My Life After Now

10

Consider Yourself




How had this happened?

I’d had unprotected sex. With someone I didn’t even know. The thought was incomprehensible.

I felt like I’d let the whole world down. Ever since I was old enough to know about this stuff, the importance of safe sex had been drilled into my brain. Health teachers with their condom demonstrations, reality shows about teen pregnancy, television commercials for herpes medications, billboard advertisements for Planned Parenthood…and my dads. You’d think they were paid spokesmen for Trojan. At first, their casual tossing around of words like “prophylactic” and “spermicidal lube” embarrassed the hell out of me, but after a few years their open-forum approach to these topics became just another reason our relationship was so close.

Here’s how the big “responsibility” talk went last year:

Dad: So, Lu, you and Ty seem to be getting serious.

Me: Yeah, I guess.

Papa: He’s a cutie.

Me: I know, right?

Dad: (hands me a paper bag)

Me: (after peeking inside and finding the jumbo box of condoms) Daaaad!

Dad: It’s important to be safe, sweetie; we can’t stress that enough. Remember, no glove, no love.

Papa: There’s also a drugstore gift card in there with a hundred dollars on it for when you need to stock up again.

Me: (my face still blazing with embarrassment) You know, none of my friends talk to their parents about stuff like this.

Dad: Well, none of your friends have parents that lived through the New York gay club scene in the nineties.

End scene.

I sat at my desk, twisting and untwisting a lock of my hair around my finger, weighing the potential consequences of my stupidity.

Pregnancy? No. I was on the pill, and I got my period right on time a few days after the night.

Sexually transmitted infections? I didn’t really think that was much of a possibility, either. Lee and I had just been together that one time, and it didn’t burn when I peed or anything. But on the other hand, I knew myself, and I knew my mind would be never be fully at ease—not to mention that I would never be able to move forward with Evan—unless I found out for sure. And this, at least, was something I was going to do right. So I did a ton of research.

Let me tell you something: the photos of various STIs on medical websites are not pretty. Those images alone are enough to make you declare condoms your best friend for life.

My first instinct was to go to my regular gynecologist to get tested. But then I realized that the tests would be on my insurance record and my dads would find out. Not that they’d be against my getting tested, but they’d definitely have questions as to why I thought it was necessary. And that was one conversation I did not want to have.

So I was going to go to a free health clinic in the city. I found one that actually specialized in STI testing, and you didn’t even have to give your name. I could get this whole damn thing over with, and no one would ever need to know. Perfect.

I left for school in the morning like I always did, but instead of turning into the school parking lot, I kept driving south, straight toward Manhattan. I parked in a garage and walked to the Harlem address that I’d scrawled on a Post-It. It was a random, nondescript three-floor building with no signs or anything indicating I was in the right place. The doctors’ offices I was used to were in shiny, large office buildings, with security desks and potted plants. This place didn’t feel at all welcoming, but I forced myself to push on. I was here for a reason. I pressed the buzzer for the lower level and was buzzed in a few seconds later. I took the elevator one flight down to the windowless basement and had to be buzzed in through a second door.

“Good morning,” the man at the front desk greeted me.

“Hi,” I replied quietly.

“How may I help you?” he asked.

Didn’t he know? Didn’t everyone come here for the same reason? I just stared at him, not wanting to say it out loud.

He smiled curiously back at me. “Are you here for one of our group meetings? Or for our needle exchange?”

I shook my head. “You do STI screenings here, right?” I finally asked. I felt weird saying it out loud.

“Oh, yes, of course,” the man said, and handed me a pen. “Please sign in—first name and last initial. Someone will be with you shortly.”

I wrote “Lucy M.” and my arrival time on the sheet taped to the desk, and sat down in the waiting room.

Almost every seat was taken; the room was packed with people. Mostly men. The walls were painted red—I guess in an effort to make the place seem less depressing—and there were posters pinned up everywhere, with sayings like, “Think you picked up more than you bargained for at that party last night?” and “BYOC: Bring Your Own Condom.”

One by one, like a graduation procession, people were called from the waiting room. I waited and tried not to stare at anyone. My leg shook uncontrollably, and the man sitting next to me had to ask me to stop. I apologized and saw the curiosity in his eyes as he caught a glimpse of my face. He was probably wondering what a girl like me was doing here. I was wondering the same thing.

Time crept by. I tried to read through my script, but it was like my eyes and my brain had been disconnected. Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast. I read the same line over and over again, registering no meaning. It was three hours before they called my name.

I followed a middle-aged woman into an “interview room.” She was wearing white pants and a white jacket, but she introduced herself as simply “Marie” and was wearing a whole lot of tacky gold jewelry, so I was pretty sure she wasn’t a doctor. The room was stocked with medical supplies, and there were more posters on the wall. “Syphilis is Back!” one shouted at me. Marie indicated that I should sit in the chair across the table from her.

“So, Lucy,” she began, with a cheerful smile. “What brings you here today?”

“Um, I wanted to get tested for STIs,” I said. Why did they keep making me say it?

Marie nodded. “What do you think the likelihood of a positive result is for you today?”

“Pretty low. But I just want to be sure.”

“That’s very smart of you. All right, let’s get started. I’m going to ask you several questions. You’ll see me writing your answers down, but it’s just for our records—anything you tell me will be kept confidential, so please be as accurate and honest as you can.”

I nodded.

“First, I am legally required to ask you what you will do if you test positive for HIV today,” she said, pen poised.

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“If you test positive, how do you think you will react?” she rephrased.

