I was invited by an HIV support group to moderate the Q&A portion of an AIDS fundraiser this weekend. With 200 people there to see the documentary Sex Positive (about an S&M hustler in the 80’s who practically invented the concept of safe sex), my co-host (drag queen extraordinaire, Bubba D. Liscious) and I took to the microphones.
I started out by asking the panel onstage if there was any room for humor when we talked about HIV and safe sex. My “joke” was actually something a reader to my sex advice column had written to me. He had recently been infected with HIV and was struggling with a way to disclose the information to potential partners without freaking them out.
Here’s the joke:
Two hydrogen atoms meet in a bar. One says, “I can’t go home with you because I’ve lost my electron.” The other
says, “Are you sure?” The first replies, “Yes, I’m positive.”
Half the room exploded with laughter. The other half glared at me. I went on by addressing the panel and saying, “My point, and I do have one, is that laughter is the Vaseline that makes ideas penetrate better, yet I never see the subject ever treated with humor. Again, is there room for the funny bone in the body of work that you do?”
At the after party some people said it was exactly what the room needed after such a heavy documentary. Other people registered their displeasure, telling me that I had insulted innocent victims of the infection who were sitting in the audience.
Who was right? Are there some things that just shouldn’t be joked about?