by Tyler Knight
My phone rings. It’s Dana Divine. I log off and answer.
“What’s up, Dana?”
She says, “Remember Eris, that girl you and Julio had fun with on Flea’s set?”
“Yes.”
“Daniel worked with her before you fucked her. She’s HIV positive—”
I feel like I plunged through thin ice and into a freezing lake.
“—you need to retest right away, and—Tyler?”
I say, “Yeah…yeah, I’m here. Are you’re sure?”
She says, “Alpha Man shot her with Daniel and Mitch Adams right when they returned from Brazil—I think it was a double anal cream pie scene. The quarantine list just got updated. It says she’s positive.
“Anyway, Flea took some pictures of you and Julio having your way with her. Flea shared the pictures with Alfred, and I saw them, so that’s how I know you’ve been exposed.”
Flash!
“Thank you for telling me, Dana.”
“Just so you know, Alfred posted pictures on the Internet of you fucking her. I told him not to, but he never listens to me…”
I say, “I gotta go, Dana.”
This has to be a mistake…confusion about what’s going on… I Alt/Tab away from Counter-Strike and log onto the quarantine website. The list is a chart of sorts. Daniel’s name is at the very top as “Patient Zero.” Below his name are the names titled “First Generation”, people who have had direct sexual contact with Daniel. Now, there’s a “Second Generation” list of people, those who have worked with the first generation, adding scores of people to the list. Eris’s name, like Daniel’s, has its own branch.
This can’t be happening to me. This isn’t real. Okay, relax, calm the fuck down and think… Wait, she did seem different when I saw her last…thinner…those sores! But, that can’t be from HIV…could it? There’s no way she’d be symptomatic that fast…right? What the fuck do I know? Nothing. Fucking HIV…Why me?
The girl who answers the phone at M.A.I.M asks for the names of everybody I’ve had sex with since my HIV exposure. It’s impossible to remember everyone because of the sheer volume of work I’ve been getting lately, and even if I could, I don’t know all of their names. Often times, I don’t bother to ask the names of everyone on the scene. I can’t think straight, and after I give her a few names I draw a blank. We schedule an appointment for me come into M.A.I.M. tomorrow morning to retest tomorrow.
Amanda… We had unprotected sex many times since my exposure. Goddamn it! What do I know about female-to-male transmission? What are the odds of me getting HIV from Eris, then me giving it to Amanda? What’s the incubation period? From what I understand, it’s extremely difficult for a man to get infected through vaginal sex with an AIDS infected woman. I don’t know a damn thing about how Daniel may have been infected. If it turns out that I’m HIV positive, I’ve put Amanda’s life at risk the same as if I took a loaded gun, spun the barrel, and put it to her head. Christ, the only thing she’s guilty of is loving me.
I call Amanda’s cell, but I hang up before it rings.
• • •
M.A.I.M’s office is on Ventura Boulevard near a coffee shop and a pet store. Inside, you could easily mistake the reception area for that of a dentist office. The waiting room is full.
When it’s my turn, I tell the girl at the front desk who I am, and that I’ve been exposed to HIV. None of the other people in the reception area react to what I’ve just said. Conversations continue. I’m invisible. The receptionist gives me a clipboard with some forms, and I hand her my driver’s license. The forms include spaces for personal information, the types of tests I am taking today (HIV, gonorrhea, chlamydia), and a waiver of privacy so that my test results may be disclosed. My hands shake as I write, so much so that I have to ask for a second set of forms. When I’m done I hand the clipboard back and she gives me a plastic cup, which I take into the bathroom.
I fumble with my zipper, and it takes concentration to steady my aim so that my stream makes it into the cup. I screw the lid back on the cup, wash my hands, and splash some water on my face. I compose myself, leave the bathroom, and head for the blood-drawing stations.
I sit in the chair and roll up my sleeves for the nurse. She gasps when she sees the scarred-over craters in the crooks of my elbows. The holes are right at the spot where a junkie would shoot heroin, and they are large enough to push a pencil through. She doesn’t ask. She composes herself and ties a rubber tourniquet around my arm. The nurse swabs the area with alcohol and stabs at the scar tissue with a needle, but it does not penetrate. I make a fist and a vein bulges on my forearm. She stabs the vein and the needle glides in easy. Blood spurts into the collection tube, and it starts to fill.
The scars inside the crooks of my elbows are souvenirs from my homeless days when I needed money for food. Blood is life, and I’ve sold just enough life to stave off death. Whole blood is made up of red blood cells, white cells, and plasma. They only let you sell whole blood once every few weeks because your body needs time to regenerate its lost red blood cells. When you donate, your identification is shared in a database so you can’t game the system by going from center to center before enough time has passed. It takes weeks for the human body to regenerate lost red blood cells, but plasma, however, is replenished quickly and may be sold twice a week, so I switched.
