MAILBOX

This week: A reader thinks Armond White’s the real racist here; after our Best of Everything issue, a call for the NYC City Council as “Best Pay for Play”; and a reminder that AIDS isn’t back, it never went away.

Superbad Bigot
So Armond White makes his point that white critics are racist and closed minded to Tyler Perry’s black-themed films (“White Lies,” Oct. 17-23). But by being closed minded to a couple of the best comedies of the year, Superbad and Knocked Up, who is the real racist here.
— Alex DiTullio

Best Pay For Play
“The Best Of Everything 2007” issue (Oct. 24-30) missed that the New York City Council is the best place for “Pay for Play” campaign contributors to influence elected officials. New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Finance Committee Council Chairperson David Weprin and many of the other 34 term limited Council members running for higher pubic office in 2009 have collectively raised several million dollars in $500, $1,000 and $2,750 donations from various special interest groups. They are making investments today on behalf of their clients for future favors at taxpayers’ expense. See for yourself and contact the New York City Campaign Finance Board or log on to their website...www.nyccfb.info. The list of special interest groups makes interest-ing reading.
—Larry Penner, Great Neck, NY

Bareback Baloney
Reading your AIDS issue (“The Plague Returns,” Sept. 26-Oct. 3), J.T. Leroy and James Frey appear to be doing just fine in their new jobs at the New York Press.
I have worked in the nightlife industry for 20 years, thrown 3,000 parties in New York alone, met tens of thousands of gay nightlife denizens, and yet I have never encountered a character remotely like “Jared,” a convenient all-in-one stereotype: He’s compared to Audrey Hepburn, an Abercrombie model and a slut who doesn’t want to die of AIDS because it’s “a disgusting cliché” even though he only has receptive anal intercourse without condoms. Although I spend several nights a week in the very nightlife mileu J.T. LeRoy (I mean Becca Miller) found this Jared (no last name, please, lest someone fact-check), I’ve never had such a swan-like creature tell me all about his propensity to bareback total strangers, something that is generally something that one wouldn’t boast about. What an intrepid reporter! What a load of hooey.
Then we turn the page and meet “Gary,” who was supposedly intentionally infected by a psychopath who then starts taunting him about his T-cell count. Selfless, pathetic Gary stays with him through all of this abuse. Why, he doesn’t even get angry! Why, it’s his own fault! Whatever Happened to Baby Gay?
Exploitive, obviously exaggerated tales like these make gay men sound like suicidal nitwits who only stop intentionally infecting teens or gleefully taking loads up the ass long enough to pause and tell all to the nice lady from the New York Press.
I’ve been an AIDS activist for over 20 years. Sensational (and fake) stories like this obscure the real causes for the only-too-real rise in HIV infections among young people.
Sadly, the facts about the rise in AIDS among young gay men in New York are true. My friends were young and slipped up, and the odds were against them. They don’t hang around Christopher Street boasting to total strangers about the fun they have barebacking. They’re dealing with the reality of what one night’s mistake has done to their lives. And they have much more to say about what is actually causing the rise in HIV transmission than these too-convenient-to-be-true characters your writers have created.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that Sara Markt, the spokesperson for the Health Department, actually exists and said that, “We somehow have to remind people that this is a gay disease, all over again, before it becomes another epidemic.” Ms. Markt, AIDS isn’t a gay disease. It is a disease, period. Saying it is a gay disease sends the message to everyone who isn’t gay that they’re home free—and they aren’t. And guess what: It never stopped being an epidemic. AIDS isn’t back. It never went away.
—Chip Duckett, East Village, NY