The self-sabotage of being gay.

After coming out in the early 90's, Jonathan came to believe that AIDS was his destiny, an unavoidable consequence of his deviant sexual desires.

From a very young age, I knew something was different about me. Something other than being adopted or half-Korean, that is.

According to people who care about these kinds of things, I belong to a microgeneration termed Xennial.

We did not have cable television in my home growing up. There was no Wi-Fi. Apple, Google and Facebook weren’t part of the cultural lexicon yet.

I was born in 1977, just in time for the Reagan era. The “Just Say No” campaign.

I’ve never liked the word no.

In 1988, Ronald created the Office of Drug Control Policy and Nancy toured elementary schools, popularizing the slogan that would come to define the thirty year War on Drugs.

“Just Say No” was an integral part of my social education growing up. Drugs were bad. Don’t do them.

That’s really all they said. I wasn’t sure why or how or even what it was all about.

Smoke pot? Your brain will look like this fried egg.

More subversive, but still a fairly dominant motif at the time was the AIDS crisis. Little was known about the virus in the early 80’s, expect for the painful wasting, and of course, it’s connection to gay men.

The first known victims were gay, so the disease was considered sexual at first. Most people are unaware that AIDS started out as GRID, or gay-related immune deficiency. Kind of messed up, no?

Accurate information about AIDS was sparse throughout the 80's.

In my secluded middle-class community of the Buffalo suburbs, it was virtually non-existent.

My early associations with the disease involved monkeys, bathhouses and the Congo, driven largely by manufactured fear.

These were the days when daily newspapers and local news broadcasts were responsible for selecting, filtering and communicating the important events of the time. Don’t kid yourself. Fake News has always been a thing. We just accepted the bias more readily because we didn’t have any other options.

The prevailing belief, both in my family and in my community was that what you didn’t know, couldn’t hurt you.

We didn’t talk about AIDS because it didn’t affect anyone we knew. We didn’t think about drugs until someone warned us about them.

And nobody talked about being gay because it just wasn’t something you were in Buffalo during the 80's.

When I finally came out to my mother in 1993, her first words were,

“Oh, Jonathan, You’re going to die of AIDS!”

I was 15 years old. I looked different. I felt different. And, because of this, my own mother believed I was destined to die a horrific early death.

The gay culture in the my youth wasn’t talked about the way it is today. It wasn’t synonymous with art and design, high fashion and manicured lawns. Gay men were not a “target market” and there were no Father’s Day cards adressed to “both my dads”.

We certainly didn’t have entire academic departments at prestigious universities dedicated to the study of GLBT literature, art and culture.

By the time I reached early adulthood, being gay was synonmous with drugs and AIDS, especially in the major cities.

If there was a “gay culture” at the time, it certainly wasn’t appropriate dinner conversation.

Ibelieve that internalized homophobia and secret shame provided the kindling to fuel a enormous rise in drug use among gay men during early 90’s. This was certainly the case for me.

Under the influence of powerful chemicals, many of which we knew little about, our inhibitions vanished. We were liberated and free.

Our rational and emotional brains quieted, our senses and pleasures heightened — we were finally able to explore the lusts and urges of which we’d long been afraid and ashamed.

For me, drug use facilitated a masochist impulse — a need to harm, punish or degrade myself for who I was:

The rumors I heard must be true, I thought. Look at the things we were doing. We were junkies. Animals operating on instinct. I was do disgusted with myself that I would have done anything to escape.

I’ve come to learn that others felt the same, and that sadly, many still do.

After coming out to my mother in 1993, I came to believe that AIDS was my destiny. An unavoidable consequence of my deviant sexual desires.

It wasn’t her fault. And, she wasn’t the only one.

The prevailing social theory for a long time was (and unfortunately still is) that AIDS was some sort of punishment, from an angry god or disgusted creator, for those of us who choose to engage in “unnatural” sexual activities.

Perhaps that’s why I ignored the warnings about safe sex.

Honestly, I don’t really remember any warnings. We didn’t talk about these things. No one talked about this things.

Instead, I said yes. To every drug, every encounter and every opportunity for fun. If I was destined to die an early death, I might as well enjoy life now. To the fullest.

This mentality quickly escalated both my drug use and my promiscuity. There were other factors at play — prolonged sexual abuse at an early age, lack of information, no gay male mentors and of course, shame — but it was the loss of hope that led me down the rabbit hole.

Being gay was just another one of the many things that made me feel different than everyone else. I looked different than my adoptive parents. My family was different than anyone else I knew. I felt different. I thought about things differently.

One trip to New York City changed all that.

