Where We Go From Here

by Lucas Rocha

  But I need to. I don’t want to involve him in my problems.

  “Man, I hate being the kind of person who needs to drag something out of you, but we know each other well enough for me to know something is wrong. And it’s okay if you don’t want to tell me, because you have every right to live your own life. But do you remember when you came out to me?”

  I can’t help chuckling briefly, because I remember perfectly. I thought it would be the hardest conversation I’d ever have in my life. How naive of me.

  “You wouldn’t pick up the phone for two weeks, and when I finally showed up on your doorstep, you tried to convince me everything was fine. And then the next week, what happened?”

  It annoys me remembering how right he was in being so sure things weren’t okay, but I remain silent.

  “Do you remember what happened the following week?” he asks again.

  “Of course I remember,” I say unwillingly. “I argued with my parents, then it all came out, and shit hit the fan. I called you crying, of course, which made you come straight from Seropédica, and you got here at two o’clock in the morning.”

  “Precisely. And I don’t want to not be here if things go south again, Ian. And I’m sure things are bad … but again, if you can promise me that everything is okay, I’ll pretend like this conversation never happened, and we can go get a burger in Copacabana.”

  I take a deep breath and let it out at once:

  “HIV.” My voice sounds tired. There is no easy way to say it, no way to make the letters softer or to work around them. I feel the tears welling up in my eyes again. “I found out at the beginning of the week.”

  We fall silent. I wait for him to start screaming and telling me how reckless I was, that I could have avoided this shit show that my life has become if only I’d taken better care of myself, and that he can’t be around somebody who goes off screwing everyone in sight. I can already predict that he’ll be the first of many who won’t support me, who will stab me and twist the knife without a hint of pity.

  Talking to strangers is one thing. Being judged by people you don’t know is bearable because, at the end of the day, they’re just strangers who will disappear if you don’t want to see them again. But it’s different when you share something this big with your best friend—the one with so many stories to tell about the two of you, the one who’s always there for you when things go bad.

  I don’t know why my thoughts are so negative. The silence remains, but the next thing I feel is Gabriel’s arms wrapping around me. I bury my head in his right shoulder, wanting the stupid tears to stop coming, but I can’t help it.

  He strokes my hair as my body starts shaking, and no words could be more important than the warmth of this moment—of knowing that, no matter what happened, he’s here, holding me tight.

  It means the world to me.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” he finally asks, and I don’t want to raise my eyes to face him.

  “I think I was … ashamed,” I answer, my voice still muffled by the now-damp sleeve of his shirt.

  “Ashamed? Ashamed of what?”

  “I—I don’t know … of everything. I couldn’t bear it if you looked at me differently.”

  “You think I would do that?”

  “I don’t … I don’t know anything anymore, Gabriel. I am so scared.”

  He continues to hug me until I calm down.

  “I’d never look at you differently, Ian. You could have a highly contagious disease that would kill you in twenty-four hours, and I’d still give you a hug. And that’s not the case. How are you feeling?”

  “As if nothing is worth it anymore.”

  “Not a great way to feel.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “I don’t know a lot about HIV, but I do know it doesn’t have to be fatal anymore, right?”

  “Everyone tells me that, and I know I’m blowing it out of proportion. But I don’t know if they say that just to make me feel better, or if they’re trying to say that whatever doesn’t kill you will make you suffer.”

  “You’re not blowing it out of proportion, Ian. I have no idea what it must be like to go through something like this. If I could rip that virus out of you, I swear I’d be working on it this very second, but that’s not how things work.”

  “I know.”

  “But I don’t want you to give up on life, either. It’s not a death sentence.”

  “I know that, Gabriel. I know it’s possible to have a fulfilling life. I know that if I follow the proper treatment, my life expectancy will be the same as that of someone without the virus. I know that it’s just one pill a day and blood tests every three months. But knowing is not the same as feeling. Knowing is not living without the fear that things might go wrong. It doesn’t keep me from spending every waking moment thinking about what it’s going to be like from now on. What if I want to have a relationship, or want to travel somewhere? What’s going to happen if the medicine stops being manufactured? Hell, I never even thought about studying abroad, but who knows if I can even do that anymore? Will I be able to work as a flight attendant or truck driver, or even backpack through South America? Not that I’ve ever wanted any of those things, but the idea that I might not be able to do them annoys me. I can’t stop thinking that my freedom ended the moment the test results came back. Maybe I did something to deserve all this. Today a friend told me that I can’t live in New Zealand because they have some kind of restriction against HIV-positive immigrants. I never thought about living in New Zealand, but the fact that this virus took that choice away from me makes me so … pissed.”

  I know I don’t sound rational at all in this moment, but I don’t care. All I want is to get this virus out of my system. Words keep tumbling out, one on top of the other, no filter, as though I am only now able to spew all my thoughts without holding back my pain or fears.

  “And the worst part is that it would all be different if I’d made different choices,” I go on. “No one says that, but I know what everyone thinks: They think of what an idiot I was for not using a condom, of how stupid I was for letting one night that wasn’t even spent with someone special determine the rest of my life. No one needs to tell me that, because peoples’ eyes say everything. That’s what the nurse thinks, it’s what you think, it’s probably what the friend I talked to thinks.”

