by Rick R. Reed
And if he knew, why didn’t he tell me?
Oh, I know, I know. Many of you are saying “Well, didn’t you ask?” And the answer is no, I didn’t. And I know the sex police are out there crying “Our sexual health is no one else’s responsibility but our own.” And in a way, I agree, but I still wonder:
If you love someone and you’re HIV positive, wouldn’t you want to do everything in your power to protect him?
Okay, I flipped over on my other side and started wondering other things:
Maybe Jack doesn’t know he’s HIV positive. So what does that mean?
Does it mean he’s newly infected too?
And would that mean that all of our talk about monogamy and being exclusive was just so much hot air?
Does that mean he was cheating on me?
Does that mean that my Jack was just like so many other gay men, who profess to want a relationship while they go out and trick around at the baths and bars when their “better half” isn’t looking?
Bitter, party of one!
Does this mean, finally, that Jack was never the man I thought he was? Did I just build up some ideal in my mind, one that twisted and contorted the real man to fit my fantasy ideal?
No wonder I couldn’t sleep.
Worst of all, right before bed, Jack called. I didn’t answer. He waited a respectable twenty minutes, then called again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Finally I crawled onto my futon and pulled the comforter around my ears, hoping for deliverance from ringing phones and praying I would not forget to take my meds in the morning, liver damage and potential buffalo humps be damned!
But you all know how well that went. Along about 3:00 a.m. I finally got up and checked my messages, all three of them. They all said three words.
First: I miss you.
Second: I need you.
Third: I love you.
Pretty undemanding, huh? Pretty smooth too.
Bitter, party of one!
I don’t know what to do about Jack. He sends me flowers and love poems. He whispers sweet nothings into my voicemail. For six months he was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me.
I don’t know what to do. Do you?
Ethan didn’t even bother to proof the entry, nor to preview it. He simply hit Publish, thinking of the comical wit and wisdom of Thoreau and how “most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Except he wasn’t so quiet. Not anymore. Not with his “song” being broadcast far and wide on a blog that was inexplicably growing popular. Wait a minute. Isn’t there some internet term about going “viral?” Ethan shuddered.
Work, there is work to be done.
Already it was 10:00 a.m., and the offices of LA Nicholes were humming. Ethan thought how none of his coworkers had even the smallest inkling of his plight.
He also wondered how long he could wait until he started obsessively, compulsively checking his blog for comments.
As it turned out, he would have to wait until that night. The day actually slipped away from him… almost unbelievably. He was immersed in meetings, scheduling interviews, and sending out press kits for a new play at a promising little storefront theater in Rogers Park that had once, long before any of this had happened, become a pet project of Ethan’s.
He was surprised when he looked at the digital clock in the lower right-hand corner of his monitor and saw it was already well after six. Were these meds affecting his mind? It almost seemed like he couldn’t recall how the day had slipped away. He could tell from the sounds of the office that most people had already headed home for the evening. Why hadn’t he heard them leave?
It’s not your meds, silly. It’s because you were simply busy. Remember how that felt? Once upon a time—before Brian and a hot new romance, before HIV, before fears of betrayal and the impulsive tossing away of that same hot new romance—you used to throw yourself into your work… and the hours would just slip away. Just as they did today. You just forgot what it was like before your personal life changed so dramatically.
Ethan sat back in his chair and glanced outside as the day wound down into dusk. It was already almost full-on dark, and he knew soon they would enter that depressing period when it was dark when you got up and dark when you left work in the afternoon. Sunlight was a rare and precious Chicago winter commodity and probably went for high prices down at the Mercantile Exchange.
The realization that he had just been busy and time passed was a revelation to him. Something so simple, yet it made him consider how much his life had changed since he had met Brian, how his priorities had shifted.
You had a life, one in which the work/life balance was suddenly tipped in favor of life. Your job no longer defined you but became, as it did for lots of happy people, just a way to make money, to provide essentials, to allow for cozy weekends and evenings with the one you love.
Or should that be “loved”?
Ethan sighed, amazed at how quickly the lavender/purple twilight had faded to almost black. Outside, the streetlights gave off their familiar and sickly dingy yellow sodium vapor glow. The traffic on Belmont sounded clogged and impatient. Outside, he would walk home in the chill, pushing against unfeeling commuters in their own rush to get home, hurrying by tawdry storefronts… vintage clothing stores, Swedish, Thai, and Mexican restaurants, cafés, and doughnut shops, a popular store that catered to the Goth crowd, bars…. All of them flush with teeming masses of humanity.
And not one of them would pay him one second of attention.
Ethan felt like crying, but suddenly he also felt there wasn’t even the energy for tears. He considered logging on to his blog before he left, but he saw Jan Most hurry by his cubicle, a stack of xeroxed copies in her arms. She looked brusque, in a hurry to finish up her business, and did not, for once, glance his way.
Maybe he should see if she would be up for grabbing a bite to eat at Ann Sather or a cocktail at Gentry, where maybe someone might already be manning the piano?
