By EMILY HEIST MOSS
An email arrives from an old friend with the name of your ex-boyfriend in the subject line. In the body of the email, just this: “I’m totally shocked. When was the last time you talked to him?”
You sigh, what now? Is he getting married? Having a baby? You head to Facebook, the one-stop shop for dirt on old flames. No wedding announcement, no ultrasound. Instead, there’s a video. Same crooked grin, same floppy hair, and this:
“This is a clip of me taking my first dose of Atripla, which is a combination antiretroviral drug. My name is Jake Earl, and on May 13, 2013 I was diagnosed with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).”
There’s chaos in your brain for 30 seconds before you’re able to make some sense of what you’re seeing. Order descends and you start a convoluted march through a series of reactions: Self-preservation. Nostalgia. Anger. Fear. Curiosity. Admiration?
*****
Self-preservation: How long has it been? That’s the first thing you inevitably wonder when you see the words HIV next to the face of someone you’ve slept with. Am I safe? It suddenly feels like yesterday that you woke up in his twin bed in an apartment with pizza boxes on the floor and philosophy books stacked on every surface. But it wasn’t yesterday, it was five years ago. It was many partners ago. It was many clean STD tests ago. You’re fine, breathe easy.
Nostalgia: You read his Facebook post 10 more times. Then you read all of the comments. You look at familiar and forgotten names that have liked it. You wonder who he is close to these days. You wonder who he confides in. You drift into a daydream about a particularly blissful week in the spring of 2008. When you follow the train of thought, you remember that it ended in a fiery crash and middle-of-the-night tears on your roommate’s shoulder.
Anger: You remember feeling betrayed, manipulated, outraged. You remember trusting him enough to ignore 10 years of safe-sex lectures and forgo condoms and then abruptly realizing that your trust was misplaced. You’re furious all over again. When it ended, you knew you would never make that mistake again. For the most part, you’ve kept that promise to yourself, never treating your sexual health with nonchalance. For the most part.
Fear: You have had unprotected sex with people you cared about after long, mature, sobering, not-at-all-sexy conversations about past partners and testing habits. With people you trust. Do you really trust them? Can you trust anyone? People forget. People lie. People cheat. People are terrible. You start a map in your head of your partners, branching out to their partners, and their partners’ partners. It’s gigantic, a many-headed monster of potential infection, and it’s only as sprawling as your very limited knowledge allows. You think you should probably never have sex again.
How sure are you that you haven’t been exposed? How much are you willing to risk, for yourself and your partners, by not knowing for certain?
How sure are you that you haven’t been exposed? How much are you willing to risk, for yourself and your partners, by not knowing for certain?
When were you last tested? How sure are you that you haven’t been exposed? How much are you willing to risk, for yourself and your partners, by not knowing for certain?
Curiosity: You haven’t wanted to start a conversation with him in a very long time. But now your ancient hurt feelings are easily dwarfed by the monstrous size of his emergency.
His very public post, frank and eloquent, reminded you that there were reasons you enjoyed his company. When he wasn’t being an asshole, he was an inspired conversationalist. His online candor opens the door for virtually any conversation you want to have, so you start one.
You wonder if his safe sex habits, or lack of them, have changed since you knew him. You wonder how this happened, and how he feels about it. How would you feel about it? Would you share with the world, as he is doing? His post holds some clues:
But this post isn’t about me: It’s about you. When were you last tested? How sure are you that you haven’t been exposed? How much are you willing to risk, for yourself and your partners, by not knowing for certain? Needless to say, I was surprised at my test results. I don’t look like your stereotypical HIV-positive person. But now you ought to ask yourself: Are you really so different from me? If I could have it (along with 1.2 million other Americans), then why not you?
Admiration: He gives you permission to write this essay. After all, he has already posted a letter and a video of himself taking his first dose of an antiretroviral. How much more transparent can you be? He writes this:
It’s interesting how people like us rationalize their way out of thinking they’re at risk for HIV. The stigma has a lot to do with it, as well as the feeling of power; in order to think I might be at risk, I have to think at least one of my partners might have it. “I don’t fuck people like that though,” is a thought I’ve often had, and I’m sure lots of people like me have had.
You have had that thought. Haven’t we all?
