Alex

Hometown: California Central Coast
Positive Since: April 15, 2005
Relationship Status: Boyfriend
Age: 22
Favorite Place: Boston

I was raised in a rural/suburban city. My mother provided for me and my younger siblings, because my father left the family before I hit puberty. I assumed the role of caretaker for my younger siblings in my mother's absence. I was pretty focused on my academic achievement, so my mother and I never had any discussions about sex and dating.

My school system's approach to sexual education was different. I remember the teachers questioning how effective a condom would even be against infection, given the size of the virus. Abstinence was the de facto only guarantee against infection.

One of my first sexual experiences wasn't entirely according to my will, so I didn't get the chance to ask for a condom to be used. During my year suspension from college, I wasn't feeling at all good about myself, and I didn't always care to ask about safer sex, or that I really mattered enough to assert my preferences about such. I never experienced sero-conversion, and when I got tested, I was in the healthiest shape of my life. So finding out I was positive left me with no one to blame for my infection, except for myself.

I was diagnosed in September of 2005 in Atlanta, a week or so before I was to get a second chance at an Ivy League degree. I didn't actually get tested specifically for HIV, or even consider my risk of catching it. I was under the impression that AIDS was something on the decline, and it wasn’t in my community.

I had a physical and decided to get everything tested at the same time. My doctor was through my employer's insurance program. He was older and probably, before providing care for me, dealt with patients who had blood pressure or cholesterol issues. I say this because when he told me I was positive, he tried to package it with good news about my “enviable” cholesterol and blood pressure levels. They were levels, in his words, a lot of his patients would “do anything for”. He also tried to comfort me that most people lived 10 or 20 years now “with AIDS”. I can’t recall if I actually said something. I was completely floored and didn't know what to do. I was sent to get more blood drawn. The same nurse, who had so pleasantly chatted with me before about her young adult daughter, put on gloves this time around, and didn’t have more to say than a couple words. I counted steps returning back to work, and ended up breaking things from dropping them. My numb mind began to race when I realized I’d have to tell my boyfriend to get tested and tell him about me.