ANDREW OF AMERICA's Simple Steps in Getting an AIDS Test (C) 1995, 1996 All Rights Reserved. What follows is a slightly modified version of a text that originally appeared in the April 7, 1995 edition of Gaynet-Digest (Vol. 16: 544). It has become one of the most popular and requested "AOA" pieces to date appearing in national publications and inspiring tons of fanmail from men and women who have "been there." ANDREW OF AMERICA's Simple Steps in Getting an AIDS test Date: Fri, 07 Apr 1995 03:05:07 CDT 1. Have sex with someone who lies about their HIV status. 2. Go down to the local free health care clinic. 3. Make up a fake identity including ersatz social security number because big brother is watching you and testing is by state law "confidential" and not "anonymous." Be sure to write your lie on a 3 x 5 card or matchbook so you can remember it following the two weeks of interminable hell while you wait in limbo for your test results to come back late from the lab. 4. Roll up your sleeve. 5. Lie to the nurse about your risk group status. Tell them your Haitian. 6. Don't worry about lying. It didn't bother your sex partner. 7. Wait wait wait. Take up a hobby to pass the time. Photomicroscopy is good. Wait wait wait. How long has it been? Eleven minutes. Your test results are only a scant 19,876 minutes away. This leaves plenty of time for hating everyone you ever slept with, distrusting people at the supermarket, questioning the existence of God and reading self-loathing literature from Exodus International. 8. Blame people. Scientists, politicians, popes, your mother who made you this way, the psychologist who told you your mother made you this way, your self and everyone who ever slept with you. 9. Turn on the radio. Don't love songs sound like big long lies set to music? Doesn't Rush Limbaugh sound sensible? Doesn't static sound best of all? Switch to a classical music station. Listen to the unspeakable longing in a Tchaichovsky Piano Concerto... all because he was queer and couldn't tell anybody. You're queer. Have YOU ever written a piano concerto? Better get to work. You might not have long to live. 10. Become paranoid of your own body. Don't share you soap. Don't let people drink after you because-you-could-have-micro-abrasions-in-your- mouth-because-you-just-brushed-your-teeth-and-they-could-have-just- accidentally-bitten-their-cheek-in-which-case-you-could-pass-bodily- fluids-that-could-kill-them. Better wrap your toothbrush in aluminum foil and bury it in your sock drawer just-to-be-safe. 11. Turn into a religious maniac. Then an atheist. Then soften it to an agnostic just to be safe and not piss anybody off. Hide all sharp objects. 12. Judge people. Judge straight people for being so insensitive. Judge gay people for being so promiscuous. Judge Judge Judge. Grow a beard so you will look like Lance Ito. Drive up to the McDonald's pick up window and overrule the cashier. What are they gonna do? Put you in jail? 13. Keep a diary. Your entries might look like this: Day 1. Dear diary, sorry I have waited until now to keep a diary. Day 2. Haven't started on the Piano Concerto yet. Day 3. Rained all day. 14. Try to figure out what all that James Joyce business was about you never quite got in college. 15. Unplug the phone. Unplug the computer. Withdraw. Do not unplug the TV. It is your only friend. The TV loves you. Watch O.J. Talk to him through the TV screen. Tell him you know exactly how he feels. Watch 7 hours of trial analysis so that at night you can dream that you finally finished renovating your Victorian house and O.J. Simpson and your father dissaprovingly come to visit in some sort of daylight savings time twilight world cocktail party with Cajun blackened chicken and honey mustard pasta and most of the guests are dressed in blue seersucker except for O.J. whom you grab by the lapel of his brown Armani suit and pull him to to you and begin to weep: "I don't know if you are guilty or not but I just wanted to tell you that growing up it was important for *me* to have a black role model *I* could look up to..." and as you say this O.J. breaks down and cries and you hug each other close and his warm tears fall into *your* eyes and fill them like teacups before spilling down your face and running down your neck. You get an erection but you cannot tell if he has one or not. He reaches down to squeeze your thigh and you cup his buttocks in your hand before he turns abruptly to walk out of the room and before he reaches the doorframe turns back semi-silhouetted and says "I wasn't impressed." The rest of the night you dream that you spend the rest of the night telling everyone you know that O.J. came to visit. 15. D-Day arrives. You go into the clinic and sit in cold polyurethane molded chairs in a sterile white environment and look for something to read. There are no magazines so you take to reading the oversized posters warning you of the risks of a Pandora's box worth of diseases with long Latin names. The desk clerk calls you up. You pass a pink, crumpled slip of paper through the partition in the glass booth that serves as her cubicle. You expect her to respond with some routine gibberish about having a seat and waiting but instead her face blanches white as mayonnaise and she recoils in horror as if she were a bank teller just handed a stick-up note. "I'll be right back." She says and disappears through a maze of glass partitions each no bigger than a living room aquarium. You stand there in silence as all the other nurse/clerkoids nervously look down in a vain attempt to appear busy and you can feel the hot breath of the man in dirty overalls and a baseball cap behind you as he holds his daughter waiting for her immunization. "Don't cry Latisha, don't cry girl, c'mon." After 8 minutes, the nurse returns. The doctor will see you in a minute. 135 minutes pass as you numbly watch the sun set over the observatory dome on the college campus across the street. You think back to the first time you saw that view when you were tested 7 years ago and you ask yourself why you just didn't join a monastery then. The Trappist Monks at Conyers were so nice. It's your turn. You don't recognize your name at first because it's not *your* name but the one you made up for the test: "Malcolm McDougall." You rise slowly and you feel the gaze of the half dozen others in the room and wonder if they think your zits are Karposi's Sarcoma. You walk through the open shower glass door like a zombie and float down the hall like a drugged sheep entering an avatoir. You envision rotating knives from the walls at the end of the hall whizzing into your flesh and sending you into sweet midnight after a brief sting of pain. "Have a seat." The doctor is young, pretty and black. You wonder where she went to school. Is she friendly? Will she bite? Will she hate you? Will she explain things? She stares at the slip of paper she has in her hands inquizitively. "Is this your name?" Your voice sticks in your throat, "Yssgh." She looks down at the paper and asks, "what's your social security number, address and home phone?" You recant the list of fictitious digits as if saying the Haggadah from rote or some secret code of salvation memorized by hours of inculcation. There is no answer. You see sweat on her upper lip. You feel sweat on the palm of your hand blotting the ink on the 3 x 5 card of incognito infornation tattooing your fist like some concentration camp serial number hoping you gave the right answer... 16. The doctor sighs and tells you you are NEGATIVE, NON-REACTIVE. The test indicates you do NOT have the anti-bodies for HIV. The room seems to get very light as your thoughts of freedom and the buzz of the fluorescent tubes drown out her spiel about wearing condoms. Of course your not infected. Of course you are okay. THAT only happens to other people. You take two bags of condoms and go on your merry way with your pink slip of proof that you are immortal, invincible and will live for ever. You have not killed your current boyfriend and your ex-boyfriend has not killed you. You can live a carefree and happy life at home alone, locked in a chastity belt and strapped to a piano bench where you will compose concertos of unspeak- able love to men of great youth and beauty. You are roused from your world of halcyon dreams by these words: YOU MUST GET TESTED EVERY SIX MONTHS FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS. 17. Shampoo. Rinse. Repeat. AUTHOR'S NOTE: In 1993, ANDREW OF AMERICA received word from the county health department that a former lover had tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. ANDREW underwent two years of testing at six month intervals. He was *not* infected. He credits "God and condoms" to this end. The above passages were adapted from his journals. ------------------------------------------------------ (C) 1995, 1996 ANDREW OF AMERICA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.