Posted on 05/31/2004 10:17:55 PM PDT by neverdem
Nothing I had done in the two years since my previous negative H.I.V. test led me to think I would come up positive this time around. But I am a 47-year-old noncelibate gay man in San Francisco. And like many of my friends, I try to get checked every now and then as a psychological reminder of the payoff I get from staying safe.
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The one-week gap between getting blood drawn and receiving the results has always been harrowing. The wait guarantees a slew of restless nights, but it also focuses your mind and forces you to confront your fears and your past.
You replay your recent sex life on the video screen of your mind, pausing to examine certain moments in excruciating detail. You drive yourself nuts by concocting images of far-fetched but theoretically possible routes of infection. You stumble through the five stages of grief described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. When the result comes back negative, the wave of relief helps to quell, at least for a while, the chattering in your brain.
So I wondered how it would feel this time taking the new rapid H.I.V. blood test, which crams the one-week cycle into 40 or so minutes. The Food and Drug Administration approved this new test technology in November 2002, and more recently approved a test that uses saliva instead of blood.
About a third of those who take publicly financed standard H.I.V. tests fail to return for their results, according to government figures. And because many of these tests are anonymous, contacting those who are infected is not an option. Health officials hope the growing use of the rapid test will help to increase the numbers of H.I.V.-positive people who know they have the virus.
At my local health clinic, the H.I.V. test counselor - eager, earnest, spike-haired - looks about 13 but tells me he is 33. He has lost a partner to AIDS, as have I.
He has a pretty tough job. Notwithstanding the remarkable treatment advances of recent years, I would not relish having to inform frightened young men and women that they are infected with a lethal virus.
He explains that they need just a pinprick of blood from my fingertip, not the vial from my vein that the standard test requires. That is a real blessing for needlephobes like me. He also tells me that a negative result is conclusive, but that if it is positive, he will have to draw blood for a test to confirm.
He sends me next door, where a cheerful health attendant jabs my finger. When I return, he begins the usual battery of questions about my sex life.
Condoms? Always. Any broken ones? No. How many partners in the last year? Enough. Positive partners that you know of? Yes. Women? None. Sex under the influence of alcohol? Rarely.
We discuss the relative risks of anal sex (high) and oral sex (very, very low).
I know that one answer to the epidemic for a single gay man is to avoid sex altogether. But I treasure human touch, so celibacy does not feel like a viable option to me.
I could also, I suppose, limit my contacts to H.I.V.-negative men. Straight people recommend that strategy as if it is a no-brainer. But they are not confronting a dating pool so full of potential risk. In my city, lots of the gay men I meet are H.I.V.-positive. Thanks to the current crop of medications, many have successfully kept illness at bay and continue to lead full lives.
To reject such a huge number of people out of hand feels wrong, like rejecting someone for having cancer or diabetes. That sort of discrimination, however understandable, long ago earned a name in the gay community: viral apartheid.
I certainly know men who have come up positive in recent years. Broken condoms. Slip-ups. Impulsive acts fueled by lust and drugs and a hunger for connection. I have known the pain that brought them there - the death of friends and lovers, the loneliness. I see how getting infected might bring some flicker of relief; it's done, the fight's over, you can relax now.
I have found myself so tempted, after so many years of self-restraint, to chuck it all and break the bounds.
But I'm me, so I don't. Because I know that then the tests and drugs and treatment decisions would start for real, and that they would stretch before me without end.
If you are gay, and you live in San Francisco, these anxieties fade in and out of consciousness. But the week of waiting to learn your fate always delivered them in a concentrated dose. This time around, there is little chance for them to gather intensity and power. And the relief, when it comes, feels like an anticlimax.
My 13-year-old counselor goes next door to retrieve my results. My chest tightens. He comes back in. He's grinning. "Well, it's negative, like you thought," he says.
My body sags. I smile. I pull my jacket on, stand up, thank him and pass through the waiting room, where several men sit and fidget. I am still in the clear, but it is likely that someone else will be getting bad news tonight.
PING
Let's see now, the queers come in, take the test, I pay for it, then they don't bother to come back to get the result?
That sort of discrimination, however understandable, long ago earned a name in the gay community: viral apartheid.We all have to pay for this man's lunacy and the lunacy of his entire "community" in higher insurance rates, medical costs, increased risks of infection and even antibiotic resistant super-infections.
Sounds like a future Darwin award nominee.
"You drive yourself nuts"
Well, I guess that statement certainly is true, though the sentence is lacking the preposition "towards" in between the words "yourself" and "nuts"...which is the basic cause of the whole problem this sweetie-pie quivers and trembles about finding himself with in the first place.
Speak for yourself. Why do people use "You" when relating first-hand experience?
Gee, haven't these people read an AIDS pamplet yet, or learned about the risk of AIDS on MTV? sarcasm/
Homosexual behavior in all its neurotic, unhealthy ways. His "chattering brain", his refusal to avoid those who are already HIV-positive, etc. Sorry I don't buy the "homos are just like everybody else" rhetoric.
I got it... ping.
Have a heart, he might be a "Log Cabin" pubbie. Some people believe homosexual "marriage" will decrease promiscuity within the gay lifestyle, thus less transmission of HIV. I have a bridge to sell anyone who believes that.
That's a very dangerous sex life. It's too bad his counselor doesn't tell him about the thousands that have left the homosexual lifestyle, and that there is hope for him.
"I treasure human touch..." Oh, how melodramatic. What's amazing is that this guy apparently doesn't see any irony in saying that avoiding AIDS is not "a viable option..."
Mr. Tuller, remind me and the rest of America why we are supposed to care more about your life than you do. I keep forgetting.
I could also, I suppose, limit my contacts to H.I.V.-negative men. Straight people recommend that strategy as if it is a no-brainer.
That's right, we do. If you had a CAT scan along with your HIV test, maybe you would know why -- or, actually, perhaps someone could try to explain it to you.
But they are not confronting a dating pool so full of potential risk. In my city, lots of the gay men I meet are H.I.V.-positive. Thanks to the current crop of medications, many have successfully kept illness at bay and continue to lead full lives.
Giving you all the freedom that you desire to fornicate like rabbits. Yeah, that worked out real well in the 1970's, didn't it?
To reject such a huge number of people out of hand feels wrong, like rejecting someone for having cancer or diabetes. That sort of discrimination, however understandable, long ago earned a name in the gay community: viral apartheid.
Yeah, buddy, it "feels wrong" to reject someone with this communicable disease that you have so much trepidation about, "like rejecting someone for having cancer or diabetes," which you can't catch.
Well, that does it. Not only is homosexuality abnormal, it rots your brain, too.
And people live like this voluntarily.
If the implication is that AIDS is spreading faster among straights due to unsafe sex, I invite you to back that up with some numbers.
Ah the fear pain and suspence is horrible, but once cleared he goes right back for a deplorable repeat performance.
Except for the high cost passed on to tax payers, these stupid Darwin Award seekers can go the way of the dodo bird with no regret on my part.
cry me a river, fella.....
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