I have been trying to be silent. My life feels like corners of it are coming undone.  I am supposed to be one of those people that hold it all together and help others.  Well, tonight I am feeling a great urge to say fuck it to that.  Well, I guess I just did.  Fuck it.  And fuck it again.

Last Sunday afternoon I was standing at a urinal at a swank resort hotel in Tucson and trying to take a leak.  The big problem was that as I looked at my dick I felt tears fall on it.  I watched as the tears just fell on my skin and felt them burn a little.  I don’t believe I have ever cried publically before while staring at my dick.  I stood for a long time.  Noting but tears kept on flowing so I zipped up my pants and took a deep breath.  I was nervous about turning the corner and encountering the mirror above the sinks.  I did not want to look like hell.  It was okay to feel like hell since that has been my normal state of being for the past few months, but looking like was not something I was ready to give over to HIV yet.  It was coming soon enough but it was not going to come at that moment.

 What I saw in the mirror was the same as always, Staring back at me was a nice looking guy, muscled, expensively dressed, and miserable.  I realized that I had been self-imposed hostage at an AIDS conference that had little use for people like me.  After all, I was just another infected fucker.  I had crossed the line.  I went from HIV health care provider to a person with HIV.  I guess I fucked up. 

I had been told earlier in the week that the organization that was putting on this conference mission was directed at specific clinical care providers of people with HIV/AIDS and NOT the HIV positive person themselves.  It did not matter I was one of the early board members who served in the early days of epidemic, ate baloney sandwiches and gave tons of money in time, talent, and in very real treasure because it was needed.  I was even elected president, I was asked to take on jobs (along with some many other wonderful and dedicated volunteers) that were often mind-boggling and backbreaking.  But I and MANY OTHERS did them because they also did something else – they raised the quality of care people with HIV were receiving in the community, in clinics and in hospitals.  We had raised a voice and now I had gone and fucked it all up by getting infected myself

Here is a little dirty professional secret.  Some HIV health care providers get uneasy when one of their own becomes infected. Another layer of separation vanishes and fear surfaces.  I honestly do understand this but if anyone wants to know real fear just sit in a fucking exam room and wait for some damn doc or nurse to waltz in and fumble through your chart looking for your T cell results.  That is real fear in this damn numbers obsessed drug driven disease.  A decorated Marine who proudly served our country in Desert Storm told me that getting his T cell results was worse than hunkering down in a fox hole during combat.  At least if you were going to get your head blown off in war it was quick and final.  T cells just bleed on paper.

The worst of it all came when I suggested that there should be HIV positive health care providers elected to the national board.  I assumed those of us living with the disease and practicing HIV care might have something of unique value to offer, and that it  actually might have been greeted with a least some interest.  What happened was like a small nightmare of politeness. No, we were told, that the “general feeling” that amending the rules and bylaws to provide HIV positive representation on the national board was not of any real interest.  The board president did his best impression of President Bush’s disconnect with realty.  The bylaws chair that the rules dictate that I work with to get this amendment before the membership was as cheerful as Miss Gultch coming to take Toto to the kill.  She sternly reminded me, with the board member that was suppose to representing the interest of HV positive health care workers was bobbing and weaving though a haze of booze, that she had no interest in helping on this since change she felt it was “illegal, unethical and in violation of the spirit of the organization,” After her repeated reprimands I just turned away and realized she had spoken a harsh truth.

It would be a “violation of the spirit of the organization” to have seats at the board table for HIV positive health care workers since the organization no longer seemed to really care.  So I walked away and cried on my dick and tried to think of way of caring again.  When I realized I couldn’t come up with any reason letting some tears hit my dick made all the sense in the world.