Lucrezia Magazine

Daytime is an Illusion, Nighttime a Dream.
~ A Buddhist Saying.

“You’re lying,” I gasped. “Who ever heard of an inconclusive AIDS test?” This announcement, from my lover of six years, after a marathon bout of lovemaking, made me jump out of bed and stub my toe. I ignored the pain, struggling to speak in a normal tone to discover the facts.
“Have you got it or not?”
“The doctor gave me two tests and told me to ‘go about my business,’” explained Alex, stretching out to pull me back to bed. “I asked Dave months ago. He’s sure I’m fine. He says only gays and dope fiends get AIDS!”
“You’ve known for months and didn’t tell me,” I growled. “Anyway, Dave’s a Dentist. What makes him an expert?”

My partner, relishing the slumber his Casanova-like exertions had earned him, fell asleep. Vigorous shakes failed to wake him. I lay there in a stupor waiting for daylight. Intermittently, I dozed off and a repetitive nightmare kept shocking me awake. It always began with the voice of my Hispanic friend Carlos who died of AIDS eight years ago.

“Cowardly wretch, why didn’t you visit me in the hospital?” His accusatory voice grew louder as he jabbed me with a pointed skeletal finger. A chorus of HIV positives with running sores and rashes backed him up, reinforcing my guilt.
“I couldn’t bear it Carlos,” I moaned, “to watch your weightlifters body become emaciated, your bowels a mess.”
“Carlos who?” whispered Alex. “Have you been cheating on me?” He muttered, hoping for an encore.
“Go back to sleep,” I snapped, huddling at the furthest extremity of the bed. I lay there in shock at my lover’s cavalier attitude towards a life threatening disease that he might have transferred to me.

Next day, from home, I called the AIDS hotline myself because Alex was dawdling about taking another test. I hesitated to call my own doctor for fear the test would come back positive. What if my family and friends found out?

“Bastards,” I shouted at the perpetual busy signal. My vision blurred and I imagined myself going blind from AIDS. Finally, a supervisor picked up. He refused to let me make an appointment for Alex. I found out that the testing center nearby was booked for two months; however, the one in East Harlem had an appointment immediately.

I phoned Alex and begged him to call at once. “What about you?” he hissed,” It takes two to tango.”
“Me,” I stuttered in disbelief. “Why, I avoid chemical hair dyes, canned food, fur and seldom eat meat.” I struggled to hold back the tears welling up. Was this the same man who begged for frilly articles of my lingerie to kiss before he slept, who swore I was the dream woman he’d waited for since childhood?

“Maybe we shouldn’t see each other over the holidays? Let’s wait till this thing is straightened out, OK honey? You sound really stressed out. Don’t think we’d have much quality time together right now.”
“Monster,” I croaked, slamming down the phone. I decided to take my own test, which meant running the gauntlet of East Harlem. For a Greenwich Villager, whose entire world revolved around downtown movies, theaters, bars and restaurants, East Harlem seemed as remote as the Maldives. Perhaps I should apply for a passport? The prospect of an hour subway ride, when I either took cabs, the bus or walked, made me nauseous in advance.

I envisioned myself being trapped in the crossfire between drug dealers and cops, my bullet ridden body tossed into the gutter among slimy needles. Perverts would chop my corpse into bite size pieces that dogs would chew up. Sweating, I phoned the Harlem Center.
“Pick a three digit number,” ordered a detached voice.
“666,” I blurted out, a hair trigger from raving. How appropriate, the number of the Beast!

As a bored voice on the phone grilled me about my sex life, I repressed the impulse to slam treasured pottery against the wall. How in the Hell could I remember what happened sexually eight years ago? Dredging up one night stands mercifully buried in memory made me tearful. Nor did I wish to remember the long term affairs, which also ended badly. “Accept in your mind that anything that can happen can happen to you!” This maxim of the Greek sage Pythagoras prepared me for the worst philosophically. It was the real time anxiety that I found devastating.

Could I commandeer an armored car for the trip to Harlem? I wondered. Finally, resigned, I boarded the local train. I welcomed the company of other riders, gaining comfort from their chatter and protective numbers. At each stop I silently implored the riders near me to stay on the train. Few lasted to 116th street. Those who did beat me out the door.

