Photo Credit: David Richie

My relationship with AIDS is complex to say the least.

Looking back it really is astonishing to me how many times I have had to say “I promise I don’t have AIDS.” True, our generation is a bit more open about HIV, STD’s, and STI’s. We are told to actually ask our partners if they have been tested and, in order to get birth control, you are tested annually (in New York State at least). Even so I find it strange.

The question normally comes up when I mention a camp that I helped to create in the Dominican Republic for HIV+ children. So, I guess it isn’t a huge leap to go from girl who works with pediatric AIDS patients to girl with AIDS. Below is the typical conversation that ensues when I say I don’t have AIDS.

Sample one-sided Conversation:

“I really don’t.

Do you want to see my test results?

Really?

You can’t be serious?

Yes, I do let them sit on my lap and I do swim with them.

No, you can’t get AIDS like that.

Did you not ever have sex ed?

Well your sex ed teacher was an idiot.

Why? Because it’s proven that you can’t get AIDS like that.”

____

Lets start this over.

I don’t have AIDS.

I am not HIV+.

The kids, and some of the adults, I work with are.

We take medical precautions so that I am not at risk.

Typically this satisfies the questioner  but I am left with a bad taste in my mouth. Every time this happens the first thing that flashes through my mind is “Do I look like someone with AIDS dummy?” Immediately after thinking that I feel profoundly ashamed. If I, who work with HIV+ kids and speak about AIDS as a young women’s issue, still have a guttural reaction that because I am a white wasp I wouldn’t have AIDS there is something profoundly wrong.

Yes, statistically speaking I am less likely to be HIV+ than just about any other demographic on earth. But unlikely does not translate into impossible. More than 34 million people are infected with AIDS worldwide and there are more than 2.5 million new infections each year.

So, I can promise that I don’t have AIDS but that really doesn’t mean anything. I’m not lying, but I could be. Just as someone who is HIV+ could lie to a potential partner about their status.

I don’t think that distrust and interrogation-esque  techniques are the answer but I guess that I understand why people ask me in the first place. They could normally chose a better time, place and be more tactful but at least they are asking. Furthermore, my reaction, my sudden need to insist that I am not one of “Them” points to an unreconciled relationship with a virus that is both an integral part of my life and completely foreign.

What I have embraced is that by having these conversations I am given the opportunity to share the stories of the dozens of HIV+ children I have had the pleasure of working with. These children, born HIV+, never asked for the hell they were born into. They didn’t forget to use a condom or share a needle. Despite the hardship they face they are passionate, energetic, smart, and tenacious beyond belief. All that I can conclude is that the answer to both my internal struggle, and others misconceptions about the most notorious virus on the planet, lies in them. A generation who has it in their power to end AIDS once and for all.

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