HIV, Hairdos and Tickets to See ‘Lutha’

It’s safe to say that most of the women idly magazine-flipping on a stormy Saturday morning at Sensation’s Beauty Salon are waiting for the usual: their standing blow-dry, press and curl.

The men, arranged at the back of the shop near the barber chairs, have arrived early for their own weekly rituals: “Clean up the edges,” with a side of salacious Saturday morning ... “quarterbacking.”

But there’s an additional clutch of women eagerly collected near the threshold of this busy shop in a tight corner of a South L.A. mini-mall. They’ve come to scoop up the results of HIV tests--along with tickets to see Lutha! (that would be Vandross), their reward for agreeing to step up and be tested.

HIV, Luther and hair? It’s an odd mix that’s got some around the shop murmuring. But for Tony Wafford, a community activist, it just makes perfect sense:

“We all know it. You can be as smart or as ignorant as you wanna be right here in these chairs. So why not be smart?” asks Wafford, community advisory board chair for the HIV Prevention Trials Network, a worldwide AIDS and behavioral studies research firm with offices in L.A. “People passing on information they know nothing about. But talking big and talking loud as if they do.”

Wafford, 45, is known for his brazen and outsize personality--it comes from years of doing the Hollywood P.R. thing, spinning and vamping. However, even this side of 10 a.m. he’s got a fair amount of competition. Already, elaborate Saturday night plans and steamy Friday night recaps spike above the steady buzz of the electric clippers and the hum of bonnet dryers.

But Wafford, who knows a little something about timing, finds his opening. Swinging a see-through plastic Santa sack from his back, Wafford--a dapper St. Nick who appears to have stepped between the raindrops, careful not to get his alligator shoes wet--saunters up to deliver his pitch.

“Right here, everybody talks about just about everything--world religion, politics, dope and sex--and sex!” Wafford blasts in his big emcee voice, prompting not one but five heads to snap to attention in unison. “What better way to get this started. And may as well give them something to talk about.”

He reaches into his bag and pulls out a fistful of festive red and white bundles, not candy canes but condoms. A thousand of them at least. He passes them out by the heaping handfuls, politician-on-the-stump style.

And there’s more: A breast pocket stuffed with an eye-catching “pocket square” of safe-sex literature. A family-of-five-size plastic jar with even more condoms to leave at the stylist’s stations. And the main event: concert tickets that he waves like a fan. They’re the centerpiece of his AIDS awareness campaign, just unveiled: “Fighting HIV Through R&B.;”

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Campaign Geared to Its Audience

It may sound odd--all of it--the condom jars, the plain-speak literature papering the shops of South L.A. hairstylists, the offer to trade tickets for AIDS tests. But Wafford’s campaign isn’t just a floor show. Already, out of about 600 people tested, 35 have tested positive--the youngest 16, the oldest 45.

Wafford has based his efforts on one of those basic, kitchen-table truths: No better place to tease out an elaborate tale than the beauty shop--or the barbershop, home of the super-size boast. Basing his unconventional HIV and AIDS education campaign there is his way of reaching a tough-to-crack demographic.

With years of being tuned in to both the news on the airwaves and the news on the streets, Wafford is particularly sensitive to the dissonances that echo between them. So the optimistic headlines he read in his daily paper, “HIV and AIDS No Longer a Death Sentence,” or references to “magic drug cocktails,” seemed to be monitoring a different universe than the one he negotiated daily.

What he heard too frequently--in clubs, at stores or at the barbershop--suggested a world of misinformation: “Only gay men can ‘give it’ to women.” “You can’t ‘get it’ if you’re doing it the first time.” “You only ‘get it’ if you’re gay.”

Statistics only underscored his hunch: 64% of all the newly reported cases of HIV infection in American women occur in African Americans. And black men account for half the new cases among American men.

Though the numbers alone should be attention-getting, Wafford knew they often are mentally filed away under the heading “Those are other people’s worries.”

Much of the disparity, some experts say, has to do with what is essentially a maze of shame, self-deception and secrets that tends to wind in on itself. The truth gets lost amid fears and rationalizations. “We don’t think we’re going to get it,” says Olen Henry, a nurse practitioner and former director of Carl Bean House, an HIV-AIDS hospice and care center in the West Adams district. “We think it’s a disease of white gay men. Black gay men, maybe. But ‘not my sister. Not my sister who is married and who is in church. She’s a good girl. She doesn’t even do any of that freaky stuff.’”

While some point to machismo and others to the heavy doses of straight-by-the-Good Book religious upbringing, Henry says that silence and imprecise language are the biggest impediments to getting information to the people who need it the most. “I find African American women especially just don’t talk about those issues. What it all boils down to is all the misinformation that people have in general about sexual activity and the transmission of HIV--you can’t say ‘safe sex,’ you can say safer sex,” Henry says. “You’ve got young people who think they are invincible and older people in their 50s, 60s and 70s who think that it has nothing to do with them. They go to the bingo meeting and get together with Sister Mary. Well, Sister Mary’s got a big surprise for them.”

