Am I the “I” in HIV?

I’ve had a low grade fever for nearly three weeks now. I remember the first morning I woke up sick. My alarm rang and as I scooted over in my bed to hit the snooze button I felt the familiar weakness that I normally associate with the flu.

My very first thought was “Oh fuck, its HIV.”

I have become consumed with fear ever since I had unprotected sex early last month (I fucked without a condom….). My anxiety had already been affecting my sleep, and now that I actually was sick my fear escalated to panic.

That morning I looked at myself in the mirror. Everything looked okay until I opened my mouth. The back of my tongue was coated in a thick, white sheet of bacteria. Now this isn’t the first time I have had a white tongue. Its actually a normal reaction to your body fighting off an infection, and I had seen it on myself many times before, but this time I felt that it was something different. I remembered being at Steaks apartment a few months before and noticing that my tongue was in the same condition. “So my tongue has been like this for a few months,” I realized. That couldn’t be normal.

Online I looked up HIV symptoms. I read that a fever is usually the first discernible sign, as well as a white tongue. I looked at pictures of HIV infected tongues on the internet and was terrified to see that they looked just like mine.

Then another weird thing happened. I stepped outside to smoke my first morning cigarette and was unpleasantly surprised when the first hit of smoke tasted nothing like the way its supposed to. My menthol light cigarettes suddenly tasted like burnt cough syrup. The taste was so disgusting that I couldn’t manage more than a few puffs. I tried different cigarettes in the pack to make sure it wasn’t just a rogue rotten one, but they all tasted the same.

I researched “altered sense of taste” on google and the first website that popped up was a Canadian HIV/AIDS organization. I was too terrified to research further – fearing that an altered sense of taste was a definitive sign of an HIV infection.

I also remembered that my skin had suddenly become a lot worse a few months ago, right around the time I first noticed the white stuff on my tongue. I thought I had paid my dues to the acne gods back in high school, but suddenly and unexplainably my acne returned, though only on my back.

I felt a little reassured when I realized that the acne and the white tongue pre-dated my unprotected sex by more than a month, but then I realized that there were a few times in the past when I could have been exposed:

-In August of 2006, as I wrote about in my blog “Drugs, Violence, Sex and Dreams,” I injected heroin with a needle given to me by a homeless drug addict.

-About three months ago, I had sex (for only the second time) with a guy who tried to fuck me (when I was too drunk to stand) bareback, though I had enough sense at the time to tell him to put a condom on. He did, but I couldn’t shake off the fear that maybe he had stuck his small cock in before I told him to stop.

-Also about three months ago, I had sex with a guy (which I wrote about in my blog “I fucked someone else….with VASOLINE“) who, though I watched him put a condom on, pulled out of me as he came. Why, I started fearing, would he have pulled out of me if he had a condom on? Perhaps he took it off like an asshole when I wasn’t looking.

I went to see a doctor after my fever didn’t dissipate and he suggested that maybe I have the beginning stages of pneumonia. I went through a five day antibiotic treatment to no avail. Then he put me on even stronger antibiotics, which also had no effect.

I know that viruses are not affected by antibiotics.

My fever was a roller coaster. Some days it would become so bad that I was nearly bed ridden, and other days I was able to function and work (hence my last six posts, which all took place since I have been sick.)

I was too afraid to get an HIV test. I imagined sitting in a crammed office with a doctor, and I pictured the awkwardness in his face when he is forced to tell me “You tested positive for HIV antibodies.” Maybe I would throw up in a nearby garbage can, to overrun with negative emotions to keep anything inside of me.

Then I imagined having to call my parents. I could hear my mom screaming when I sobbingly confessed that I had HIV.

I imagined having to tell all of my future lovers about my HIV status – and all my previous ones. Grant would surely never want to see me again.

I saw myself crying to my family, saying “I guess I won’t be able to have a family like I always wanted.”

Finally, I pictured myself in a hospital bed, thin and wasting away. The disease would eventually rob me of my good looks, and then I would die ugly and insignificant.

Finally, two days ago, I decided to go get tested at a free testing center in South Beach. I called the hotline and scheduled an appointment for the following day at noon. I had actually done the same thing two weeks before, but in the end I was too afraid and so I canceled.

The night before I had a panic attack. A full blown panic attack, the likes of which I haven’t seen in many years. I was sure that I was going to test positive. I imagined – how could I finish school or ever get a job when I know that its all futile, that eventually I am going to die young?

The day of the test I saw a client, the foot tickler guy, at 10am. As he tickled me into the seventh gates of hell I suddenly wanted to grow big and strong and break through the bondage lines, roar and pound my chest at the pedi-pervert, and smash through the wall of the bedroom, leaving a perfect imprint of me in the wall for his partner to find.

The INCESSANT tickling did little to take my mind off of the impending test.

I got to the CVS pharmacy, where the testing center was, and sat in the small waiting room. A black, transgendered women greeted me and then brought me into a small office. An oral swab was taken, and then she told me to return in twenty minutes for the results.

I paced around the block a few times, looking at the clock on my phone every two minutes. “How the fuck am I going to tell my parents?” I thought. “Who is going to have sympathy for yet another gay guy who yet again made some stupid decisions and got himself infected with HIV?”

I returned to the office and saw that the women who had tested me was smiling. I felt a euphoria wash over me. Then she said “It still needs one more minute. You’ll hear the beep when its done.”

I paced back and fourth in the small room until I heard the beep. Then I sat down next to her and started seeing spots in my vision.

“You’re test is negative” she said. “You see, if you were positive, there would be two lines here, but theres only one.”

Then I started sobbing. I cried long and hard. My voice was shaky but I was able muster out the words “Thank fucking god.”

PS: Does anyone know of any HIV volunteer programs that exist? I really want to join “the fight” or something equally gay sounding.