Apprehensive, I made my first visit to El Barrio--alive with barking dogs, bodegas and street hustlers. The residents were too busy carrying on their daily occupations to bother about me--becoming more and more crazed as I searched for the Board of Health. I blanched at the first sight this stunning example of jailhouse modern.

The dingy office reeked of disinfectant. A receptionist indicated a chair next to a dozing man, every inch of his face pockmarked. A female counselor dressed in a tailored suit ushered me into a bare walled office. Phyllis specialized in paralyzing questions: how many partners I been with since 1988? How many men since then had ejaculated in my anus, or on other parts of my body?
“Count up the men on whom you’ve performed fellatio?” requested Phyllis, idly twirling her pencil. I found myself wishing for a mezuzah, cross, worry beads or a baby’s pacifier. Why hadn’t I gone to my friendly family doctor instead of putting myself through this medieval inquisition? I felt as though I were drowning in oceans of come, about to be swept out to sea by a tidal wave of fluids surpassing the biblical flood.
“Statistically, being fiftyish and drug free, you’re not in the high risk group . . .But the test will tell won’t it?” jabbed Phyllis in a bored voice. Meanwhile, I sensed that she was on the verge of burn out. Prying into strangers’ sex lives certainly was no dream job.

I thought to myself: we’re around the same age and I fight the good fight, do killer aerobics, fast once a week and make it a fetish to never go on the street without makeup. Conversely, Phyllis is heavy with two half eaten candy bars on the side of her desk. I suspect that dates, not to mention sex, did not come her way often.
“Probably I’ll test negative,” I announce mustering a false bravado.
“You may have the HIV virus and never develop AIDS. These days even symptomatic cases are living longer. Why, I heard of one engineer, hale and hearty for ten years. Of course, he makes megabucks and can afford the best drugs on the market.”
“Ten years,” I parroted, envisioning an erased future. I pictured friends laying flowers on my corpse, which would be to meager to attract vultures. What a fool I’d been to ridicule my parents for their pleasure denying existence. Both, probably orgasmless, died in their mid-eighties. They occupied the same house not world with their daughter whose misbehavior began in the 50’s after she read an unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
“Every day there are new alternatives to traditional AIDS therapies,” confided Phyllis cheerfully. “New wonder drugs are really extending lives. Be optimistic,” she volunteered. You're next. Go ahead and take this card out front.

A stunning Latino technician, whose face had the contours of a grandee on an antique coin, fiddled with needles and vials. When he closed the screen to his cubicle around us, a desire to embrace him overcame me. Luckily, I restrained myself. He handled my arm as though it were radioactive. His hands were encased in plastic, his eyes remote. I had been transformed from a desirable woman into a statistic.

Normally, my fragile veins refuse to disgorge any blood. The technician’s magic touch made blood gush into the tube - labeled with a six digit number. Routinely this sample would be sent to a city lab to decide my fate. When the technician opened the screen, I noticed a pockmarked fellow in an identical cubicle next door raise his shirtsleeve for his own test. Would his results be confused with mine? I wondered.

Why not disappear? Flashed into my mind. The prospect of moving to Vermont with one suitcase became alluring. I would become a missing person, a random number in dusty files. The taciturn Vermonter would accept me if I took up a craft, perhaps weaving? One day curious neighbors would find my corpse seated in a meditative posture. My legacy would be piles of hand loomed articles that could be sold at church suppers.

It took two wasted, sanity-gutting weeks to get the test results. Normally, at this season, I’d be planning a vacation to a tropical island. Why bother when, if the results were positive, I’d “rest in peace” permanently? On whom would I bestow the clothes and jewelry gathered from umpteen years of ravaging the racks? Would friends recoil from my stuff the way they had from Carlos’s when his lover tried to give them away?

Hazy vision, diarrhea and constipation keep me homebound. I scour the TV and newspapers hoping for an AIDS breakthrough. Despite tons of money spent on research, a cure is still unavailable. Today the AIDS issue is not front page news anymore. The epidemic has been incorporated into the other horrors of modern life. Lurking, it infects healthy bodies unlucky enough to be its host.

