Ed

HIV took away my youth and my hope. I was 23 when I was diagnosed and at that time it was considered almost certain that AIDS would be the cause of my death, and that I would die young. In a way, I did die, because the people who shared my stories died and they were nearly all of how I identified myself. If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears, it doesn't make a sound. The people I meet think I've always been down, but there was a time when I thought I'd have a career and find true love, buy a house and maybe even raise a family. Even I have a hard time remembering those dreams, but part of that is because there's nobody around left to remind me of how ambitious and romantic and idealistic I was.

The last man I dated before I found out I was infected with the virus was Ed. We met in September of 1985 in a gay country bar where I used to go dancing almost every night of the week. I was self-conscious about wearing glasses, so I would leave them in my car and that night I'd been standing by the far corner of the dance floor, looking in the general direction of the front of the bar when Ed walked up and introduced himself.

"I noticed you watching me from across the dance floor. Did you want to dance?"

I told him I wasn't watching anyone 'cos I couldn't see a damned thing from that far away, but I'd dance with him. We went out two or three times before we decided to date exclusively. Really, it was Ed who decided, since I felt like I should like anyone who said they liked me and I didn't have much experience with dating. Looking back, he really irritated me, but he was also kinda obsessed with me and that was flattering. It was while I was dating Ed that I had the tremendous fever and sore throat that I learned later is a tell-tale sign of HIV infection. It lasted a couple or three days, and I even went to the emergency room, but the doctors said it was just a severe cold. I don't think there was even a test for HIV then, or if there was it was probably not very commonly used unless someone had pneumonia or lesions from kaposi's sarcoma. It's hard to remember the details because at the time it wasn't any more significant than any bad cold and doctors didn't start identifying those symptoms as early indicators of HIV infection until many years later.

Ed and I had been dating for a couple of months when he was in a serious car accident. I got a call at work since he was estranged from his blood family and he'd listed me as an emergency contact, telling me that he was in ICU and he might have a broken neck. My boss wouldn't let me go to the hospital. I had to wait until my shift was over, or lose my job, and since I knew I couldn't do anything for him anyway, I stayed at work. When I got to the hospital, Ed was being released. He had to wear a neck brace, but there was no break. He wasn't allowed to work, though, and he needed bed rest, so I stayed with him and cooked, cleaned and did laundry and shopping for both of us. When he recuperated he used his insurance money to buy my favorite car, an Oldsmobile Toronado. It was white with dark read crushed velvet upholstery, and I'm sure I loved that car more than I loved Ed. Seems like he did go back to work for a while, but for whatever reason, he decided to quit. Maybe he got fired or was laid off (it's been so long, I don't really remember) but he told me one night that he wanted to move to Austin. I had always said I'd like to live in Austin, and had even made plans to go there when I was 19, but my uncle had discouraged it. Now, I finally had my chance to go. The only problem was I was gonna have to go with Ed, and I really didn't think we were suited to live together. He wasn't giving me much time to decide, either. He said he wanted to leave in three days. I didn't have much money, and neither did he, but he thought we could make it together. The night after he told me, I was talking to him from my job at the answering service and he asked me if I was only going because I wanted to be in Texas. I told him the truth and said it was no good faking a relationship. One of the women in the office overheard me and yelled out something about "He always fakes it," Ed called her a dirty name (on the phone, to me - she didn't hear) and I disconnected the line. The morning Ed left for Texas, we had breakfast at a cafe on Broadway. I think I was relieved more than anything to not be going with him, but we weren't officially broken up. He was gonna write when he got settled and we tentatively planned that I would join him later on. When he pulled out of the driveway, I watched him from the rear view mirror of my car and Roy Clark's "Thank God and Greyhound You're Gone" came on the radio.

I got a few letters from Ed before the last one - 14 pages - that told me he'd found someone else in Austin and was breaking up with me. Since I hadn't even written to him once, the extended length of this Dear John amused me more than anything. I got the letter right after Valentine's Day and it was just a week or two after that that I was being told I needed the test for the virus. I never did talk to Ed about it. At the time, I assumed that he was the one who infected me, and I assumed he knew by then he was infected himself. Since I hadn't slept around and Ed had so many ex-boyfriends (the one before me hadn't even finished picking up all of his stuff the first time I went to Ed's apartment) I thought he had to be the carrier. Of course, if I had to do it over, I would have told him - just in case he didn't know - and at least keep him from spreading it to anyone else. Times were so different then, especially about how the virus was transmitted. There wasn't any talk of how to have safe sex - just that sex might be unsafe. If I had any thoughts of AIDS it was that I would be able to tell if anyone was that sick. Because of how few people I had been with, it never occurred to me that I would be susceptible. I blamed the people like Ed who had had sex with so many different men, but I didn't understand that by sleeping with someone like that, I was essentially sharing the risk. It didn't cross my mind until I had the virus myself that it only takes one time to be infected and that virtually anyone could be a carrier.

Ed came back about six months after he moved to Texas on a vacation, and he ate at the restaurant where I worked every night until I finally wound up having to wait on him. He was with his new boyfriend and all cuddly, but when they broke up a couple of months later, Ed moved back to Denver. This time, he started dating my roommate. He was really just stalking me, but I wasn't interested. I was mad at him for infecting me (at least that's how I saw it then) and we rarely spoke. I danced with him once (I remember it was "Leavin' On Your Mind") but I always did like to dance - with anyone. I still never discussed HIV with him. It's quite possible he wasn't even infected himself and I had been carrying the virus for some time before I met him and I was the carrier, or that he did infect me, but had no knowledge of his own status. At any rate, I heard that he died of AIDS complications a few years later in Las Vegas. He had finally found a partner and they'd been together for a few years. One of his other exes in Denver that I met in an HIV support group told me about it. One of Ed's exes that dated Ed after Ed dated me.

Ed is the last person I had consensual unsafe sex with and I tell myself that I've never passed on the infection to anyone else, but by not telling Ed to get tested himself, that isn't really true. I don't think he was the kind of person to deliberately infect anyone (and maybe he didn't) and he never told me about his HIV status either, but I don't have any way of knowing when he found out he had it. I have one friend that I keep in touch with across the miles once every couple of years who might remember when I dated Ed, but all the rest are gone. I don't even have any pictures left of him, cos I threw them out when I was in that stage of blaming him for giving me the virus. I don't blame him now. There wasn't enough information out yet about it and we were all so young, none of us thought we would be the one to get sick. I didn't know anyone who had the virus before I found out I had it myself. It was one of those things that was happening in San Francisco and New York, but it didn't seem serious enough to ever affect my life. Now, I've lived with it for more than half of my life and I'm trying to recapture some of those feelings I had before it was ever a part of me. I want there to be something more than just waiting to die.