Today I found out I have HIV.
Well that’s how my night would have gone if it were true. And by “true” I mean if I hadn’t kept reading the letter from the Red Cross but instead fainted like I naturally wanted to do.
What’s even funnier is that just yesterday I was joking that if I ever got “the HIV” that I’d go to Africa and run free with all my other HIV comrades. I pictured myself jumping and frolicking like a giraffe in the wild savannah or something equally as majestic. Me with my HIV and new friends being left alone to share needles and bleed freely around each other. It would be like HIV heaven! I also picture us singing and laughing around a bon fire, and the language barrier wouldn’t matter because the HIV would unite us and overcome all tongues!
So today I got a rather thick letter from the American Red Cross. Instead of recycling like I usually do to 99% of my mail, I felt compelled to open it – maybe they were thanking me with a coupon for a free pint of ice cream for my recent donation of superior blood! Logically you’d read from top to bottom – I read somewhere in the top-ish portion that announced "your blood test came back as positive for HIV”… skipping right to the other pages I saw something along the lines of “Welcome to HIV! Here’s some information about your new disease!” I’m a fainter. I got light headed, not only did I see some mother-fucking stars, the curtains were closing on my theater. With the last bit of sense, I decided to do a better job of reading my multi-paged letter. It said something more along the lines of “you got a false positive for HIV, we retested, you do NOT have HIV, but we don’t want you to continue donating because it’s really stressful for us to find out you have HIV and then waste money on more tests only to find out you are not going to Africa after all.”
So, good news! I’m not carrying the HIV! And I’m also not going to Africa! I ate Cheetos’s instead. The orange powder cheese is very calming.
