To Be Young, Black, and a One-Man AIDS Epidemic
(Reprinted)
By Dennis Levy
January 1998
Ricky is the lookout for a South Bronx
crackhouse. He looks up and down the street, past decaying buildings.
Ricky's 25 and looks 35; he's an HIV-positive crack addict. A black
woman in a dirty coat, about 35, approaches. "They open?" she mutters.
"Yeah! They slammin', too!" The skinny black woman hurries into the
building. "Bitch got some good head!" Ricky says. "I hit that last
week!" A car pulls over to the corner and a white man in a blue suit,
about 38, motions to Ricky. Ricky walks to the car and leans in. "Can
you get me ten?" he asks, flashing a stack of bills. "No problem, G,"
Ricky says. He grabs the money and jets into the building.
Around 139th Street, all the crackheads know 'Pretty Ricky.' But
they don't know he has AIDS. The young black man has been working as a
lookout for the last six months. Ricky works the block of 139th between
Willis and 3rd, steering customers to the crackhouse every night from
9:00 pm to 5:00 am. It's 3 am now, the 'thirsty hour.' If Ricky tells
people about his AIDS, he'll lose his job and his "hos," in his words.
"It's the lifestyle I'm addicted to," he says, "The excitement of
crack, women, and danger!" He says each week five women sleep with him
on a regular basis. I ask him if he uses condoms. "Are you crazy?" he
asks. "A bitch stressing for a hit don't give a fuck about no raincoat,
and I ain't about to blow some sex on a tech!"
If there was any doubt that crack cocaine use is up in poor
black and Latino neighborhoods, it would have been quickly dispelled by
Ricky. In recent years, police brutality, a sorry education system,
welfare reform, and double-digit unemployment rates among people of
color have created a booming market for crack among hopeless inner-city
women and men. And though accurate statistics are hard to come by,
anecdotal evidence suggests crack is back, and AIDS has made it more
deadly. Nevertheless, everyone from teenagers to grandmothers is
getting high.
In about five minutes, Ricky comes out of the building to the
waiting car and hands the man eight vials of crack, keeping two for
himself. Ricky walks away from the car towards a dark stoop, and the
red flash of a lighter darkens into the red glow of burning crack in
the tip of a glass pipe. Ricky used to be a dealer and a player, but
now he's a crackhead, smoking off and on, he says, since he discovered
his HIV status three years ago. "It blew me away," he says, rapping at
crack-driven speed. "I never thought it could happen to me!"
Crack customers continue to stop in front of Ricky more than one at a
time and, after hearing 'it's on,' hurry into the building. First come
two pretty Latino women who say they are lovers. Ricky says they'll sex
any man for a hit of crack. Then a skinny, middle-aged man in a torn
tee-shirt is pulled along by a 15-year-old black teenager. "Nigga' got
AIDS," says Ricky, "but he hits more skins than Nushawn Williams."
Williams is the young man accused last month of being a one-man AIDS
epidemic who knowingly infected dozens of young women in an upstate
neighborhood and left several women in the Bronx scared to death. New
York City newspapers called him a murderer, psycho, and serial killer.
Williams may be all those things. The unspoken and far more disturbing
issue is whether or not Williams represents many more young black and
Latino heterosexual men. Are some minority men knowingly spreading HIV
to unsuspecting women in minority neighborhoods? Instead of heroin
users sharing HIV-contaminated needles, is unprotected sex,
promiscuity, and drug use among heterosexuals fueling the speeding AIDS
epidemic in poor neighborhoods? Is alcohol and/or drugs the lethal
combination that pushes bored black and Latino teenagers into the open
arms of HIV-positive older black and Latino men?
Ricky says black and Latino men don't use rubbers, and recent
statistics support it. The HIV infection rate is rising among women of
color, and transmission through sex with infected men has outpaced
infection through intravenous drug use, says Dr. Pascale Wartley, an
epidemiologist and chief researcher at the Centers for Disease Control.
Women are 2 1/2 times more likely to be infected through heterosexual
contact than by injection drugs. Indeed, AIDS cases diagnosed in 1996
rose 19% among heterosexual black men and 12% among heterosexual black
women. Roughly twice the number of African American males die from AIDS
as die from homicide. And the reported number of African American women
with AIDS is more than 47,000, enough to populate the town of Selma,
Alabama . . . twice!
A young black hooker with thick make-up asks Ricky if he wants
to party. "Let's get it on," Ricky says. "Ya know that, baby!" she
answers. "Meet ya at 5:00." "Most people who do drugs will sex anyone,"
Ricky says, slam-dunking a bottle and beaming up. "Their guard goes
down." Ricky goes home with a woman almost every night. "Nobody talks
about the monster AIDS," he says. Ricky swears that sex and drugs go
together like hands and gloves, and the fear of getting AIDS does not
stop it. "Nobody got a raincoat, or time and money to get one!" he
says.
A black Lexus parks halfway down the block. "There's Rico," Ricky says.
The driver door opens and a young Latino man in full hip hop gear gets
out. Ricky says Rico's the man. Street legend says he stopped using
crack and heroin after watching the movie New Jack City. He's in
recovery now and, at 31, goes to nightly N.A. meetings. Rico doesn't
know Ricky is HIV-positive and never has taken an HIV test. Rico has at
least three girlfriends.
"What's up, baby?"
"Chillin'."
Ricky introduces Rico to me. We talk for a minute. I ask him if
he ever took an HIV test. "Fuck no," he screams. "Who the fuck wants to
know they got AIDS?"
I tell Rico about the new medicines that can prolong your life, and
point out the fact that everyone in recovery has engaged in risky
behavior. Based on that fact alone, they should take the HIV test, I
say. "Listen, my man," Rico lectures, "AIDS was invented by the C.I.A.
as a biological weapon. They be testing it on black people and faggots,
but now straight white people been getting it too. So, they made a
cure. I heard it will be on the market in 2001." "That's crap," I say.
"Yo, when my time has come, so be it," he answers. "Until then, I'm
partying. Anyway, I don't know if I got AIDS. So, you can't say I'm
knowingly passing it to women."
Rico goes on to tell me about his 'peeps' in the N.A. rooms. Some of
them are HIV-positive, but they don't want anyone to know because it
might affect their ability to pull women. "They don't use condoms
either!" says Rico. Enough said.
Despite all the optimism about the downfall of AIDS, the white
gay community was still decimated. From a scientific standpoint,
multiple partners and increased amounts of anal intercourse are the
factors that helped spread HIV in the gay community. The gay community
responded with a massive safe sex campaign and free condoms. It worked.
The rate of transmission of the HIV in the white gay male community has
leveled off.
In the '90s, the second decade of AIDS, the sharing of
contaminated syringes, unsafe sex, drugs, and alcohol are spreading
HIV/AIDS among black and Latino heterosexuals. The safe sex message and
free condom distribution has not worked nearly as effectively as it did
in the white gay male community. Moreover, the unwillingness of many
black and Latino people to take an HIV test makes for a host of
potential one-man AIDS epidemics. Nobody has a solution. But a
partnership of the entire community must be mobilized.
Pretty Ricky and Rico walk to the Lexus, get in, and drive off into the early morning light.