  “You can look at things from that negative perspective, Ian,” Gabriel responds. “Or you can choose to believe that the people who support you are truly worried and want to see you well. That instead of judging you, they simply aren’t, and that’s the end of it. You think you’re the only one to have had sex without a condom in all of human history?” He laughs. “We all screw up on a daily basis, Ian, and we snap out of the guilt or the thought that we deserve the bad things that happen to us along the way. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t cry or worry about your diagnosis, but try to look at it as a fact of life, not a punishment. You are the best person I know, man, and I’m sure you don’t deserve this. But bad things happen to good people. There’s no retributive system. Things just are what they are.”

  “But it’s so … hard.”

  “I know. Or, I can imagine. But life goes on. You’re still the same person I met on that day my car broke down and your dad stopped to give me a hand. To me, you’re the same guy who dreams of living without money problems and who’s planning on becoming an economist for the Central Bank of Brazil; you’re still here, right by my side, even if you have a weird knack for numbers and mathematical formulas that I’ll never understand. And you can still do everything you want, Ian. If you want to go live in fucking New Zealand, I know you can figure it out, because that’s just the kind of person you are, period. This virus is not going to end your life. First of all, because it’s not that important, and second, if it insists on getting in the way of your life and dreams, I’m going to find a way of kicking its ass myself, you hear me?”

  I smile, and he puts his arm around my neck,
squeezing me into an even tighter hug than before.

  “I don’t want you to think that every single thing that comes up in your life will make me stop being friends with you, dummy. I don’t care how hard you try to stay silent, I’ll insist until you tell me everything that’s going on. Because you chose to be my friend and to tell me what’s going on in your life, just like I tell you all the bad things that happen in mine, and that’s not going to go away overnight.”

  His hands move toward my face, and his thumbs dry the tears under my eyes.

  “Life is going to be different, Ian, but you can’t stop living it. And I’m here for anything you might need, anytime you need it. Even if it’s four a.m. on a Monday and you need to talk about how the moon is positioned in relation to all the stars in the universe. Just grab the phone and give me a call, because I’ll always be ready to pick it up.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” I say, smiling in between tears. “When I start bugging you, you’re going to regret those words.”

  “You can’t bug me any more than you already do. I’ll just have to endure it.”

  “Thanks, man” is all I can muster.

  He smiles, and I reach for the door handle so I can go back home.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  “I think I’m … gonna go back home?”

  “You made me drive all the way from Seropédica on a Thursday, and you think you’re gonna get rid of me that easily?” He finally turns on the ignition, and the motor makes the tired sound of a machine that has been running way past its prime. “Close the door. We’re going to Copacabana. I’m starving.”

  THE TWINS LOOK LIKE THEY’VE been possessed by a horde of Tasmanian devils. They run from one corner of the living room to the other, fighting for the remote control, since Caíque wants to watch Adventure Time and Raí wants to watch a rerun of Everybody Hates Chris.

  “You’ve already watched it a million times!”

  “At least I understand what’s going on in the story!”

  “Mooooom, tell Raí to stop being such a brat!”

  “Mooooom, Caíque won’t let me have the remote!”

  If you could hear them from a distance, you would think they were a pair of snot-nosed six-year-olds with their thumbs in their mouths. But no. Both are already twelve and continue to behave like overgrown babies.

  “Victor, can you please find a way to deal with your brothers?” I hear my mom’s voice from the kitchen, trying to project over their bellows and the imminent threat of a fight between the two of them as they start rolling on the floor over the remote.

  “It wasn’t my idea to take the Xbox and computer away from them!” I answer, knowing that if they weren’t grounded, they’d be yelling at their Overwatch teammates on their headsets and blowing up heads left and right. Weirdly, when they interact with each other in the virtual world, they almost behave the way a normal person would expect of brothers.

  “VICTOR!” my mother shouts, and I know that particular tone of voice means, “Don’t you start your sass with me, you ungrateful boy, or you’ll be next!” I roll my eyes, take a deep breath, and get up from the coffee table, where I was writing my review of The Secret in Their Eyes for my Latin American film class. I go to the outlet, squat, and with a mischievous smile, unplug the TV.

  My brothers freeze, a tangle of skinny hands and feet and fresh scratches, stopping their fight to stare at me.

  “Hey, this is between the two of us!” Caíque yells.

  “Yeah, turn the TV back on, Victor!” Raí adds.

  “So now you two have decided to become friends?”

  “The enemy of my enemy …” Caíque doesn’t finish the sentence.

  “Okay, the two of you, for the love of God—shut up! I’m trying to study.” I walk to the bookshelf and pick out two books, one by Stephen King and one by Dean Koontz. “Start reading these. I promise they’re cool. Dead people and ghosts.” I lower my voice, as if sharing a secret: “If you let me finish my homework, I’ll let you use my computer after Mom goes to bed. I’ll say you’re in my room watching a movie. I’ll even let you play your damn Xbox, but the volume will have to stay really low, and you can’t say a word.”