Restlessness drives me from one distraction to another: B movies, deafening discos, Atlantic City, bowling, the ouija board. Nights I lie awake imagining myself cast in the lead of a holocaust operetta; the chorus is made up of my past enemies in Gestapo style outfits. They gloat, while forcing obnoxious gruel down my throat. “She has AIDS, tch ,tch, the selfish smart ass deserves it.” They chant in unison, slamming the door of my airless cell.

Finally, one week before Thanksgiving, my results are ready. I make my way back to the testing facility. While enthusiastic shoppers purchase their fattened bird, I sympathize with the innocent victim about to be sacrificed.

Jaundiced from coping with an overload of women peeing in their pants to know their results, Phyllis professionally distances herself. She chats about the weather, the upcoming mayoral election and other inconsequential items. Meanwhile, her stubby fingers extract a lab report from its folder. She brandishes in front of me while I wished for x-ray vision.
“Let’s see,” she hesitates until I nearly burst with fear.
“It’s negative. I’ll bet you’re relieved.”
“Relieved,” I repeated aloud. Phyllis used a mild word applicable to easing of a minor annoyance. Other joys I’d experienced paled in comparison. Suddenly I wanted to samba out of the office, or set off firecrackers atop the World Trade Center.
“Hold on,” cautions Phyllis, staring at me intently. The test doesn’t cover the last three months. See you in June for a retest,” she muttered, flashing her professional mourners smile.
“What about the next six months and the next,” I wondered aloud. After Alex’s bombshell, I lacked the motivation to search for a new relationship. Perhaps, I should jump on a soapbox to advocate that women adopt celibacy until an AIDS vaccine is discovered? A less radical alternative might be to heed the post porn actress Annie Sprinkle and “learn to love latex.”

© 2008 Barbara Foster

Barbara Foster is an Associate Professor and research librarian at CUNY. She is theco-author of three highly acclaimed books, including the biographies Forbidden Journey (HarperCollins) and The Secret Lives of Alexandra David-Neel (third printing Overlook, 2007). The New York Times reviewed her biography of David-Neel favorably on three occasions: the “Bear in Mind” column called it “a wonderful biography,” and “New and Noteworthy” stated: “Hers was a great human life very well written up.” The New York Review of Books rated the biography "one of the best books of all-time."

Barbara is a world traveler in the tradition of the heroic women she writes about. She has acted as a referee for Britain's Royal Geographical Society. Barbara has lectured on David-Neel (the French explorer of Tibet) at universities, conferences, museums, and libraries worldwide--including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Cal Tech in the U.S., and Sidney, Buenos Aires, Prague, Mexico City, and Calgary among international venues. Recently she spoke before an unprecedented joint meeting of the Harvard-MIT Club. Barbara has written numerous articles, for print and the Net, both scholarly and popular. These pieces have appeared in Travel and Leisure, the Richmond Review(London), Drexel Online Journal, The North Dakota Quarterly, Journal of the West, Culturefront (Summer 2000), Nineteenth Century (cover story--Spring 2002), Jewish Currents (2006), California Territorial Quarterly(2007), as well as on the Internet in popular sites dealing with sexuality, such as Nerve, Clean Sheets, Diverse Publications (UK), Ruthie's Club and Oysters & Chocolate. Barbara has also published dozens of poems in journals in every English speaking country.

Barbara is joint author of Three in Love: Menages a Trois from Ancient to Modern Times (HarperSF, 1997), which is presently an Authors Guild Selection available on iUniverse and Amazon. The subject of favorable feature stories in the Philadelphia Inquirer and NY's Daily News. Entertainment Weekly praised Three, calling it “racy and engaging”; the Washington Post said: “the first serious study of collective intimacy”; The New Yorker called it “a people’s almanac of love triangle lore.” Recently, Barbara has been interviewed by the BBC (Channel Four), CBC, ARTE (EU TV), S. Korea's SBS-TV, and CBS' 20/20 for TV documentaries on Polyamory, Eve Ensler’s latest documentary on love as well as for articles in the New York Post and the Times Literary Supplement. She is at work on a sequel to Three, which will be the definitive study of the history and psychology of plural love. Barbara has completed her intimate memoir of her experiences in New York and other exotic locales.