According to the report in the Sunday Times of 30th April 2006 we may expect to have a life-saving supergel offering protection against HIV available to sexually active people by the year 2010; we may also have a concoction of genetically modified bacteria which will prevent the spread of the virus.
This, then, could well be the scenario to which we can look forward:
It's Saturday night and Joe and Jane have just returned from taking in the weekly rave at the local football stadium by an international group of desperadoes who have just spent the last few nights in a police cell, where they have been incarcerated as a result of their trashing of a section of an international arrivals terminal at one of the world's airports. Because Joe's loft apartment is out of bounds due to the closure of the building as a result of the still ongoing strike by security guards seeking to be awarded an extra R35 per month, Jane unlocks the door to her suburban duplex and they both go inside.
There is no electric light - there hasn't been any for at least two years now because someone has sneezed his dentures into the core of the nuclear reactor of their local power station and spares have been impossible to locate - so they fumble around in the dark until a candle-stub has been found and lit. Hands all over each other they scramble upstairs to Jane's bedroom, where they eagerly tear the clothes from each other's hungry bodies. In the struggle several packets of special breath-freshening gum fall out of Joe's pockets onto the floor and Jane nearly breaks a leg when she trips on a loose canister of spray that she uses to keep her armpits dry while she pushes her car into the garage because, petrol being so scarce and so expensive, the tank has run dry.
Panting with lust (or is it exhaustion?) they tumble onto the bed and the remaining clothes are flung to the four winds.
Briefly, Jane pushes him away and comes up for air.
“How would you like it?” she asks.
“Any way you want; just let's get on with it,” Joe pants.
“No. I need to know what you want to do; do you want intra-vaginal or intra-anal?”
“Anything, Doll, as long as it's intra-something.”
Jane jumps off the bed and fumbles her way in the dark to the bathroom where she keeps her various anti-HIV preparations.
There are two bottles of lime juice, three small boxes of sea-weed, a tube of supergel, a tube of toothpaste, and an applicator in the bathroom cabinet. However, in the total darkness (the paraffin lamp has been forgotten downstairs) Jane can only feel what she's doing and, in any case, she's probably had one or two too many to drink. Sightless, she grabs the tube of toothpaste and the applicator and one of the boxes of sea-weed; she pauses a minute to brush her teeth with the supergel,
“Hmmm, that tastes interesting”, then decides that the lime juice is going to be too difficult to administer in the dark, and hastens back into the bedroom.
In the shadows of the corner of the room she bends over the tube of toothpaste, trying to screw on the applicator and swearing quietly under her breath. She throws a box of sea-weed to Joe and tells him to put it on. Joe opens the box and fishes out several long strings of kelp but can neither see nor feel how these should be put on.
“Condoms were much easier than this,” he mutters. “The worst that could happen was that the bloody things went on inside-out; I really don't know what to do with this stuff.”
Jane looks towards his dark shape as it struggles on the bed. “No, silly, I mean "eat it". Sorry, I can't think straight.”
There is a gagging sound from the bed as Joe struggles to chew the stuff.
“Where shall I put it?” Asks Jane from the darkness.
“Put what?”
“The supergel.”
“Well, where are you supposed to put it?”
“It depends on how you want to do it.”
“Inside, inside” mutters Joe, his mouth still full of sea-weed.
A few moments pass in which the night wind can be heard to sigh outside the window and a random band of security guards run past in pursuit of two terrified policemen.
“Come on, Jane. What are you fumbling at? I'm getting tired of waiting.”
Jane has not succeeded in screwing the applicator to the tube and so just jams it on anyhow.
“Shan't be a minute” she promises from the dark.
Joe can only faintly see her bending over in the corner.
“What on earth are you doing?” he asks, exasperated.
“Shoving the bloody gel up my bum and trying to get some sea-weed to stay in place between my legs,” she mutters as she delivers a liberal squirt of toothpaste into her rectum. It stings like hell and she rushes back to the bathroom where she quickly washes herself with some cold water.
Exhausted by the effort, she staggers back into the dark bedroom and falls onto the bed. Next to her the sound of loud snoring rends the night. Joe has grown tired of waiting.
“Perhaps, after all, condoms weren't really so bad,” she thinks to herself as she turns over to get some sleep.
