Feels Like Teen Spirit

At 13, Brian* is the youngest volunteer at the New York Peer AIDS Educator's Coalition (NYPAEC), a street-based outreach group that serves New York's five boroughs. He's also a precocious, gay-identified, street-smart boy with a mix of sweetness and swagger that belies his young age. Last year, Brian saw a flyer about NYPAEC and decided he wanted to reach out to other kids like himself who are living on the streets or in the foster care system, especially kids of color. "There are so many kids who are basically totally on their own, without anyone to help them," he says. "But you give someone a condom, and you're helping to save his or her life."

Brian should know. His own life story has taught him what he calls hard truths, about loss and despair, about survival and support, about AIDS and sex and learning how to avoid getting infected, about growing up quickly. Born in Manhattan, he was raised by his doting grandmother until he was eleven, a woman who he says "loved me very much." He has a brother who's older, but his parents were not around. Matter-of-factly, he explains, "I lived with my grandmother because my mother was a sex worker who had full-blown AIDS for five years. I visited with her when she had AIDS for two years, before she died." As he recalls his mother now, his voice and expression softens. "What I knew about AIDS is that it was a disease for which there was no cure," he says about his own education. About his mother's death, he says only, "It was so hard. Really hard."

"She was more like my big sister, like a friend," he adds about his mother, describing an affectionate, strong woman. "She always accepted me -- my being so feminine, and all. So did my grandmother -- she was like my mentor. My grandmother was very optimistic. Always replace hate with love, that's what she taught me."

Then came another blow. Brian's grandmother fell sick, and, without other relatives willing to care for him, he was sent to a foster home upstate, the first of many. While he was there, his grandmother died. Overnight, he was thrust into a world where adults could not or would not protect him from other kids who picked on him and beat him up for "looking like a girl," he says.

Today, Brian can list on both hands the number of foster homes he's tried and fled. "It's always the same thing," he says. "Homophobia." About his attackers, he says, "They think being gay is the biggest weakness in the world. They're stupid. I just try to ignore it."

If anything, his experience showed him how little most teenagers his age and older understand about sexuality, HIV, and AIDS. "They are totally ignorant," he says. "Trust me." So are many adults who are in denial about teen sexuality, he says. "The 13-year-olds I know are having more sex than the 25-year- olds. They're having a hell of a lot of sex. Maybe people don't want to know that. But it's the truth."

Brian decided to become a peer educator because of his mother's death. "AIDS is my life now, but I don't want to live with the virus," he explains, and that's exactly what he tells other kids. Armed with a plastic bag full of safe sex literature, condoms, and bleach kits, he'll do outreach anywhere, at any time, his message simple and hard-hitting. "I try to scare them at first," he admits, "I talk to them about STDs and other stuff, so that they'll want to practice safer sex." What if a kid doesn't want to use a condom? "I tell them about how slowly and painfully you die," he says frankly.

Like other peer educators, he's aware of the limits of the safer-sex message. "It's really hard using condoms. Most people just wants to party and have fun." For him, success, is measured by "each kid" he can give a condom to. "That's one life, right? Then they can tell somebody else to use a condom." There's also the fun side of his new job: cruising. "It's a good way to meet other guys my age," he laughs, tossing his head flirtatiously. "It's fun."

That doesn't mean HIV or boys is the only thing he's focused on. A good student, Brian has his eye on college and a career as a model, designer or photographer." I try to stay positive," he says. "I really love this job. It's not even like a job. I'm learning a lot about HIV and from the people I meet here and on the streets. So it feels good. And it's important."

All of which, he knows, would make his mother and grandmother very proud.

-ACD

* (name changed)