Southern Gothic

Its on the cloudy and cool side this morning.  I decided to have coffee and do some writing from Queen Malika over on 18th and Eureka in the Castro.  I managed to finish the sixth rewrite of my short story tentatively titled Nightmare on Valencia Street last night.  This was the first complete revision – i.e. before that I had managed to write the one original story, then each subsequent revision was started but aborted part-way through as I decided to change some critical aspect or other which meant starting afresh. 

Does the term writer’s block include the inability to divine what the meaning and theme of a story will be?  Or is it restricted to inability to put words to LCD?  I have been frustrated by having many paragraphs committed to paper, really really great ones(!), that had to be cut or re-purposed as the intent of the story gradually shifted during the revision process.  Its now a very different story than it started out. The story is intended as a submission to a queer horror anthology, and is meant to be a southern gothic story but set in San Francisco.  

I thought that San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood filled with often elaborate but dilapidated Victorian houses set amidst grit, grime and taco shops might be an interesting setting.  Add in hot humid weather,  and psychological tension brimming in the main character, a recent runaway from the rural South, and I imagined the story might work. 

The story started off very dark, and I thought too dark, in terms of what caused the tension in the main character.  Too much to handle in a short story.  I decided to cut the whole meth addict mother, drunk father, childhood rape backstory.  Instead I substituted a poor but well meaning father,  with the conflict and tension stemming from an incident which leaves the main character with a choice:  either come out to his father, or runaway and leave his father and the small town wondering if he had committed a horrific act of crueltly to his own dog.  He runs away, sure his father will disown him and unwilling to face being out in his small town.   He hitchhikes to San Francisco.  

The story takes place within a couple days of his arrival.  He has brought with him from the South an unusual heat wave, complete with nighttime thunder and lightning which sets a bit of the southern gothic atmosphere to the story.  That along with the main character’s constant headache provide the metaphor for the character’s repressed tension over his decision to runaway and avoid his real life. Over the course of the couple days our character runs into an old man named Harvey, who could be the ghost of Harvey Milk or alternately just a crazy homeless man.  Whichever,  the man plays the key role in making our character face his true decision head on.  This is done in a dream-cum-nightmare sequence in the spooky garage apartment in which our character is crashing temporarily.    Of course the denouement finds our character deciding that his best decision is to face life head on,  and, invoking the romantic gay activist Justin from QAF,  begins his reversal by placing what promises to be a fateful call to his father.     

So, that’s the current version synopsis which is a very different story from where it began a week ago.  I am almost sick of this story now!  But,  it still requires plenty more review and editing.  I don’t know if I will drop this and begin something else and come back to this when I can attack it ‘cold’ again, or whether that might just engender further perhaps needless flux in structure or plot.  I feel I am too close to it now.  

On a different not,  a (cute) pajama-clad bed-headed guppie/yuppie pulled up in his Range Rover today into the red zone by Queen Malika, parked and came in to order two lattes to go.  It caused a lot of giggling among the senior morning discussion group afterwards.             

Dispatch from Las Vegas

The Sunday night (and closing) party of the new White Party Las Vegas weekend is in the nightclub Rain (as in rain the desert being an exceptional and wonderful thing I guess). Rick and I had departed Planet Hollywood by cab to meet up with friends from Los Angeles at the club. We enter past loads of security, after the taxi ride on jammed Las Vegas Blvd (aka The Strip) from Planet Hollywood.

We cruise the club til it gets more crowded, meet up with our friends – Spencer & Dan, Todd and Andre. Others we have met earlier in the weekend also arrive. We walk around the club a bit, as more people arrive. There is only a small cluster at first on the dance floor. The dance floor is elevated in the center of the club, and surrounded by water. One enters by climbing a “bridge” of stairs over the water. We eventually all end up on the dance floor as the party gets truly underway.

