The day I found out I was HIV positive

Was the day I felt closest to becoming a detective.

That is if I don’t count the clockwork liar that I make of my own memory everyday I take my big blue pill.

My doubtful face light up by blue hues,

Still, I sat on my bedroom floor and I typed for clues.

I typed “Adam4Adam.com” in the address bar.

Username: CIRE2514

Password: bola2514

This is what a gay dating website looks like.

Raunchy ads for twenty percent off sex toys

Desperate ads of Beautiful shirtless men with empty eyes offering cybersex for just twenty dollars a minute

And over ten thousand men in my city “ready to have some fun”.

This was not a happy place where gay men went to have an exciting time,

But a black hole of superficial encounters to blind them of their insecurities.

My trembling finger scrolled through old conversations with the men I met over the time span of one year.

Over thirty conversations is the complete summary of my adolescent sex life.

“Click”

He is smiling and I see myself under him as he thrust harder and harder as he gets closer to an orgasm with no concern if it feels good for me.

I read his profile description and his HIV status is negative.

“Click”

He is eating steak over a few beers with friends and I see his wedding band as he reaches over to the passenger seat of his car to unbutton my pants.

HIV status is negative.

“Click”

A headless “selfie”. A classic tale of a closeted high school senior, a football star. And all I can remember was the fear in his eyes because he wasn’t sure at what time his parents would be home.

He was negative too.

“Click”

I remember that T-shirt

“Click”

Id forgotten about him

“Click”

Who is this?

All of them negative.

I am crying.

I am crying again.

Not for pain, but for knowledge I had and knowledge I lacked.

Is this what it means to be gay?

To live a plagued life of incurable disease?

Or if you don’t, you eventually will?

Because that’s what society has placed me under.

A group, determined by extremist, which will lead itself to extermination.

In the following months I proceeded to take my own life twice.

Ready and willing, I have shaken Death’s hand

Grasping firmly as the darkness settled around me

Yet coughed up twice from the void that is my mind.

In circumstance that can only be called a miracle, purpose shot through me like a thousand bolts of lightning.

I returned with a gift known as endurance.

I will no longer blame myself for events in and out of my control.

Courage and fortitude is what lifts me out of my fears when my past is glaring towards me.