Worried Well

My first boyfriend is diagnosed with HIV in early 2000. I sit with him as he cries and shakes his head in disbelief. He thinks about killing himself all the time. But he doesn’t. I flashback to a friend at a party the previous week -- he had a biohazard tattoo etched into his skin after his diagnosis. A warning. I get scared for my boyfriend. For myself. The next day, I make an appointment with a local HIV testing center where I’ll be tended to by trained professionals. A week later a nurse swabs my arm with alcohol and tells me I have good veins. I puff with pride. "My husband doesn’t like gay people, but I don’t mind them," she says as the syringe fills to near overflow. With each draw of blood, I deflate a little more. Moments before, I had told her I was gay. "You’re talking about me, bitch" I wanted to say, but I don’t. Instead, I smile weakly and wonder if I’ll return for my test result the next week.
A month later, I sit in another doctor’s office, this time on 14th street, waiting for another test result. Although I’ve done nothing to compromise my negative status, I’m thinking about HIV all the time and I’m scared. My boyfriend and I have been doing everything with condoms. Oral sex, grinding, and definately no penetration. I broke out in a rash after we fooled around and thought I had AIDS. I know this is not how to get infected, but my mind plays tricks. An irrationality takes over. It’s like someone’s sending me an envelope of anthrax everyday. Some mental health care workers would call me "the worried well". I beg to differ. When sex and death are so intimately entwined, "the worried well" seems like an insult on the grandest of scale. I’m worried for a reason and I’m not well – since I was a boy I’ve seen my gay brothers diagnosed and die. I’m worried sick -- I don’t want to die. As I wait, I see an older man who wears the years of survival in the wasting grooves of his face. The miracle drugs are working, with the minor inconveniences of reconfiguring the skin on his face. Dark hollows for the gallows. It’s heartbreaking. I think "That could be me." The man nods, as if to welcome me -- a sad introduction into a club I’m hoping I’ll never be a member of.