Retribution

Check List:

• Got my diagnosis.
• Called my boyfriend.
• Called the other guy I've been fooling around with.
• Got my first treatment (out of three).
• Took the other guy to get tested.

Woke up the next day, back in the nook with Keith, my boyfriend.  Feeling like today might be a good day to get some work done.  Keith rolls over and asks me if I want to get breakfast.  Ooh, that sounds good.  A healthy breakfast to start the day.  He smiles and gets out of bed.

"Great.  Then we can stop at the center so I can get tested before."

Right.  See, I took Tyler to go get tested.  So it's only right that I go with Keith, my actual boyfriend while he gets tested.  But to be fair, Tyler doesn't have a car right now and I told him I'd take him.  And more accurately, he was just hitching a ride.  It's not that I don't want to take Keith or that I don't want to be supportive.  Of course, I have no problem going with him while he's getting tested.  But I wish he had just said, "Hey, can you come with me to get tested?"  Or:

• "You got me into this shit.  You're coming with me."
• "I could use the moral support."

But instead, I get a bait and switch.  Because on the way to the center, I innocently ask where he wants to go to get food.  "We'll see if we have time."  I hate the bait and switch.  Listen, I should go with you.  I would go with you.  But don't trick me into it.  And don't think that you have to trick me into it to get me to go.  It just seems a bit dishonest.

So we get to the center, he fills out the paper work and he goes and talks to a counselor.  He comes out with a lot of facts information.

• There's a 60 day incubation period.
• You get it from any kind of touch.
• He needs to get a shot anyway, as a precaution

And he's sulking.  "I can't believe I have to get a shot!  Even if I don't know if I have it or not.  They don't want me to wait.  And I don't even know what they're giving me!"  Amber alert.

"Penicillin.  They're giving you penicillin."

"Oh."  With all of that information, did they fail to mention that it's just penicillin?

"Are you allergic?"

"No."  Can we get lunch now?  I'm starving. 

I can't believe that I stayed as calm as I did, considering that I thought we were eating a couple of hours ago.  I'm crabby when I haven't eaten.  Crabby's actually too polite a word.  I'm a raving lunatic.  

So we drive back over the hill to where we live so we can eat nearby and so he can get to his drum lessons.  I understand that my boyfriend is frustrated that he has to get the shot.  But he's starting to freak out for no reason.  He doesn't need to go there.  I'm going through the same thing.  Maybe I need a little more support and consoling.  After all, Victor was the one who called me to see how it went.  Keith didn't call me to see how I was doing until much later.  But then I think he was just calling to see how much it hurt.

Keith's an amazing boyfriend.  But he's not always great in moments of crisis like this.  He wasn't good when my Dad died.  I give him a pass because he's still got a lot of issues with family since he was adopted.  I'm used to consoling myself, but it would be nice to get a little consoling from him.  He's a loving, caring boyfriend in every other way.  And he's totally obsessed with who I've told.  I told Steve and Victor.  I told my friend Susan.  I didn't tell my Mom.  I told my Brother.

"What did you brother say?"

My brother's field of expertise is infectious diseases.  He's a researcher.  I wasn't going to tell him because I was having a hard enough time as it was.  But of course he asked me how things were going.  And I couldn't lie.  So I told him.  And my brother said to me, "Don't ever not share things with me.  It sounds like you took care of it.  You're being responsible.  And you'll change your behavior if you need to.  Thank God it wasn't more serious."  And I told my friend Dave who's a priest and has been a mentor to me: "It's like a cold.  You're taking the penicillin and then it'll be out of your system."  I was getting a lot of support from these other people, but not as much from my boyfriend, who I know blames me for it.

I started thinking about this 60 day incubation period.  That would have put him on tour and me in Portland, visiting my brother.  I went to a bathhouse.  I could have gotten it there.  I start to feel bad.  Then I remember that Keith also went to bathhouses in Seattle and Vancouver, when he was on tour in the Northwest at the same time.  So actually, he could have given it to me as well.  I decide to hold on to this information if I need it.  No need to pick a fight now.

Of course, in my later research, I find out that the incubation can actually only be 1-3 weeks, which means there's a good likelihood I got it while he was out on tour this last time.  And that's fair.  I am not looking to place the blame on Keith.  I just wish he would acknowledge that either one of us could have passed it on.  But he's got this idea in his head because I'm more vocal and free about my sexuality, that some how that makes me dirtier than him and more at risk.  More dangerous and unsafe. But I know that I can be sexually liberated and totally cautious, which I am mostly.  

But Keith's still closeted to a bunch of people, including his parents.  And with that goes shame.  And I think there's some internalized homophobia going on there.  So when something like this happens, he blames the "gayer" of the two of us.  I'm not saying that I don't have blame.  But I wish he would acknowledge that there's no "gayer" one in this relationship.  We're both as gay as the other and we are both capable of giving an STD to the other.

But I decide not to unleash all of this on him.  I just pick up the tab for lunch.