By Becca Tucker

It's no big secret in the gay community that HIV is on the rise among their numbers.

“Common knowledge,” says Jared, 28, rolling his eyes. Although no louder than the others, Jared's is the one voice clearly audible from down the block. It's irony's unique inflection, which cuts through the chatter—half in English, half Spanish—coming from a handful of gay men outside The Monster, a West Village cruise bar, at 2:30 a.m. on a Friday morning.

Perched against scaffolding, Jared exhales cigarette smoke with the elegance of Audrey Hepburn. The collar of his smoking jacket is turned up. His blonde hair, combed forward, swirls up from his forehead like that of an Abercrombie model.  

“When I fuck a man, I want to feel it,” says Jared, charismatically unapologetic. “I want to feel the man inside me, not some plastic...” he trails off and takes a drag of his cigarette. “You can call me a slut, call me whatever you want. I’m going to die when I’m going to die.”

Does he ever lose sleep, wondering whether the virus is multiplying in his cells?  Jared rolls his eyes at the thought. “I don’t want to die of AIDS because I think it's a cliché, a disgusting cliché. I don’t think that’s going to happen to me.”

He flicks ash onto the sidewalk. “A friend said to me recently, ‘Our generation would be the generation that brought AIDS back.’”

Jared’s casual attitude may be brazen, but by no means is it anomalous. Whether or not they do it themselves, everyone in this crowd knows someone who has unprotected sex. But the mindset is not shared by the men who are old enough to have witnessed the ravages of AIDS firsthand.  They take a more somber view of the recent resurgence in HIV.
Joey, 38, a hefty Hispanic who is married to a woman but runs in this crowd, was active in the gay scene in the ’80s and ’90s. “I had 15 friends,” says Joey, “and there are seven of us left.”

Joey shakes his head at Jared’s banter, as if his blond friend were an incorrigible child. “It’s become very common that anyone goes out to a bar, gets drunk and fucks and doesn’t use a condom,” Joey says.   He particularly blames the spread of HIV on “fucking people from New Jersey who come in and spread their legs.”

“Puta al fin!” he says, turning his hands up in mock helplessness, a phrase that means “whore to the end!” in Spanish. The Spanish speakers in earshot snort in amusement.

A block away from The Monster, another member of Joey’s generation—a rare breed these days among the young West Village crowd—scopes the scene from outside the Christopher Street 1 train subway stop. Scott, 34, shows some signs of wear: a missing front tooth and a beer belly. He says he has been “hanging down here since 1989, 1990. I'm about the only white guy hanging out here that’s still alive and kicking.”

The two young black men standing around with Scott in the glow of the Duane Reade—Gregory, 23, and LaDu, 19—don’t have much to say on the subject of HIV. They agree that “barebacking is normal,” and Gregory, wearing a do-rag under his straight-brimmed Yankees cap, has “met people that were [HIV positive],” but only in passing.  “I read an article in the news that HIV infects minorities more than other races,” Gregory offers. But the statistic, while curious enough to toss into a conversation, did not make a lasting impression.

What a difference 10 years can make. Scott came of age in the same neighborhood, back when it was a different world entirely. “I’ve seen everything,” says Scott. “I seen people go. I seen people down here deteriorate, seen people disappear.”

“The way some kids here are—I don't want to say they have no respect for themselves,” he says, careful not to offend his younger companions, “but it’s something that people should put in their brains, that it’s instant death, right there.”

Watching death at work has instilled in Scott a healthy horror. “My main fear is death, period,” explains Scott. “Once you get it, there’s no making a U-turn.” Scott thinks more HIV counseling and resources in the Village would help. Still, when it comes to getting a point across, there’s no substitute for firsthand experience.

Take, for instance, the slight 21-year-old in skinny black jeans eating a bagged lunch on a stoop on West 20th Street, just west of Chelsea’s aortic 8th Avenue, on a sunny weekday at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. Miles is fastidious about using protection and getting tested, and speaks with the conviction characteristic of the older generations. That’s probably because Miles watched an uncle die of AIDS.

“I know a lot of people who have AIDS, older people, a couple generations older than me. I understand how it affects people, physically and all of that.” Miles tucks his sandy hair behind his ear between sandwich bites, nodding as he chews. “I hope that [safe sex] is kind of, you know, a given,” he says with a shrug. “But sometimes it’s not, I guess.”