Positive Life NSW

What happens when you go too far during a sexual encounter and don’t consider the consequences? Greg Page recounts an anguished and difficult personal story.

I wasn’t going to write this under an alias, but then I decided against it. I decided I was going to explain the situation honestly, ask for the readers’ remorse and then move on. Then I realised that, like a lot of things to do with HIV in the world we live in, I fear that there is never really total understanding and compassion. So I’m keeping my alias. For now.

A few months back I met a ridiculously hot guy and we had ridiculously hot sex. That isn’t the issue. I didn’t know if he was positive or negative and neither did he about me. We fucked with a condom and it was great. Terrific. Fireworks. Kaboom! We decided to meet up again and have more of a session in a hotel room. He has a long-term partner, as do I, so we thought this would make life easier. And it did. Except that after ripping each other’s clothes off (not to mention the complimentary white terry-towelling hotel robes) we got down to business and had ridiculously hot sex again. Kaboom!

Getting carried away
This time, I have to tell you, we didn’t use a condom. I’m not exactly sure why. It just kind of happened. That sounds like a bad cop out and maybe it is, but I can only tell you that I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t thinking. It felt good, yes, but I do remember feeling a twinge of guilt in the back of my mind as it was happening. But the excitement of it all, the very hottest of it all, and that rapturous moment just carried me away. Yes, I got carried away. Well, so did he. Kaboom!

The next day suddenly I remembered what I had done. What we had done. I chatted online with a sexy Egyptian guy who lives in London who likes to cam for me occasionally. He’s also positive and understands a lot of what I’m talking about. Thank God for the internet. I told him what had taken place. “You have to tell him now so he can go and get PEP,” he advised me.

I realised he was right – there was no alternative. Should I not tell him? No, I couldn’t do that. I had to be honest, upfront and live with the consequences. I owed it to him. I believed my fuck buddy was mature enough and together enough to deal with the fact that I’m positive, we had unsafe sex, and he needed to do something about it. I also wondered if he too were positive, as he hadn’t said anything about what we had done after it had taken place. After we lay spent, exhausted and drowsy in each other’s arms. It just kind of disappeared as we were so thrilled by our dangerous liaison in a hotel room, sequestered away from our lovers and interruptions.

Talking about it
I called him as soon as I got offline. “I have something to tell you,” I warned him. “Oh,” he didn’t seem particularly fazed. “I’m positive,” I blurted out. “I thought you might be,” was his cool reply. “And…” I waited to see if there was anything else forthcoming from him, but there didn’t seem to be. “We had unsafe sex yesterday.” “I know,” he sighed. “I’ve been thinking about that.” “I’m guessing you’re not positive then?” I asked quietly. “No, I’m not but it’s not a big issue,” he said quite calmly. “If it happens it happens.”

I wondered why he was being so relaxed about it all. Then he told me that one of his boyfriends had died of AIDS and that they had been having unsafe sex and he was still negative. He didn’t think he was at risk. “And if I am then life is a terminal illness,” he joked. I didn’t laugh. “I think you should go and get PEP,” I told him. “Okay, I’ll think about it,” he replied.

I didn’t know what else to say or do. I couldn’t force him to go and get PEP. I could just warn him that he might seroconvert if he didn’t do it soon. “Leave it with me,” he just said. “Let me know what you decide,” I said quietly. A few hours later he called to tell me that he had just picked up his PEP from the hospital and had started a month’s course. “They also did blood tests, but they won’t know the results for three months,” he said, again quite calmly. I was relieved that he was doing what he should be doing – looking out for his health.

To cut a long story short, my ridiculously hot fuck buddy did the course of PEP and we kept hooking up when we could for sex and it all seemed good. Then it was that three month after period when he had to go and see the doctor. “I’ll be fine,” he said, waving away my worried expression. “I’ve been through this before.”

The result
That night he came and saw me and told me the result. He was positive. I was devastated. Not only had I done something morally wrong, but also – in NSW at least – legally wrong.

Now my fuck buddy has to live with being positive, as well as knowing it was me who infected him. He still has to tell his boyfriend too, which he is dreading. Thankfully, they haven’t had unsafe sex in the last few months. That would be too much for me to cope with.

In a way at least my own experience of sero-converting prepared me for how he would react. There were the waves of grief, the sobbing, the recriminations, the madness and the “I am going to be alone for the rest of my life, which is going to be short!” statements. I tried to comfort him as best I could. I told him that life goes on and – as he had always joked – it was a chronic illness anyway. It seemed almost pathetic, shallow and pointless to say it, but I did. Now I have to live with the fact that I had passed on the virus. It’s not a particularly pleasant thought, but at present my concern is mainly for him and for how he is doing and his health.

Perhaps the moral of this story, if there is one, is it’s not worth taking a chance. Use a condom. Practice safe sex. It’s not just a line on a poster on a wall in some sex-on-premises venue, but a valid statement. Now I carry that sadness for the rest of my life in realising that I failed not only my fuck buddy, but myself as well. Be aware, be very aware! Kaboom!