Health: THE CHASER’S TALE – PART ONE

(This post was written by Bob Leahy at PositiveLite.com)

I first met Joseph at an HIV conference in Toronto in October. Earnest, polite and well spoken, but with fierce looking facial piercings and black painted fingernails that give him an activist’s edge, Joseph is clearly a thoughtful, well-educated man who finds himself on a journey he is still trying to fully understand.

We had first asked him to write about his experiences, including his motivation for seeking to become poz – commonly called bug chasing. And he did so for PositiveLite.com here.  The story he told is both fascinating and difficult to comprehend for those who have not walked in his shoes. More importantly, it begged to be told in more detail. I wanted to know more about why Joseph wanted to become poz, about the role crystal meth played (or not), about who he did it with and how. How did it feel? Was he tuned on? All these questions and more he answered frankly and openly over lunch in Toronto one day last week.

I asked tough questions, but my intent was not to be judgemental here but rather to comprehend. Joseph is fully aware that not all will approve of or even understand his actions. His need, as he started in his last article, is to provoke thought – his own and that of others – on why we do what we do.

Bob: Joseph, the first thing I wanted to talk about was your decision to become poz. When did that thought first occur to you?

Joseph: I appreciate the opportunity for this conversation, Bob. But before we begin, I want to emphasize that I’m describing and interpreting my own experience. I don’t in any way want to model behaviour, nor do I want to glamourize or romanticize or eroticize or fetishize or otherwise encourage or promote bug chasing and, especially, meth use.

Good. That’s important to get out.

To answer your question I had never even heard about the concept of bug chasing until two years ago when I was volunteering at the 519 at the Senior Pride Network conference. And as I was reading and researching I came across a reference to “bug chasing”.

What did you think, Joseph?

Well it was one of those things that make you go “hmmm.”

You didn’t think this might be fantasy? You know there has been much speculation about to what extent bug chasing actually exists?

No. I could go online right now to various sites and I could find tens if not dozens of bug chasers in Toronto.

But how do you know they are real?

Well that’s true. There is a fantasy element, and you don’t know what is fetishistic and what is real, but there are people who profess to bug chasing and gift-giving online. But where are they? I haven’t met any of them. Even within AIDS Service Organizations – as a health issue, as an HIV prevention issue, there is complete silence.

I think I can probably answer that. It’s viewed as a very small phenomenon and ASOs must concentrate their efforts where the numbers are.

Maybe. Anyway, back to my story, I read about it two years ago and it was when I started using meth on a regular basis, when I first started injecting meth, that I became aware of sites such as BarebackRT and, in particular, Breeding Zone, where I first had a real discussion about bug chasing and hooking up.

OK one question there. I’ve heard it said that at crystal meth parties there is not much fucking going on and that the most popular sexual activities that go on are jacking off and watching porn together.

That’s true. That’s been my experience, because there is such a thing as “tina dick.” And then too there is a whole slamming community – a site where guys can go and watch each other inject meth. They post videos of themselves doing it too.

Slamming sites! Didn’t know about those. What sites? Can I look them up?

Well there’s NastyKinkPigs, say, for starters. But there is an offshoot of it called, if I remember correctly, NastyChemPigs. And Breeding Zone is another. So it wasn’t until I started slamming that I became aware of the real possibility of bug chasing. It was no longer this article in a magazine in which I had intellectual curiosity. There was a real possibility of meeting people in Toronto who were talking about getting together. So I discovered that getting infected was a real possibility. Then I discovered, as you referred to, that there are those who merely fantasize or fetishize and you don’t know that until you meet. But as I mentioned in my article I would never blame – I would never say that the tina made de me do it because although meth introduced me to the possibility of bug chasing, I was stone cold sober as I continued to contemplate it. Once I became aware of it, I could not let go of the possibility.

