In 2012, AIDS is a different beast for gay men in D.C.

Over the past five years, Theo W. Hodge Jr., a D.C. physician whose patients are primarily African American, has seen mothers bring in teenage sons who test positive because they’ve limited their sexual activity to a small group of friends that they assumed were too young to be exposed to the disease. Richard DiGioia, a panelist at the original Lisner AIDS forum in ’83, suspects that single men of older generations discover erectile-dysfunction drugs and are propelled by loneliness into risky behavior. O’Neill has seen a white, married, elderly man who contracted HIV by having sex with men on the side, and he’s seen people who don’t fit the profile of high-risk individual (such as an injecting-drug user or a sex worker) but show up with late-stage AIDS because their lives are shrouded in secrecy.

The story of AIDS in D.C. in 2012 is not just a gay one. It’s also not about the imminent end of a war. The story is that people — of all sexual orientations, in every quadrant of the city — are perpetuating or encountering complacency, silence and stigma, and behaving in ways that would embolden a future microbial killer.

Video

D.J. Steedley is the modern face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He is open about his HIV-positive status, physically fit, in some ways healthier than he was before he was diagnosed, and on a clinical trial through the National Institutes of Health that requires four pills a day, likely for the rest of his life. Editor’s Note, July 25:  This story includes interviews in text and video with D.J. Steedley, who was described in the story as “the modern face of the [AIDS] epidemic.” Following publication, The Post learned that Steedley signed a contract in June with a production company that specializes in filming and distributing videos that depict unprotected sex. This information was germane to the story and should have been included.

More on this story

LIVE BLOG: 2012 AIDS Conference

Washington Post staff writers

Updates on the sessions and speeches taking place throughout the day.

CDC study: Good and bad news about teen sex behavior and HIV

Lena H. Sun

Fewer black high schoolers are engaging in risky sexual behavior than 20 years ago, but overall rates have have declined only slightly.

Teens tell the world of HIV’s impact

Caitlin Gibson

Young activists become actors to show what it’s like growing up in a city with one of the nation’s highest HIV rates.

“The day might come along that we see an end to HIV/AIDS,” O’Neill says, “but if we don’t change how we fundamentally interact with and respect each other, there will be something else down the road.”

D.J. Steedley, an ex-Marine and current bartender at Number 9 on P Street NW, tested positive in August after having unprotected sex with someone he trusted but who didn’t know his status.

“If a guy is positive and the question is not asked, he’s not necessarily going to tell,” says Steedley, 30. “You can get comfortable with anything, and your guard goes down.”

Steedley is the modern face of the epidemic. Open about his status, he is physically fit, in some ways healthier than he was before and on a clinical trial through the National Institutes of Health that requires four pills a day and a certain level of discipline and caution, likely for the rest of his life.

His medical condition is a far cry from that of John Willig, the man who became the District’s first de facto spokesman at the Lisner forum, but Steedley is still metaphysically tethered to that era — as are all of us, as citizens of a city with an epidemic.

Willig, as one of the earliest infected, was repeatedly tested and treated at NIH. During one session, he laid still for three hours while tubes were inserted into slits on the tops of his feet, as radioactive tracers pumped through his lymphatic system. He was an important part of the District’s response to the epidemic, and a tiny part of the early research that laid the groundwork for the first antibody test, which would enable the first antiretroviral therapy, which led to the combination treatment and current medication regimens that are, culturally, both a blessing and a curse. People are living, and living well. The virus has almost gone invisible again, like in the early days.

Although some of us don’t know what the early days were like. We weren’t there. We didn’t live through it. We don’t ever want to have to.

Postscript

In a June 1983 interview with The Post, Willig was optimistic. His only symptoms were skin lesions. His boyfriend likened AIDS to “a little hill we have to climb over.”

Three years after that, John Herman Willig Jr. died of AIDS at George Washington University Hospital.

An AIDS memorial quilt bearing his name features a rainbow, a gold cross and a flight of balloons rising near the Washington Monument. The quilt was scheduled to be laid out with hundreds of others on the Mall on Saturday, but rain prevented it. The quilt will remain stored at the Mall until Wednesday, in case anyone asks to see it.

Editor’s Note, July 25: This story includes interviews in text and video with D.J. Steedley, who was described in the story as “the modern face of the [AIDS] epidemic.” Following publication, The Post learned that Steedley signed a contract in June with a production company that specializes in filming and distributing videos that depict unprotected sex. This information was germane to the story and should have been included.