Bleeder: A Memoir

A Man in Hiding

13 a man in hiding August . Although I have decided to attend college, it has crossed my mind to forgo my education and do other things: to travel while I’m still healthy, to see Rome or Venice or Paris or London or Bali or any of a host of places that one wishes to see before they die. . . . Or perhaps, instead of tiring myself out with world travel, I should do nothing other than read books at poolside and let my mind slip away from this reality. How much of my life should I change? How much should I adapt to HIV? Or perhaps, it has already been altered enough. So instead of any of these grand plans, I am here at UNC-Wilmington, or as the natives call it: UNC by the sea. I will get my college education. My family and I hoist boxes of my belongings and cart these up two flights of stairs to my college dorm room, and after several hours the heat exhausts me. I sweat—trickles of perspiration slip from my pits. My family, too, sweats in the coastal heat, Dad the most, his cotton polo patched with dark splotches. We breathe heavy. We rest on the unmade bed. And then, feeling we’ve had enough recovery, Dad announces that it’s time for the family to go. A mournful silence descends on us all. “You’re going to be so happy at college,” Mom says with half-hearted enthusiasm. “Everything’s going to work out. You’ll see.” She plasters me with kisses and holds back her tears while we hug Shelby Smoak 14 good-bye. Dad stoically hugs me—wrapping his arms around my slender frame and then, with those same long thin arms, he sweeps my family away, and they are gone. I am alone, away from home, with my HIV. Immediately, I busy myself with unpacking. I fold my clothes in the drawers , store the snacks in the cupboard space, connect the wires for my stereo, and organize my books into milk crates—then I begin to hide my secrets: the 30cc syringes, the twenty-five gauge needles, my elastic tourniquet, my factor, and my AZT. I place my factor supplies underneath my bed and cover them with a towel. My clotting factor, however, must be refrigerated, so I wedge this behind a six-pack of Cokes, and although it can be seen, I have no other choice. I can only hope my roommate won’t ask too many questions. Yet the AZT is a problem. Its discovery would ruin me. I can’t keep this in the bathroom as I did at home, for I share my college bath with ten boys, any of whom could open my drawer and see the AZT bottle there, revealing immediately everything I seek to hide. I consider cloaking it underneath the bed along with the factor supplies, but the daily regime of dragging these pills out, morning and evening, would soon grow old. I rove my eyes around the room. The closet? No. Too accessible. The desk? No, though the pencil drawer has some promise. I squeeze the AZT bottle in my hands, its plastic unyielding in my tight clutch as I cast my eyes about the room for a safe hiding place. I spy my dresser, and I shove the AZT deep into a sock, it seeming safe for now. With my things unpacked and my secrets safely hidden, I rest beside the window at my desk and arrange my reference books—dictionary, thesaurus , word menu, guide to birds in America—before settling my view on the campus yard that is now wreathed in the soft pink of an evening sunset. Tall slash pines yawn into the dusk whose horizon begins to halo with the last thin rim of daylight. Then a last ribbon of sun catches through my window and hangs in a frail quiver before the dome of night is upon me. Before the first week of classes ends, I develop a knee bleed, another thing I must hide. “Bleed” is a hemophiliac’s jargon for what doctors call a hemathrosis : the accumulation of blood in the joint. The tissue underneath my right kneecap has grown soft and spongy and the skin gives and turns pink when I Bleeder 15 press my finger to it. If students saw my swollen knee, questions would be asked, and if I answered them honestly, said I had hemophilia, well . . . connections...