So let me stop you there. There was something about it that attracted you and I got from your article that there are two main things – one the eroticism of it all, and secondly you wanted to be part of a community and the poz community attracted you. Let’s talk about the first one, the fetishism. Does the idea of being poz get you hard? There is a sexual energy that comes from it? I’m not quite getting it.

I can’t explain the unexplainable. Some things just are.

But try and explain why being poz is sex-charged.

You know that is really hard. I don’t really get it. But poz semen, poz blood. . . Again I hadn’t heard of blood slamming and when I first saw that, there was this frisson of excitement. But I want to emphasize again that it wasn’t meth that made me do it. But I want to talk about meth taking me to a dark place.

I struggled with crack use starting in 2007 when I was fifty-two years old. When I was doing crack I knew I wanted to get off it. I describe my experience of crack as an escape from reality into a few moments of bliss. And it was just a few moments. It was in December 2012 when I started doing meth, injecting it. It became my substance of choice. Meth for me was a portal to an alternative reality – and I liked that reality, it brought out the bad boy in me.

So getting back then to the idea of becoming poz, you obviously thought it erotic, but you must have thought too of the price of becoming poz, that there would be a downside – health issues, money issues, dealing with stigma issues. Did you consider the price?

No.

Why not? None of those issues made any difference to you?

Nope.

That’s somewhat irrational. Explain.

There was no calculation. As I said once I learned that it was not just academic, that it was possible to find someone in Toronto to do it, I just could not escape that thought.

So it didn’t matter if HIV was potentially life–threatening or alternatively treatable? None of those issues came in to your head?

No. I’m Hep C as well. Hep C was like a bonus. I wasn’t seeking to become Hep C. It so happened that the guys who blood slammed me were HCV-positive.

Why was it a bonus?

I’m being somewhat sarcastic.

But let me guess. So because you wanted to be an outlaw, you might as well go whole hog.

That’s part of it but within the bug chasing community, there are also those looking for full-blown AIDS; they want to be infected by someone with full-blown AIDS. Or with every possible STI.

So of those people did you ever have any judgmental attitudes towards them? Did you move from a stage of thinking “that’s really weird” to a place of understanding?

I didn’t think I was in any place, in any position, to criticize. Personally, I wasn’t seeking syphilis or gonorrhea. I didn’t want to go there.

But I’m hearing HIV for you is a) not a big deal, b) rather erotic and c) tapped you into a community you liked the look of.

I’ve had a lifelong search for community.

Did you see us as bunch of renegades or something that you wanted to belong to?

To a certain extent ,Bob, although I’ve since learned that everyone has a different relationship with HIV. My relationship is very much coloured by the reality that I became infected deliberately. Part of the narrative of the bug chasing community – if I were to follow the narrative through to the end, then I would become, I would pick up the role of, a breeder.

I see. OK, I’m still having difficulty in visualizing the exchange you would have had with the person who bred you.

Well, the conversation was initiated online To the extent that we all have profiles the idea was somewhat mutual. I’m pretty sure it was the first person who infected me. He was a nice guy, one with whom I could imagine striking up a friendship. We were together for a couple of days and had far-ranging conversations. At one point in the weekend there were two other guys and there was a lot of sexual play, sexual talk . . .

So did the event have a sort of a ritual significance?

There is ritual. I don’t want to romanticize it. Part of the ritual of injecting oneself is hitting a vein, pulling back on the plunger and seeing blood. Almost immediately you get really high. But I want to be very clear that I’m not recommending it for anybody. The chemicals took me to a dark place.

Was it easy to get out of all that? Are you still in recovery?

I think I’ll always be in recovery. For me with crack there was the attraction to the drug itself, to the high. But for me with meth, though, it wasn’t so much of a high as it was an energy pulsing through my body. And when I hooked up with the guy who I think pozzed me it was probably within the first two or three hours of being there. We had talked about it. And I asked him to do it. I invited, him, I knew he was HIV-positive, he had told me he was Hep C-positive too. I invited him to give me a blood slam.

And he said?

Oh fuck yeah.

I thought he might. 

To be continued . . .