The reason the scars are so large is because the gauge of the needles they stick in your veins for plasma collection are wide enough to drink a milkshake through. They have to be to prevent clogging. When you donate plasma, you’re hooked up to a machine that sucks your whole blood out of your vein, spins your blood inside a centrifuge machine to separate your red blood cells from your plasma. The machine keeps your plasma and returns your red blood cells back to you through the needle. This process repeats itself for several cycles until your plasma donating quota, based on your weight, is fulfilled. If you’re a larger man, you must give more plasma per visit than a smaller man, but your pay doesn’t scale accordingly. You get paid exactly the same. For a man my size, it takes many repeat cycles of sucking, separating, and returning, and I could be hooked up to the machine long enough for me to watch a movie. You learn not to eat fatty foods before you donate, because excess fat in your blood may clog the needle, slowing the process even further. Now do you understand why I hate needles?
When I’ve filled the collection tube with blood, the M.A.I.M. nurse removes the needle, swabs the area and puts a band-aid on. This is to be the first of many HIV tests I have scheduled over the coming weeks. I’ll have the results for this one in a few days.
• • •
I’ve sequestered myself to my bedroom while waiting for my test results to come in. Waiting in a room to find out if I have a disease that may kill me in a slow and painful fashion, I can’t handle the idea of going out in public and interacting with other people as though everything is okay.
Amanda checks in on me, asks if I’m hungry, and opens the drapes and windows. She gives me some space, but not much. She knows me better than anyone else does—that I tend to brood, and in a moment I may be a danger to myself. She’s seen it happen before, and for far less. She leaves, but keeps the bedroom door open.
She returns with a game of Monopoly. She picks the thimble; I choose the shoe. While counting out the money, a lock of hair falls in front of her eyes and she smooths it back behind her ear. She looks up at me, hands me my starting money, and smiles. Just looking at her smiling at me shatters my negative mood, and leaves me with no choice but to smile, too. She picks up the dice and rolls.
• • •
Few people return my phone calls these days, so I log onto an online porn forum and sift through the gossip for any information. I read that some industry people say they can’t understand why this is being blown out of proportion; apparently, I have AIDS; some male talent not on the list price gauge, charging two and th
ree times their usual rate; Daniel has gone missing; a second girl is infected with HIV. I log off and switch to the site for the HIV quarantine chart.
The online quarantine chart has grown. It confirms a second girl has tested HIV positive under Daniel. This brings the total of HIV infected, including Eris, to three people. On the chart, my name is listed under Eris as “First Generation” exposed. A “Second Generation” list with other people’s names grows under mine.
There’s a girl I worked with whose name is not on the list. Trisha Marie. I should to call her before I call M.A.I.M.—better she hears it from the source than from a porn gossip board or from some M.A.I.M. employee. But I don’t have her number.
I make some calls. Nobody who answers the phone and will actually talk to me has her number. After leaving a few more voice mails I give up.
There’s a news special on TV about HIV in porn. I watch it while I wait for people to call me back. The anchor, while getting some things right and raising important questions, digresses into ad hominem attacks on Daniel and Eris, because it’s easy. I turn the TV off.
• • •
I’m on the phone with Jack Hammer. He’s telling me about the porn industry “town hall” meeting that just took place, and how there was an agreement on an industry-wide moratorium on all shooting until the quarantine list has cleared.
He says, “Some other ideas were brought up, too… No more anal cream pies, oh, and no double anal scenes, because of the risk of the anal lining tearing. That, and prolapse.”
“Yeah, we’ll see how long that lasts. What else?”
“Some studios, VELVET and Decadent, are going condom-only, and they’re insisting that other studios do the same, but…”
“Yeah.”
He says, “There was a lot of push-back from some of the gonzo studios on the condom thing. Their argument was, ‘Yeah, condoms might be a bit safer for the talent pool, but it would hurt business because nobody wants to buy porn with condoms. And since we all need strong product sell-through to earn a living…’”
“Let me guess: ‘…why make things difficult for everybody by using condoms? M.A.I.M.’s testing and protocols are working anyway…’ Jesus, Hume’s Guillotine, anyone? There are some smart folks in our business. People went along with this?”
He laughs. “Yeah, pretty much. I was thinking, Check out the emperor’s new condom…”
• • •
It’s date night and Amanda and I just finished watching a movie. She insists that it’s important to keep our routine and hold onto normalcy in spite of—and especially because of—the events unfolding around us.
While she’s in the lady’s room I wander around the gift shop. I pick up an art book with works by Francis Bacon, a painter I’ve never heard of. I turn to the page of the painting, “Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion.” The first impulse upon beholding it is to drop the book where I stand. Three contorted figures, more beast than man, shriek in a claustrophobic room painted a hue between orange and blood red. The painting is a triptych, so even though they appear to be in the same room, each figure is confined to agonize in the isolation of its own panel. The description says that Bacon got his inspiration from Aeschylus’ Oresteia and the three Furies that hunt down Orestes for his sins. From the effect this reproduction in an art book has on me, I can only imagine the impact standing before the lush paint of the original would have.
We drive home through the gloaming. Amanda talks on her cell. The imagery of that painting is still with me. How Bacon captured raw human emotion and foisted it upon the viewer…I’ve got to learn how to paint.
