APPOSITIVE

There comes a moment of seemingly cruel realization, a moment in which you come into ownership of a parenthetical knowledge about your identity. It should pale in comparison to your diagnosis. But it doesn't; it supercedes it. Runs past all the cautionary information relayed to you by physicians and counselors and rushes to the finish line. It's an insidious understanding that you are now not only Positive - you are Appositive. Your identity will forevermore be placed into brackets, qualified and added to and amended. If only within yourself. No longer are you John. You are now, John +. - Benjamin Bruckner, R-U-1-2 *

Bullets are dodged every day. You turn right instead of left at the corner of Fate and Destiny and avoid the piano falling from some sixth floor window. Or you pause a moment in reflection before commenting on your lover's insightful words as you chew your pancakes, thus avoiding an untimely death by aspiration.

Yeah, bullets are dodged every day.

But sometimes you smoke just one too many cigarettes and develop emphysema, or swim fifteen minutes too soon after lunch and are carried to the bottom of the pool by the cramping pain in your gut. And sometimes you just fuck the wrong person and the condom fails, allowing a single microscopic life form to penetrate into your system, setting up household in its new, plush digs and going forth to multiply.

It's the law of averages or gambling theory or just the luck of the draw.

I never studied law, can't gamble worth shit, and my luck just ran out.

I wasn't even given the option of keeping it to myself. Of hiding it or pretending it didn't exist. Of keeping myself invisible. The loft was full when the call came. Emmett, Ted, Michael, Ben... Brian. They were all waiting for me, eager as usual to head out to Woody's for another night of same old same old. If only we'd left five minutes earlier or I'd answered the phone instead of letting the answering machine pick it up. But we were running late.

"This call is for Justin Taylor. Mr. Taylor, this is Dr. Como's office. He would like you to make an appointment at your earliest possible convenience to go over the results of your test. Please call and make an appointment. Thank you."

The voice was insidiously cheerful and loud in the you-could-hear-a-pin-drop silence of the loft.

"Baby? Are you sick?"

I didn't bother to answer Emmett. I was too busy trying to figure out what color of pale that was on Brian's face. Ash? No. Winter white. Perhaps - with just a hint of citronella around his lips. Yeah, he knew what test results Dr. Como wanted to discuss. Everyone else knew it, too.

The confirmation from Dr. Como was just that, a confirmation. I'd already known the diagnosis without ever having heard it. HIV positive. And not in a positive, life-affirming way. I'd tried to laugh it off with one of Brian's platitudes. I couldn't. This was real, not just the potential we always accepted as a matter of course. As a part of every sexually active gay man's life. This. Was. Real.

And I was terrified. Not of dying. Not that. At twenty-three I was still young enough to feel invincible, but cynical enough to know that death could literally be standing in wait around the next corner. After all, I'd barely survived a bat and a bomb, hadn't I? No, although I didn't welcome it, the specter of my own death wasn't one of my greatest fears. It was just an inevitability of life.

But I was terrified. Of being outed. Of being that statistic, that tag-line and punch-line. Of having that descriptor addended to my name. To who I was. I was no longer Justin Taylor. Now I was Justin Taylor +. 'You know, Justin Taylor. The guy with HIV - they guy with the bug - the guy you don't want to fuck now.' I was terrified of the scarlet letters.

And I was terrified of the way Brian looked at me. As if I was broken - again. As if the fucking eggshells he'd started walking on around me applied even to his vision.

"Stop it, Brian."

"What?"

"You fucking know what. Stop looking at me as if I'm dying right in front of you."

"Justin..."

"It's disturbing, Brian. And it's mortifying. And I'm not a goddamned fucking disease! I'm me!"

He held me for a long time that night because I cried like a fucking three year old. I held him for the same reason.

"I hate this shit," he said. We'd ended up on the bed, not fucking again. We hadn't done more than jerk off since the diagnosis because I wasn't sure how to do that yet. How to navigate a blow job on Brian or trust a condom. How to trust that this condom wouldn't fail, too, if we fucked. I didn't know how to have sex with a plus sign beside my name. I was terrified of that, too. Of giving Brian that sign. Beside his name.

I spent a lot of time alone. Going out wasn't really an option if I want to avoid the looks and the asides. I'd had enough of that after the bashing. It had been over a week now since I'd been in my studio. The one I'd been so proud of when I came back. The one that meant I was finally home for good. Now, the anonymity of New York, that isolation that had almost robbed me of my desire to create, sounded almost like a siren call. Now, instead of painting, instead of creating, I... avoided.

It seemed antithetical to me that I wasn't as worried about having HIV as I was about being HIV positive. I'd never thought of myself as being shallow or particularly self-absorbed. I didn't care about what people thought when it came to other things in my life - my clothes, my political views, my fuck-anything-with-a-dick boyfriend. But this was different. This wasn't really about other people's opinions. This was about me, about my own identity. It was about who I thought of myself as being now. And right now, there was a big red glowing neon sign seared into my forehead and I could feel myself being defined by that mark. For the rest of my life.

Ben showed up when I'd been cloistered in the loft for a little over a week. Brian had decided he'd had enough of my introspective period, I assumed, and called in reinforcements. He'd already supplied me with Ben's book. Well written as it was and apropos to the situation, I had dutifully read through it. For Brian. He deserved better than I was able to give him right now. He'd agonized with me and then processed. "It is what it is, Justin, and we'll fucking deal with it." I wanted to spit out that it was easy for him to say, but I knew it wasn't. It was killing him, too.

"So, we share more than a birthday now." I couldn't help being a little casual with Ben as we 'shared'.

"Brian tells me you may not be dealing with your diagnosis well..."

"I'm dealing with that just fine. Thanks."

"How are you feeling?"

Laughing seemed a bit out of place here, but I laughed anyway. "Parenthetical. Bracketed, qualified, added to and amended."

"Ah... Chapter 8." I didn't bother to respond. I just patted the book and grabbed us both a beer. "Did you finish the chapter, Justin?"

I shook my head, although I had finished it. But at the point I recognized myself, so clearly illustrated by another who'd faced this... dilemma... I'd stopped paying much attention. I didn't really want to see a future of parentheses and identity qualifiers laid out ad infinitum.

"I didn't think so... That sounds so much like some of my students." He chuckled and I couldn't stop a little smile of my own. "Any event in our lives brings with it a set of parentheses, Justin. You were appositive the moment you were born - Justin Taylor, son of Craig and Jennifer, the child born on the fourth of January. None of those things fully define you. All they do is add to your definition." He placed his hand on my shoulder as he stood to leave. It felt good. Solid. Maybe a little trustworthy. "This is a big chunk of that definition, granted. But no more so than Justin Taylor, the man who finally tamed the great Brian Kinney. Remember that."

The laugh that burst out of me at Ben's words turned into a broken sob. I'd never been much for hugging, except with Brian, but I had to hold onto Ben. Right then I needed to hold this big, gentle man who shared all this with me. "Thanks, Ben."

"You're welcome... And, yes, Justin, we share birthdays and blood... but we also share friends and family. Don't forget that."

I didn't forget. When I showed up later that afternoon at Brian's office wearing my paint-splattered clothes, the relief on his face was enough to insure I'd always remember.

"Hey, I'll be at the studio for awhile. Can you pick up dinner?"

"Yeah," he replied with a wide grin. "Lemon bars for desert?"

"No need. We can make desert together." I winked. He laughed. It was a momentous conversation.

Living as a positive man isn't easy. Then again, living with Brian Kinney isn't easy, either. But for me the alternative to either one is not living at all.

And Justin Taylor is going to live every minute of his life. Parentheses, brackets and all. Of that, I'm positive.