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150 Disclosure WhatISaidandHowISaidIt The disclosure, as I made it to close friends immediately after my diagnosis, did more than transmit a basic piece of information. It also implied: You are my friends, I am your friend, we matter to each other, and I need your support right now. It hardly felt like a disclosure at all, really; this sort of friendship doesn’t police. The statement, at the time, didn’t need to be completed by much else, and the fact that it often wasn’t (what else could I say at that point? I was stupefied) conveyed a certain sense of urgency located outside the statement per se—­perceived,although not explicitly heard.And this sort of indirection is precisely what made the urgency of it all the more available to social connection, or sharing, because it had to involve, on the part of my interlocutors, a mode of reading at once more proactively engaged and more receptive. Friendship, which allowed such contacts to occur in the first place, also found itself prolonged yet transformed—­ reiterated would be the right word. With friends, you don’t confess; you share. And sharing necessarily involves gaps, lacks, and silences for people to latch onto. (What I’m trying to figure out is, If friendship makes it possible to share, is the reverse also true? Does sharing make friendship—­ or some kind of friendship—­possible?) The same news, given to another friend, with whom I had had sexual relations in the not-­ so-­ distant past, acquired an additional level of unspoken signification: it would be a good idea for him to get tested, in case he hadn’t been in a while. Because that friend was, like me back then, a foreigner in the United States, but one who hadn’t yet obtained his green card, parts of the conversations initiated by the original announcement also dealt with the unique intersection of the political and personal aspects of HIV and AIDS within the larger international contexts of the pandemic and immigration—­ in this case the risk of sudden deportation and its consequences . (The Obama administration has since rescinded that rule from the Reagan era.) I sent e-­ mails to sexual partners I wasn’t close to—­ provided, of course, that I knew their e-­ mail address, which wasn’t always the case. Yes, I did it to obey the law but also because Ann Arbor is a small town in many ways. I felt it wiser to tell them than to take the risk that they may learn it from a third party. I also felt concerned about their well-­ being, but I must admit that I didn’t feel any particular urge to take responsibility for their actions. That said, I had the option to do this anonymously and still comply with Disclosure 151 the law. I opted not to because in each of these cases where I could identify and contact the man in question I felt safe enough to do so openly—­ and I had to protect myself. Was there also some reluctance on my part to depersonalize the question of risk, to sever its attachment to a specific memory, a specific person, a specific body, a specific face—­ a specific contact? It’s possible . I don’t know. When, several weeks later, I broke the news over the phone to friends overseas, I was able to complement the basic statement with reassuring news, namely, that I had begun treatment and that it was working very well. Indeed, that was why I had waited before communicating with some people I could not have face-­ to-­ face contact with. Because of the physical separation , I also prefaced the statement with something self-­ referential such as, “I have something to tell you but let me reassure you right away, it isn’t as serious as it sounds.” My efforts at reducing unwanted noise, however, were not always successful, reminding me that I could never be in full and sole control of what I was saying, that listeners, too, determine meaning. One such friend, for example, replied that he was relieved to hear that everything was going well, but that I should never, ever again start with“It isn’t as serious as it sounds,” because the phrase had produced exactly the opposite of the desired effect. Thinking back on this with greater clarity now, I realize how thoroughly unsurprising this is . . . In at least one case, a friend expressed some disappointment...

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