File Under: What I Didn't Do For Love
My response had always been “not now, not ever.” He already knew that going in.
I was your basic “condom Nazi” I’d been out longer than he had, and fully enjoyed the sexual freedom of a young gay man within a large gay community.
Yes, I hooked up a lot, at an almost at a pathologic rate. Having come out late, I was in search of both validation as well as pleasure. I was fucking my way up the gay food chain.
That, however, never included unprotected sex with anyone.
When offered, I had steadfastly refused. My new found “freedoms” were enjoyed in the glaring spotlight of AIDS. If unprotected sex was a deal breaker, the doorman will call you a cab. There’s more where you came from.
Unprotected sex, also known as “raw" or “bareback,” was simply a bridge too far. We had only started dating in October.
He was disappointed, but knew enough not to push at the risk of losing me. My objections were not entirely unreasonable, given the context
To him, it felt like nothing.
To me it felt like everything.
Months later, after we had "the talk" and committed to a monogamous relationship, the topic came up again. I was still wary. In the early 00’s, HIV was still a significant risk, but gay men kept pushing that boundary just like he was.
But given the status of our relationship, and my having tested negative every 3 months, I started to hedge. If in fact it was just going to be him and me, it was time to have that discussion.
I later came to learn that he was far more worried about me going rogue that I was about him. He had given me no reasons not to trust him. He seemed as invested in me as a boyfriend, and us as a couple as I did.
He was everything I'd always said I'd been looking for. He was my age, tall, blonde, handsome, stacked, masculine, smart and successful.
He'd dropped out of the sky unexpectedly on the newest sleazy hook-up site I was trolling. He then proceeded to chase me, at a time I was willing to be chased. My relentless pursuit of conquest had become routine, rather than fulfilling.
By the time we met I was at a point in my life where I more than willing to get off that merry-go-round. I wanted something more than routine, empty, meaningless hook-ups. I wanted a relationship that included emotional as well as physical intimacy.
Going raw felt like the first test of our relationship. He had offered me the opportunity to taste "the forbidden fruit" and I was on a diet.
I came with some baggage. I had aggressively pursued conquests in my past, and my job presented a lot of opportunity to continue that. I was healthy, moderately attractive, skilled and available. Plus I was a gifted Top, which practically made me Boystown royalty.
Some men never get the taste for validation and conquest out of their mouth. Hooking up is both intimate and detached at the same time.
The amount of infidelity I was exposed to in my hook-up days was wholly unexpected, at least to me.
The caveat of course, was who I was meeting, how, and why. I wasn’t using the new internet hook-up sites like Manhunt, Adam4Adam, Gay.com, and AOL chat rooms looking for "dates." They were more like "short term relationships." of about an hour.
Your own relationship status was none of my business. Tell me you were single, or you and your partner had an "open relationship" and I believed you. Someone was going to bag you tonight, it may as well be me. It's not like I was ever going to see you again.
I had safety rules, no drugs and no bareback. But I was otherwise "morally flexible."
It was all incredibly easy. At the dawn of the internet age, you didn't have to go to bars to look for willing partners, and play all the pursuit and capture games.
You went on-line and cooked up a screen name, mine was usually Mercury, the Roman god of cunning, eloquence, luck, trickery, thieves.
You cooked up some text about who you were and what wanted and loaded a few PG pictures in you profile. You held the X rated ones back for qualified candidates.
The internet language entered my lexicon; ASL was "age stats location." HWP was "height weight proportional." Once you hooked them it all came down to "host or travel," and the dance began.
So, I may have gone into this with a few “trust issues” that I had created for myself. I trusted no gay man when it came to sex, and had learned to protect myself, no meant no.
Fun: Risk vs Pleasure.
Gay men have a somewhat well-deserved reputation as being shallow, superficial, and focused on immediate gratification. In our 20's and 30's, like all men, particularly in big cities with large populations, we relentlessly pursue "fun."
But the risk doesn't seem to phase us. You could get ass delivered in Boystown faster than a pizza and I made the most of my address.
The Rules of Engagement.
We would both get tested, show each other our results, and get tested again, before we took that step.
In 1985 an effective blood test for HIV became available. I'd been through the testing process dozens of times before.
I'd been in that room more than once with a friend, in some cases someone I'd hooked up with. There's a reason there are 3 chairs in that tiny room.
Even though I played as "safe" as possible, that wait seemed like an eternity.
By the time I'd met my partner, you walked in and a single finger prick returned you results in 20 minutes. You never had to leave the exam room.
I tested negative on the first go-round the week after Christmas. Not unexpected, but still a relief. I held up my end of the bargain, and was just waiting for him to get tested.
We had planned to ring our first New Year’s Eve together at my house, then head to bed for some loud, sweaty celebratory man-sex. I'd been looking forward to this for weeks.
He came in my door looking like someone shot his dog. His test had tested positive. It was a very long weekend.
Stay or Go?
Our relationship was still new. I was still in the “rapture” phase, and deeply in love with him. I thought we had a lot of good things to look forward to as a couple. Things I had always wanted.
Having a ‘poz’ partner changes the nature of your relationship. If you are in a committed relationship, it becomes part of both of yours lives.
