Clean
http://www.aumag.org
http://www.aumag.org/?s=clean
“Are you clean?” my Grindr date
asks me. I met him on the popular gay chat site some weeks ago, and after some
pleasant back and forth, we agreed to meet up.
He’s cute and too young for me, about 30, give or
take. His name is Kenny.
“What do you mean?” I ask, as if I
don’t know. I sip my Starbucks.
“You know,” he says, picking at the
raisins in his half eaten scone, “are you disease free?”
“Are you asking me about my HIV
status?”
“Yeah. Are you clean?”
I hate this question. I hate it
because it states clearly in my profile, the one that no one bothers to read as
they scroll through pictures of faces and torsos and body parts, my status is
HIV positive, undetectable, on meds. These days, in the age of medications,
being undetectable means that my ability to transmit HIV is drastically
reduced. This, and safer sex practices that we all learned in school, helps
prevent new infections. But sadly, there is still stigma in the gay community
toward those of us who are HIV positive. I am healthy in every other aspect. I
have a good job, in fact I am a nurse in the HIV field. I own my own place. At
50 I’m in pretty good shape, well reasonably good shape, anyway. I’m basically
considered a nice guy, a real hoot at a party, a catch. Still, when this
question about my status comes up, as it almost always does, in just this same
way, I feel like an undesirable, untouchable.
When I tell Kenny my status, I
watch his discomfort, his pretty blue eyes that look anywhere but at me, as if
he’s scanning the place for an emergency exit. I know he will be gone in about
two minutes.
“I should get going,” he says,
right on schedule, suddenly forgetting we had plans to hang out together. It’s
a bright, warm, sunny October afternoon. We had talked about walking along the
Charles River, to see the beautiful autumn leaves. We were going to go to the
Square, to browse the stores.
Kenny thanks me for the latte.
“Nice meeting you.” He manages a tiny smile. He zips up his jacket hastily, the
hem of his untucked flannel shirt gets caught. He just leaves it like that. He
can’t get out of there fast enough. And then he is gone.
From the table at the window, I watch
him as he crosses the street. He does not look back.
The place is busy, noisy with
people. I stay there a while longer,
alone and quiet. The coffee gets cold. I take a sip, still not able to shake
this feeling that’s something a little more than sadness, I sit there feeling
for a moment dirty, and unclean, diseased.
I can’t be angry with Kenny. He’s
too young to remember. He doesn’t know what it was like, to come of age just as
AIDs was on the horizon. I understand his fear. I was scared in those days,
too. Who was not? They were truly
terrifying times. I was barely 20 before the first casualties began.
Robert in July of ‘85. He went
fast.
Davidwas in hospice a few weeks, so
we got to say goodbye.
Everet lingered. He was a ghost by
the time he passed like a shadow, after months and months of wasting away. He
scared me the most, with his face, so thin, so gaunt. The feel of his bones
when we hugged made me cringe. I hated
myself for how I felt. I couldn’t wait
to get away from him, away from the bottles of pills, the diapers, the smell of
dying and death. I hated being there, and I was afraid of him. And, worse, he knew it.
Everet died, then Seth.
Those early years, it was like playing
musical chairs. When the music stopped, someone was out. I stumbled through,
numb among the sick, skeletal, walking dead. In between, I kept dancing and
drinking, I smoked and snorted and rutted to forget. I needed to feel alive, to
feel a pulse, a warm body, someone to hold onto. I had boyfriends, I had
tricks, lots of them, like survivors in a shipwreck, I clung on, sputtering,
dazed, wounded witness to the end of the world, what could I do but keep playing
the game? What I really wanted was to say:
Take care of me. Don’t let me go.
Love me, a little.
By the 90’s, we had collectively
moved through the stages of grief, from shock and denial, to anger. Anger was the
dominant mode, and it took the form of activism.
We wore black Tshirts that said
SILENCE=DEATH as we marched in pride parades along with QUEER NATION and Act
UP. These groups organized protests that politicized the epidemic into a call
for action. They verbalized the rage we felt, they made people uncomfortable,
but they were visible, vocal, and they would not back down.
We were angry. We were scared. We
didn’t know what to do, so we marched along.
And then it was my turn. I sat in
my doctor’s office when I got the news. I just sat in a hard plastic chair,
staring at her calendar. It was December, 1999. I didn’t cry. “Do you want to
see a counselor?” she said softly, nudging a box of Kleenex toward me. I shook
my head. My first and only thought was escape. My thought was to get out of
that office, out of that building, I needed to get out on the street and walk
in the new falling snow. When I got home, I didn’t talk to anyone for weeks, I
unplugged my phone, called out to work, stayed in bed.
Somehow, those days turned into
weeks, months, and now almost 20 years have passed. In the end I was lucky to
be diagnosed when things were changing on the cusp of a new century. And yes,
it was luck, the kind that comes randomly, but also, thanks to the efforts of a
generation of men who went before me, those who marched and protested, those
who died, those whose efforts brought new meds and treatments in the pipeline,
I would be ok. I would survive. But I would never forget.
I cannot forget that history; it’s
as much a part of my blood as this virus, and just as potent.
Now here I am, dating again in my
50’s, trying to navigate in a foreign digital playing field that presents new
challenges. I was not prepared for this new environment,
surprised to be confronted with stigma toward HIV that still lingers, even in
this new era. It may be people have forgotten. Or this next generation coming up
just doesn’t know what we went through. I wonder, what happened to all that we
learned? Where did all that hard won understanding
go?
When some guy shrinks from me
because of my HIV status, yes I get angry, yes I am hurt.
But it will pass.
I leave Starbucks after the last
sip of coffee. I walk out into the bright autumn day, to breathe in the air,
the air that feels cold and sharp,
the air that feels clean.
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