Poz Seeking Poz

The pickings are slim but getting better for singles living with HIV and AIDS.

by Shane Johnson

If there’s an upside to carrying the HIV virus, it’s that the mere mention of it is poison to even the most lecherous barfly. Only problem is, the acronym has much the same effect on legitimate prospects.

“He beelined out of the bar; didn’t so much as give me a goodbye,” Doug recalls of one abruptly rescinded proposition. “It really is pretty damaging if your esteem is at all weak.”

But for Doug, a 35-year-old health-care worker who tested positive for HIV in 1999, disclosure is not optional. “You have to,” he insists. But he also notes, “There’s a lot of vulnerability to that.”

Since joining HIVnet.com, a dating Website for those living with the disease, Doug is able to let his guard down some. And while he’d never be so close-minded as to write off “negatives” altogether, he writes of being “tired of dating guys who aren’t poz” in his HIVnet.com personal profile.

“Anyone can sympathize with people who have this disease, but it takes a person with the disease to really empathize,” Doug explains. “When you feel cruddy, when you feel sick, unless you have this disease you can’t understand what it’s like.”

Rick, a local businessman and the founder of HIVnet.com, didn’t want his last name published because, like Doug and so many living with HIV, the professional and social repercussions are too great. Sitting down at the People With AIDS Coalition in their downtown offices alongside director Toni Johnson, Rick admits his impetus for the Website was a selfish one: “I wanted to meet HIV girls.”

After a years-long unexplained illness, Rick was floored when the doctors returned a diagnosis of full-blown AIDS in 1995. His best guess is a tainted blood transfusion in the early ’80s.

“I was a heterosexual male from a small town,” he says. “I had two T cells, my viral load was over a million, I was down to 130 pounds and … the doctor basically said you better get all your s—t together, because you’re not seeing Christmas this year.”

In 1996, however, groundbreaking AIDS drugs hit the market and Rick’s condition improved dramatically. But even with the virus in check, there isn’t a drug cocktail on the planet to mitigate the social symptoms.

“When you’re HIV positive, you can’t find a date to save your life,” Rick says. “It’s a social disease as much as anything else, because people don’t want to be around you.”

Indeed, when Rick broke the news to his girlfriend of two years, “She never took my calls again.” He understands, though, because “if I was negative, I probably wouldn’t go out with a girl who was positive either.”

When Toni Johnson was diagnosed 13 years ago at age 21, her fiancé reacted similarly.

“This is back in ’93, and all you knew about HIV is that it was going to kill you,” she says. “And he was horrified. He stayed in town long enough to get his negative test result, and then he took a job in Hawaii … doing construction.”

Before Johnson went full time at the coalition—where her chances for romance are obviously better than the other known positives dispersed across the state—dating was an agonizing exercise. “As soon as someone would ask me out, the little monster would start eating at my brain,” she says. “‘When do I tell him? How do I tell him?’ And it just keeps doing that until you actually say the word.”

So, for ease of coupling, the consensus among Toni Johnson, Rick and Doug is that positives are better off pursuing other positives. Some studies have even shown the trend has stalled infection rates. But finding a compatible positive is easier said than done and, Rick says.

Though Rick has connected with eligible women on the site, despite traveling the country for dates, he still hasn’t found the right one. The praises of satisfied users are nonetheless encouraging.

“Please cancel my membership,” one wrote. “I have met someone and we’re getting married next year. Thank you.”

Another raved: “I’ve dated negs in the past, and it doesn’t work well. All conversations end up being about me being HIV. … There’s so much more to life than being HIV-positive, and it’s great that you put up this Website so we can meet.”

Rick didn’t want just another Internet switchboard for sexual liaisons, and he wanted the utmost privacy for HIVnet members. We personally review each profile, tossing graphic photos and rejecting profiles that don’t pass the HIV smell test. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that members run the gamut from hot young singles on the prowl to a 56-year-old Republican Mormon widow looking to meet new people.

As Doug reckons: “If you want to hook up, go to Craig’s List,” or any number of online meat markets. But, he warns, “Chances are nobody on that list is going to disclose their serostatus.”

HIVnet.com meticulously screens prospective members’ profiles to block all but HIV-positive singles. Still, some try to fudge their way on for one reason or another.

“I bet I get probably five or six profiles a day from hateful bashers,” Rick says, elaborating with examples too ugly to print here. “Then I get a lot from people who want to come and save people. … But we’re not there to be saved, we’re not there for pity and we’re not there for scorn. We’re there to meet somebody.”

And everybody needs somebody.