Ethan shook his head. He wanted company, but not hers, as nice as she seemed to be. He knew there was only one person whose company would really make him happy.
And he wondered for the umpteenth time if that person even existed.
He gathered up his messenger bag, switched his Cole Haan loafers for Reebok walking shoes, and headed out.
Jan was at her desk, collating and stapling papers and stuffing them into bright blue folders. She looked up at him as he passed and smiled. She rolled her eyes. “Press kits, you know? They have to be ready for tomorrow night’s opening.”
Ethan shook his head, wondering if he should just drop everything and help her so she could get out of there. He knew nothing about her home life, not even the basics such as if she was married or had children. Maybe you should be less self-absorbed and find out a little something about the person who works each day just over the partition from you. “You have the most thankless job in the office, Jan. But I, for one, really appreciate what you’re doing.”
Her eyes seemed to light up at the small compliment. “Why, thank you, sugar!”
“Want some help? I could stick around for a while. Many hands make the work light, you know.”
“You’re an angel. But really, I’m almost done here. You go on.”
“Okay. Night.”
“Good night, Ethan.”
Just as he got to the exit door, she called after him. “You take good care of yourself, now.”
The phrase was innocent enough, but Ethan still couldn’t help but wonder what had compelled her to say it.
WHEN HE got home, Ethan felt he was already sinking into old patterns, even though it had only been a few days since his diagnosis and the subsequent fallout with Brian. He set down his messenger bag and thought of his “plans” for the evening: change into sweats and T-shirt, heat up a Marie Callender chicken pot pie, watch some TV, pay a bill, brush his teeth, go to sleep with the TV on timer. Lather, rinse, repeat. Was this really to be his life? It was as comfortable as an old shoe. And just as boring.
Who knew what new comments might have come in from his last blog post? Ethan, when he began writing this online journal, had never even entertained the possibility that someone might comment on what he had to say. Hell, he hadn’t even thought he’d have readers, other than himself. It still puzzled him, wondering how all these people had stumbled across his online thoughts. But the internet was a strange and mysterious beast. He wouldn’t have been surprised, he thought as he waited for his PC to boot up, if there were no comments. Or a hundred. Or a thousand. The internet was capricious that way. Maybe the phrase for the new millennium should be: What the internet giveth, the internet taketh away. It certainly had given him Brian.
But, he thought dejectedly as Internet Explorer brought up his home page, the internet had nothing to do with taking Brian away.
The internet had not taken away his readers. And his last post had caught them in a talkative, opinionated mood. Before even beginning to read what they said in response to his worries over Brian aka “Jack,” he scrolled down and saw that he had more than a hundred comments.
Good Lord! A new question, aside from his wondering how he’d been discovered, emerged. Why did people bother? Why did they care so much to sit down and write to someone they didn’t know, couldn’t see, and couldn’t hear? Why did they care?
He started reading.
Honey, you need to kick that man to the curb. If what you say is true, and you know it is, he’s a cheat. My mama always told me, “Once a cheat, always a cheat.” Lies are like cockroaches: there’s never just one. You seem like a good man. You just need to buck up and get on with your life.
Relationships are not like broken appliances. You do not toss them away and buy a new one just because they aren’t functioning the way you’d like them to. Real relationships take work and give and take. You say nothing in your blog about talking to this man, only that he’s tried getting back in your good graces. If things were as wonderful as you say, don’t you at least feel like you owe him a bit of your time to sit down and talk everything out?
Just from the little I’ve read, I can tell you’re sweet and wonderful, a real caring and feeling man. Hell, I’d date you. There doesn’t seem to be many of your kind in my neck of the woods. So what do you say? Ever been to San Antonio?
So what if he’s HIV positive? Aren’t you? At least now you can throw away the rubbers and fuck bareback with impunity!
I may not have HIV, and I may not be gay, but I am at an age where people have started calling me wise. I don’t know how true that is, but I do know I’ve learned a thing or two in the sixty-plus years I’ve been on this earth. And five marriages and six kids later, I can tell you the lessons I learned weren’t easy.
You need to remember that love is about trust. Now I’m sure there are people on here who will jump right in and tell you the same thing and will say that, for just the reason of trust alone, you should stop seeing this man you seem so in love with. They will say that a relationship without trust is one built on a foundation that’s sure to collapse.
I say that’s too simple. Human beings are black and white only in skin tones. Morally, ethically, intellectually, we come in all different shades of gray. Maybe this man of yours did do wrong. Maybe he did cheat on you. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was HIV positive from long before you met him and just has buried his head in the sand and doesn’t know himself. And yes, maybe he knows and knowingly infected you. If the very last of these scenarios were true, then I would agree with those who tell you to move on. A person like that truly carries way more gray in his heart than you need.
But about the other scenarios, I urge you to get things out on the table with “Jack.” It sounds like he’s waiting. Find out what you’re dealing with and then make your decision.
And then remember two words: forgiveness and faith. They apply very well to God, but they also apply to love and the people whom we hold dear.
