I TRAVEL A LOT, I've been told. Doesn't seem like it to me. A lot more than two weeks a year, sure-but how does the average American exist with only two weeks of vacation per year, anyway? It never occurred to me that such a thing was possible. That's one of the major advantages of the kind of disorganized life I've led: I've never bad to worry about keeping a nine-to-five job. And for the last few years, each time I do manage to take off for parts unknown, it constitutes a perfectly legitimate tax deduction, too. You can look at this two ways: either I'm always on vacation-or I'm never on vacation. My job follows me everywhere. Fortunately, it's the world's best job. I've made a lot of trips where I didn't really enjoy myself. When asked about the last time I saw Paris (eight years ago!), I shudder. Why? As usual, it was the little things that added up. The dogshit in the streets more of it than any city I've ever been in. The preponderence of smokers. My inability to make myself understood, after four years of French, in even the simplest requests. ("Could I have a glass of water, please?" "Eli?") And, mortification of mortifications, going to a bathhouse the second night of my stay and being told they weren’t selling memberships. Hey, I lived in San Francisco during the time when Club SF (Eighth & Howard) was in operation; I know that code phrase. In this case, I interpreted it as We don’t want Americans here. (The alterative interpretation-You’re old, fat & ugly, get lost — would've been just too much for my ego to bear.) I expect bathhouses to be places where I can go to feel warm, secure, at home, accepted, when the rest of the world is cold and unfriendly. Being rejected by a bathhouse attendant was the last straw; I packed up my things and caught the first train north the next morning, to Amsterdam, where I knew I would be welcomed and appreciated, even if I didn't know two sentences of Nederlanse.

Bottom line: despite two trips to France, totalling about three weeks (and an extreme weakness in my knees for foreign accents and uncut dicks), I have yet to have sex there. That says something, to me, about the mythic(al) Gallic seductiveness.

En etrangers might be transliterated as 'in strangers'; translated, it's closer to 'in foreign parts.' Either way, it's one of the nicest ways to have sex, as most of our readers are well aware. Over the past decade, I've spent at least ten months outside the US, and quite possibly had more sex in those ten months than in the other nine-plus years. Something about being in strange surroundings, among men who can't understand you, stimulates my gonads. Hey, so does lazy change in atmosphere: just going to New Orleans turns me on. Familiarity breeds contempt, the saying goes. I don't find Americans contemptible, exactly, but my neighbors don't fill me with lust, either~, the way the men on the streets of Bangkok do. And as for lovers-well, there's nothing less interesting to me, sexually, than a face & body that I've been seeing day in & day out for two years. I don't believe I'm alone in feeling this way.

But where was I? Rambling all over Europe, that's right, staying at youth hostels. I won't regale you with the lurid episodes that night have occurred at those spots; my imagination isn't quite that fertile. Still, I do recommend them as the best way of meeting (or at least sleeping with) lots of men & boys from all corners of the globe. (In most cities, the hostel rooms are segregated by sex-but in Amsterdam, watch out, it's co-ed Yes, I can be intimidated. And they say wowoen are powerless?)

My international traveling came to a screeching halt about five years ago, when I came to terms with my AIDS diagnosis. It had suddenly become necessary to talk about sex with potential partners beforehand. Or so it seemed to me. Oh, you can still stick to safer sex, whether or not your partner knows you're positive; but then, afterwards, while you're relaxing, he's almost certain to ask what those purple spots are and I'll have to tell him "They're lesions ... you know, KS ... Kaposi's sarcoma ... Have you heard of AIDS?" And chances are, he'll start freaking out. "I just had sex with you, and you didn't even tell me?" Yes, his reaction is irrational-he shouldn't have been doing anything to begin with that he'd be uncomfortable doing with a PWA-but it's also traumatic. I don't enjoy Scenes. Better to bring it up beforehand. And my Italian, French, and German, while possibly sufficient for that one simple fact, are inadequate to the task of discussirig it. So I swore off foreign travel 'until I get rid of this damn virus.'

As our charter subscribers know, that resolution didn't last long. I went with Keith Griffith to Italy two years ago, and afterwards to Amsterdam, Berlin, and London. (Keith went to Paris after Italy, where I resolutely refused to accompany him.) I had sex with a number of Italians with whom I didn't discuss my health status. They didn't seem overly concerned about safer sex, butt stayed within my own personal boundaftes (basically: don't cum in his mouth; don't fuck or get fucked without a condom), and I assume they stayed within theirs. And still, I felt depressed after each encounter. In Berlin, I met two men (separately) who spoke excellent English; feeling somewhat more asserhve, I told both of them I was HtV+. Both men shrugged, and said casually, "Then we'll have to be careful, right?" Talk about liberating! Best sex I'd had in months

It was that contrast, as much as anything else, that made me get tattooed last spring. A tasteful, simple, black tattoo on my. left shoulder that says 'HlV+'-with a tasteful, simple circlet of spermatozoa swimming around my arm. I wanted to have that feeling of freedom 100% of the time; I didn't ever want to have that after-sex discussion again. It hasn't been an altogether successful experiment. First, of course, to be useful, the tattoo has to be visible. Most of the places where I traditionally 'connect' for sex bathhouses, sexclubs, parks at night-render it invisible, due to low lighting levels; and in Wisconsin, anyway, it's covered about six months out of the year. Which leaves me back at Square One: how to get the message across without having to shout to the room (park, arcade, whatever) at large: "Yo, guys I've got AIDS! Who wants to play with me?" Should it matter? No. Does it matter? Yes.

They say sex is a universal language. Oh, the variations I've encountered in other countries the charming Latin stereotypes, the sexy Asian stereotypes, the butch Aussie stereotypes (and each stereotype, despite PG protests, exists for a REASON) give a different slant, a different accent; but a hard dick needs no translation, just fellation. One of our goals here at STEAM is to improve communication about sex-and I don't just mean across national borders, either. There's probably less dialogue about sex (and sexual limits, and the boundaries of 'Safer Sex') here in the US than there is between France and Germany. The thing we think is most important-not just because of the health crisis, but because it's good for the psyche, is that we learn to talk about sex. With partners, with parents, with legislators, with laymen. (I guess this is the one area where a professional is a 'layman.') We didn't really set out to inflame tempers. It just seems that one of the surest ways to get people talking is to get 'em STEAMed.