PozFriendly

It's been a week of extremes and I'm sorta tired. Not physically, but emotionally. High point was an intense and playful m2m connection. God, I love that. It's the best. Low point was facing the reality of my car being stolen and vandalized by some humanoid thugs.

So I'm just lying around this evening checking out new cars on line, doodling, cleaning...and I switch on a TV program about of group of HIV+ men undertaking a sailing race on the Pacific.

Some of their stories sound very familiar. Though I remain HIV-, men with the virus have been a regular part of my life for over two decades. Perhaps it's familiarity, or a lot of medical information, but I have never found in myself the impulse to distance myself from HIV+ guys. Men I have loved have died from AIDS. I have conducted their funerals, carried their coffins. And men I love now have HIV. How much love would be lost from my life if I cut them off.

Listening to some of these guys on the show talk about fear, about rejection...it pains me. It never occurs me to turn down a connection with a guy because he is positive. But I know that many men do. I understand it in my head, but in my heart it makes no sense to me. And if I imagine a man I know and care for who has HIV being rejected because of that...yeah, it makes my throat tight.

I am, in the lingo the websites, PozFriendly. How could I not be? One positive man wrote me to say how grateful he was for that and what a special person I must be. Nothing special about it.

Most of the time in the last twenty-some years I have made good choices. But I have taken calculated risks, too. "There but for the grace of God..." About that, I'm positive.