I glance in my rearview mirror, and what I see triggers an adrenaline dump. My mouth dries and my pulse speeds, but I will myself to remain calm. I check my speedometer, and when I reach an intersection I step on the brake and come to a complete stop. Then I signal and turn. When we get to the next intersection, I signal, stop, and turn again. My brakes are still soft because I’ve been putting off getting them fixed, so I apply them early enough to compensate for the increased stopping distance.
Amanda ends her call and puts her phone in her purse. She says, “Why are we driving in circles?”
I point to the rearview mirror. “Those cops are following us.”
Another intersection. I turn. The cops turn.
She says, “No they’re not. Why would they be following you?”
I come up on another intersection, and this time I apply my brakes a touch late and the nose of the car edges past the white line. There’s a clarion scream of a siren and a spotlight blasts through our rear window. The light is intensified by the rear view mirror, filling the cabin with the brightness of the sun. I pull over, turn the engine off, then return my hands to ten-and-two on the steering wheel. The cops cut the siren off but they leave the spotlight focused on us.
I say, “Don’t say anything, Amanda.”
“Okay.”
A cop stands at my window, slightly behind my left shoulder. He says, “How are you doing tonight?”
I know he doesn’t give a damn, this is a feel-out question designed for the police to gauge the attitude of whomever they pull over.
I say, “I’m doing well, sir.”
“What are you up to?”
I stare straight ahead. Through my windscreen. Focusing on a billboard a block away. Hands at ten-and-two. Digging my fingernails into the steering wheel.
He says, “Do you know why I pulled you over?”
“No sir, I do not.”
“You were driving too slowly.”
“Okay.”
It’s a vacation billboard. People frolicking on a white sand beach… “License, registration, and proof of insurance, please.”
I say, “My registration and insurance are in the glove box. My girlfriend is going to reach into the glove box and get them, sir.”
Amanda scrambles the contents of the glove compartment, including traffic tickets from the previous times I’ve been pulled over this month, in her search. Finally, she finds the papers and hands then to me. I take my right hand off of the steering wheel to accept them. Then I reach across my body with my right hand, left hand still gripping the steering wheel, and pass the documents across my body to the cop. With slow and deliberate movements, I use my right hand to pull my wallet out of my pocket, extract my license, and hand that to him with my right hand, also. I return my right hand to its place on the steering wheel. He goes to his cruiser. In the passenger-side mirror I see another cop from the neck down, posted sentry at the back of the passenger side door. His thumbs are looped in his belt.
Amanda’s phone rings. She fumbles in her purse to answer it.
I say, “Get your hands out of your purse.”
“But, I’m just getting my—”
“Look in your side mirror. See that cop there? You want to get shot?”
The headless cop in the mirror no longer has his thumbs hooked into his belt loops. They are now at his side, elbows bent slightly as if he’s dying to say “Draw pardner!”
She says, “No, I’m sorry.”
She turns to toss her purse onto the backseat. The headless mirror cop flinches.
I say, “Stop moving!”
In my driver’s side mirror, I see the first cop, back lit by the spotlight, walking toward us. His hand goes to the butt of his gun as he gets closer. The steering wheel is a circle of butter dissolving in my hands.
Here we go… Okay, without looking, what clothes am I wearing? Baseball cap, T-shirt, shorts with a draw-string… They’ll take the drawstring out… My shoes have laces…no, they’ll probably take my clothes and shoes and put in county blues and slippers… I say, “Amanda, if they take me into custody—”
“But you didn’t do anything!”
“If they arrest me, call my mother so she can contact her attorney.”
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Her voice quivers. She tries to hold back tears, but fails. “Don’t worry, Papito. I love you, we have each other.”
The cop is at my window again, “Okay, you have no warrants, but—”
His hand still rests on the butt of the gun.
“—you still never told me what you’re doing in this neighborhood.”
I say, “If you read the address on my license, you’ll see that I live nearby, officer.”
“You did a rolling stop at the last intersection. Here’s a ticket for that. I’m also giving you a ‘fix it’ ticket for the crucifix dangling from your rearview mirror. It’s a hazard.”
He hands me the tickets and returns my documents. I reach across my body with my right hand, take them, then return my hands to the steering wheel. The cops return to their car. They keep the spotlight on us and wait for me to drive away first. I stuff the insurance, registration, and new ticket into the glove box with the other tickets. Then I rip Jesus off of my rearview mirror, turn the key in the ignition, and drive the last few blocks home with great care.
• • •
When I return home from my final HIV retest, I close the door, shut the blinds, and head for the bedroom for a nap. My mind won’t shut off, and after staring at the ceiling I get up and log onto Counter-Strike. The server list of available games populates. The server I want is full, so I watch a game in spectator mode while waiting in queue to join in.
I Alt/Tab to the Internet. The quarantine list shows a third girl has tested HIV positive. It seems as though the list of names grows by the hour. The message boards have posts by talent who check the list several times a day to see if their name has been added. I Alt/Tab back to Counter-Strike and join in a game, but I’m not able to focus and my character keeps dying.
Normally, this time of day I’d be sparing with my friends at the boxing gym, but of course that is now out of the question…So is Jiujitsu, and a long list of other things I may never be able to do again if I’m HIV positive. Like making love to Amanda ever again… Assuming I have not infected her already.