Greg didn’t bring it up right away, which I understand. He’d had some really negative reactions.

I didn’t want to make him feel like I was distancing myself. What I told him was, “I do want to get close to you. Let me go with you to an appointment, just to go over what we can do and make sure we’re safe about it.”;

It was hard convincing him I was for real. I had to keep telling him, “no, it’s not that I don’t want you, it’s that I don’t want it. They’re not the same thing.”;

He agreed to take me to the doctor’s, but I don’t think he said a word the whole way. Like I said, I got where he was coming from. Of course you’ve got your own shit to deal with, which must be hard enough. But then, you’ve also got to worry about your partner, and how you’d feel if something happened. That’s a lot for anyone to handle.

So we were both pretty tense, but then we met the doctor. She walks into the office like, “So, how many times have you popped the bubble?”; That’s her first question. I’m cracking up like,”EXCUSE me? Do I know you?”; That immediately broke the tension in the room and got us both laughing.

She was really a great doctor to go to. I liked how liberal she was, and how she was so calm and up-front. She was like, “Okay, oral’s still an option. Thing is, if your gums bleed every now and then, you need to watch it. Any blood at all and you should wait until it goes away.”;

When we got into fucking, we talked about making sure we play safe, cause–she called it “rupturing”;–whenever you’re fucking, there’s the possibility you might tear or bleed a little. So she said, “well, if it gets to the point where you’re noticing a little bit of pinkness in your stool, you probably need to hold off from anal sex even with protection.”;

She just basically told us to be wise about it, which was nice to hear. I guess cause there’s SO much out there about how dangerous HIV is, it can scare you shitless, you know? Helps to realize that there are these simple things that work, even when you’re with a positive guy.

Actually, Greg needed to hear that more than I did. He was constantly afraid of getting me sick. I remember this one time, he cut himself chopping vegetables and it was this huge thing. “Don’t even go near the kitchen! Stay out there!”; I’m like, “well it’s not airborne! Throw some bleach on it, you know?”; At one time, it was so bad that when we went out to the movies there would be a seat in between us. He’d say, “oh, that’s so you can put your bag there,”; but no, it was cause he didn’t want to sit next to me.

It was weird because, you can’t possibly think you’re going to give someone HIV just by sitting next to them in a movie. He knew better, but he always felt infectious, like he was the plague or something. He was scared for himself, and scared for me, and that would make him do paranoid stuff like that. It was more of an emotional thing I guess, like him getting close to me was dangerous.

That made it hard to keep things going, especially with sex. With him it was always, well, we can do more but we really shouldn’t. He was just plain scared to have sex with me, even with a condom, even when we did everything possible to make it safe. I tried to tell him I was okay with it. I knew he was positive. I knew the risks. I knew what I was doing and I wanted to make this relationship work. But he still couldn’t get over it.

Eventually it got to be too much. We broke up. That was really painful for me cause I liked him a lot, and I always felt like it was just that one thing. If I could have made him understand, I was taking my own risks…he wasn’t responsible for me. It was my choice to be in the relationship and I wanted to make it work. Just couldn’t convince him.

It sucked that it ended, but I think we both came out better than we went in. I certainly learned a lot. Now if I were dating a positive guy, I would be more sensitive from the start. You hear people ask, “well, would you date someone who had it,”; as if it’s only an issue for the negative guy. Not true.

Now I can see the other side of it. I hope he can see my side too–at least on some level–and realize that there are guys out there for him, when he’s ready. Dating Greg, I started to put myself in his place a little bit. I think we could all do more of that sometimes.

Robert, 22