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Semantics and Sexual Identity

Like Henry, Wafford has learned that a slippery game of semantics is at the root of much of the confusion, and consequently the danger. “People who do one thing but consider themselves something else,” Wafford says. “They don’t consider themselves to be ‘gay.’ These cats who were in prison ‘handlin’ their business’--once they’re out, they don’t talk about it. Or found out they liked being with a man and even though they might be married, just keep what else they’re doing on the down low.”

Safe-sex messages are often lost on such men, black men in particular, who, for a complex set of social and cultural reasons, don’t see themselves as gay or bisexual--even though they have sex with men. It’s this “bridge” population that has activists like Wafford concerned. “I ain’t for spittin’ venom on the brothers,” he says, “Just that women need to know. Then they can make their own decisions.”

But first you have to talk, says Wafford. “You just don’t see a lot of [straight] cats like me talkin’ about this,” he says. Too often, “what you know about ‘gay’ is that cousin the family doesn’t talk about much.”

Looking at the contours of the HIV demographics--especially the statistics that say HIV/AIDS is the leading killer of African Americans between ages 25 and 44--set Wafford to brainstorming. His son is 25 and his daughter, 23.

“This can’t be impossible,” he thought. What do women like? What do young people like? How do people distract themselves? How do you distract them from their distractions?

“Entertainment,” he says. “Something for free. I figured, let’s get ‘em tickets and get ‘em tested.”

Wafford, a former publicist whose clients included top-draw acts like Eddie Murphy and Miles Davis, knows the currency of a big name, and for his “HIV/R&B;” effort he called in his entertainment-world chits. He persuaded Alan Haymon, a prominent African American concert promoter who handles acts like Vandross, Destiny’s Child and rapper DMX, to come up with tickets. And Agouron Pharmaceuticals agreed to provide testing materials.

The final pieces were T.H.E. (To Help Everyone) Clinic in South L.A., which agreed to administer the tests and set up counseling, a service that fit neatly into its existing community outreach mandate; and the Palms Residential Care Facility, the nonprofit that would provide quality assurance, monitoring the testing, confidentiality issues, counseling and treatment.

In September, a test run with a Destiny’s Child concert in Irvine went smoothly. And Wafford figured that the Vandross tour, which ramped up in October, would attract black women, who have long been drawn to the romantic balladeer--and slow to get tested. “Shoot. Luther tickets are $80! That’s enough of a draw right there.” Haymon provided 100 tickets for the L.A. date.

For that show, testing was done both at T.H.E. Clinic and at Sensation’s. The beauty shop idea, says Wafford, was an outgrowth of a successful condom distribution campaign to local business on the Crenshaw strip spearheaded by prominent politician Maxine Waters. “If they won’t go to get tested,” says Wafford, “we’ll bring the testing to them.”

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Getting the Test Results

One woman who strolls into Sensation’s between cloudbursts to pick up her tickets on concert day brings a friend whom she talked into joining her for an AIDS test. “My beautician called me and told me about it,” explains “Theresa,” who declines to give her real name. “I’ve been tested before, but I’ve been wanting to get tested again since I had my last baby, but hadn’t gotten around to it. My beautician remembered that I had mentioned that, and he called.”

Jacqueline Thompson, a hairstylist, also agreed to get tested along with a few other operators in the shop. “Well, I practice safe sex when and if I have it,” says Thompson, “but I just figured I should make sure. You want to make sure you’re covered. So much is going on, you want to learn about it--the test, prevention. There are things I didn’t know--like having anal intercourse was a sure-fire way to get it.... Now I can share that with my clients.”

Auleria Eakins, teen clinic coordinator at T.H.E. Clinic, has been taking women to a secluded corner of the shop behind one of the shampoo bowls to give them their results and a packet of literature that includes basic but crucial tips--like not drinking and having sex. (Though no one tests positive on this day, anyone with positive results would be contacted immediately and asked to come to the clinic. There a counselor would help them set up financial aid, work through medical insurance red tape and set them up with a social worker, clinician, therapist and nutritionist.)

Already, Wafford sees the larger potential. He’s been putting his feelers out to set up partnerships with community clinics at various concert tour stops across the country--from Seattle to Baltimore. Haymon will be donating upward of 8,000 tickets.

What Wafford has found most encouraging, if not outright uplifting, about the program so far is the strength of the community network tapped--without newspaper advertising or radio promotion, just powerful word of mouth. “You don’t need a government grant or handout to do this,” says Wafford. “We can help each other. Too many people are still talking about ‘AIDS comes from the white man,’ ‘AIDS is a gay disease.’ Now, the white man ain’t in the room with you telling you not to put the condom on, now is he?”