My friend Tony Valenzuela -- made gaymous in 1999 in the Poz Magazine Cover Story, "They Shoot Barebackers, Don't They" -- has just published yet another fabulously incisive piece of journalism about the alleged "superbug" scare of 2005. To catch you up to date on the gist of that story, Tony writes:

"A slew of chilling claims was made about this man – that he carried a new, more virulent strain of HIV dubbed a “supervirus” that progressed from infection to AIDS in as little as two months; that his meth-induced promiscuity would instigate a deadly epidemic potentially undoing a quarter century of progress against HIV; that he signified what many in the gay community had been dreading would occur, given that gay men—stubbornly, recklessly—refused to give up their uniquely nefarious brand of promiscuity."

Tony's basically arguing here that there was a lot at stake in this case -- his case quickly came to represent a kind of perverse nexus of multiple crises in gay sex politics. His life -- his story -- came to be the gay media's whipping boy.

Tony has written a gorgeous, important piece here. Notably, he got to sit down and actually chat -- for the first time on he record -- with "The New York Patient" whose case became so controversial. What he does here is build a story of an HIV-fueled moral panic, something I think is important and builds on the arguments many of us have been making for years now (perhaps inspired most by the late Eric Rofes).

I can't say enough this piece. It's fucking brilliant. It is at the same time investigative journalism and thoughtful self-reflection (two things that almost never go hand-in-hand). For instance, Tony describes the Patient's coming-of-age story, and then notes:

"As I listened to the New York Patient’s story I noted the parallels of his life to my own—both Latino, gay, HIV positive. I have many friends like the New York Patient—gay and immigrant; one foot in American culture, the other in a country left behind; a life of adaptation and struggle, of inimitable self-invention that redefines community and home. I don’t mean to say we’re alike as much as the worlds we inhabit overlap in places that have drawn me to his story, and here’s the most compelling part: Our obscure but considerable common denominator is the strangely intimate experience of withstanding the punishing glare of scandal."

Read it all for yourself here. It will change your life. You MUST read this article!