I leave the dance floor and Rick to wander a bit, heading upstairs to a bar over looking the dance floor and find LA friends Todd and Andre and hang out for awhile. I am pretty sober but have had a few cocktails (rum and diet cokes) which I mention to Todd, since he drinks them as well. We’re standing idly, gossiping and people watching. Todd mentions he has to get back to his hotel to get a few hours sleep. He has a conference all day tomorrow, starting at 9:30am at a hotel near LAX, and he has to catch a 6:30am flight back from Vegas. I glance at my phone to check the time – its 12:30. Early for the party but not if you have a 6:30am flight. Todd says he he’ll take an Ambien to get to sleep and needs four hours for that. So he has to leave pretty soon. I’m thinking how fun it is I don’t have to worry about that now. And that makes me happy.

Andre comes over and asks if we want to get some shots and motions to three cute girls dressed Britney-schoolgirl-style in plaid minis and halter tops, and stilettos. Andre says they’re here because one of their boyfriends is a go-go dancer. We all instinctively look down to the floor to check the dancers. Andre and I move over to the bar and the girls come over as well and ask if we want to do shots with them. I’m thinking – god I don’t need more alcohol right now, and I don’t have much cash with me anyway so I hang around until Andre is conversing with the group to get the order straight. That will be two Sex on the Beach shots and one Patron for the girls. I sneak away back down the stairs before hearing what Andre orders, thinking at the same time it would be fun to hang around with that group for awhile, and also thank god for dim nightclub lighting.

Later I check back in with Andre. Andre is now alone – Todd has presumably left . I ask Andre how Hooters Hotel is, wondering if its too overwhelmingly straight but Andre responds that its OK for a low end place, thinking that must have been what I was referring to. He told me he was able to get them comp’ed because he books a lot of German groups there. I wince at the six hundred plus bucks we spent at Planet Hollywood for the three nights and that was relatively cheap from what we could find. Didn’t run into the schoolgirls after that.

At some point I wriggle my way through the crowd, back up the short stairs over the faux-creek (Rain is water-themed naturally) to the dance floor in the center of the club to join Rick and the group. Can’t recall what song it was that got me back dancing but that’s always what I wait for – some music that just makes me have to join the throng and bounce around again. Rick was dancing with someone rather tall, lanky, and stylishly long haired. A surfer-dude type although not a blonde. Definitely not Rick’s usual type but Rick was his type. We all danced for a while and the music was excellent – DJ’d by Brett Henrichsen. At some point S (friend from LA) came over and whispered that he in fact did discover that he had an extra X he could give me. S had just flown in from Taipei after being delayed by a typhoon. He was the drug bearer of sorts for the weekend. This X was a capsule and S explained was very pure stuff, so would be enough for two. S was able to tear it open and dissolve it in Rick’s remaining water and I shook it up. I took a swig and passed the remainder to Rick who downed it. This all made me very happy because I was already immensely enjoying the evening and this bit of serendipity was another part of the scene that I thrive on. We kept dancing in the middle of the crowd, bending low instinctively whenever the overhead flame throwers were lighted as part of the lighting effects. Yes – you read that right, part of the lighting effects at Rain include overhead flame-throwers and you can indeed feel the heat from on the dance floor! The effect would have been cooler had I not always been reminded of the nightclub fire in Rhode Island caused by indoor pyrotechnics. Soon enough though I was feeling the vitamin water because I started to become much more outgoing with the crowd of dancers. Rick and I left the floor to a while to chill, catch up and do some more people watching. By now it must have been two or so and I was on a good roll. The main floor by now was pretty crowded too, and security still very much in evidence throughout. Off to one side on a dais where the DJ booth was, Flava came out at one point and did a couple dances – can’t recall what the tunes were. Flava is a plus-size African American drag queen / club performer. Always dressed spectacularly for the show but it only works if you’re high.

I began cruising a hot young thing to my right – a young hot bearded and tattooed thing standing with a friend who still was fully clothed, and not hot, and therefore standing out. The hot one was immediately joined by another young hot thing, a bit less edgy for lack of beard and tats. Both more my type that Rick’s I presume since they were both smooth and on the younger side. I wasn’t sure if they already knew each other, or the one was just moving in trying to pick up the other. So I was watching them curious to see what was going to happen when more hot guys came over and started dancing near us. There was a bit more space to dance here than up on the “official” dance floor. I started dancing too, and glided over the short distance in the direction of the original cruise target and his new friend. His friend started dancing with me and Rick and introduced himself as M from Phoenix. After a bit we all went back up on he dance floor and continued to dance and make out and have fun. Oh the vitamins!

