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STFree Certificates founder Eli Dancy is one of 15,000 cardholders.
Monaster/News
Dancy displays a card.
Monaster/News
Call it a license to thrill.
Sexually active New Yorkers looking to wise up before turning the lights down can verify their partners’ sexual health status with a simple glance in their wallet.
Manhattan-based company STFree Certifications provides its health-conscious customers a sexual history “license” with a phone number on the back that enables them to prove their testing backgrounds to potential partners.
More than 15,000 people nationwide have signed up for the STFree service, launched in 2004 by Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, native Eli Dancy.
Dancy, a former club promoter, said he saw “a lot of irresponsibility” in his neighborhood and created the STFree card to help raise awareness.
“In places like where I grew up and where I worked, there are incredibly high HIV and STD rates,” said Dancy, 28. “This card opens up the conversation for people to talk about it.”
Nearly one-third of New Yorkers with multiple sex partners regularly have sex without condoms, government statistics show. More than 100,000 New Yorkers have HIV or AIDS.
“People in our community don’t take the time to check each other, and it puts a lot of lives at risk,” said Harlem resident Tawanna Jones, 23.
At registration, which can be completed online or inside an STFree van that travels citywide, program subscribers must provide a detailed sexual profile and be tested.
To access the testing history of an STFree cardholder, partners must have access to the phone number located on the back of the card as well as to a PIN number provided only to the STFree member.
“This card will keep people from lying and get it all out in the open,” said Bronx beautician Lorna Smith, 51, who lives in the borough with the highest AIDS death toll citywide.
“It will let you know who’s safe, and who’s not. It’s definitely a good idea,” said fireproofer Eric Lopez, 28, of Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
STFree members pay a one-time $19.99 fee for the service – which Dancy said will allow more people to join.
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“This is so normal!” Oprah Winfrey exclaimed as Tom Cruise took her through the vast, pristine, wood-paneled kitchen in his mountaintop estate in Telluride, Colo. Ms. Winfrey sounded relieved, almost as if she were half expecting to find space helmets and a teleporting station wedged next to the stove.
Oprah Winfrey with Tom Cruise in Colorado on Friday.
There was nothing normal about the conversation between Ms. Winfrey and Mr. Cruise, of course. Mr. Cruise, whose unhinged exuberance and acrobatic leap onto Ms. Winfrey’s couch in 2005 was the first in a torrent of embarrassing YouTube moments, was back on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to repair the damage. He had agreed to a two-part interview, and tellingly, the first one on Friday was on his couch, a reversal that they joked about, gingerly.
“I’m on your sofa now,” Ms. Winfrey said, mugging. Mr. Cruise laughed and said, “And we’re sitting.”
When Ms. Winfrey’s car drove up the Cruises’ driveway, Mr. Cruise and his wife, Katie Holmes, emerged from the house hand in hand to greet her. Like the first lady, Laura Bush, welcoming reporters to the family ranch in Crawford, Tex., Ms. Holmes was warm and gracious and quickly made herself scarce, hugging her husband and saying, “I love you,” as she walked out the door.
Mr. Cruise then sat winsomely through a barrage of questions about his marriage; their baby, Suri; Scientology; and in particular his rant to Matt Lauer in 2005 on “Today,” ridiculing the use of Ritalin and attacking Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants for postpartum depression.
“I mean, what I regret is that it just came out wrong,” he said. “What I regret is that even discussing Brooke in any way.”
This was not a promotional gimmick to boost box office sales. Mr. Cruise does not have a movie coming out imminently. (“Tropic Thunder,” in which he briefly plays not a leading man but a sleazy studio executive, is scheduled for an August release.) Mr. Cruise employed his charm — and taut stagecraft — in an effort to rehabilitate his reputation.
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