Play safe”, “Use a condom”, “Get tested” are all common phrases used in my community to justify sex. Why is it, then, that so many of us are still getting infected? It’s not that we don’t know how to put on a condom. We’ve all laughed through the banana demonstrations. It’s not because we’re too poor to afford condoms either. They’re given away, FREE, at the clubs. Many times, they’re given in packets: two condoms, lube, and an after dinner mint. Whatever the reason is, I’ve been able to keep a negative status for the past 10 years. I am proud of my status. And I believe I keep my negative status thanks to my friends.

I remember sitting in JR’s with my best friend. It was about 10 years ago, give or take a few months. Besides having some great drink specials, JR’s was the bar where every queer boy who lived in Dallas met up before going to dance the night away. My friend and I had recently come out. We were ogling over the latest “This Week in Texas” model. Flipping through the pages of the TWT, I spotted an ad to have the test done. At the time, I had no idea what the test was. My friend and I started talking about it. He didn’t know too much about it either. The only thing we concluded from that conversation was just that we both knew that there was a difference between being HIV positive and having AIDS.

As we both started to assimilate the gay club life style, we discovered how easy it was to fall prey to the partying lifestyle. It was tons of fun. We would go clubbing Thursday through Sunday and meet lots of people whose names we’d forget by the end of the night. As time went by, I started noticing that some of the people that I was meeting would be sick a lot. I’d been out for two years. All I had to show for the past two years was a really thin body. I couldn’t afford to eat. I had to save all my money to party. Apart from that, I had the memories of some real mean hangovers.

I had a chat with my best friend. I told him I was tired of losing control. I wanted to change. I wanted to party, but I wanted to be aware of what I was doing while partying. I was tired of putting myself at risk because I was too drunk to use a condom. Plus, I was worried about my friend. He was very logical, but once he started to drink, all his senses would leave him. And boy, could we drink! It was not uncommon for us to wake up the next morning without knowing how we got home. He listened, and said we needed to start getting involved in our community outside of the bars. This concept blew my mind. How could our community exist outside of the bars? He also pointed out that we needed to start choosing our friends a little more wisely. Not that the people that we knew weren’t nice. They were super nice, but their only goal at the time was to get fucked up on weekends, and then laugh about it the following Thursday. We both wanted a lot more out of life.
Some time passed. My friend and I kept partying, but I started to slow my pace a little. Cruising the Crossroads on Friday and Saturday nights was no longer a fun event for me. Bar hopping, while keeping track of the 30-minute time slot assigned to each particular bar to take advantage of the 50 cent well drinks had grown monotonous.

Still, I didn’t know where else I was supposed to go and meet people. I read in the Dallas Voice, the newspaper for our community, of a gay church. Being a Catholic-raised Latino boy, I couldn’t believe such a thing could exist, but hell, the manliest of men stepped together at the Country and Western club, The Round Up, so I guessed anything was possible.

I visited the gay church. It was fun. In fact, many of the same guys that I would stand next to in line at the bars were the same guys I would take communion with! It wasn’t uncommon to meet up with these guys after service for brunch and mimosas. Mimosas being the main entrée, of course. The church itself didn’t have too much to offer me, but I did meet a couple of guys who were looking to build friendships outside of the bar environment. That was refreshing. And through those friends, I met even more friends who were positive influences. Climbing the corporate ladder seemed to be a driving factor in my new friend’s motivation for life. Plus, some of these guys were relationship oriented. I remember the first time I heard one of them talk about how he wanted to get married, to a man. The idea was beyond foreign to me. Pretty soon after that, however, I attended a friend’s commitment ceremony.

My new friends made me look at life in a different way. I realized gay life does exist outside of a bar. I realized that if I wanted to climb the corporate ladder, I could. If I wanted to get married to a man, I could. And if I wanted to keep a negative status, I could. After being exposed to the fact that we really don’t have limits on what we can do, I started to make goals for myself. Always asking my friends for advice, I knew that if I failed at something they’d always be there to help me succeed the second time.

I am no longer in Dallas. My friends in Dallas remain. My best friend is still in Texas. But here, I’ve got an awesome network of friends, none of which I met in a bar. And thanks to them I’m accomplishing what I want in life. And because of that, I will continue to be negative. I still go to bars and clubs, but now I party to have fun, not because it’s the gay thing to do.