  “You’re gonna let us play all night?” asks Raí.

  “Only till two, because if you don’t wake up tomorrow, Mom will say it’s my fault. Deal?”

  They both consider it for a moment.

  “Can we eat your cookies?” asks Raí.

  “The ones in the pantry,” adds Caíque.

  “If you can keep quiet until Mom goes to bed, you can even eat the pantry door for all I care. Do we have a deal?” I ask.

  The Tasmanian devils drop the books on the table and run to the kitchen, shoving each other to determine who’ll get to open the cookies.

  I try to focus on my homework, but my phone buzzes. Sandra is calling me, and I come to the conclusion that I’ll never be able to finish this assignment, so I give up on trying. I grab my phone and plop down on the couch.

  “So, what you up to?” she asks from the other end.

  “Trying to stay sane while my brothers are deprived of their video games. And writing a paper.”

  “Are you done?”

  “I have the words This movie depicts, but that’s it.”

  “Wanna hang out?”

  “Right now?”

  “Yeah. I’m hungry, there’s no food in the fridge, my parents went to the theater, and I’m utterly bored. Wanna come over?”

  “My dad is working tonight, and my mom is by herself with the twins. I think she’d never forgive me if I went out right now. But you can stop by if you want.”

  “Okay.”

  She hangs up, and precisely five seconds later, I hear the doorbell.

  That’s the advantage of being best friends with your next-door neighbor.

  +

  “Any update on the ‘Avoiding a boy I really like because I’m afraid to fall in love’ soap opera?” Sandra asks once we’re in my room, door locked. She’s lying on my thigh as we both stare up at the ceiling.

  She finishes eating a turkey-and-cheese sandwich she made for herself in the kitchen, and I toss a plush Bulbasaur doll into the air and catch it. My brothers finally calmed down and decided it would be a good idea to stop fighting, all for the privilege of playing video games late at night, and now they’re sitting on the living room couch, watching the evening news and devouring chocolate cookies.

  “Since when are you so interested in my love life?”

  “Since it started happening, which is big news in itself. Come on, Victor, gimme some drama. My life is boring, and I can’t stand watching TV shows anymore, so I need some real drama. Come ooooon!”

  “You’re such a cliché, you know that?”

  “I am?”

  “Yeah. If my life were a romantic comedy, you’d be the female character who’s best friends with the lead. You’re like a mix of the mentor and the comic relief, because I bet you have a lot of great advice to give, but you use none for your own life.”

  “In my movie,” she retorts, “you’re the trope, and this is the scene where the stereotypical gay best friend tells the main character about his love life, because he obviously has a funny voice, is full of little quirks, and even dyes his hair blue. We’re all clichés, Victor.”

  “Whoa, now I’m offended. Which little quirks are these?”

  “You just rolled your eyes,” she said, even though she’s still looking at the ceiling, not at me. “Am I right?”

  Shit.

  “Okay, we’re all walking clichés.”

  “We’re clichés within clichés, but now skip the script and start spilling the beans about the latest developments in your telenovela.”

  I remain silent.

  “So …” I begin, and I notice Sandra is still quiet, waiting for my words. “Nothing has happened since I last updated you.”

  “What?!” She seems offended. “Nothing? Not one tiny thing? No
t even a hello from him? Not even a poop or eggplant emoji?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  “It sounds like we have a problem that demands an immediate solution.”

  Before I realize what’s happening, Sandra leaps from the bed and runs straight to my phone, grabbing it and unlocking the screen.

  “Sandra, don’t!” I say, because I know she’s about to open my chat with Henrique and say something. That’s what she always does, and sometimes I think it’s funny, but right now I don’t want her to.

  My upset tone turns her fun smile to a serious expression. She locks the screen and gives the phone back to me, as if she were holding a bomb about to explode.

  “Victor, I’ll only say it again because we’ve been friends for a long time and I value our relationship: You like this Henrique guy in a way I’ve never seen you like anyone else, but you’re letting your fear get the best of you.”

  “So what if I am?” All this talk of me having to give Henrique a shot despite everything else is starting to wear me out. “You’re always talking about me being fearless, about believing in love and letting myself get into a relationship with a boy who might make me sick, but I doubt you’d do the same thing if you were in my shoes.”

  “If you really knew me, you’d know that would be the least of my concerns in a relationship. But apparently all these years have taught you nothing about me, and it seems I don’t know the first thing about you, either. And HIV is not a sickness, you moron.”

  “So now you’re the big relationship expert, are you?”

  “Come on, Victor! Imagine what it must be like for him to like someone who also likes him but won’t take another step forward because of something so minor. Where’s the boy who came home all excited after finally going on a Tinder date with a normal person?”

  “Something minor? If he’d told me about his status during the first date, maybe nothing would have happened. We probably wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now.”

  “You have zero empathy, Victor. If you think this is hard for you, try putting yourself in his shoes for a moment, and think about what you would have done.”