I look back on all the guys that I’ve played with, dated, been friends with or just known, and there really seems to be a common trend about many of them — a lot of them are HIV+. Now I guess I don’t know if some of them really are, but some signs point to the fact that they are. I’m not a person to ask someone their HIV status, whether a friend or a fuck. For fucks, I just assume everyone is positive. People may fully believe they are negative, and even got tested today, but that doesn’t mean they are. The common HIV tests have a buffer of about 3 months that the test doesn’t include. For friends, it’s not any of my business. They can tell me if they want an feel comfortable, but I’m not going to ask and it’s not going to change anything.
For dating it has caused some issues, especially at first. As I gain more understanding about HIV and more comfortable with it, things have been going better. I can’t think of any person that’s told me they were positive in person that I shunned away because of that. Now, if they were ugly… that’s a different story.
My other thought is that there are a lot more HIV+ people out there than I realize. Or maybe there are just more in the types of circles I hang out in.
I’m glad that HIV isn’t quite the death sentence it used to be, but it definitely does affect your life in large ways. My generation is seeing HIV in a very different way than the first generations saw it. For a lot of us, it’s an old-gay thing or some think they’ve all died out. Then you have the naive ones that ask and believe the person. Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I won’t believe someone about something that could very much change my life. My generation is being impacted by HIV and reacting to it differently because of everything that’s happened since the first boom. For the older generations, don’t get mad at us because we’re reacting differently, just try to help us understand.
One last factoid from a friend of mine -
More than 1.1 million people in the U.S. are infected with HIV and 232,700 don’t know it.