There's a line you cross when you've done many different things in life and you need to be certain as to what the power of life constrains. Life can be amazing or life can be a death sentence. And despite crossing the path of a bus to hold it for a friend, grabbing a car from a bad section of street or being tossed through a plate glass window; nothing has found itself to be as deadly or as damning as sex.
When you are asked to give blood, there are three (3) standards by which you are not allowed to donate blood: you've had a blood transfusion that took place before 1986, you had sex with another man or you've been in jail at any time at all. Obviously I have crossed the path once and found lust in the wrong place, which I shan't detail at this time as this is more clinical than erotic. I was flat broke, and went into a plasma center, offering to sell my blood. That's when I learned I could be riddled with this hidden time-bomb. A hedonist now on the verge of death, wrapped in paranoia, all for tasting a forbidden fruit.
Magic Johnson can be calm or glib about it and Elizabeth Taylor can weep – I don't give a fuck. They don't know me and they're not here with this. Time limits all, and when you see your own blood being drawn you make a face and recall all the things that have and have not gone into your body. Bad food, bad booze, something you smoked... that girl. Or slut, babe, blowjob, assfucking... whatever. The sting leaves, and a swab of white and alcohol bite you gently, making you think about the last time you gave blood, for charity, when you lived with your family. What has changed? How long has it been since you were feeling and caring?
The place was sterile with a small sunshine of warmth on the soft-butter colored wall and the shabby furniture. The application is a standard routine about the continual gathering of facts and you gulp, wondering how many other men your age go to their private physicians, company doctors, or military medics upon entering the service with the same fears as their blood was drawn from a vein and spilled into a transparent tube. (This must be a golden age for the plastics industry! After all you need a shitload of petroleum for plastic gloves and tubing and vials. You frown just a bit and shiver, thinking carefully about the misery of knowing you might have a death sentence applied to you. After all, it's been five years. Your only lover has been your drunken rages and internal fears, jacking off and nervousness and condom practice. What matter is that I will fucking die when I get the results. All that happens are that sis that as the vial is filled with something I have kept from others for so long I have a lower trembling lip and my mind races to all moments I have had and where they all have taken my mind, body and weariness. I loathe everyone... everything, and there's a dripping of venom for my life as I see the label placed and the girl remove her gloves. She's been considerate, with a knowing nod, the one that tells you you're not the first one to tell her his kind of story. She's pleasant and somewhat motherly in her appearance, yet you know there's a knowledge and hidden sorrow in her eyes. After all, how many of us could tell someone you are going to die? As humans we can't say those things: we have to tell them, until their last breath, that they (they dying) are going to live and live long or live well. That's what keeps the specter of death off the lingering one, sealing one in comfort, for being there or for dying, holding them, and suffering with them.
She lets you know that you're going to be hearing from them in a few days, about four to six days. Until then she regards your health and says (as she routinely does to other high-risk patients) to abstain or use a condom, offering you some Lifestyles with odd colors and battered edges from a plastic fishbowl on her desk, the way some office managers offer candy for a visitor. You gulp, refusing gently, smiling softly and shaking her hand, saying 'Thank you' very gently after this humiliating experience. She now knows your secret and your real name, and she has everything to turn you over to any group for statistics, monitoring or killing that the CDC and AIDS-Awareness could be connected to so that people with our sicknesses can be wiped off the map and not infect the rest of the world. Or just taken from my home after it's posted on flyers and in newspapers with your driver's license photo for everyone to see, and you're driven from the shabby apartment into the night or to awaiting trucks and down the road? Am I getting shipped to Africa?
