NEGATIVE

We had talked for a year
We had met.
There was a chemistry.
He lived in Houston. I was in Austin.
We decided to spend a weekend together.
To see "what if"...
I don't spend weekends with people.
But "what if"...
How many guys want to go there?
I'd like to go there.
So I went.
And it was a good weekend.
We talked and had sex and got to know each other.
We had decided to make plans to see each other again.
And then he left.
And I got a sore throat.
And I kept getting up in the middle of the night to pee.
And it burned when I did, like a hydro peroxide.
I looked down at my penis the next day.
It was inflamed. Enraged.
A brown discharge came out of my body.
The kind you see when you pick a scab.
But this cut was deeper.
He swore he was free of all diseases.
He just had a cough from teaching kindergarten kids.
Maybe it was a urinary tract infection?
I got tested and treated.
And I was positive. At 34, I had gonorrhea.
What are the chances?
I got tested for HIV and every other sexually transmitted disease.
I stripped naked for the second time.
Because I also have jock itch from running and the weather change.
But I didn't know at the point what anything was anymore.
And this woman examined my entire body as if I had been raped.
She asked if I had ever been raped.
I felt raped.
Raped of an idea, a dream, a promise.
Do you meet guys online, she asked.
Where do you meet guys anymore?
This is what you get what you go to the Centers of Disease Control.
All I want is to be in control again.
And after my blood was taken I passed out on the floor.
This is normal. I expected it. These last three weeks have taken everything out of me. Well, not everything.
I'm stronger then that. Then this. I think? I hope.
I was still conscious, as they fed me a juice box. Hi-C. I felt like a kid again.
But I'm not a kid.
To be a kid again, underneath a fort made of blankets.
They had rapid testing
And I tested negative.
He says he's negative.
What do two negatives make?
I'm so fucking single.
But I'm healthy. And proud to be single, for maybe the first time in my life?