I am chatting on the phone with a friend. I tell him I have met this cool man from Cape Verde. ”Tsk tsk tsk,” he goes. ”There you go, joining the multiple-partner risk-group for Aids.”
”Thank you, Dr Killjoy,” say I. ”On political grounds, I refuse to toe the line of the American religious right and George W Bush. The personal is political. I shall not abstain from sex. I will be smart and factor in Aids.”
I mean, life is so unfair. When I was young, my mother disapproved of sex before marriage. Later in my life, husbands and lovers disapproved of sex without them. Now that I am old enough and single enough to do as I please, my friend disapproves. I may only have sex twice a year but I get lumped with high risk. How unfair can life be?
My friend speaks from the position of fresh marital bliss. He can get laid every weekend or every weekday if they so fancy. But what’s a single woman gotta do?
You can stay at home and abstain, feel unloved and unpopular, and wonder if perhaps you have halitosis and no kind soul has ever told you.
You can grab the first available single man without halitosis, build a joint emotional nest and be faithful, eventually bored.
Or you can do as most singles I know. Dramatically reduce the number of men or women you find really attractive. Grill your potential partner about his or her sexual history. With the excuse of massage, check every inch of skin for telltale signs of past herpes or fungal infections.
Run a check on any potential partner through friends, colleagues, comrades and Google. Talk about Aids. Talk about testing. Go test together. Build trust. Take your time before you have sex, use a condom and hope.
You can’t let fear rule your life, whether about crime or Aids.
Nevertheless, I find men who have recently had surgery with an accompanying HIV test very reassuring. Years ago, when I moved to Zimbabwe, I met this cameraman who was recovering from a really bad car accident.
One month in hospital, two operations and three months of recovery in a wheelchair, living in a tiny cottage with his mother. The hospital tested him for HIV. Mom kept him HIV-free. That’s hitting the jackpot. But, other than scouting trauma wards and physio clinics, I don’t know where to find such men.
You can’t be more sensible than this — but it’s not enough for the Moral Brigade out there. If you are not married, in a stable relationship, or abstaining, you are in a high-risk group. What should one be? Home alone until you gather cobwebs where the sun don’t shine?
I cannot say it better than Dr Patricia McFadden, a Southern African feminist academic: ”The ancient socialisation practices that kept women enslaved have resurfaced” owing to ”the fear that the HIV/Aids pandemic has unleashed within heterosexual relationships”. Like virginity testing — and tsk-tsk- tsking your friends.
And so it is that, in these times of Aids, safe sex is a required topic of conversation with your date. But there is no book of etiquette and advice about it.
So, for those brave souls who are venturing into the summer holidays without a stable partner, here are some Frequently Asked Questions about condoms and dates:
When is a good time to talk about condoms?
When is a good time to have an anal examination or a wisdom tooth pulled? Never. But eventually, unfortunately, we have to go there. Talk about it while you still have your clothes on.
Does one look while he puts on the condom?
It is useful to check if the condom is really on and well on. However, I find the procedure of slipping it on as attractive as watching a surgeon put on plastic gloves so I look elsewhere and check later.
Some women, however, find it an interesting maneouvre. Each to her own. The late Princess Diana liked to watch open-heart surgery. But then, the poor thing had to hump old Charles when she was a tender 21. That must have warped her sense of fun for ever.
On the other hand, if at the Bangkok Aids conference in July you attended the sessions on condoms run by an Australian sex worker, you might be more proficient than him, so why not do it yourself? Grease to your elbow.
Why don’t the brochures, magazine articles and billboards about condoms tell us that the first effect of a condom is to maintain erections until kingdom or dawn come? (No pun intended).
Tantric sex has arrived in our lives, courtesy of the condom. Hours and hours of non-orgasmic sex. It’s 5am and you are dying for sleep but he is dying for something else. So what does one do?
If you say: Honey, a girl needs her beauty sleep, he will whisper: I love the bags under your eyes in the morning.
If you warn: I am doing a spinning class at the gym at 7am, ditto. He will sigh: Gimme your flabby thighs over BeyoncÃ