Why share something like this where mothers of friends and first-grade classmates and old math tutors can read about it? The Internet is a megaphone that we usually use to broadcast cat videos and memes of crying children, or to prod our “friends” into validating our every observation.
It doesn’t have to be that way; instead we can use it to encourage each other to take care of ourselves, to turn misfortune into an opportunity, to transform shame into something productive. “People like us” need a reminder that we are not immune; we need it to come from within the ranks, from a familiar face. Someone has to be that face, and he nominated himself.
*****
Nearly 1.2 million in my country alone. Twenty percent of them don’t know they’re infected. Imagine the map of your partners’ partners. Five or 10 becomes 50 very quickly. Add another degree of removal and 50 becomes 1,000. Three degrees and you’re at 10,000. How long before your map intersects with the 1.2 million?
Jake let me share his story and I’m going to end with his advice: Be unashamed. Be unafraid. Know your status.
If you need help finding testing locations, or just want to know more about HIV/AIDS, go to hivtest.cdc.gov.
This article was originally published on Role/Reboot here and has been republished with full permission.
Role/Reboot regular contributor Emily Heist Moss is a New Englander in love with Chicago, where she works in a tech start-up. She blogs every day about gender, media, politics and sex at Rosie Says, and has written for Jezebel, The Frisky, The Huffington Post and The Good Men Project. Find her on Facebook and Twitter.
Top Comments
While worldwide the incidence of HIV being transmitted via heterosexual couples and mother to baby is high. This is not the case in Australia. This is because when HIV first came here a number of courageous doctors instituted a strong public health campaign to warn people of the dangers of HIV and also the instituted the world's first needle exchange program which stopped HIV getting into the IV drug using population, and make the leap across. It is also much more acceptable to be gay in Australia, so a lot of gay men are not attempting to have wives anymore.
Fact: In Australia a woman and a man rock up to the Emergency department after being raped by a man - the man gets HIV prophylaxis and the woman doesn't
There are other mechanisms at large also. Men who have sex with men have more sex. They typically report having more sex partners, having more sex with people they don't know, and have sex orgies. In addition they are more likely to use sex toys and their sex is rougher simply due to the anatomy involved and the chances of blood to blood contact in gay sex is much higher then during vaginal sex.
There are women in Australia who have HIV, however the majority of them are migrants who caught HIV overseas, or have recently had sex with a high risk man; migrant, man who has had sex with men, IV drug user.
While no one is "safe". Women should be more concerned about the risk of getting chlymidia, gonorrhoea and developing PID which could lead to the loss of their fertility. Or not having regular pap smears and dying of cervical cancer.
Not really sure why so many people are still thinking HIV is predominately a risk for gay men: 70-80% of all HIV cases worldwide resulted from heterosexual transmission. The man in this article is heterosexual (presumably, with the names Jake and Emily). I know people think they're so far removed from the possibility of contracting HIV and think they're really only at a risk for curable STIs, but the reality is this could happen to anyone--no matter sexual orientation, race, gender, age, education, or location. In the US, certain parts of DC, Chicago and NYC have HIV infection rates/percentages rivaling sub-Saharan Africa. This could happen to anyone. The man in the article is brave by stepping up and talking about it openly, and it's an interesting point he makes about how we all rationalize ourselves out of the reality we're at risking, thinking "I don't fuck people like that", but to take that line as truth to your situation distances you from reality. Practicing safe sex is exactly that--safe sex.
People need to get educated with current material when it comes to HIV. This is no longer the 80s when it was considered a death sentence, but because an HIV diagnosis is still so socially stigmatizing, some people are terrified to tell their closest friends and family--or worse, their own lovers--for fear of judgement, rejection, and those same people they love cutting them out of their lives completely without educating themselves. People need to talk about HIV and what it really means in CURRENT times (i.e. with medicine, it's now a manageable disease akin to diabetes, transmission rates occur approx. 1 in 300 unprotected sex acts with an HIV+ partner, condoms are extremely effective in protecting against HIV (over 97% effective when used correctly--the same margin as getting someone pregnant while correctly using a condom) it can only be spread by certain bodily fluids--blood, sperm, cervical mucous, and breast milk--not saliva, sweat, tears, or urine, etc.). This is not to make light of it by any means, but people need to reduce their fear and automatic recoil instinct for people living with HIV and also realize this disease is almost completely preventable with safe sex.