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             This article was taken from Double Helix in New York.
                  It is an account of a personal experience.

    PET AIDS
    --------
        One of  the  weirdest spinoffs of my recent trip to Russia was
    the news about AIDS in household  pets, cats and dogs. The Soviets
    seem to have  discovered  it  first  and  announced  it  to  other
    national health organizations   and,   I  am  told,  articles  are
    starting to appear in the US about it.

        When I was over in Russia some  of  the  people  I  spoke with
    including the Intourist host explained that sex  as  such  in  the
    USSR is one  colossal nono and taboo. The society is quite puritan
    and Victorian about sex believing  that  it  is meant only for the
    propagation of the  species in order to populate  the  Motherland.
    All this is  after  a  due process marriage, of course.  Naturally
    hormones don't care abour Lenin.    Men  do  have hormone arousals
    and attacks. In addition flats are small and scarce,  with  two or
    even three families  living  in a four-room apartment.  This means
    the casual sex of the American stripe  is pretty much precluded --
    it's hard to lay your girlfriend when your aunt is sleeping on the
    cot across from  you  and your father is playing chess  with  your
    sister at the table in the corner.

        Now, on top of all this, in Russia you must earn the privilege
    to have a  household pet. You work extra long and hard and you get
    a coupon for a dog or a cat.  This  you  redeem at the Ministry of
    house pets or some such bureau and you are the proud owner (with a
    license) of a nice cuddly dog.  Needless to say, pets are uncommon
    in the USSR.

        So we see Igor getting all hot and horny with  his  family all
    around his ears.    Necessity  to  satisfy  his  biological  urges
    causes a lightbulb in his head to  go  on!   Igor  fetches a large
    bath towel 'because the draft thru the wall cracks bother him' and
    in a flash the little cuddly dog is popped under  it.   Some minor
    commotion ensues and  the  dog  jumps  out  all terribly confused.
    Igor is becalmed and his tension momentarily relieved.

        With little other outlet for  sex urges, the dog is treated to
    frequent sessions under the towel.  Soon, our dog sickens and Igor
    packs it off to the clinic.  Oddly, it fails to revive  under  the
    usual medicines; the  immune  system seems deficient.  And the dog
    dies.

        Apparently the periodic towel  treatments overload the animals
    capacity to fight off "invading micro-organisms"  in  the  form of
    sexual fluids.  Now in Russia, ideologically speaking, there is no
    explanation for this  odd  death  at  all.    Quite  privately the
    physicians did have to own up to  the cause and they alerted other
    countries.  It took a few years to figure out what  was  going  on
    firstly because pets  are far and few between in Russia, secondly,
    most people don't have the smarts  --or  the  nerve  -- to bring a
    sick pet to  a  doctor.   After all, the pet was  awarded  to  the
    person and its  sickness could be deemed a mark of unworthiness to
    keep it, given the centralized state control of everything.

        Now look what's going on in the  USA.  Here sex with housepets
    is a subset of the overall sex culture and, indeed,  you  can  get
    books, magazines, appliances,  etc.  to promote and foster pet sex
    (remember, this is with human partners).   Hence,  for  some  time
    pets were brought  to  vets with arcane diseases  that  failed  to
    respond to treatment.

        Vets in  the  sexually aggressive neighborhoods knew all along
    what was happening.  And in the  pet  sex  literature  there  were
    pieces about the cause of death among sexual pet partners.

        Well, when the Soviets leaked out the word --  pets  are dying
    from AIDS --  there  was  no  way  to  avoid  the topic within the
    general public.  So,  although  I  myself  have  yet  to  see  any
    articles on pet AIDS, I do hear about it at social  gatherings and
    parties. Needless to  say,  no  one in my circles ever owned up to
    sexxing with his or her housepet,  but  all state that they know a
    friend or neighbor who practices pet sex and lost a pet to AIDS as
    a result. Also,  being  that  I  work  in the Village,  (Greenwich
    Village in New  York),  I do see some heavy stuff going on between
    people and pets in the parks.

        Anyway, that's what you get from the good folk who brought you
    caviar and vodka.