One of the confounding puzzles about AIDS is the fact that it has struck with particular force at the African American community, a community notable for its openness about sexual activity. A closer look suggests there are limits to that openness, and understanding those limits is key to fighting the disease. PNS commentator Stanley Joseph is on the staff of YO! (Youth Outlook), a newspaper by and about young people produced by Pacific News Service.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Death at an early age is no stranger to the Black community.

Masked as violence, drug overdose, heart disease and suicide, premature death has been as much a part of us as breathing. Now AIDS has become the number one killer of young adult African-American males and the number two killer of young adult African-American females here.

"It's crushing the community," says Johndel Hill, 24, a counselor from Bay Area Young Positives (BAYP), based in San Francisco. This is a "peer-related agency" -- that is, everyone who works there is HIV positive and under 26. It offers referral services, support groups and recreational events.

"Not a lot of people in the community talk about AIDS," Hill says.

What make this so puzzling is that Black culture is permeated with sex. It's in the movies from "Love Jones" to "Soul Food," it's on television, from "For Our Love" to "Moesha" and for the longest time in the music, from Marvin Gaye to Luke to Janet Jackson. Even amongst ourselves we discuss it in public -- in school, at parties, in cafes.

But while it is okay to express our sexuality (at least straight sexuality), it's difficult to talk about the consequences.

No one seems willing to come out and say that they are infected with a sexually transmitted disease or have a history of unprotected sex. Closing off communication allows the disease to spread because it thrives on ignorance and embarrassment.

A case in point. African American young people have come to glorify the deaths of rappers Tupac and Biggie Smalls, who were gunned down. Yet Eric Wright, known as rapper "Easy E" who died of AIDS, has disappeared from their memories. "If they don't want to talk about that, they don't want to talk about HIV," Hill added.

Hill himself tested positive in January of 1995. He was infected by a man he had been dating two years earlier, and he traces his difficulty to lack of communication.

"Me and my ex-boyfriend had a fight. We were drunk. I was trying to keep him. He never disclosed to me that he was positive, and we had unprotected sex. There were condoms right next to us."

Low self-esteem was also a factor, according to Hill.

"I was Black, I was gay, I was feminine, I was sleeping with guys. All that made me feel like I was going to be nothing."

Many Black teenagers could take Hill's testimony as showing that AIDS is a gay disease, but Eric Brown, interim director for prevention of the Black Coalition on AIDS (BCA) of San Francisco, says heterosexuals have as high a rate of infection as gays.

Brown is also concerned with the fact that bi-sexual males in the community are having unprotected sex with other males and taking the virus to a community that is not generally considered vulnerable -- heterosexual women. He says there is not enough information available to know what the main transaction route is.

When statistics showing the extraordinarily high levels of AIDS among African-Americans appeared months ago, President Clinton designated money for organizations that could specifically work in the African American community. But BAYP has not received funding for 1999. As of now, two people are on staff.

The BCA's Brown says, "All the dollars for people of color communities are low. BCA now offers only half the services they offered eight years ago." Many providers have entered into collaboration with other providers to survive.

Hill notes that the services that do exist disproportionately serve white men over black men.

As the number of infected white Americans is decreasing, it is hard not to wonder whether the increase in the African American community is due to racism -- racism in the sense that the African Americans have been ignored.

Brown says what is needed most is to, "talk about sex, talk about it openly" -- especially about what happens afterward. This is not a question of movies and raps and talk about who is sleeping with who and how many, but talk about what happens when we keep something hidden -- something that can explode in our face.