It’s Friday night and Ray Otani is meeting his date at the Moby Dick after weeks of exchanging e-mails and chatting online. They enjoy their drinks, touching each other’s arms and whispering flirtatious words. Otani thinks he’s finally met someone who is able to overlook his HIV-positive status. After spending several hours at a crowded bar, Otani’s date takes him to his place. They spend the rest of their evening kissing and fondling on the couch, their shirts in disarray on the floor while their pants are pooled at their ankles. As their sexual excitement peaks, Otani’s date asks him to penetrate him and he halts his movements.
“Are you crazy?” he asks in disbelief, but his date urges him on.
“I’m allergic to condoms, but it’s okay.”
But Otani doesn’t believe him and he realizes that he has been asked by a “bug chaser” to be a “gift giver.”
The terms “gift giver” and “bug chaser” have fearful overtones for those who are familiar with HIV and the gay community. Gift giver is used to describe a homosexual man who is HIV-positive and intentionally infects a sexual partner. Bug chasers, unlike gift givers, are HIV-negative but are willing to be exposed to the virus.
“Yes, there are bug chasers out there although I cannot figure out why,” says 41-year-old Otani, pushing a finger on the rim of his round glasses that seem to always slip down his long, narrow nose. He surmises that he contracted the virus in 1983, but didn’t test positive until about two and a half years later.
Otani’s hunched posture is deceiving of his 5-foot-11-inch frame. He weighs 139 pounds, but he is proud of his remarkable two-pound weight gain in the last three months. His cheeks are sunken and it’s difficult to ascertain if it’s from years of being positive or the natural structure of his kind face.
“I am a very responsible individual and I do believe that HIV stops with me. I have no intentions of ever being a gift giver and have been approached on more than one occasion to share my bug with men, to which I say no way. I would not wish this disease on anyone,” he says, a soft smile quickly disappearing as his chapped lips cover the gaps between his teeth.
Although Otani has only been asked three times to be a gift giver online, his positive status profile on gay.com has filled his inbox with strange requests to send his semen in containers or used condoms from other gay.com members.
“I think it’s sad. Bug chasers don’t understand what I have to go through day in and day out. I mean, is having chronic diarrhea everyday bad enough for you?” he says.
S.F. State Health Educator Kamal Harb explains that although the existence of gift givers and bug chasers is undeniable, they are still a small group of people immersed in the gay community.
“This is something that’s underground. You wouldn’t be able to find one person who is an actual ‘gift giver’ or ‘bug chaser’ willing to admit that they do these things, especially the ones who intentionally infect their partners without telling them about their positive status,” says Harb.
He explains that gift givers are usually angry about contracting the virus from another sexual partner, and that bug chasers are even more complex, and possibly dealing with the social pressure of being gay.
Redge Norton, spokesperson for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, believes that there are a number of reasons why gift givers and bug chasers would be willing participants in a game of “Russian Roulette,” and that this kind of careless behavior stems from substance abuse, depression and most of all anger issues.
“It’s self-destructive behavior and those who want this virus usually don’t know all the facts with what it’s like to live with HIV in 2006,” says Norton.
After working with HIV-positive men, some volunteers at the STOP AIDS project, a San Francisco-based organization promoting the education of HIV awareness and prevention, have speculated that men who want to contract the virus want the insurance, but Jason Riggs denies this.
“This is not what is going on. I am not an insurance specialist and have never heard of somebody looking to get HIV for insurance money or coverage,” he says.
Riggs, the communications director at the STOP AIDS project rationalizes that someone who is HIV-negative seeking to contract the virus harbors deep psychological demons, making bad decisions when under the influence of drugs, alcohol and stress from life-changing events such as sexual abuse or rejection, but emphasizes this is a very small, rare group of people.
Apparently not small enough for David Jordan. Jordan is also part of the gay.com community. His online profile lists his hobbies, pet peeves and his positive HIV status. He’s been positive for over 20 years, but has maintained his health through medication and healthy eating habits. In the past seven years, Jordan has been approached by bug chasers 30 times.
He is confounded as to why someone would want to gamble with their life.
“Usually young guys with obviously low self-esteem that seem to romanticize the disease [ask me]. They say one of two things: that they want to be able to have sex without having to worry about it any longer or that they want to "belong" to the gifter after converting and they feel that it would make a stronger bond between them,” says Jordan.
Riggs helps counsel gay men who are positive and dealing with denial, which usually runs its course after a year. Some men who are still in denial continue with the same lifestyle that puts them at risk.
“They continue their life without dealing with their positive status. It is not uncommon for people to spend the first year of knowing they are positive to be in a funk or low-grade depression” says Riggs, but he makes it clear that this does not mean they are gift givers.
According to the AIDS Legal Referral Panel, a low-cost legal service focusing on HIV/AIDS cases in San Francisco, California law states that any person who has HIV/AIDS who exposes another person to the virus without disclosing their positive health status, is guilty of a felony and is punishable in state prison for up to eight years.
As harsh as that punishment may seem, Burnet shakes his head in disagreement. He doesn’t feel that those who are HIV-positive should be wholly punished for having unprotected sex, especially since it takes “two to tango.”
Troy Burnet was infected during a sexual encounter 12 years ago, when the idea of HIV and AIDS mythically targeted gay men. He casually had sex with a friend who never told him he was HIV positive and Burnet unabashedly admits that he didn’t consider using a condom because he “knew him too well.” When Burnett tested positive for the virus, he found out that the friend he thought he knew was actually more careless with his sexual endeavors than he had led on and he jokingly comments about having homicidal thoughts when he tested positive for HIV.
When Burnet tested positive, he went through a year of denial, sustaining the lifestyle he was accustomed to, affixed with more drugs and more sex. He has since taken greater responsibility.
Despite feelings of the physical and social repercussion of being positive, which he succinctly describes as “having a giant bird on your shoulder and having it constantly shitting on you,” he has never thought of taking any legal action.
“If a person can make a decision to have sex, they can make a decision to use some protection, but if they don’t, then the person who gave them the virus shouldn’t bear all the blame,” says Burnet.
Otani doesn’t sympathize as easily. He believes that no one should have the power to decide who should get the virus and punishment is necessary.
“It’s disgusting,” he says.
As for his date, Otani hasn't spoken to him since that night and sometimes he can't believe that he was even asked.
"It's just something you never get use to - and I shouldn't have to," he says.