At the all night raves and house parties that lasted for days, I could disappear. The Jonathan Casey from Buffalo ceased to exist. I was a walking, talking zombie, focused only on my next fix, my next hit… and whomever was willing to show me the most attention.

It wasn’t just the drugs that were intoxicating. The “male gaze” is exhilarating if you’re young, attractive and willing. The sexual attention gave me a confidence I never knew before, and a place where I belonged.

Growing up in Buffalo, I had very few opportunities to mingle with other gay men. My friend Michael and I snuck out at night and hung around the seedy clubs known for attracting queers.

We observed these men carefully, comparing their behaviors to ours, trying to pinpoint exactly what made us so different than our peers.

But, no one ever talked to us — we might as well have been invisible. This was not the case in New York.

Men fawned over me. They bought me things, wanted to take care of me or take me under their wing.

I was never alone unless I wanted to be — which was never — and it seemed like a steady supply of uppers, downers and performance drugs was part of the package deal.

The summer after my freshman year, I dropped out and moved to the city that never sleeps, planning to do the same, until the day died, presumably from AIDS.

Along with a newfound sense of community and belonging came a heavy price.

Addiction, violence and death were woven into the fabric of gay life in the 90's. In those days, you’d ask around about someone you once knew only to find out they had died, months ago.

Still, we rarely used protection. There was really no reason why, except that we didn’t know how easy it was to prevent transmission. And, it didn’t matter anyway — we were all going to die of AIDS. It was the price of being gay.

These days, I like to think that I would’ve chosen differently, been more cautious/less cavalier, had I known better, but I’m not so sure.

When I look around at the young gay men of this new generation — millenials, x-er’s or whatever they are — I feel both a sense of disappointment and frustration.

New HIV infections have declined for every single segment of the US population, except for gay and bisexual men.

Infection with HIV is no longer necessary. HIV is no longer a death sentence. People can and do have normal healthy lives in spite of a positive diagnosis.

The medical community has gifted GLBT men — and all humans — with the ability to effectively manage this chronic illness rather easily.

And, they didn’t stop there.

PREP, a daily preventative pill, has the potential to eliminate virtually all new HIV infections among men who have sex with other men.

Research has shown that when taken at least four times a week, this medication is 100% effective in preventing transmission.

So why do less than 10% of the people who need this drug, use it?

The gay culture of my youth and young adulthood was awash in fear, shame, stigma and isolation. But, we know more now.

Right? We’re more accepting — right? I mean, gay marriage is legal! The Pride Parade isn’t just a handful of people getting shitfaced together on a Saturday afternoon.

Today, there are openly gay men in the military, pro-sports and politics. We have role models, culture, community and collective action.

But, instead of educating ourselves or taking advantage of the many services available, we continue to face prejudice and discrimination, not only within society at large but also within our own community.

Gay men have always been a catty bunch, but shunning those living with HIV is barbaric.

My infection was a product of the very shame, ignorance and hopelessness that continues to encourage fear, ignorance and discrimination to this day.

In the 20+ years since my diagnosis, awareness and education about HIV and AIDS have increased dramatically. Condoms and clean needles are relatively accessible, even in Western New York.

With proper treatment, the HIV virus is undetectable in the blood. Undetectable means untransmittable. Untramsmittable means that the virus is not contagious.

With proper treatment and preventative measures, HIV is as manageable as any chronic illness. HIV poses less of a risk to overall human health than the flu virus, which kills thousands each year.

Why then, do we face discrimination, prejudice and fear — not only from society at large, but also from medical professionals, treatment providers and most painfully, from other gay men, simply for knowing and taking respionsibility for our status.

Perhaps it’s the same self-destructive tendency many of us share — the hidden shame and internalized beliefs that created the perfect storm for my fall from grace, if it can be called that.

I’m not alone. I know that. Gay men suffer from addiction, mental health disorders and suicidality at higher rates than nearly every other segment of the population.

Unfortunately — as a culture — we still treat gay men who are HIV positive like they have some sort of contagious, deadly disease — one in which there is no cure, except for not being gay?

Knock it off, okay. Get yourself tested, treated or counseled on the options. Seek out opportunities to educate and inform others.

Together, in the light, we have the power to stop the HIV infection from spreading to even one more person within the gay and bisexual male community.

Go to www.whatisprep.org to find out more about the daily HIV preventative. If you’re in the WNY area, Evergreen Health is leading the way in education, treatment and support. Get tested. Seek treatment.

Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next week with another excerpt from my book, Re-Purposed: An Unlikely Redemption Story.

Please let me know what you thought of this piece! If you liked it, go ahead and hit that clap button for me please, and share, share, share away.

Don’t miss a thing: Follow me on Medium, Facebook or Twitter!