# Just one night



## gokedik (Oct 10, 2014)

Yesterday, I had a nurse give me an injection and upon pulling the needle from my arm a drop of blood oozed forth. The nurse pulled out an alcohol pad but only got half-way finished wiping the blood, now trickling down my arm from my shoulder, before saying, “You can handle it from here, can’t you?” She turned the alcohol pad over to me, letting out an inaudible sigh of fear while walking away with her hands clear of me and in the air. Returning with a pair of gloves but she was no longer needed as that one alcohol pad was enough to stop the bleeding. She looked silly but I felt worse, as if my disease defined me or maybe she just couldn’t see past it. But either way, she is in the medical field and, yet, is still uneducated. Hurting the fragile feelings of those newly diagnosed and infuriating the veterans, of which I qualify.


	This is what it is, and this is what’s up. For all of you too young to remember the 80‘s when people dropped like flies, and not just the dirty and drug addicted, either. Models, tennis players, playwrights, actors and actresses, mothers and fathers. A one nightstand can turn into a night you will remember for the rest of your, unnatural, life. And gain a relationship with an infectious disease specialist, a pharmacy who’ll love you, but only for the money you bring in, a psychiatrist for the inevitable depression and a therapist who will help you not allow it to dominate your entire life. But that’s a difficult trick that I’ve yet to master, even after nearly twenty years. 


	Time does not make the load lighter, as one might think. Pain never hurts less, pain is pain, and emotional is the worst. And this will leave emotional scars that, no one can see, but will last you a lifetime.


	It’s a three letter three letter disease that, inevitably, develops into a four letter death sentence. Unless you are famous with piles of money. Your spirituality will cultivate a healthy respect for Death, as your personal life will grow sparse, without proper support, which you will need to track down and tackle. You will curse that one night with all of your might but it will be to no avail, you will have been tagged by one of the most stigmatized viruses on the planet and will carry it to your death. Hating the person that knew, or not, that they were giving you a gift that keeps on giving.


	You will learn, by proximity, that to transmit this scourge, it needs to be injected into you, one way or another. Not saliva nor blood exposed to air. But, people in general, are ignorant and self-absorbed and will hurt you unconsciously with jokes or just bad information  You will hesitate to correct them because you would be “outing” yourself and do not want to be known for carrying a Death that is time released.


	The medication is quite intensive and hard to swallow in more ways than one. It’s called a cocktail but is nothing like the one you had on “that” night. If you are human, the desire to stop taking the pills will be overwhelming. But your doctor will promise you that your health will plummet with what are called “opportunistic infections”. The parasites that will draw the life out of you and people like you.


	Or, you may be at a “friend’s” house, drinking yourself into oblivion and have your “friend”, after you pass out, use your body like a blow-up doll. As happened to me. I harbor no ill will for a dead man but still cannot wrap my head around his. I accept my part in my violation but as some women need to know, also, is that it is never their fault and wasn’t mine either. Rape is always wrong, whether the word “no” is uttered or someone is incapacitated. And when you include a disease, it is simply unconscionable. But I have made the conscious decision to go to the grave without my virus seeing the light of day, whether that means living and dying alone concerns me not. I am a hu-man and feel responsible double time as the way I received it was w-r-o-n-g. I will not continue the cycle of abuse. It stops HERE.


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## Terry D (Oct 10, 2014)

In my opinion this is your best non-fiction piece to date. The tone and presentation are controlled, but passionate. Not at all bombastic. That makes it far easier for the reader to absorb the message rather than getting snagged on the barbs of the presentation.

I particularly like, "Pain never hurts less, pain is pain, " but would lose the 'and emotional is the worst'. It just seems clunky and unneeded. I'd also lose "the gift that keeps on giving"; the cliche' is a speed-bump in the flow of the piece.

All together a very well presented piece.


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## dither (Oct 11, 2014)

Heavy stuff goked.


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## gokedik (Oct 11, 2014)

Terry D said:


> In my opinion this is your best non-fiction piece to date. The tone and presentation are controlled, but passionate. Not at all bombastic. That makes it far easier for the reader to absorb the message rather than getting snagged on the barbs of the presentation.
> 
> I particularly like, "Pain never hurts less, pain is pain, " but would lose the 'and emotional is the worst'. It just seems clunky and unneeded. I'd also lose "the gift that keeps on giving"; the cliche' is a speed-bump in the flow of the piece.
> 
> All together a very well presented piece.


I appreciate your time and your generous critique. Thank you, Thank you, Thankyou


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## gokedik (Oct 11, 2014)

dither said:


> Heavy stuff goked.


All too, I'm afraid. Thank you for reading...MK


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## Misty Mirrors (Oct 18, 2014)

I do not know what to say. There are no words that can describe my sympathy. I am a man. I have been raped repeatedly after my drink or food was spiked. A far as I know I only received a minor illness. I read that rape is imposed not out of sexual desires  .....  but motivated by a need to have power. I know that is not a conselation to a death sentence. Misty.


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