Talk about Being Gay
by Humphrey Wou
2008
Little Bug is a nick name. His previous nick name was Soundless, not much of a name in my opinion, but very appropriate in his case. Little Bug was part of the "hidden population," gay people who do not show their faces in gay bars or saunas. They mainly look for friends and sexual partners on line. It was in a chat room that Little Bug met both of his best friends, Winter Sun and Kid Brother. Winter Sun was an introverted college student who seemed to bury his head in books most of the time. Kid Brother, on the other hand, was out-going, cute, and popular. The three of them quickly became each other's emotional support, sharing all their secrets.
Without warning, one day Kid Brother told Little Bug and Winter Sun that he had just learned he was HIV positive. "He has AIDS," Little Bug and Winter Sun both concluded, "he may not live long." They had learned about AIDS from TV and knew very little about it. Both of them believed HIV=AIDS=death, and Kid Brother would eventually become a skin-and-bone corpse.
Kid Brother kept texting Little Bug, "I am so afraid... I hope you are there to talk to me, even for just a minute... I wish there were no night, and the sun would shine all day long... I saw myself in the mirror, and I looked dead..." Bug was also afraid, as if he could catch Kid's virus through reading his text messages. He didn't respond much. He didn't know how.
The text messages suddenly stopped coming. Bug didn't make an effort to find out why. A month later, it was Winter Sun who called Bug to tell him that Kid had gone. "Gone? Where? To the hospital in Beijing?" Winter Sun couldn't contain his emotions any longer. "He died. He killed himself five days ago," he said.
Little Bug's remorse drove him to activism. Now he is no longer Soundless. He is a gay community leader in Benxi, a small town in northern China that I had not heard of. He wrote that it was not HIV but ignorance, fear, and his silence that killed his friend. He has three cigarette burns on his arm, symbolizing the three best friends.
I only met Little Bug for the first time two weeks ago when I called a meeting in Beijing to launch our Identity Affirmation Project. The idea is to create small rap style support groups in second-tier cities in China to help gay people build self confidence and social safety networks. We believe that when people are not isolated, they are less likely to do harm to themselves, including contracting HIV or committing suicide.
I was surprised to learn that Little Bug was familiar with the rap group concept and had already implemented three sessions on his own. For over a year, I have been spreading my brand of gay gospel on HIV prevention to any willing to hear: "We need to do more than hardware (condoms and info pamphlets) distribution. What gay people need is friendship and security." I would then proceed to spell out the details of an eight week closed group in which the participants could share their inner thoughts. With the support of AIDS Project Los Angeles, this March we will formally launch the project, which I have dubbed "Heart Talk".
Little Bug learned of this concept from one of ARFC's grantees. He thought the effectiveness of rap groups was much greater than that of parties in gay bars which have been reported as "identity affirmation" projects. Even in his conservative small town where there seems to be no gay presence at all, he is confident that he can get university students to take part in his rap groups.
Most gay activists in the room were very different from Little Bug. Their efforts have been spent primarily in outreach to gay bars, saunas, and bordellos. They don't necessarily think about people like Bug and Kid, the hidden population. Kid had had sex with many men, but few of his friends knew the facts of HIV. To illustrate the point, Jack from APLA brought his friend W to our launch meeting.
W is a young man who can speak English like he was educated in the West. He has a promising career and lives in Shanghai, the most sophisticated city in China. He knows Jack, who works for an AIDS service organization in the U.S. W should be safe from HIV, in theory.
And he was. He always practiced safe sex with his boyfriend. But one day, he fell sick with flu-like symptoms. He did an online search and two prominent websites stated that the onset of HIV could be like the flu. The websites advised an HIV screening.
W was spooked. He tried to call someone, some hotline, or some clinic to clarify his concerns. His search turned up nothing. Meanwhile, Shanghai has four grassroots organizations that I know of, including one hotline, working on HIV prevention. You may think that W was not very resourceful. But the problem, I think, is that W doesn't visit gay establishments and therefore is not connected. Like Kid and Bug, he was on his own.
The scary fact is that the majority of gays in China are just like them. While most gay groups would claim tens of thousands of condoms distributed every year, hundreds of entertaining skits with HIV prevention messages performed in gay bars, and hordes of volunteers sent to gay saunas on weekends, these efforts reach only the tip of the iceberg.
W eventually was able to find some credible websites and got hold of Jack who was visiting China. They went together to get tested. No surprise to us, he was HIV negative. But this happy ending was just the beginning of our discussion. Why can't information be more user-friendly and accessible? If a highly educated bilingual person in Shanghai had problems, what about others? What should we do? Our conclusion was a two-pronged approach: cyber outreach and identity affirmation. Our meeting focused on the latter strategy.
Some 20 people from 10 different cities gathered in Beijing for the meeting. We shared a commitment to thinking outside of the box. At the break, I heard Little Bug telling someone about not being able to get any free condoms to distribute. The man immediately responded, "But you don't need boxes of condoms to do outreach. I sometimes carry four condoms in my pocket and sit down to talk with someone in a bar or a sauna. After 15 minutes, I gave him a condom and that's an outreach. I learned about the power of conversation through this rap group idea." I was surprised to overhear him. Not many months ago, he had insisted on free condom distribution being the only way to do HIV intervention.
The core of the meeting was to split the twenty participants into two groups. We had one and a half hours to experience a real rap session. The rules were simple. We could not repeat anything said in the room to outsiders, and we would respect each other's views. The idea was to create a safe space for conversation. The two sessions went like magic. People were fighting for their chance to speak. We were eager to express ourselves and learn about each other simultaneously.
The purpose of "Heart Talk" is not casual conversation. We want to design a progression of 8 weekly sessions, moving participants from talking about who I am, to what I care about, and eventually how to respect myself. There will not be any teaching on how to wear a condom. But more importantly, the discussion will be on why one should insist on protecting oneself and his loved ones. This is all a part of self respect.
In the end, I asked everyone to write down 8 rap topics. People in the room would pick out the ones they liked. The only criterion I gave them was that the topics should potentially lead to a discussion of HIV prevention. In the coming months, APLA and ARFC will go to each city to evaluate their results. We will then put the best ideas together and create a curriculum to reproduce this model.
I also encouraged them to write down stories of transformation on their own blogs. In two to three years, we will pick the 100 best blog entries to publish, sort of a Chicken Soup for Gay Souls.
In the last 10 minutes of the meeting, I needed a commitment from the attendees, "Who is confident that you can pull it off in your city?"
"Suzhou," was the first to shout out.
Then it was, "Taiyuan."
"Xian."
"Zhengzhou."
"Tianjin."
"Shenyang."
"Jilin."
"Benxi."
These eight cities will receive $1,000 from ARFC/APLA to promote and implement Heart Talks. We didn't count Harbin because it has been supported by the Netherlands Red Cross. I later heard that the guy from Xinxiang also wanted in but I probably cut it off too soon. The folks in Zhengzhou were willing to split their grant money with Xinxiang. In other words, everyone in the room had signed up to test pilot this project.
Two weeks after the meeting, Little Bug sent me his story about Kid Brother's suicide. He titled it "A Lesson Learned Too Late." I couldn't imagine the pain and guilt he felt. I wrote back, "We won't let this happen again. We can't."