Episode Details

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In 2007, Nikolaj Tange Lange wrote a punk song with the chorus "Gay is the new punk because we don't give a fuck about dying while we're young." A few months later, he tested positive for HIV. He was 27, newly arrived in Berlin, and had just discovered a city where condoms were already the exception in dark rooms and sex clubs. The song, it turned out, was prophecy.

Nikolaj is a Danish writer and musician who has spent nearly two decades navigating the gap between what the world thinks HIV means and what it actually means to live with it. He's published five novels, performed in porn under his real name, and written extensively about transgressive sex, chemsex, and queer culture. His novel Romeo and Seahorse is available in English from Cipher Press.

The night of infection was at a party during the Berlin Film Festival. A guy with a mohawk, a few beers left on the coffee table, straight to the bedroom. Nikolaj told him to stop, but was slow about it. He was drunk, high, in it. Two weeks later, he was in hospital with pneumonia so severe he could barely move. The Western blot confirmed the infection was recent. Mohawk guy was the one.

What's striking about Nikolaj's story is his refusal of blame. He continued to see Mohawk guy afterwards because he was hot, because he was funny, because “once you stop being afraid of HIV, a new world opens”. He doesn't know whether he tested positive because he stopped being afraid, or whether he stopped being afraid because he tested positive. Does it even matter?

The conversation ranges across pre-PrEP Berlin, the transgressive thrill of bareback sex, the codes of "safer sex needs discussion" on Gay Romeo, and the way stigma gets reproduced even in attempts to break it. Nikolaj is wary of the Drag Race moment where someone comes out as positive and the strings swell and everyone hugs and says how important it is to keep having this conversation. A taboo, he argues, is not something we don't talk about. It's something we keep reproducing as a taboo by talking about it as one.

Timestamped Takeaways

00:02:10 - Berlin, autumn 2007. A party during the film festival. A guy with a mohawk. Beers left on the coffee table, straight to the bedroom. Drunk, slightly high, post-high. He sticks his dick inside without a condom. Nikolaj tells him to stop, but hesitates.

00:04:08 - Pre-PrEP Berlin. The song "Gay is the New Punk" was inspired by Nikolaj's experience of arriving in Berlin and realising everyone was having sex without condoms. In dark rooms and leather bars, condoms were already the exception. You could ask for one, but it was a choice.

00:05:19 - Disbelief before arrival. Before moving to Berlin, Nikolaj heard friends' stories about Connection, the big gay club, and didn't believe them. How could people be choosing this? Then he met friends living with HIV who seemed perfectly healthy. The narrative he'd internalised didn't match what he saw.

00:06:31 - danish awareness campaigns. Growing up in Denmark, HIV awareness ads played between afternoon TV programmes. The message was absolute: use a condom or die. Not using one wasn't an option. It wasn't even a thought.

00:08:00 - Transgression as intimacy. Nikolaj didn't initially experience bareback sex as more physically intimate. The difference came later, when it became part of a scene where irresponsibility and transgression were the point. For queer people whose existence is already transgressive, doing something transgressive is exciting.

00:09:11 - Fear and freedom. For years, sex had been associated with fear and responsibility. Once Nikolaj stopped being afraid, he tested positive. He doesn't know which came