Coat Up

Pokpokan Blues
By Makisig Santos

“Mas masarap kung walang condom (It feels better without condom on),” this 20ish guy said to me, just as I was putting on a condom, prior to putting my dick in his waiting ass.  “Ipasok mo na (Just put it in).”

I pretended not to have heard him, continuing with my coating up.

“Sige na (Come on),” he said, grabbing my now coated dick, just as I was about to lube up.  He then turned around, tried to unroll the condom off me.  “Mas masarap talaga kung balat sa balat (It feels better if it’s skin to skin).”

I pulled my dick, still with condom, away from his hand.

“Ano ba (What are you doing)?” he said, horniness on his face changed by seeming exasperation.  “Malinis naman ako, ah (I’m clean, you know)!”

This was not exactly the first time I encountered such a client – insistent on getting screwed THEIR way, which is not MY way; though there are those who want to screw, too, yet also THEIR way, not MY way, even if it’s MY ASS that will be screwed.

While I am familiar with negotiating condom use (and even with all the pleading and bribing, and pleading and bribing, I’m able to just walk out, if it came to that), it is unfortunate that I am but one of the few sex workers who even negotiate condom use at all.

In a surveillance among female sex workers in the Philippines, done by R.J. Mateo and M.C. Lim-Quizon of the National Epidemiology Center of the Department of Health for the International Conference on AIDS in 2002, it was noted that while majority of the sex workers surveyed knew that condom use prevents HIV transmission, less than 50% (from 25% to 42%) consistently used condoms during sex.

In a way, I see where the complacency comes from.

As of 2002, the Department of Health (DOH) cited the number of Filipinos with HIV and AIDS at only 1,503 – a small figure, what with the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) citing that 7.1 million people in the Asia-Pacific region have HIV and AIDS as of end-2002. 

With the low infection in the country, Earl Wilkinson, author of AIDS Failure Philippines? (book-of-dreams.com), asks: “Did the HIV/AIDS epidemic pass the Philippines by?”  After all, the country “has one of the lowest rates of condom usage in Asia; has anywhere from half a million to two million sex workers, a good majority of whom don't require their customers to wear condoms; has more than seven million overseas workers, separated from spouses and often engaging in risky sexual behavior; and has practically no awareness program to teach the exploding population of young people about the dangers of HIV/AIDS.”

There are prevailing beliefs that in the Philippines, sex workers have less sexual partners (compared to other sex workers in other countries); that Filipino men do not frequent sex workers as much as other men of different nationalities; that anal sex is uncommon in the Philippines; and that there are fewer injecting drug users in the Philippines.  And while all of them may actually have at least a grain of truth, looking at the bigger picture, they are BS.

BS that is a source of worry – or at least is should be.

Wilkinson already noted how condom use has been dramatically falling in recent years – e.g. in Davao City, condom use by sex workers went from 36% in 1996 to only 9% in 2002.  And with this, the risk increases.

No, that the country’s HIV incidence is “low and slow,” the official government position, is not true – it is just underreported (e.g. Do presidential candidates even undergo HIV antibody test to determine their status?  They could have been infected without them knowing so, you know…).  And no, the seeming low prevalence is not because Filipinos have "high morality," as President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself stated once – I am living proof of the opposite.

This is why it’s important to learn to negotiate.

I repeat for emphasis: NEGOTIATE (For the HOW, contact support groups listed in the directory).

No one can force you to not be safe, but yourself.

That night ended unhappily for both of us: me and my customer – him missing out on the kind of screwing he wanted, and me not getting paid.  But aside from the loss of earning, I’d say it was a great night for me over all.  Why?  Because I’m still negative – and even if I’m not, I didn’t spread any disease around with my lack of common sense.

Go fuck.  Just coat up.

Makisig Santos, 24, is an on/off sex worker, who believes that since the profession is inherently dangerous, SWs need to be provided with as much know-how as possible for them to be able to protect themselves in whatever situation they find themselves in – and this is the very intention he intends to achieve here, with Pokpokan Blues.