Ethan’s vision became smeared with tears as he read this response. He scanned through the others, and they were all much the same mix of the first few: those on the side of leaving, those on the side of staying, and those who—surprisingly, at least to Ethan, whose self-esteem had never been too high—wanted to date him themselves, taking the place of “Jack.”
But it was the words of the sixty-something-year-old that he kept coming back to.
How could I have been so stupid? Oh sure, I was in shock and everything over my diagnosis and the possibility Brian might have played in it, but I haven’t yet even given the man a chance to talk with me, not really. Mean Ethan says I shouldn’t give him the opportunity, but I know in my heart I should. That reader was right: no one is perfect. We all make mistakes. Maybe Brian made one. Maybe he didn’t.
This last thought chilled Ethan. Maybe he didn’t. In spite of his jokes about his barren love life, he wasn’t a virgin when he first hopped into bed with Brian. Sure, months would often go by without a date, but he did have them now and then, and often, out of either optimism or desperation, they usually ended up in someone’s bed. Ethan was always careful. But condoms broke. And sometimes he had oral sex without them… and who knows where that could have led?
It only takes one time, Ethan.
Good God, have I been blaming the man for a crime he didn’t commit?
A short sob escaped him, explosive. He angrily wiped the tears from his eyes, enraged at himself for being so single-minded and sure of himself.
Ethan realized the odds still were in favor of Brian being the one who had infected him. But even if that were true, didn’t he owe this man he had come to love in the past few months at least some time to talk?
Sensible Ethan told him to wait until tomorrow, to place a phone call or send a text or email asking for a time to get together. But Sensible Ethan didn’t stand a chance against Impassioned Ethan, who was already struggling into a pair of jeans and a navy blue pullover sweater. The clock hanging above his kitchen sink warned him that it was already past ten o’clock and that showing up at someone’s door unannounced was just plain rude.
Ethan shook his head, unworried about impropriety. After all, what did he have to lose?
And tonight he thought the answer might very well be everything.
He hurried out of his apartment, hoping the wait for a cab would be short.
THE FRONT door to Brian’s high-rise had never looked more forbidding. Oh, what are you doing, Ethan? Just go home and wait until tomorrow. Sleep on it. You’ll be more prepared come morning. You can think out in advance what you want to say. He hesitated in the shadows of the shrubbery at the front of Brian’s building, uncertain whether or not he should listen to the voices that were telling him to go home, wait until tomorrow, procrastinate.
But he knew, deep down, these so-called sensible voices were not sensible at all. They were fearful. They were the voices that had Ethan back away in the past from promising relationships, finding fault with every Tom, Dick, and Harry. And Ethan realized now that he was afraid of getting too involved… no, make that, he was afraid of being rejected. One way to avoid being rejected was to end things early yourself. You could always take comfort in the fact that you were not the dumpee, but the dumper.
Tell that to the cat you buy to keep you company some cold winter night.
And right now, he knew he was afraid to talk to Brian, to find out where things stood now that Ethan had ended their relationship, told him he was HIV positive, and been just plain mean to him. Maybe now that Ethan was willing to open the door to reconciliation—maybe—he would find that Brian had acquired the good sense to firmly shut it.
It would serve Ethan right.
Tomorrow would be one more night spent in limbo, lost and alone. Tomorrow he might not feel as passionate
ly and might give himself permission to wait one more day, and that day might follow another, then another, until Brian was nothing more than a sweet but flawed memory, something to think about as he cleaned out a litter box and opened a can of Fancy Feast.
And tomorrow he would not have the fire that inspired him to leave his apartment, lights burning, computer online, the TV playing in the background. Had he even bothered to lock his door?
He needed the passion that caused him to rush over here to Brian’s.
Several months ago Brian had given him a key to his place. Now, from so many visits, even the doorman knew him by name, and Ethan could easily waltz right in, just like any other resident, and go right on up to Brian’s apartment.
But that was before. Now he didn’t feel right using the key, even if it was in his pocket. Now he felt demoted to a caller, a guest, and needed to rely on the formality of ringing Brian’s buzzer outside and—hopefully—being let in.
Ethan closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, imagining himself an actor in the wings. He strode up to the intercom box and, without letting himself hesitate, punched in the code that would cause the phone in Brian’s apartment to ring.
“Hello?”
Ethan was surprised when he answered so quickly, his voice sounding slow and sleepy… and unbearably sexy. Memories of early mornings and late nights rushed into his brain, and for a moment Ethan was speechless.
“Hello?” Brian said again. “Anybody there?”
“Hi. It’s me.”
There was a long pause, and Ethan was afraid Brian had simply hung up the phone. Wouldn’t that be just what he deserved after how he had treated him? Ethan thought of a bouquet of beautiful purple irises flung to cold concrete, to wither and die among discarded cans, papers, and cigarette butts. But then Brian spoke again. “What are you doing? You’re downstairs? Why didn’t you just use your key?”
A good sign! “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t know if that was appropriate… anymore.”