I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

By the time I graduated high school in 1983, AIDS was no secret.

It wasn’t getting the national attention it should have, Reagan was still pretending it didn’t exist, and gay men were dying across the country.

In Central Kentucky, I felt isolated. I felt protected.

I won’t say I was as careful as I should have been.

I went off to college, also in central Kentucky, and it was very much the same. Still not as much attention as it should have been getting. Reagan might have mentioned. it by then, and by this time the number of deaths were staggering.

Still, I felt isolated, protected.

In September 1987, I moved to Atlanta.

Suddenly, I wasn’t in little “ole” Kentucky.

Suddenly, I knew gay people. Suddenly, I was out of the closet.

I was much more careful, but not as careful as I should have been.

By the time I left Atlanta, it was a full-blown national nightmare.

I moved back to Central Kentucky.

I was terrified. I’d met men who had been diagnosed with HIV and AIDS, it was very close to home.

And yet. It was 1989, and I had never been tested.

I’d seen the posters around town. In the bars. On the bulletin boards at school.

Finally. I said I’ll do it.

I drove to the health department on Newtown Road. Around to the back. In a satellite trailer, similar to the ones they use at high schools now.

I went in, took a number.

I was scared to death.

I waited about 16 hours. Actually, I don’t remember how long it actually was. It seemed like a decade.

I was taken back. I was asked some questions. I was told the test could be anonymous.

The nurse was very sweet. Caring. Gentle.

She drew the blood.

I was given a sheet of paper with a number on it. As it was anonymous, it would be how I’d be matched to my result when I came back.

In two weeks.

What the fucking fuck?

If the wait to draw blood was a decade, the two-week wait was a century. Everything was in slow motion those two weeks. Work. School. Rehearsal.

Two weeks later, I made the trek back out to the trailer.

I was taken into a room with a counselor. I was told they always have a counselor just in case it’s positive.

The envelope was opened.

A breath was taken.

I was told

It was.

Negative.

The emotion that rushed over me, was immense.

How could this be? I was only kind of careful. Surely it was wrong.

But it was not.

Fast forward 35 years and I’m tested at every physical. It’s part of my routine blood work for cholesterol and my A1C.

I’m still not sure how I remained negative.

I spent almost 12 years in New York City. I was always kind of careful.

I’m forever grateful.

So many people in my generation were not so lucky.

The care has come a long way, but there are still people worldwide, who are suffering and dying from this horrible disease.