Everyone Is Thinking of You

Three doctors came into my room and drew the curtain around my bed. The same three had come in earlier that morning and prodded my stomach, asking me when it hurt most—the same test they'd performed the night before, when I was admitted to the hospital with intense abdominal pain. Each time I told them that my belly hurt all the time, they looked unhappy and left. Now, they stood over my bed solemnly until one of them whispered in a scolding tone, "You aren't gay, are you?"

I knew what they were implying—that I might have AIDS. It was the spring of 1986, and AIDS was in the news nearly every day. It's hard to convey how pervasive homophobia was in the country at that time, even within the Washington beltway. What people knew about the disease seemed half science, half speculation and fear.

I lay there in the hospital bed, exhausted from a night of no sleep and constant pain, feeling embarrassed and angry. The three men hovered over me, all wearing white coats, which were unable to cover their prejudices. The question was full of assumptions. They didn't ask me if I'd ever had sex, or specifically, unsafe sex. They'd only asked if I was attracted to men, as if that alone was a basis for diagnosis.

I was afraid to tell them I had a boyfriend, because I feared they would judge me and not want to take care of me. Besides, my sexual preferences seemed none of their business. Still, I didn't want to lie; I didn't want to be ashamed about who I loved.

Beneath all of those feelings was a more subtle issue: I did not actually feel like the true answer to their question was yes. I'd just turned twenty-one, was finishing my final semester of college, and didn't like labels. When I thought of gay, I thought of men who used hair products and went to night clubs where disco music blared and everyone ignored me. As I'd told my parents the year before when this issue had come up, I simply loved who I loved—which at that time was a boy named Andy.

But in my hospital room that morning, I didn't have the energy or confidence to explain all that to these strangers. Or to tell them that in my life I'd only had safe sex, with one woman, and two men, all within the last two years. It was unlikely that I had AIDS—or that I even had contracted HIV, a term that wouldn't be officially adopted until later that year. Despite all this, I feared that their suspicion about my mysterious illness might be true.

"Yes," I finally said, trying, despite their disapproving stares, to say it without embarrassment or shame.

The doctors looked at each other gravely, and without asking any more questions, told me they needed me to be tested, then left the room.

________

A few days earlier, I'd been home at my parents' house in Western Maryland for the weekend when I noticed my belly bloating. I felt as though I'd drunk a gallon of water.

My mother thought I might have appendicitis. "But it doesn't hurt," I said. "And the appendix is down here," I added, pointing to my lower stomach.

She nodded her head sideways once, a gesture which I'd come to learn meant, We'll see.

I thought the swelling might simply be from stress. My housemate Meredith had committed suicide few weeks earlier, and I had been the one to organize a ceremony for her at the university. And now the closing weeks of the semester were upon me: a five-hour Honors English exam, four other finals, and an Honors paper on Sam Shepard for which I had to read forty plays.

But what occupied my mind most was having fallen in love for the first time. Though I'd known Andy—a lanky, goofy boy with no facial hair and tiny Ben...