He flashes an awkward smile, because he also doesn’t really seem to know how to start the conversation, especially with someone he doesn’t know. This is starting to feel like a job interview.
An agonizing job interview.
“Everything is so new,” he tries to summarize.
“And scary.”
“And scary,” he echoes, nodding. “But it’s not the end of the world, is it?”
“It just looks like it,” I say with a smile. I take another sip of the coffee. “But no, it’s not the end of the world. I mean, look at me: I’m alive, right? A few episodes of that summertime sadness and a well of irony, but I’m here, and that’s all that matters.”
“Is it hard?” he asks, and I notice his voice is soft because he doesn’t want anyone around to listen to our conversation. So I lower mine, too, and I’m sure we look like two revolutionary leaders conspiring to overthrow a totalitarian regime.
“Depends on what you see as hard. It’s annoying, draining, and exhausting … but hard is a really strong word. Maybe psychologically hard. Physically, only once in a while.”
“I’m sorry, I …” Ian breathes heavily, and he takes another sip of his coffee, trying to get his thoughts back on track. But he doesn’t manage to say anything else.
“You’re scared.” I say what’s on his mind, and he agrees. “Scared of what other people will say, scared of what your life is going to look like from now on, scared that you will be rejected, and scared of all the things you’ll need to put into perspective because of this virus. Am I right?”
“Spot on.”
“I know what it’s like.” From the outside, I might seem like the HIV guru who has already overcome all these fears, but they are still here, hidden somewhere. Ian doesn’t need to know that, though.
Silence takes over our table, as if the words were gunshots, capable of hitting someone right in the forehead, splattering brains and bone all over the place.
I try to focus on being the hard-and-wise older person at the table and keep talking. “Say what you’re thinking. No restrictions. We don’t even know each other, so if I pass judgment, you have nothing to worry about. Not that I will, of course. I’m not that kind of person.”
He smiles again and looks me right in the eye. It usually bothers me when someone does that, but his brown eyes seem so innocent and well-intentioned at the same time that I don’t mind it, because I know he’s not trying to decipher me.
“I’m thinking that I could have been more careful, and everything could have been different.”
“And also that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a time machine so you could go back to when you had unprotected sex and knock down the bedroom door and yell, ‘Don’t do it!’ ”
“That’s about it.” He smiles.
“It’s not very healthy to think about the impossible.”
“It’s inevitable.”
“You know what I thought when I got my results?” I ask.
“What?”
“That I should have been more careful, and everything could have been different. And that time machines should definitely have already been invented.”
He smiles again. “It’s bizarre, isn’t it?” Ian asks, grabbing his coffee cup with both hands and swirling it around the table. Uneasy, uncomfortable, unsettled. “We know exactly what to do, but then we think it will never happen to us, until it does. And then we blame ourselves, thinking that everything could have been different.”
“We think we’re a bizarre kind of superhero, and that the stories we hear don’t happen in real life. As if HIV were a big collective delirium that only happens to people in sad movies that get nominated for Oscars,” I add. “But this isn’t about blame. We only blame ourselves for a little while. I know it’s all very recent for you, Ian, but that feeling will go away eventually, or at least you’ll find a way to tuck it back in a corner of your mind. Because, in the end, it is not about blame.”
“For you, what’s been the worst part?” he asks.
“My mind. Definitely my mind and the things that it creates out of my fears. They never go away, you know?” He nods. I keep talking. “Maybe that’s the biggest lie in the history of lies that the doctors tell you to make you feel better. They say, ‘You get used to it with time. In time, you don’t even remember that you have the virus, because you become undetectable, and your odds of transmitting it are zero, and the side effects of the medicine aren’t as bad, and you take your pill automatically. As if it were for high blood pressure. As if it were for diabetes.’ ” I let out a dry laugh. “But it’s a lie, at least for me. Not a single day goes by when I don’t remember the virus, and not one goes by when I don’t worry that I’m not exactly like everyone else anymore.”
Ian looks at me attentively.
“I’m sorry, I …” I smile humorlessly, running my hands over my red hair in an attempt to tame it. “I should be trying to make you feel better, and look at what I’m doing.”
“It’s not a problem. It’s great that someone is being honest, for a change.”
“Doctors only think they know what happens in here,” I say, pointing at my own head. “And of course we process it all in our own way. When I have doctors’ appointments, I meet a lot of people in the waiting rooms, and one thing I’ve learned is that we each view the virus—and life with the virus—differently. I met a woman who got it from her husband because he was cheating on her, but she forgave him and was pregnant, on treatment so the child would be born without the virus. And a forty-five-year-old man, father to a fifteen-year-old girl, with enough money to travel wherever he wanted every six months. When we talked, he seemed determined to make things work and said that he didn’t want to give up on life, that he loved to see the world, and that his diagnosis had given him a new perspective on how much he could still enjoy. Then he stopped coming to the clinic, and one day I saw on the news that he had jumped from a twelfth-floor window.” I shrug. “The thing is, even with all the information out there, people are still shitting themselves with fear of having something like this in their lives, but everyone responds to bad news in a different way.”
“And how did you take the bad news?” he asks.
I look away from him for a few seconds and gaze at the name scribbled on the side of the coffee cup next to a smile that the barista drew.
I try to organize my thoughts.
“At first, I had this fixed idea that the clinic had screwed up my blood test and that the reagent they had used had gone bad.” I laugh when I remember how that coping mechanism had seemed like the easiest at the time. I scratch my cheek and feel my unkempt beard poking the tips of my fingers. “I redid the test at a private lab, and it also came back positive. So I started thinking that the private lab was wrong and went to another and took the test again. When I realized it was not a bad joke or a collective mistake, I started thinking about what I had to do. I read a lot about the history of the virus and decided that not taking care of myself would be stupid, so I started treatment.”
“Did you have any side effects?”