Johnno

“Sorry I’m late,” says Johnno. I moved house on the weekend and I had a bit of a bender. I’m living with one and a half prostitutes.”

It’s a good introduction.

We sit in a café on Oxford Street near the community health clinic where Johhno works as a nurse. “There wasn’t any one moment I can think of,” he says. “It was more a process of realisation. I grew up near St Maries – I was a Westy – and I got engaged right after I left school. I only called it off two months before the wedding. I had to. I kept hanging around men’s toilets at pubs. I never went to any gay bars because, you know, if you go there, you’re gay. But in the gents at the local, you just liked sucking cock.

“I can’t believe that was 20 years ago. You know what’s really amazing, though?” he says. “I’m 39 and I’m still HIV neg. I can still see the Grim Reaper ads so clearly. They scared the hell out of me.”

Most of last year Johnno juggled his career as nurse and councillor with an addiction to crystal meth. “I was really lost,” he says. “It speeds everything up. An hour feels like ten minutes, and it makes you horny as hell. I just wanted sex.”

Johnno says he can talk under water. I believe him. He’s a handsome bloke, six foot something, broad shoulders, slim waist, furry chest, well groomed. He greets a dozen people on the street in the course of an hour. He happily sweeps you up into a world he knows is wild and wacky. “I love being me,” he laughs cheekily.

“I tried a lot of really kinky stuff on ICE. Leather, whips, fantasy, you name it. But I always made sure. There had to be a condom. I’ve had to be really disciplined. When I was in a long term, monogamous relationship a few years ago, I had to practice masturbating with a condom to feel the same pleasure. My partner was HIV positive.”

Johnno sees and hears a lot of first hand accounts of how HIV/AIDS affects people’s lives, and how people relate to the disease.

“A lot of young gay guys think it’s like having diabetes, or any other medically treatable disease. A lot of them actually seem relieved when they get infected. They want to have open relationships and enjoy sex. They want to feel accepted. There’s a common saying in some parts of the gay community, ‘planting the seed’, or ‘give me your seed.’ There are ‘gifting parties’ where HIV negative men go to get infected. It’s like an initiation ceremony.”

Johhno says sometimes he feels sexually discriminated against for being HIV negative. “I was first knocked back by a man in a bar earlier this year because I’m HIV neg. It’s happened to me again since then,” he says.

It would be unfair to suggest this relationship to HIV/AIDS is common to gay men, but it’s a growing trend, says Johnno, and something that concerns him. “I tell so many young guys who come in for a check up to be careful. A lot of them are on ICE. It changes personalities and makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do. Sometimes they arrive high to the clinic, and you can just tell. They’re really flirtatious. Some of them pull their dicks out, and of course afterwards they’re really embarrassed.”

Johhno agrees that the Grim Reaper adds had a big impact in Australia, and suggests that something similar is needed now. “I’m sure I’d be HIV positive now if it weren’t for those adds,” he says.

We pay for our coffees, and I ask a final question. “What do you mean, exactly, that you live with one and a half prostitutes?”

“Oh. One of them’s only part-time, God bless her.”