The Reaction

I laughed, waiting for him to tell me he was just messing with me. When he didn’t say anything, I yelled, “Stop playing!” He told me he wasn’t playing and explained to me that he had received his results from a testing facility and then went to the health department earlier that day to be retested. The original results were confirmed. He had to go back the next week for a TB test and to have his blood drawn for the other tests that needed to be completed. I was still waiting for him to tell me that this was a joke that he had taken too far, something to distract me from my anger, but he didn’t. He just kept saying that he was HIV+.

I was rendered speechless. All I could do was stare at him while my mind scrambled to remember how to formulate words. The fear rose up in me. My knees buckled and I had to take a seat on the edge of the bed. I thought about the time we had spent together over the last few months, and the scandalous acts we had committed. We hadn’t used protection in any of those encounters.

When I was finally able to speak and stand again, I walked over to him. His back was now to me. I wrapped my arms around him and said, “I got your back.” He turned to face me and we stood in each other’s embrace. When we separated, I looked up at him and told him, “If I’m positive, your ass is marrying me!” That made us both laugh. “I’m fucking serious!” I said. “Ok,” he replied. We then headed to the kitchen to get something to drink, and went downstairs.

We continued to talk about what made him decide to get tested now, how this could have happened, when this could have happened, and who could have given it to him. I wasn’t that convinced about his reason to get tested, but decided that the reason wasn’t important. He got tested and now we both know his status. He shared with me that while he had ‘cleared his plate’ of women here at home since we started dating, he was still sleeping with other women pretty much every time he went out of town on a gig. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach.

As he was speaking, a sense of déjà vu came over me. I remembered I had seen this conversation happening three years prior. I didn’t remember all the details, but I saw him telling me that he was positive. He must have noticed the expression on my face because he asked what I was thinking about. I told him. He was offended that I could have thought years ago that he would be telling me something like this. I reminded him that he was not innocent. We’ve talked before about his and his band mates’ whorishness, and he just said he told the DIS (disease intervention specialist) at the health department that this was actually a slow year for him! Something I didn’t find funny.

But then I had to think, what does that say about me that I not only stuck with him, but had unprotected sex with him knowing his lifestyle and his propensity to cheat.

I had become comfortable in the pattern. I thought that after all these years I knew him. Usually, when he did dirt he would wait to see me and we wouldn’t have sex. And when we did get together, he would use a condom. I wouldn’t even have to ask, I knew what it was.

He didn’t do that over these last months. He had been telling me about all these benign encounters – Such-and-Such called me, I flirted with this bartender, I ran into So-and-So and we had lunch, your arch enemy called to get with me, but I resisted. I thought we were good. All but the September gig, I had talked to him before and after every show and on some of those occasions, he was with my family members! It truly never occurred to me that he was sleeping around. Yet, he had been on some Ludacris ish and had hoes in every area code.

Now, I was angry and wanted to curse him out and start tearing up his house!

Yet, somehow I managed to press pause on that and think about what he must have been going through in this moment.

We continued talking. After a few hours, I finally found my strength and got up to leave. He walked me out and asked me to call when I got home. I drove in a mind fog. I don’t even know how I got home. I called him after I had showered and readied myself for bed. We talked another couple of hours about our relationship and his status. He was good and drunk by this time so he was comfortable telling me that of all the girls in his life, he knew that I was the one he should be with and that I was his ‘Number 1’, but he just wasn’t completely satisfied with my sex. REALLY!? This dude right here!

At that, I excused myself from the conversation and tried to get some sleep.

III