Double Standards Can Be Real Killer
When Frank was 17, he got rip-roaring drunk one night with friends. They attended a party somewhere in the north section of town.
He met a girl at the party and, after a time, they disappeared together into a bedroom over the garage. Being so drunk, he doesn’t remember much, including the girl’s name.
But she was willing, so what the heck, right? To a 17-year-old boy securing his first conquest, it seemed like something to boast about at the time.
He and his friends even joked about it while playing basketball the next day. “They thought it was funny that I couldn’t remember her name and treated me like I was some big stud,” Frank said.
He shakes his head, and it seems as if he’s about to laugh. Instead, tears roll down his pale, pinched face.
Once a lineman for his high school’s football team, Frank, 29, is no stud these days. Bone-thin, he suffers from depression, physical ailments and spends most days in bed.
Nine years after his drunken encounter, Frank learned he had HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The disease is now assaulting his body full-on.
His devoted mother looks after his every need, a decision that eventually cost her her job. She lost the family’s four-bedroom home, so the two now live in a converted garage behind her mother’s house.
“I’d heard that anyone could get AIDS, but it didn’t compute,” Frank said. “I really didn’t think it would happen to a guy like me.”
His father left the family two months after the diagnosis because the pain and disappointment of having a son with AIDS was too great for him to bear, Frank said. His father occasionally resurfaces, but hasn’t been heard from now for about seven months.
He hopes his father will phone this Christmas because Frank thinks it will be his last. “Christmas was always a great time in our house. We were a very close family. … Before this.
“My dad just couldn’t take it,” Frank said. “He’s what you used to call a man’s man, and he just couldn’t accept that his only son will die of AIDS.”
To save his father further pain, the Sacramento, Calif., native asked me to tell his story using a pseudonym, which I have.
“What’s important here is reaching teenagers who enter into sexual relationships without really thinking,” Frank said. “What I want them to know - and know well - is AIDS can happen to them. The culture of coming of age sexually has changed since our parents and their parents were kids.”
He believes that “men especially” need to take a stand on what they teach their sons about sex.
About a year ago, he spoke at a school. Outside, before the assembly, he overheard two boys hurling the word “virgin” at a third boy as a putdown.
“We need to stop promoting double sexual standards for young men,” Frank said. “That’s what we do, you know. Tell boys to be responsible and then, wink, wink, we look the other way.”
The latest issue of Science includes a new report on AIDS that lends credence to Frank’s words.
Considered a more precise estimate of the epidemic’s toll than we’ve ever had before, the report estimates that one of every 92 American men ages 27 to 39 is infected with HIV.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta already announced that AIDS became the No. 1 killer of people ages 25 to 44 in 1993.
One in 92 may not sound like a large number until you consider, say, a cafeteria, with 92 young men you know.
I imagined myself talking to my young daughters on a day not so far away. That’s what must be done, you know. Tell them to imagine that they’re in a room with 92 boys they know. One of them has the AIDS virus. Which one? How do you know? (Without a blood test, you don’t.)
Minorities are hit even harder: In the same age group, one in every 33 African American males and one in every 60 Latino males is estimated to be HIV positive.
Slightly more than 311,000 Americans have died of AIDS since 1981, but between 630,000 and 897,000 are alive with the HIV virus now. And, because symptoms don’t show up for an average of 10 years, many infected persons continue having intimate relationships without knowing they have the disease.
This is a crisis that Americans are ignoring much longer than we dare.
Ten years from now, thousands of beautiful families will be shocked when a loved one with virtually none of the better-known risk factors is diagnosed with AIDS. These are the teens of today who are bombarded with sexually provocative messages every day by an irresponsible society that tells them “No, no” and whispers “Yes, yes” at the same time.
People in their 30s and 40s will be dying like never before and we will wonder why we didn’t do more.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Diana Griego Erwin McClatchy News Service