The dance was going to close at three (it was a Sunday night after all) so Rick and I left the dance floor at about quarter to three to beat the crowd and get a cab back to PH and get some rest before we had to fly out.

Thoughts from Chicago

I’m now back on a plane, this time returning to SF from Chicago.  This was a quick trip to headquarters – short due to my needing to be back in SF for an HIV related medical appointment tomorrow. 

I am feeling a bit lighter this trip, because I discussed with my boss earlier this week that I would be leaving.  That was precipitated by getting assigned last week to do a sales call in Philadelphia, which would then turn out to be a project in Philadelphia.  What with all the stuff I have going on right now that’s stressing me I just do not need that kind of travel schedule.  And for all that, the pay and benefits and such just do not add up anymore.

P was meeting me in LA on Monday for a presentation to a client.  (NB:  he flew out to LA for the one hour sales call from his hometown of Toronto, was then headed for a short meeting in Houston, and then to Chicago!)  We discussed my decision over lunch.  P wants me to stay, and focus on building business in California.  He talked about some organization changes that would be making the firm less Chicago-centric, and said he’s serious about wanting to build up more presence again in California.  He also acknowledged me not wanting to have to travel to Chicago and the East Coast all the time.   We talked about connectedness, and me having a hard time feeling like a part of the organization since I felt out of touch.  He agreed and said that he’s also planning to reduce his time at HQ and that he was making other changes to reduce the HQ-centrism of the company. 

I agreed to give it another shot – seeing that the past year I have made headway in the company and I do trust my boss is serious about making an investment here.  I think I will give it another several months at least.  It feels much better to have brought it up and discussed it.  

From Wilmington

Its been over a week since my last posting, and I’m now in flight from San Francisco to
Chicago for business meetings.  After my last posting I proceeded from my dad’s home in Delaware to meetings in Chicago, and back home to San Francisco. 

I’ll start with a little more about my visit with father.  My father lives near my younger sister S and her family which includes my two nieces and her husband.  My older sister R lives a few hours away but often visits on weekends and holidays.  She’s never married and really enjoys playing with the nieces.  R came up to visit since I was going to be there, so I got to see everyone – which is great since its so far to travel and I absolutely dread the thought of being there more than a few days at a time.  I like to be able to pack in as much guilt-relieving family face-time as possible in my short visits.  This visit was  very spur-of-the-moment which is classic with me as for some reason I hate to plan out things.  However I had been promising Dad I would visit soon and the confluence of a three-day weekend (President’s Day) with a need to be in Chicago anyway made it seem the sensible (and expedient) thing. 

The visit was filled with some classic (my)family events – a rousing game of Pinochle which is now one of my father’s favorite games (its popular at the Senior Centers!);  my father making dinner (boiled ham, boiled cabbage;  Pillsbury dinner rolls;  boiled potatoes; and home-made (in air-quotes) cherry pie);  my nieces eating not dinner but some apple slices, processed cheese product, and yogurt;  playing games with my nieces (more to follow);  watching TV;  me escaping to the bagel shop to get coffee and self-space.

While hardly fodder for a blog, the visit had some entertainment value to share.  

My older sister R has apparently decided that my dad’s housekeeping practices lack, shall I say, enough oooomph.  She thinks he lets the kitchen get too dirty.  Lord, I should worry what she thinks when she visits R and me – but she’s not one to keep even unpopular opinions to herself for long so I don’t actually worry.  Anyway, after the fabulous boiled dinner at my dad’s place, we all moved plates and stuff back into the kitchen and cleaned the dishes and what not.  Afterward as everyone was finishing cherry pie R was in the kitchen busying herself with more cleaning.  Not the dishes mind you – the stove, fridge and stuff.  In fact she was cleaning like a maniac really – spraying and wiping, spraying and wiping, spraying and … not wiping.  Dad has one of those electric stoves with the smooth top.  R felt it important to wipe it down with Comet, and not rinse it but instead let that dry before washing it off.  I saw what she was doing and assumed she knew how to clean it – I certainly wasn’t going to claim any expertise.  Once she was done – and my dad was kind of joking about it with the rest of us still sitting at the table talking – we started a game of Pinochle.  Part-way through R goes into the kitchen and starts trying to rinse off the now-dried Comet. 

