Monte

It began with a tiny piece of paper slid beneath my door. It was a business card, and on the back was a handwritten message, “Hey. We’ve bumped into each other in the elevator a few times. Thought I’d say hello.”

As sad as this is to admit, it was the first invitation to a date that didn’t originate online. I was ecstatic—even more so when he first appeared at my door and turned out to be not only normal, but quite attractive to boot. And successful.

After that first date, we saw each other almost every day. I’d stop by his apartment to say hello; I’d cook him homemade dinners which we ate on the rooftop; he’d take me to parties and art galleries.

I also must admit that the sex was some of the best I had ever had. For two people who had known each other for only a month, it was incredibly intense and passionate. One night, it lasted for an amazing six hours before we collapsed into sleep at four in the morning.

And then it was the day after Valentines Day, and we had just finished watching my first Woody Allen movie. I paused the rolling credits and put on some music. Then I turned to him in bed and asked, “So what’s this health thing you mentioned yesterday but didn’t want to talk about?”

After 20 minutes of silence, through tears, he told me he was HIV positive and had been so for the past seven years.

We had had unprotected sex twice.

I cried more in the three months that followed than I ever had in my life. For those unfamiliar with the HIV testing process, it takes up to three months for blood tests to detect HIV. Until that time, you must wait. And wait I did.

I also had a lot of time to think: To think about all of the ways I had disappointed and hurt my family and friends; I thought about a future filled with sickness, hospital visits, and medical bills; I thought about my parents outliving me and having to suffer through watching their youngest son die.

But what haunted me the most was the prospect that I’d be alone for the rest of my life. How could I expect someone to love me unconditionally when I myself am too selfish to do the same?

So many things to think about in those three months. Every itch and every cough had me convinced it was a symptom, and I was surely positive.

The second week of May, I began calling around to different clinics in the area to setup an appointment to get tested. The woman on the phone from Southwestern Medical Center was an unprofessional, unsympathetic bitch. So I called another clinic, but they were out of rapid tests.

There are two types of HIV tests to choose from. With the traditional test, your blood is sent away to a lab, usually offsite, to be analyzed. Rapid tests are relatively new and cost more. The blood is extracted onto an applicator similar to a pregnancy test. One bar means negative—two bars is positive. The result appears within 10 minutes.

The third clinic I called was in the Cedar Springs area and provides health services almost exclusively to the gay community. The man’s voice on the phone sounded gentle and friendly, so I booked my appointment for that Friday.

Unfortunately, they had already run out of the rapid tests the day of my appointment, so I opted for the traditional test and was told my results would be ready the following Monday. I sat in the waiting room for 10 minutes watching Ugly Betty, and was finally called on by my anonymous number, a combination of my birthdate and social security number. I shook the volunteer’s hand, and told him he could call me Monte.

We sat down in a small room with two, plush, oversized chairs and several boxes of half-empty tissue. A poster on the wall had some clever slogan related to safe sex. Five minutes later, I shook the man’s hand and left. While walking back to my car I felt as if all of the gays in the neighborhood on their lunch breaks were staring at me knowing fully well where I had just come from.

That weekend was surprisingly relaxing. The following Monday, I drove back to the clinic on my lunch break—they don’t give results out over the phone. While sitting in the waiting room, I tried analyzing the faces and expressions of the receptionist and other volunteers trying to decipher my fate.

The volunteer called my number and brought me back to the same room, only this time he didn’t bother closing the door.

“Well, the results came back and you tested not positive.”

When I stumbled back to my car, I buried my head in my hands and cried for the last time out of relief.