Lowdown on the down low: J.L. King discusses his new book about African-American men seeking gay sex "on the down low.".

On a recent episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a young and, for lack of a better term, "straight-acting" African-American man from the hood stood trial for the murder of a gay white man with whom he seemingly had no connection. A typical story line, right? But here's the twist: The white man threatened to reveal his sexual relationship with the young black man if he wouldn't come out on his own--and found himself dead.

Fiction? Absolutely not, says J.L. King, author of an explosive new book, On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of "Straight" Black Men Who Sleep With Men (Broadway Books), that's part autobiography, part cautionary tale. "I know a brother right now who's fucking a white guy, and if [the white guy] ever outed him, he'd kill him," says King.

His book is stirring up controversy in the often-homophobic black community because most blacks see their men in very specific ways, images that have been cultivated and co-opted from hip-hop stars and rap videos. You're allowed to be suave like Denzel, tough like 50 Cent, or streetwise like the young men you see in baggy jeans and oversize basketball jerseys, but black men aren't allowed to have even the slightest feminine characteristics of the average metrosexual. When most black people think gay, they think In Living Color's Blaine and Antoine, or they think RuPaul--and those stereotypes, molded by television and, say, Wesley Snipes's performance in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, have stuck. Many blacks find it hard to believe that men who look like LL Cool J or play professional basketball or lived next door could be homosexual or even bi.

"Gay is white," King says. "It's a culture I do not want to be part of. In Chicago you can't be black and gay on the south side. You can't live in your community. You can't go to church. You can't join a fraternity. You can be black, or you can move out." Which is why the young man on trial in that episode of Law & Order was living DL, or "on the down low." Taken from rap music, the phrase is for a guy who's cheating on his wife or girlfriend; in this case, he's sleeping with other men.

The phenomenon was illuminated in a rogue e-mail, still circling the globe, that caught the attention of black women, many of whom had never even considered the possibility. Because the e-mail promised that King would be traveling the country, giving seminars on how to tell if your man was on the DL, he began receiving e-mails from as far away as Germany, the Bahamas, and Australia from concerned women and men who wanted help living their lies.

King knew he was on to something. His journey from a man living on the DL--who eventually gave up the ghost and divorced his wife--to marketing executive to HIV educator to author began when he learned that health care workers were baffled by how HIV took such a strong hold around him. With African-Americans making up almost 72% of new HIV eases reported among women (according to a recent 29-state study), King knew what was going on and decided to tell his story--stepping forward, he says, to save lives.

"I needed to give a voice to the DL man," King says from his office in Chicago. "I am the only DL man to come forward. But these guys gotta realize they're putting people at risk. I let my dick put me into situations where I could get killed or blackmailed."

Traditional methods of educating people about condom use isn't making it into the urban black population or to the DL man. Because their same-sex liaisons are impulsive or clandestine, they often don't take time to think about protection. And if a woman is in what she believes to be a monogamous relationship with her husband or boyfriend, why would she ask him to wear a condom?

"Black men believe they're invincible. I've been told point-blank by men about HIV, 'You made that up.' There's a distrust of the medical establishment that goes all the way back to the Tuskegee experiment," King says, referring to the U.S. government's 40-year study in which black men with syphilis were observed but not given any effective treatment and not even told what disease they had. "It has to do with denial and from living in a culture where the message is directed to white gay men."

Black women seem to be getting the message, and King may have to begin those rumored seminars after all. The demand is great for On the Down Low--many bookstores report that so many copies of the book have been preordered that it's already on back order before even hitting the shelves. And that was before King's ninth-touted appearance on Oprah in April.

King thinks that if the spread of HIV slows among black women, it will be because of the church and not his book. He wants pastors--some who are, he notes, themselves living on the DL--to start teaching tolerance and stop preaching damnation and hellfire for homosexuals. "God made us all," he reminds them. The media, which helped build and maintain stereotypes about black men and gays, can help destroy these depictions as well, he says: "The media needs to show two strong black men in a committed relationship, living together and being positive in their community. Instead, you see sissies, faggots, and clownlike characters."

And although King's sexual behavior (he still sleeps with men and women) would suggest he's bisexual, if not gay, he won't be anyone's poster boy. "I am not gay," he says. "If I could settle down today, it would be with a woman. My life will be easier if I have a woman in my life, living the American dream. I don't see myself with a man, growing older, being with him for the rest of my life. No way. It's easier to be heterosexual in our culture."

Jones is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.