A date with Viagra.

Viagra, Pfizer Inc.'s new miracle drug to treat male impotence, has only been out a month, and already I'm collecting stories. Like the one about the guy who walks into the gay bar in San Francisco and asks attractive men if they're interested in having some fun with a hot new drug. Within an hour, about a dozen guys are walking around unzipped, sporting erections for all to admire.

Or the one about the gay man in New York whose doctor suggests he try Viagra. He has no problem in the erection department, but the doctor isn't suggesting the patient has a problem. He's suggesting the patient have a little fun. "Everybody's trying it," he says. "I'm writing a dozen prescriptions a day. It's great."

If Viagra turns out to be as revolutionary as the birth-control pill, it won't be merely because it works miracles for those who are clinically impotent but because it allegedly works just as well for men who are not impotent, producing long-lasting erections with the slightest stimulation. Males have searched for effective aphrodisiacs for centuries, and now, according to popular wisdom, we have one--at about $10 a pop.

I got a crash course in Viagra's allure when I decided that if I were going to write about it, I should try it. A Los Angeles doctor agreed to write a prescription, and I found his office festooned with handmade warnings about Viagra's dangerous interactions with protease inhibitors and antibiotics and its potentially fatal interaction with poppers (the signs were handmade because Pfizer has not produced any). He told me that 75% of his male patients had requested the drug--although only a few are impotent--that it was already the drug of choice in Los Angeles's gay porn industry, and that he was worried that it was likely to "throw gasoline on the gay sexual revolution."

I was suitably alarmed, but a funny thing happened on my way to total indignation. I assumed he would offer me a single pill for my "research," but instead he asked how many I wanted. And to my surprise, I hesitated. I've never had a problem in the arousal department, but the prospect of multiple orgasms, nights of endless bliss, and the return of the libido I had at 16 suddenly loomed large. How many did I want? Five? A dozen? A free lifetime supply? He ended the suspense by offering two.

In my case the results were less than revolutionary: a pounding heart, a flushed feeling, perfectly decent sex without any noticeable urge to break an endurance record, and the next morning a persistent headache reminiscent of a nasty hangover, even though I drank only two beers the night before.

Still, the sudden rush by gay men to try Viagra has many calling it the newest gay drug of abuse. And in a gay population daunted by rising rates of unsafe sex and haunted by the specter of resurgent, drug-resistant strains of HIV, the potential damage is something to ponder.

After all, gay men have an unfortunate history of abusing drugs connected with sex. In the pre-AIDS years you could often get a popper high just walking into a disco or bathhouse. Crystal meth is popular today in part because it heightens desire, vaporizes fears of infection, and can turn sexual mice into voracious--and often unsafe--love puppies.

It is precisely among drug abusers that Viagra's potential for harm looms largest. Crystal meth in particular often makes its users sexually voracious but impotent--a world of bottoms searching for a top. The epidemiological effects of a drug that, in the words of one crystal user, "turns every bottom into a top as well," could really give HIV transmission a nasty boost.

There is a potential bright side. Some men hate to use condoms because condoms cause them to lose their erections, and Viagra may actually help them play safer. But in a population devastated by the unintended results of the sexual revolution, there's real danger in a drug that might, as my doctor fears, throw fuel on that revolution. Gay men should be wary, and gay health groups--and Pfizer, with its newfound billions--should do more than merely warn. about Viagra's potentially fatal interaction with poppers. They should warn--and educate--about its potentially fatal interaction with the AIDS epidemic itself.