The grim prospect of my partner having a potentially fatal disease was always going to be buried in the back of my brain. And while the current therapies were, for the most part effective, they were not without their side effects, and people still died.
At the time I was still mourning the loss of one of my dearest friends, Beck. We were fraternity brothers during college. Haven chosen me to be his "big brother," we formed a relationship that lasted beyond our college years. We were both the youngest in our families; I'd grown up without a younger sibling and he'd grown up without anyone to look up to.
We were as close as any two people who weren't related by blood could be. I'd been welcomed into his family, who not only thought of me as a "good influence" but was also going to keep him out of trouble.
Our lives were so intertwined that he was the first person I told I was gay. Even though I was older than he, he essentially became my "big," when it came to what being an "out" gay man meant.
I loved him deeply, honestly and without question. He had come out in the 90's, 10 years before I had, during the worst of the Plague.
When Beck came out, it was about freedom. When I came out it was about fear.
His HIV diagnosis at 20, when AIDS was a virtual death sentence, changed both of our lives in an era when there were no effective treatments.
He was the first person I loved to die of AIDS. He was just 30. His family asked me to be a pallbearer at his funeral, and I wept unashamedly as my heart broke when I lowered him into the ground.
This emotion was burned into my brain. For the first time in my life I was forced to confront my own mortality.
My partner and I could do everything right; we could me monogamous, practice "safe" sex, take the meds, and be mindful of potential health risks, but I could still lose him. Even years later, the pain of losing someone I loved was burned in my brain.
I’m ashamed to say it, but a lot of men bail on the spot, and just walk away. They lack the moral wherewithal to stick around to comfort someone facing life-changing crisis. It was lovers or nothing, friendship was not an option. Because that felt too much like a "commitment."
After too many failed relationships with too many shallow, damaged men, I said to myself "if this was as bad as it gets, I'm willing to stick it out and see how it goes."
I put my faith in science and kept my mouth shut.
Looking back, some of the issues that took us down 8 years later were rooted in this very decision. I may have stayed for both the right and wrong reasons.
By then an effective treatment had emerged, known as "the cocktail." It was a combination of drugs that held the virus at bay, and you could live a relatively normal existence.
We became “a serodiscordant couple.” Or as I said “a mixed marriage.”
Even though bareback became a viable option, I still refused to cross that line. I was still paranoid as fuck. I loved him, but was not willing to fold that risk into our relationship.
I had no interest in becoming one of the Cool Kids. Any curiosity I had was overruled by reason; I’d never had sex without a condom and therefore didn’t miss it. As bad as my behavior may have been in the past, it had served me well.
Ultimately, we never took that step
How I Ended Up In The Oncologist's Office.
Nobody who came out in the 80’s to 00’s thought there would ever be a treatment, let alone see it advertised on TV. But as new and effective drugs emerge, too many gay men today regard it as a manageable, chronic, disease.
I may, in fact, be out of step with current thought. Among the most vulnerable segments, the risk is highest among gay men under 25. They weren’t even alive during the worst of the Plague. They never buried anyone who died from HIV or AIDS.
By the time my partner and I split, a new version of Truvada had been approved for “treatment as prevention," known as “PrEP.” (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis)
PrEP blocks the HIV virus from taking hold within your body if you have been exposed, which is why any sexually active gay man who cares about his health should be on it.
I figured I was “off the leash.” He had cut me off long before we split, but I had been faithful to my commitments to the very end.
So I went on PrEP. I wanted to be one of the Cool Kids, I was now in the garden and I wanted to "taste the forbidden fruit." and see what I had been denying myself all those years. In a lot of ways, I was angry about how things ended, and walked into the next phase with an "I'll show you" attitude.
I was also in the throes of active addiction. There were no more rules, and I was beholden only to myself and the pursuit of my own pleasures. Between that and my mental health bullshit, I took insane risks with myself and others. Too many men, too many wrong reasons. I held the line at no smack, no coke, no meth and no shooting up, but beyond that, not much was off limits.
I kept testing every 3 months, but the worst that ever happened were a few social diseases, all of them treatable with a shot in the ass.
PrEP doesn’t protect you from everything.
When I got clean, all that ended, but I continued to take the PrEP. You never know when it could come in handy with the next guy.
I’ve been on PrEP. over 10 years, but the quarterly tests started coming back wonky. PrEP has some potential long term side effects including liver damage and bone density loss.
And right now, it’s kicking the shit out of my liver.
As advertised on TV, a new therapy has emerged; Apretude. It's a shot every 2 months. It’s just as effective, with fewer side effects. I asked my GP about it and I seemed to be a good candidate. Before he would prescribe, I needed some very specific blood work done.
That’s how they discovered my current blood disease. They don’t show up on standard blood work, you have to go looking for them.
These are the test results that triggered my Cancer scare 12 weeks ago.
My condition is very likely rooted in the PrEP meds I’ve been on for over a decade. I have low levels of all blood types. There will always be risks.
But otherwise, none of this impacts my life directly. The risk of my condition escalating is very low. Both my parents lived to be 90, so heart disease or Alzheimer’s is much more likely to do me in.
I look at it this way; PrEP, and my decision to go on it, likely caused this situation. But it protected me from a lot worse things.
Comments
Post a Comment