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Indeed, the events that led to his contracting HIV and his related termination from the Peace Corps this past February-and his legal skirmish with the organization over that dismissal, which he alleges is a case of HIV discrimination-sprang from a rather simple decision: He wanted a few beers.Īnd like many other crusaders since the dawn of the epidemic, Johnson-an intensely private, reflective young man-has had the cause thrust upon him. One evening in August 2007, Johnson, who had by that time served 11 months of his 27-month Peace Corps term in Ukraine, hopped a train in his home base of Rozdilna (rose-DIL-nuh), a bleak town of 17,000. His destination: the party capital of Odessa, about 90 minutes away on the vodka-soaked shores of the Black Sea. On that night he would intersect with the various cultural forces that fuel HIV in Ukraine-and choose the very behavior that his Peace Corps work had taught others to avoid: unprotected sex, in the back room of a gay club.
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“I’d had a hard week,” says Johnson, who stands 6-foot-2, has a thing for pro hockey players and prefers “Jeremiah” to “Jeremy” because he thinks it conveys seriousness and authority. (As does, he believes, his beard, which he cultivated in Ukraine.) “There are gay clubs in Odessa, and I wanted to just hang out and socialize. Life in Rozdilna is not an easy one.” And then, in the earnest tone of someone who has dedicated his life to public service, he adds: “But I loved it.
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I would get up at five every morning, do my wash by hand, get my lesson plans ready for the English classes I was teaching, then sometimes prep for my secondary Peace Corps projects with HIV.” (He helped launch, among other HIV initiatives, an educational road show that taught Ukrainian kids about the virus, and a program that helped underground gay groups get funding for prevention efforts.) Johnson would walk to the secondary school where he taught many classes a day, often meeting afterward with other volunteers and activists fighting Ukraine’s crippling HIV stigma. (Its rate of new infections is exploding, the highest such percentage outside Africa, with 80 percent of new Ukrainian infections occurring among Johnson’s age group, 20–39.) He’d then return to his spare Rozdilna bedroom, often dine alone, read a bit, call friends back in America for moral support and conk out.ĭuring his first month in the village, Johnson lived with a host family, who had a cramped house that afforded him little privacy.
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#Denver gay bar unprotected sex professional#Īlthough Johnson has been openly gay since he was 21 and disclosed his sexual orientation upon applying to the Peace Corps, he guarded it in Ukraine, fearing personal and professional repercussions. Gay stigma in Ukraine often turns violent-as it does in many other HIV-ravaged nations, such as Jamaica-keeping many men and women from coming forward for HIV education and treatment. The stigma also forces gay sexuality into the shadows, increasing the sorts of unprotected behaviors that heighten transmission risk. Johnson, the only American teaching at the Rozdilna Educational Complex Gymnasium No. 1, wanted to avoid any extra attention that could distract him and his students from their work. “But being so guarded, of course, kept me from being intimate or physical with anyone for a very long time in Ukraine,” he says. “That part of me went entirely neglected. And in our Peace Corps training, we were taught a lot about the high HIV rates in Ukraine and discouraged from any sort of casual sex with people in the country.” I couldn’t exactly pursue my sexuality while living with another family. Johnson eventually moved into a house of his own in Rozdilna, but what he gained in privacy he sacrificed in loneliness. He was the sole Peace Corps volunteer in town. “I was lonely in that house all by myself,” he says.
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“I was far from home, isolated, cut off from my own sexuality. They teach you so much in the Peace Corps, and they prepare you for that isolation, but until you experience it, you just don’t know. I mean, you have all your work to power you through it, you can feel noble, but the solitude can still get to you.”Īnd so it was that Jeremiah Johnson found himself on a train to Odessa that August evening. #Denver gay bar unprotected sex professional#.