Steal Hearts, Steel Bonds/ This is Pittsburgh

I want to actively stop using condoms because, really, Susan Sarandon?  Susan Sarandon?  Really, Susan Sarandon? 

Last year I participated in a research study conducted by the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force.  I know it as both The M2M project and The Respect Project.  It involved a series of one-on-one interviews about my sexual experiences and self-worth, issues, abstractions, etc.  What the project acknowledged, and what was enforced by my conversations with the PATF rep was that when it comes to getting dudes to wrap their dicks, their’s no easy solution. 

I was honest: I’m a frequent drug user and a frequent condom user.  Just because I’m high or drunk doesn’t mean I won’t use a condom.  Just because I didn’t use a condom doesn’t mean I was high or drunk. 

I’m not ignorant about HIV and AIDS.  I know the routes of transmission, what an oppertunistic infection is.  I’ve read The Lancet’s reports, watched the four-hour Frontline documentary, devoured And The Band Played On.

So why the fuck don’t I use a condom every fucking time?  Because I don’t love myself?  Because I don’t respect my partner?  Because Susan Sarandon never told me to use condoms? 

I love myself enough to get my self sexified to go out to the club.  I respect my partner enough to swallow his cum.  I don’t care enough about Susan Sarandon to listen to anything she says. 

So why the fuck don’t I always use condoms?

If a fraction of the money spent on telling people to use condoms was spent on learning why we don’t in the first place, something good might happen.  I believe we’re beyond the point as a society where we didn’t know we should be using condoms.  Something else has to happen now.

PATF is trying to figure out what.  They’ve commisioned a series of billboards: A muscular black man in a singlet, and the words, “You’re sexier with your eyes open.”

Brainblast!  Part of the problem is, we know, but we’re just not paying fucking attention.  And I’ll pay a lot more attention to a monolithic half-naked man on my bus route than Susan Sarandon on youtube.

Yessir, us faggots is just as handy with an M-16.