Well after a few minutes trying to remove the greenish-white pasty stuff, she yelled to us “Susan lets this stuff dry, right?”  Susan and her family have gone home by this time.  So its actually a rhetorical yell.  Several gallons of water later, we’re all still wiping and mopping up.  After that we continue Pinochle where dad buries us both. 

Now the next day I went over to Susan’s after lunch to see everyone there.  It was kind of fun hanging out there especially when it started to snow – something that was always a fun event when we were kids.  We didn’t have any of the extra work (shoveling) or worry (slippery driving, or getting stranded) that it brought and sometimes school closed. 

When I got there my nieces were in the process of putting on a Barbie fashion show.  I don’t think they were all Barbie dolls but that’s what they called them.  And they had a lot of the little dolls.  Seeing what they were up to I asked if this was their Project Runway – thinking that’s where they got the idea.  Nope – just doing a Barbie fashion show which I guess is some marketing thing from Matel to sell more dolls and clothes and stuff.  I seized the opportunity to be a guest judge for them, taking over the prime spot previously held by my sister R.  I announced I was Heidi Klum!  So we proceeded to have round after round of competitive fashion modeling where I bitingly dissed and praised various Barbie fashions, all in bad but determined imitation of Heidi’s german accent.  I gradually even came to remember each doll’s name and the names of the designers.  That really pleased the nieces.  As did the bad accent.  I tried to get R into it as another judge, being Nina Garcia, but she also hadn’t ever seen the show so how WAS she going to get Nina’s mannerisms?  S was even laughing as the whole thing got more and more elaborate and my nieces got more and more competitive. 

That capped off the evening and the visit.  I hardly even had time to think about HIV, whether to be on or off ARV, and whether or whom to tell. 

Visiting my father

My father lives in Wilmington Delaware.  That’s Delaware as in “home of tax-free shopping” – as the freeway welcome signs boast.  My father is now 86 years old, and doesn’t travel much – pretty much to one of the two senior centers, the grocery store,  an occasional trip to the Amish farmer’s market. 

I got here yesterday evening.  To get there, I traveled all day from Oakland via Midway airport, to Philadelphia where my older sister R picked me up at the airport.  I was reading “ Lunar Park”, the latest Brett Easton Ellis novel on the way.   I also was able to make a good revision to a presentation I need to do for a potential client in a few weeks.  Significantly I didn’t hear much coughing, wheezing or sneezing on either flight – which made me a cheery because I hate being on flights thinking I am going to pick up some bug.  As I exited the plane in Philadelphia I called R who was waiting in the “on call” lot near the airport to pick me up at Arrivals.  She doesn’t use her mobile phone regularly – she has some it mainly in case of car trouble – and I had checked with her to make sure she turned it on this time.   Turn out she just got a new phone, and a new phone number.  So I called my Father to get the number – and he didn’t have it.  So I called my younger sister and she called R who called me.  So we met at Arrivals a few minutes later.  Traffic was rush-hour slow, and the freeway from the airport south to Wilmington goes through several lane-narrowing bottlenecks and splits.  Not to mention my sister drives like a grandmother. 

When we got to my father’s place, he had a beef stew simmering in his Christmas-new crock-pot.  R stayed for dinner as well, although she stays with S and her family when in Wilmington so she can have a lot of time with the two nieces E and S.  I was glad to see Dad was still quite active and pretty much as I last saw him a few months ago.  He had been playing cards at one of the senior centers he belongs to earlier in the day.  He has learned how to operate his CD player and plays 40s pop and country music.  He has also figured out the VCR and now gets movies to watch from the senior center.  He has “On Golden Pond” to watch. 

