In public, this conversation is more than 25 years old, stretching back to the so-called plague years, before the public availability of protease inhibitors in 1996 revised the trajectory of the epidemic, reducing death rates and turning HIV into a chronic condition instead of a death sentence for many living with the virus (who had access to the drugs, which remains an issue). Queer men’s abandonment of condoms in the wake of the AIDS epidemic has long been a point of debate and, in some circles, consternation. Though the opening of your letter reads like a setup of a joke, I’m taking it seriously.
