Hen Rodriguez:[image] Officially negative! I feel like this takes about 75% of the worry away: we both went into last night almost certainly negative.
Me:[phew.gif]
Grinning, I watched the man in the gif breathe out his relief a few more times.
Me:I guess now we wait and try not to bite our nails until all the other results come in. Good times, good times.
Henry Rodriguez:*crunch*
Me:*double crunch* lol. Ttyl.
I blew out a breath and reached out to run a finger along the still-damp side of my Frapuccino cup. That hadn't been as awkward as it could have been. We'd even joked around a little. Hopefully it would stay that easy over the next, yikes, few months. This was turning out to be the opposite of a forgettableone-night stand, no matter our intentions. When you need to keep someone updated on your health status for the next three to six months, you kinda can't ghost them even if you wanted to. Luckily for me, Hen seemed to be both easygoing and easy to talk to. I just hoped it stayed that way if anything came up positive.
3
Henry
Day 6 (end of Week 1)
"So you just… forgot?" asked my friend Jamal with wide eyes. "How do you just forget, for fuck's sake? How old are you and how long have you been sexually active? Fuck, man."
It was the next weekend and after sitting on my sense of guilt throughout the week, I'd needed to unload on someone. Jamal, as my best friend, got stuck with the job, though I was reconsidering the wisdom of that choice given his aghast reaction. "I don'tknow," I whined, nervously twisting my hair into a bun and then letting it fall free again. "I was just… caught up in things? And he was really hot? And I just… had a brain fart."
Jamal's deep brown eyes narrowed. "How drunk were you?"
"Not that drunk!" I protested, spinning my coffee mug between my hands. "We were both tipsy and happy but not out of control."
He forked up a bite of his eggs, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed. Putting down his fork gently, he dropped theskeptical expression he'd been wearing and regarded me with a new gentleness. "And how did he react once you realized what happened? I mean, wait, how didyoueven react? I think I'd lose my mind. Did you blame each other?"
I shook my head. "Not really. I immediately apologized to him, I think, because obviously it was my job and I failed at it and I felt awful. He seemed… ok? I mean, as ok as you can get with being told you might have just been exposed to HIV or god knows what else. We traded verbal last-test results, and he suggested we go get tested. He seemed to know more than me about, like, how this all works."
Jamal twisted his lips. "As in, he's done this before? You think this is a thing for him? That'd be creepy as hell. Or dumb as hell. Maybe both."
Had it seemed like he'd done this before? "Not really," I mused, working it out in my head even as I said the words. "It was more like he's maybe well-read or knows a lot about sexual health? Like he was able to recite back what he'd seen, rather than like he was speaking from experience." I shrugged and ate some of my pancakes. I may be stressed, but hell if I was going to let that cut into my maple syrup ingestion habits. "I felt kinda dumb in comparison. Like, I'm a thirty-five year old sexually active gay man and I managed to just not know these HIV facts? How?" I finished, waving my fork for emphasis.
Jamal frowned at my self-criticism. "You're not expected to know everything. Google-sensei exists for a reason." He sat forward a bit. "But ok, let's focus on the important stuff. What results have you gotten so far? Is everything ok?"
Nodding, I picked up my phone and thumbed to the patient portal app. "I've gotten four or five results. Let me find… yeah, ok. Trichomoniasis: negative. Gonorrhea: negative. Chlamydia: negative." I paused, looking up. "I don't even know what trichomoniasisis. All I know is I don't want to have it." Ireturned my attention to my phone. "Results are still pending for syphilis and HIV antibodies. They weren't able to test for Herpes because I don't have any sores. Yay," I added dryly, circling a finger in the air in a deadpan celebration. "Pretty much everything is curable other than herpes and HIV, so the other negatives are kinda not a big deal even though they still feel like they are."
“And you’re not contacting him until you have everything?”
I nodded. “It feels weird, though. Like, every time a negative comes in I kinda want to call someone and go ‘fuck, yeah!’ but there’s no one to call except him and that would be weird as all hell. Not to mention stalker-ish.” I forked up another bite of pancakes.
He thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, probably wouldn’t go over that well. You can always text me, though. I can cheer with the best of ‘em. ‘Yay!’” he enunciated in a whisper-shout, sticking his arms up in the air like the cheerleader he’d once been. “‘You aren’t infectious!’”
I couldn’t suppress a snort at that. Jamal, six-foot-six and two hundred fifty pounds, was not exactly a cheerleader stereotype, but somehow he managed to pull off the air of enthusiasm the role required, and he’d led his squad to victory more times than I could count, so the dude had mad skills. I just didn’t want him tossing me up in the air, so I tried to stay on his good side. “Always a plus,” I managed to say without laughing out loud at his antics, then sobered as a new thought broke through. “I’m really nervous about the HIV test, though. I mean, I know we both came back negative on day 1, so it’s really unlikely either of us is infectious, but still. HIV is…life changing. Scary as fuck.”
He took a slow sip of his milkshake - he was the only person I knew who would willingly combine a milkshake and eggs - and then put his glass down with a nod. “Yeah I can understand that. I don’t want to directly compare pregnancy and HIV because,well, they have really different outcomes, but it kinda reminds me of pregnancy scares for men who fuck women. Like, holy fuck, the entire trajectory of your life could just…shift. After one moment of forgetfulness or neglect with someone whose name you might not even know.”
“That’s pretty close, actually,” I acknowledged. “I mean, one ends with a dependent for eighteen years and the other ends with antiretrovirals for life but…yeah. ‘Oh, shit’, you know?”
“I hear you.” He reached across the table to pat my arm. “But like you said, it’s really unlikely anything will come of this. Except maybe…” A sly look crossed his face.
I didn’t like when he got that look and I regarded him warily. “What?”
“So you’re required to stay in contact with this guy, yeah?”
“Yeah…”
