Having Sex With Poz Men Helped Kick My Fear of HIV

“It’s no longer a death sentence” is not what I was told in my seventh-grade health class. “It’s the worst sexually transmitted infection, and not one you want to get” — that’s what I was told. That’s what started my pathological fear of contracting HIV.

Before I had sex with a single man, I was having HIV scares. I don’t think there’s a pediatrician in the history of mankind who’s had to deal with such an obsessive (barely sexually active) 17-year-old.

Upon asking for my fourth HIV test, my pediatrician told me that since I was having [condomless] vaginal sex with literally one woman, the odds of my contracting HIV were slim. He told me it would be a different case for anal or if I was having sex with men.

Then at 18, I started having sexual relationships with men (two weeks into college), but it wasn’t until almost four years later, the week before graduating from college, that I first had penetrative intercourse with a man. It was [condomless], and I was high and liquored up. That’s what it took me to get to a place where I could sleep with a man. The sex was [condomless], and this was May 2013, before I even knew what PrEP was.

Later that week I took 20 milligrams of Ambien and invited the same boy over. We had sex again. Again, [condomless] . For a month afterward, I freaked out about being positive. Then I finally got tested. The results came back negative.

Then after coming out as bisexual and fully embracing the label, I began using condoms. The possibility of getting HIV seemed even more real, and once I embraced the bi label, I couldn’t stop thinking about HIV during sex and feared being that HIV-spreading “bridge” to women — a bridge that's quite possibly a myth I've been conditioned to fear. So condoms seemed like the logical option.

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