The conundrum of visiting my family is that we have absolutely nothing in common except our past.  So talking is tough – it centers around small talk primarily or the nieces and what they’re doing.  Dad is hard of hearing (and doesn’t want a hearing aid) so that makes conversing doubly hard.  I do talk about what we do out in San Francisco,  but its hard for him to understand, let alone relate – his social life seems to have ended about 1955.  Hasn’t been out to a movie theatre since we kids were at home.   A fine restaurant would be the Olive Garden.  Oh, we do talk about TV – he watches Survivor and The Apprentice.  Maybe I can get him watching Project Runway next season!   So trying to get across the concept of the, for instance, the Eagle Beer Bust and the characters is – difficult.  I told him we sometimes go to Moby’s on Friday after work to meet friends and talk and have a drink.  He said they don’t have cocktails at the senior centers – he said everyone has enough trouble driving at it is.

Dad remembered a little more about Mom and when she started getting sick.  She would call her sister (Aunt M) and have long talking jags.  This was after we moved to the house in Oxon Hill but before my younger sister was born.  Summer of 1960.  Apparently these talks were of a nature that worried my Aunt M, so M asked Mom and Dad both to come out to visit to talk with her in Silver Spring.  From what my Father said, the conversation must have worried or scared Aunt M because she contacted a psychiatrist she knew, and got Mom to go see him.  After that visit, he called Aunt M and said she needed to be admitted immediately.  My father said he had to trick her into going back to the hospital that night, and she threw her purse at the doctor when they told her she couldn’t leave.  So,  big trust issue there!  She stayed for 30 days and had electro-shock therapy.  But he didn’t know what they thought was wrong.  Which right there seems odd – I suppose there was medical-speak involved but a husband should know why his wife is commited to an institution for 30 days.  No?  (queue suspicious background music).  When she got out, he remembered her being better for a while.  And that was when she got pregnant with Susan.  But she continued to have episodes apparently, and went back to a different psychiatrist (Dr. Philpott).  She went off and on for out-patient electroshock treatments, but didn’t get better.  That’s the new stuff he remembered.

Later, as he was playing some country music on the CD player, he told me about the time he met Patsy Cline.  He and some friends had beers with Patsy Cline at Harrigan’s Café after she sang at Washington’s U-Line Arena in the late 40s.  She was living in West Virginia and just getting her start.  This was before she was a star.  He said his friends were flirting with her girlfriend she was with because she was better looking and had a convertible. 

I haven’t been thinking much about HIV this week.  Work has been very busy, with a big presentation for a new sales opportunity with Union Bank of California due to be reviewed early next week when I am in Chicago.  So between that and visiting my father, I have been distracted.  Still – it has been a little on my mind just due to the doctor visit this past week.  And I am still taking the Lunesta for sleep. 

Panic!

I went for my 2nd month visit to the UCSF Options study yesterday.  Got blood drawn again.  It seems to hurt more each time!  This visit I didn’t get F who has very good technique.  She was busy and I got E instead.  Hadn’t had him on either of the other visits.  I still couldn’t watch it,  nor even count up the test tubes.  It was plenty – clearly more than a dozen and again the pages of labels being applied.  That took a while maybe 15 minutes.   We chatted about the lack of snow at Tahoe,  and E’s skiiing accident (into a tree) – his last skiing attempt.

After which I saw L, who took me though a checklist of symptoms to see if I’d had any headaches, or whatever, in the last month.  A big list of things – all of which responses I presume are being tallied up to see if there are any commonalities among the study group.  My blood pressure and pulse rate still abnormally good (how can my blood pressure be low now!).  

L also reviewed my prior lab results with me,  key results being the cd4 and VL counts which again bounced around a bit but were still good.  L noted that I did have an abnormally high creatinine level and wants to have that checked in more detail with my own doctor.  It could indicate a kidney issue.  Do I look completely icy and calm at these visits or something?  She explained that HIV sometimes involves the kidneys, not just the cd4 cells – although its rare.  @#&%@#!   Did she have to toss that out there?  Like I needed to know that when the one lab test may just as well be an outlier as anything significant. 

We discussed the possibility of starting ARV treatment.  I explained what I had discussed with my primary care doctor.  She explained that its just not known yet whether starting treatment at an early stage helps, or not.  And then, not quite out of the blue,  L says that of course ARV would be the treatment method if there was any kidney involvement.  %^&@#!  Again!  Ouch!

The discussion eventually led around to the topic of drug resistance and the need for the genotyping results – which were not ready yet.  The genotyping takes six weeks, sometimes more.   So I have a few more weeks to ponder the question of treatment or not.  L was a bit more encouraging about starting treatment,  primarily because she feels that the side effects of the meds now are usually very manageable when they are encountered.  And that current regimens she feels are much better in terms of numbers of pills per day, and restrictions than in the past.  And that experience has shown very good viral control,  and good prevention of drug resistance.

All fine,  but which then got me (subconciously) thinking about HIV drug resistance, kidneys and stuff.  The middle of last night I dreamt I got my genotyping results.  I had HIV resistant to everything and a kind that was infecting my kidneys on top of that.   The same kind of panic that hit me when I got my prelim test result at Magnet back in December came back.  I started hyperventilating,  and my blood was pounding in my ears.  I woke up out of the dream…and wasn’t hyperventilating and my pulse seemed normal.  I felt the dream was an anxiety dream but my body didn’t respond to it.  That seemed strange to me – when I wake up from dreams I normally am physically involved if that would be appropriate for whatever was occuring in the dream.  I went back to sleep.  Fitfully.

New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve we went out to a party being held by a couple we know, with their neighbors in their new condos.  It turned out to be a huge party with lots of people we know and didn’t know, all crowding in and enjoying drinking, shouting and looking around.  Their new condo is in

Corona
Heights and I drove us over (just a few blocks but it was a cool night) and got what my partner calls Doris Day parking – i.e. right there.  We climbed up the (many) stairs and mingled our way through the crowd (it was still early) – stopping to chat with friends and then making our way to get drinks.  I can’t remember what I was having – probably cranberry with vodka, heavy on the vodka.  I drank and drank – not something I normally do.  We stopped and caught up with friends some more, people coming and going.  We wandered around a bit to check out the place and I drank a bit more.  I ended up getting silly when the noisemakers were being handed out before midnight (i.e. annoying people not as drunk as I was).  Well – it was a New Year’s Eve party!   Puhleeze J    

 

Internally I was mainly pondering my upcoming medical appointments.  The bad thing about getting my diagnosis mid-December was that I couldn’t get to see my doctor or even get confirming results until January.  My therapist luckily was willing to see me those weeks which was great because I could have gone crazy without someone knowledgeable to talk to. 

 

Having the medical appointments though gave me something to look forward too – something I was doing to counter HIV.  I had my appointment at Magnet to get blood test results.  My partner seemed to be pinning some hope on the blood test results being negative.  I had dismissed this since the oral test is 99.8% accurate – but lately had also begun to hope that it could be a false positive.  Past that I had an appointment later in the week with the UCSF Options study to get my first lab test results, which would give me a leg up for my visit with my primary care doctor the following day.  All that gave me encouragement that at least I was doing things as best one could in the circumstances.

 

We left the party somewhere after midnight, many contemplating whether to go out dancing at the Sanctuary party,  me and my partner just heading back to sleep.  I hoped at least with all the alcohol I would get some rest. 

Christmas – Orphans’ Dinner

Christmas Day we were invited to some friends’ home for dinner – the “Christmas orphan’s” dinner for those not spending the evening with bio-family.  For me,  that evening was more familial than it would have been had I been with my bio-family.  The home was on a steep hill in the heart of the Castro, being the six month new home of two friends who have been boyfriends for a couple years.  It was decorated for the holidays – in a very tasteful not schlocky way.  The entire experience made me ponder the message of the book “The Velvet Rage” – everything about the evening felt quite “produced”, although effortlessly.  The result was very enjoyable for us guests.  One partner managed all the cooking – and the dinner was incredibly delicious.  He had also handmade a streudel for dessert – which turned out well but again made me think more about whether he did it because of love of cooking and sharing (I hope) or to impress.  His boyfriend stayed out of the kitchen the whole time except to fix the occasional cocktail and kept us all entertained.  The whole time I was glad to be with everyone, and the party provided good opportunity to de-focus my thinking about being HIV+.  On the other hand, the whole HIV situation never actually left my mind during the event and I practically wanted to scream out what had happened.  Someone had brought some special hybrid pot, and it was shared around – I partook which I normally don’t due to feelings of paranoia.  This time it was just relaxing, maybe the feelings of paranoia were just drowned out by all the other thoughts spinning around in me. 

Between Christmas and New Year’s

Over the holidays I was reading “Dry” from Augusten Burroughs, a former advertising executive living in
New York City, turned memoirist with titles including “Running with Scissors”.  “Dry” recounts his rehab from alcoholism, while he lived in
Manhattan and worked in advertising.  Anyway, I had enjoyed other works of his and always enjoy reading about life in
Manhattan. 

 

The experience of reading the book turned out to be very disquieting for me.  One of the plotlines follows his friendship with a man known in the book only as Pighead.  Glossing over very interesting details of their relationship (read the book),  a picture was painted of Pighead as having been on ARVs for quite a while, in peak health, and taking excellent care of himself.  Augusten falls out of touch with Pighead for years as he descends into alcohol abuse.  During a period of recovery, he gets back in touch.  As they rekindle their friendship,  Pighead suddenly falls sick, with AIDS.  The book describes Augusten caring for him,  and Pighead’s decline and eventual death – very much reminding me of a couple close friends who died of AIDS before ARVs.

 

This was terribly upsetting to me.  I had been absorbed with thinking about HIV anyway,  but at least after the first few days had managed to keep concentrating on the fact that it’s a treatable illness now.  The book up to that point had been helping keep me diverted from too much thinking – and now it was making me think about it more, and making me fear that AIDS could still be out there in my future, despite all the ARVs.  More sleepless nights ahead…

 

UCSF Options

I had arranged an appointment for an evaluation with the Options study run by USCF at SF General Hospital.  The morning of the appointment I was pretty frazzled  as I had not been sleeping well since testing positive.  However the prospect of getting the medical process started had given me something to look forward to and almost cling to like a life preserver at times, and I would be getting a lot of tests which would tell me more about my immediate situation and health.  So while nervous I was somewhat upbeat about the visit.

I headed down to SF General and as I turned down 23rd St from where I live I realized that, and I had never noticed, from my block you can see all the way down 23rd St, downhill through the Mission, to where the street ends at Potrero Ave and SF General.  So as I headed there I passed through familiar territory in Mission Dolores and the Mission. 

Once parked and inside Bldg 84 I headed up to the 6th floor where the Options program lives.  Its very hospital-like although there are no patient rooms – offices jammed with familiar and not-so-familiar medical instruments and equipment, exam rooms, a waiting room and the like.  The staff there are very sweet – and also I got the feeling that they understand people going there for the first visit have a lot of questions and feelings swirling around.  And they were happy to allow for that.  I was given a lot of disclosure forms to read through and sign – describing what the study was for and what to expect and then all the standard disclosures. 

A social-worker helped me through all the papers, the started an interview which basically took down a lot of medical, drug and sexual history.   She was very supportive and we talked about how / when I may have been infected.  The study needs people who have very recently converted.  They have a method using several forms of antibody tests to estimate the time since infection.  I went across the hall to get blood drawn for some lab tests.  I used to hate getting stuck – however its too familar now to actually be a bother.  Anyway the RN who was taking my samples was in the proces of peeling off preprinted lab stickers to place on the various test tubes,  a full letter-sized sheet of laebls – must have been a dozen.  I figured of course she would throw some away.  Instead,  she finished placing all those on test tubes splayed out in front of me then reached for another page of preprinted labels and stuck on a few more!  Uhh I was getting a little nervous. 

She explained how she was going to take all the samples using a “butterfly” and it should only feel like a little pinch.  I never saw the butterfly because if I had watched her insert the needle I would have passed out.  Anyway, she was engaging and began talking about growing up in Atlanta and how long ago she had left for San Francisco, and her kids, and I was listening and trying just to breathe, not hyperventilate, not faint, and not look.  It didn’t take long and I didn’t even feel a pinch really.  There was a lot of blood on the table though – all safely in the test tubes.  

After that,  another social worker came in an basically wanted to check in on my frame of mind, give me information about the resources available here in SF,  and yeah gave me some words of encouragement.  Which was good.  After that I saw a doctor who explained some of the different tests they would run, and some background about how HIV treatment therapy is determined by cd4 count and viral load.  Since it was close to teh holidays though I would not be able to get the results for a couple weeks.  It was going to be a long Christmas season for me.