In the early 1990s, I was a member of Act Up New York’s safer sex committee. We worked hard to promote responsible behavior by eroticizing safer practices.

We even fought for the legalization of backrooms and other public sex spaces. This struck many people, mostly straight people, as the height of irresponsibility and foolishness.

But we knew, because we were right in the middle of it, that huge numbers of people were going to “live for today" come what may.

Unlike with the covid-19 pandemic, HIV didn’t have an expiration date. In 1993, for all anyone know, HIV would be a threat forever – no vaccine, no treatment, no hope. Lots of us in Act Up bravely declaimed that we would work to make treatment possible, but deep in our hearts many of us doubted, sometimes daring to whisper our doubt only to ourselves.

All this to say that finding a balance between survival and sexual intimacy was not optional. Maslow is much more demanding when human needs lower on the hierarchy look to be not postponed but terminated.

To put it in perspective, in my world of the early 1990s, I had every reason to presume that any potential sexual partner was already HIV positive even if they didn’t know it — and that such would be the case for the rest of my life.

But few people I knew stopped having sex because of that. We put on condoms and hoped, or prayed if we were religious. Some of us, including a very close friend of mine, said to hell with it and seroconverted on purpose. They couldn’t handle the sword of Damocles. To them, being positive was better than being terrified.

Me? I danced in Washington Square Park wearing glittered spandex shorts, colored condoms clutched between my teeth, scattering safer-sex pamphlets into the crowd.

Safer sex is hotter sex. That was our mantra in those days as we worked to show people what we meant.

Because people aren’t going to stop having sex, whether because of HIV or because of covid-19. Our challenge is to face that reality intelligently and honestly.

Thanks for your story.