Summary

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 first.

00:09:43 - Two weeks later. The coughing starts. Pain in the back and chest, each feeding the other. By evening, he can barely move. His flatmate takes him to the emergency room.

00:11:28 - The test. They ask about his HIV status at the hospital. He doesn't know. They test. The next morning, it's positive. A Western blot confirms the infection was recent. Mohawk guy was the one.

00:12:10 - Prognosis at 27. The doctors told him he'd probably make it to 60, which at 27 felt like "whatever." He thought he'd die a little sooner, but old enough that it wouldn't make a significant difference.

00:13:05 - Quitting smoking. The pneumonia was partly caused by smoking 50 cigarettes a day. Nikolaj quit and hasn't missed one since. His doctor told him smoking a pack a day is probably worse for your health than being HIV positive.

00:13:48 - The ghost patient. The hospital had a special ward for HIV patients that no longer exists. Nikolaj felt grateful for the connection to history—this was where terminal patients had come in the worst years. A young man there looked very ill. Nikolaj felt the weight of now carrying something that was part of queer history.

00:17:50 - Mohawk guy again. Nikolaj kept seeing him afterwards. Because he was hot. Because he was funny. Because once you don't need to be sensible about sex, a new world opens. He wouldn't tell people he knew who infected him because he could predict their outrage, and he hates when people get more emotionally outraged about something than he is.

00:20:57 - No blame. It just happened. If it hadn't been Mohawk guy, it would have been someone else. It wasn't something he did; it was something that happened because Nikolaj had stopped being afraid.

00:21:57 - "Safer sex needs discussion." On Gay Romeo, this was code for HIV positive and open to bareback. When Nikolaj updated his status, the people contacting him changed. Group sessions would be organised with filters set to only include people with that setting. It created a bubble where HIV wasn't stigmatised.

00:24:14 - Safe spaces that weren't safe. Those spaces created radical intimacy around shared status, but they could also be transgression-seeking in ways that weren't healthy. The stigma returned when dating someone outside the scene.

00:25:01 - Coming out repeatedly. You don't share your status once. You share it every time you meet someone new, start a new job, go to a new clinic. The assumption is always that you're negative. It's exhausting.

00:25:42 - Managing disclosure. With someone outside the scene—younger, a tourist, trans or non-binary, not regularly part of gay spaces—you can't assume they have the same knowledge. Even if you know you're undetectable and there's no risk, is it enough that you know? What if they would be uncomfortable?

00:30:22 - Fear is embodied. Around 2013, a friend's condom broke during sex. Nikolaj told him he was positive and undetectable—the safest possible thing. The friend knew this intellectually. His body was still in panic. Knowledge doesn't just take us out of fear. We need to live through it.

00:34:47 - Trust and lying. You can't be sure someone telling you they're undetectable is telling the truth. People lie about all sorts of things to get someone into bed. It's an unfair demand to require trust.

00:35:13 - Remembering Guillaume Dustan. The French writer, openly HIV positive, who died of an overdose in 2005 at 39. His book Nicolas Pages, recently translated by Semiotext(e), documents chem sex before it was a phenomenon, radical oversharing, brilliant analysis of queer culture. Reading it felt like connection across time.

00:37:47 - The gap. Nearly two decades navigating the difference between what the world thinks HIV means and what it actually means to live with it. When Drag Race does a coming-out-as-positive episode with pink lighting and strings and hugging and "this is so important," Nikolaj cringes. A taboo is reproduced as a taboo by talking about it as one.

00:39:08 - Mentioning it casually. If you want something to be seen as not a big deal, you have to find a way to talk about it as not a big deal.

00:40:43 - The postcard. "When I look out at the queer community, I see a lot of pain and trauma, and I also see a lot of joy and pleasure. I think those two are connected. I hope we can move forward allowing space for the pain while pushing together for more joy and more pleasure. The Queer Manifesto says every time we fuck, we win. I still believe that. There's a great resistance to be found in joy."

Guest Bio

Nikolaj Tange Lange is a Danish writer and musician living in Berlin. Diagnosed with HIV in 2007, he has published five novels, including Romeo and Seahorse, available in English from Cipher Press. He has performed in porn under his real name and writes about transgressive sex, chem sex, and queer culture. His Substack is Nikolajism.

Resources

• Cipher Press - cipherpress.co.uk - Publisher of Romeo and Seahorse
• Nikolajism - Nikolaj's Substack
• Deutsche Aidshilfe - aidshilfe.de - German AIDS service organisation
• Romeo & Seahorse (Novel): Cipher Press
• Chemsex Support (UK): Dean Street
• Danish HIV Awareness: AIDS-Fondet Denmark

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp