowa. (And that’s all I’ll reveal.)
“C’mon!” I bark. “The first one with the right answer wins this
fabulous T-shirt!” I wave a garment blaring the campus logo. When I’d
asked when the school was founded, three kids ran up for the prize. And
when I got more on-message, asking, “Who masturbated today?” The one
brave kid rushed forth, to thunderous applause. But now I repeat: “How
do you get infected with HIV?” A hand finally rises, and a girl yells:
“Saliva!” Is she serious? This can’t be happening.
I’ve seen
ignorance before, but nothing like this. Could the Bush abstinence-only
dogma, mandated in so many states, have finally done its job? I was
pretty sure of it when the next kid informed me I could get infected
from “all the holes in condoms.” I felt that I’d been swept back to a
time before schools offered aggressive safer-sex ed. That little window
during the ’90s when people felt that HIV was a real threat and
prevention could save our lives.
“OK, folks, I know how
confusing this all can seem. But we don’t have a winner yet. Anyone
else?” A studious-looking girl said, “Bodily fluids?” Ah, bodily
fluids. That’s where the confusion truly starts. What does she—what do
they—mean by “bodily fluids”? Poo-poo, pee-pee, woo-woo, wee-wee,
toothbrushes? I decide to clear that up right away.
I rattle off
the big guns: semen, vaginal secretions, blood and/or breast milk
entering the bloodstream through the rectum, vagina or mouth. I
approach a girl in the front row and ask, “OK, if I slash my arm and
start spraying you with blood, can you get infected?” (They know I am
HIV positive.) She recoils, as if I were holding a blade, but shakes
her head. “No?” I say. “Good. OK, what if I cut myself, and then I cut
you, and we rub our cuts together. Can you get it now?” I get a
tentative yes.
“You get a T-shirt!”
The lecture
snakes on, from infection to prevention. I’m really working it and feel
the sweat dripping down my back. One kid asks, “How risky is breast
milk in the rectum?” This is not a joke. In fact, nobody here is having
any fun.
Afterward, unlike past lectures, no one comes up and
talks to me. I feel like I’ve failed. Have I lost my touch? I have felt
so blessed to do this work. Having learned to educate while making
people laugh, I can better face my own HIV issues. But now I feel
disconnected, like I’m starting from scratch. And I’m tired. All the
holes in condoms? Even from colleges, I’ve had more requests this year
to talk only about abstinence. I don’t know if I can do that.
Indeed,
I’ve begun to feel like an AIDS freak show again and am wondering what
else I can do with my life. Pharmaceutical rep? I know everything about
the drugs. But now I realize the kids need me more than ever. I am
heading to Chicago today with a revamped lecture. It might not be as
explicit or as funny as I’d like—but I hope it will connect me to the
conservative and less knowledgeable among my audience. Just by adding things like “When you get married and want to have anal intercourse….”
Meet River Huston—writer, poet, performance educator, sex goddess extraordinaire—at www.riverhuston.com.