What kind of a question was that? How would anyone know how they would react until actually put in that situation? That was like asking what you would do if you woke up to find your house was on fire. Would you run out immediately? Stop to call 911? Look for your cat? Put on your shoes? Dash around collecting valuables? Until you’re actually in that burning building, flames scorching your skin, there’s no way to know for sure.

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.

“I need something to put down here. Just take your best guess,” Marie said with a flippant hand gesture, as if she were fully aware of the ridiculousness of the question.

“I, uh, guess I would try to work through it as best I could,” I said.

“Okay, that’s fine,” she said, scribbling on her form. “We just have to ask that because some people say they will try to hurt themselves or someone else, and we’d have to report that. All right, next question. How many sexual partners have you had in the last year?”

“Two.”

“Have you had sex for money, drugs, or clothing?”

What the…? “No.”

“Have you had sex with a man who also has sex with men?”

Whoa. I had no idea the questions were going to be so personal. I wasn’t feeling anything close to comfortable, in this strange room in this strange building answering this strange woman’s strange questions, but still I answered. “Not that I know of.”

“Have you ever been sexually assaulted?”

And so the questions continued. I felt my cheeks burning deeper red with each mention of words like “oral,” “vaginal,” “anal,” and “group sex.”

The interview went on for over twenty minutes. Most of the questions, about things like drug use and pregnancy, I could answer no to immediately. But some of the questions hit closer to home.

“Have you had unprotected sex in the last year?”

“Have you had sex under the influence of alcohol?”

“Have you had sex with someone who wasn’t your regular partner?”

“Have you had sex with an anonymous partner?”

“Have you had sex with an IV drug user?”

The more times I responded yes, the more unnerved I became. They don’t ask these questions for fun. They ask them because they are relevant to the contraction of STIs. I began to realize that every time I answered yes, my chance of actually having contracted something increased. By the end of the interview, I was freaking out.

Marie had me sit in a different chair, where I rested my arm on a padded table-like attachment. Without much of a warning, she stuck me with a needle and drew three vials of blood: “One for your syphilis test and one for hepatitis C. And one for your HIV confirmatory test, if necessary,” she explained. “And now for the chlamydia and gonorrhea sample.” She handed me a little cup and directed me to the bathrooms across the office. “Fill this, seal it up, and bring it back here when you’re finished.”

If there’s anything more embarrassing than peeing in a cup, it’s having to walk all the way back across the clinic office, past workers’ cubicles, holding said cup of pee. Several clinic employees looked up from their computer screens as I passed. Some gave me a patronizing smile. Most looked hurriedly away the moment they saw what I was carrying. I told myself that they see this all the time, that they aren’t bothered by the sight of a little urine. But that didn’t make me any less humiliated.

After handing off the cup to Marie, she handed me a little plastic stick with a swab-like tip. It looked like a pregnancy test. I looked at her, confused.

“This is for the HIV rapid test,” she told me. “Smile like you’re brushing your teeth, and swab your outer gums, once across the top and once across the bottom.”

I did as she said and handed the stick back to her. She placed it in a little machine, and told me the HIV results would be ready in thirty minutes. I’d have to call the office in ten days for the other test results.

It was officially the longest half-hour of my life. Stuck in this smaller, blander waiting room specially designated for people waiting on their HIV test results, shifting restlessly in my orange plastic chair, unable to concentrate on anything except the other people in the room and the clock.

In the far corner, a frazzled woman in a bad wig was trying to keep her two rugrats occupied. A few chairs over from her was a couple who looked like they frequented the free clinic—the rings of black makeup smudged under her eyes hinted that she hadn’t washed her face in at least a week, and they both had track marks up their arms. They were draped over each other like they were each other’s life force. Over in the far corner was the oldest person in the room by a mile. He had wispy white tufts of hair on his head, he was wearing enormous eyeglasses that he’d probably had since about 1982, and his hands were wrinkled and worn. Definitely not the type of person I would have expected to see in a place like this. And next to me, a skinny pale guy who looked only a couple of years older than I was slouched low in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest, the hood of his purple hoodie pulled down over his eyes. His breathing was rhythmic. Was he actually sleeping?

I stuffed my iPod earbuds in my ears. I needed a distraction. The music filled my head, and I began to stage a full-on production of A Chorus Line in my head. It was something I did on long train rides or when my chronic insomnia was holding me prisoner at night. But the moment the opening song’s lyrics kicked in, I suddenly couldn’t turn it off fast enough. The song was called “I Hope I Get It,” of all things. Yeah, not exactly the sentiment I needed in my head right now.

I switched to the more tone-appropriate Les Misérables and glanced up at the numbers on the display for the tenth time in the last minute. They remained stubborn, torturing me, mocking me each time I met their stare. Still serving numbers sixty through sixty-four. I shot them a look of contempt and wrenched my eyes away again—only to realize with horror that the black ink on the slip of paper clutched in my hand had grown blurred and spidery in my sweaty palm. I frantically shook it out, striving to keep it legible. It wasn’t much, but right now this tiny piece of paper held the only information in the world that mattered.

Name: Lucy M.

Age: 16

Number: 68

I smoothed it out and set it on my knee to dry. If I continued clutching onto it in my sweaty hands, it would soon be completely illegible, and Marie had warned me that I wouldn’t be given my results without presenting the paper to the social worker. There was no way in hell I was going to go through all the waiting and questioning and testing again, just so I could get another ticket.

At long last, the digital sign changed. Now serving numbers sixty-five through sixty-eight.

My number was up.