Wed 26 Mar 2014 In: Health and HIV View at Wayback View at NDHA
Love Your Condom’s gorgeous gay version of the stranger kiss video has garnered ‘awwws’ all over the world and nabbed more than 65,000 hits in just three days. Creator (and featured kisser!) Trak Gray tells us how much fun filming was, who had their first kiss EVER and whether it all sparked some real romance. Gray is the social media whiz at the New Zealand AIDS Foundation and its safe-sex promoter Love Your Condom (LYC). He was inspired when he saw the viral ‘stranger first kiss video’. “Some of the remakes and parodies were like first hand-job or first blow-job, making a farce out of it. But there were also some using it to make really cool statements. The one with the first hug between a homophobic person and a queer person was quite cool.” Trak (right) took part too. As he watched the videos gain traction, Gray thought it would be really cool to have a bunch of guys from LYC who wanted to get involved, as a fun and easy way to do something for Love Your Condom. “It was so much fun. It really, really was. We didn’t have a big budget for it. It was really thrown together. The whole thing took three days, between throwing it on Facebook and filming it. We had a basic lighting kit which wasn’t enough, we borrowed painters’ lights from people, we had sheets held over them to diffuse the light. We cleaned out our office, taking everything off the walls, moved all the desks around. “It was kind of like a project you’d do in your student flat. We were really just trying to make it happen very quickly.” Gray was both in front and behind the camera, taking part with a stranger kiss of his own. “It’s really daunting being in front,” he admits, but says he felt he should, as he was asking others to do it. “They were all really cute and awkward,” he says. It was Adray's (left) first kiss ever. It was one participant, Adray Minh’s, first kiss ever when he locked lips with Robbie van Dijk. “He was a trooper,” Gray says. “He went in for it. And Robbie was so great with him. Robbie just made him so comfortable and their take was one of the best takes. They were just so slow and intimate and it was really beautiful,” he radiates. “I wish my first kiss had been immortalised like that. Mine was far less worthy!” While all five pairs may have been strangers before they kissed, some really hit it off in the moment. “A lot of the guys stayed around for a bit afterwards and we had a bit of a debrief, thanked everyone and had lunch and were just hanging out. I think a couple of them were definitely planning to see each other again,” Gray laughs. The response in New Zealand has been huge, while the video has also been picked up by heavyweights including Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post and The Advocate. Gray says it’s amazing. “Every time I look at it it’s gone up another few thousand views. Being on The Huffington Post was incredible and Buzzfeed just blew my mind. Being on sites like that is just so cool - and always being portrayed in a positive way.” (The hits jumped another few thousand in the short time it took to write this article!) Gray wishes they had made a behind the scenes video, saying it really was something which relied on volunteers. “It was very much a ‘let’s get together and make this happen’ kind of thing … it was really quite genuine and I think that’s what makes it special. It wasn’t hard to edit the video to make it cute and adorable and lovely, because the whole thing actually was that. It’s pretty special.” Gray says they don’t want to be a ‘preachy, annoying campaign’ and it’s not about a LYC ego. “If people love being gay, if people love doing what they love to do, then they’re going to do it safely, and they’re going to have a great time doing it. It’s not a hard message to get across. We don’t mind that our brand name is in there very briefly, because it actually doesn’t really need to be in there. We just want people to feel really awesome about being romantic with other guys,” he says. “It’s about being respectful of who you’re with. All the guys are respectful, very cute and polite and shy and wanting to be so nice to the other person. That’s all we need people to see.” Jacqui Stanford - 26th March 2014