This is a continuation of the previous post.

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Before we go any further,” I said, nonchalantly, “I just want to make sure there isn’t anything going on here that I don’t know about. There are no secrets or diseases you haven’t mentioned, are there?”

He said nothing, and I knew.  The look on his face, the chill in the room, the pit in my stomach said it all.  “Well,” he said uneasily, “this is something I’ve been trying to find the right time to tell you … I’m positive.”

Immediately, I began to cry.  In retrospect, my reaction my have been a little extreme, but in my sheltered life, I’d never even met, let alone dated, someone who was positive.  My mind began to race, and I found it hard to breathe.  I asked him why he hadn’t told me before.  He said it was never the right time, and as things progressed he knew he had to tell me, but it was getting harder and harder.  I was angry, I was hurt, I was afraid, in shock.  Not knowing which reaction to have first, I continued with the tears, which were coming harder. 

I tried to regain some composure, to ask him what he was thinking in not telling me sooner, not before we had slept together in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />California.  He knew it was wrong, but we had been safe (relatively) and he was so happy to meet someone like me that he wanted to enjoy it with me before it inevitably got all fucked up.

The rest of that evening is a blur.  I remember standing up and going to the bathroom, where I collapsed on the floor, as though I were in a bad tv movie, sobbing hysterically into the soft burgundy carpet.  I wanted to get out of there, but being without transportation and two hundered miles from home, I had nowhere to go back to the bedroom, the tomb that the two of us were to share for the rest of the night.

I returned to the bed and slapped him as hard as I could.  He looked horrified, and I felt awful, but I did it again.  I dissolved into more tears, and told him that at this point I might as well tell him that I loved him.  To make the evening even more macabre, he told me he loved me, too.

I asked questions.  How long did he know?  Was he taking care of himself?  What the fuck was he thinking?  It was around this time that I realized that my own life my now in jeopardy.  We’d played it pretty safe in San Francisco, but not 100%.  He blamed himself for that, but I knew that some of the responsibility for that was mine.  He’d not told me, yes, but I didn’t ask any questions.

I don’t know if we spent minutes or hours talking about all this.  Time had stood still that night.  I told him that I felt selfish, because I kept thinking about how I’d been dreaming of my happy ending, and how that was effectively ruined.  “You can still have a happy ending,” he told me.

“Yes,” I replied, “but I wanted it to be with you.”

After more sobbing, we finally fell asleep.  We awoke in the middle of the night, and soon we were fiercely making out.  Not long in, I began to sob again.  This went on for the rest of the night.

The next day, his friends returned, and we tried to put on our game faces.  I think they knew something was wrong, but they couldn’t have known what.  The Reaper had also intended to use this weekend to tell his friends that his was positive.

As we drove to the airport, The Reaper held me in his arms.  I remember thinking, quite simply and without melodrama, that I wished I would die right then.  I knew there was no way this was ever going to be fixed, and even if it was – if I got tested and came up clean, and we still decided to make a go of it, etc – it was never going to be the way it was supposed to be.  At twenty-five, I began to imagine what it would be like to be with someone who most likely would predecease me by decades.  It was a far cry from the dreams I’d had before I left for Kansas City.

I cried the entire flight back.  My friends picked me up, and I imagined to keep it together until we got to the car.  I told them the whole story, and they were surprisingly without judgment, considering the stupidity of what I’d done in California.  I tried to map out my plan to get through this, not the least of which being the year of blood tests I had to look forward to. 

I talked to The Reaper the night of my return.  I told him that I still loved him, and that I still wanted to be with him.  He wanted to be with me, too, and I set my mind to making this work.  My intentions were good.  I can say that much.  But I did start to go a little crazy.

I became monolithic in my plans to get to California for good.  I started researching different treatments for him, gave advice, tried not to talk too much about the big A (or the fact that I still had no idea where my blood was going to fall in all this), and essentially lost my mind.  I suggested I move in with him when I got there, which he wisely thought was a rotten idea.  As I got more insane, he began to pull away.  And these were just the moments in which I was actually talking to him.

I spent my most of the first week back in fog.  My mother had known I was going to KC to meet a guy I’d met in California, but I didn’t fill her in on the details of my trip.  That, I maintain, was a wise decision, but it left me stranded when I was home.   I’d wander around the house until everyone had gone to bed, when I’d resume my sob-fest.   The first night back I remember having to actually hold on the walls to keep myself standing.  And it only got worse from there.

I was temping then, and though I’d been at this assignment for a while, I had no real friends at the job, and certainly not the kind I could tell something like this to.  I’d sit at my desk and calmly do my work, but I’d be dying inside, and every hour or so, I’d calmly leave my desk, walk to the bathroom, and lock myself in a stall and cry. 

At home, I’d keep it together in front of my family, and lock myself in my room to weep when I had to die.  Not only was I dealing with this, but I was also dealing with the fact that I’d gone from constant daily contact with The Reaper to none at all.  I’d lay in my bed at night, and consider just running out the door, in the middle of winter, with no clothes on and just run and run and run until I dropped.

I considered taking my own life.  I don’t think anyone who actually knew what was going on with me at the time knew how close I came to packing it all in.  I don’t know what stopped me from doing it.  I had no epiphanies, no moments of clarity in which I screamed, “I want to live!”  I just kept going.

The Reaper finally resumed contact with me, essentially to tell me that I was crazy and that it was best to end things with us completely.  I’d given up by this point.  I bid him farewell.

 All right.  Hopefully the next installment will be the final chapter.