I photographed husbands Nicholas Diamond, 29, and Keletso Makofane, 35, who are collaborating with fellow public health experts on a rapid epidemiological study of monkeypox in New York. “Monkeypox is a very different virus than HIV, and 2022 is light-years from 1981. But there is a spiritual echo in the current outbreak, “a cultural reflexive memory that exists even outside people who lived it the first time around,” says Demetre Daskalakis, 48, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of HIV/AIDS prevention.” “The stakes are much lower, mortality-wise, but the agita is high. Every heat rash is suspect. Every ingrown hair is a taunt. Recently gay men have been heckled on the street as carriers of disease. Text messages about known exposures — routine communication between gay men about common sexually transmitted infections — now have a more foreboding aura. The LGBTQ community is inspecting every health guidance, every off-handed tweet, for a trace of scolding or sex-shaming. Fresh adjectives and metaphors are being depleted to describe the pain that can accompany an infection (“visceral,” “excruciating,” “knives,” “curling iron”). “I think we’re all exhausted,” says Nicholas Diamond. “We just were maybe seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of the covid-19 pandemic, and looking forward to a slutty summer, and we now have to deal with monkeypox and a government that really fumbled its response without learning the lessons of covid-19. So everyone’s tired. And it is hard to talk about anything when you’re worried if your last hookup was going to get you sick, or last visit to the bar is going to get you sick. And I have to wonder if this is what our community was thinking about in 1981, too.” Excepts by Dan Zak read the full article in the @washingtonpost “Monkeypox is rousing old fears — and ways gay men care for each other”.