Movie Review

It’s been a good week. No biggie. Nothing extremely good, nothing extremely bad. When the weekend came, no real plans. A former buddy of mine sent me a message inviting to have “fun”, but of course I had to decline, under the alibi of “dating somebody”. I find that excuse to be most effective for me right now. I cannot just tell them that sex, orgies and slutting isn’t my thing. That would be the surprise of the century. There would have to be some reason for me to mellow down this much. And there is a reason, and you guys know it. It’s just not that easy a reason to blurt out.

Saturday morning, I got a text message asking if I’d like to go watch a movie that afternoon. It was someone I had encountered online, but never met before. A movie? Innocent enough, right? It would be overly assuming of me to think this was more than just a movie. So I agreed. He even told me he’d invite another guy along, which to me, made it much safer and easier to get away from, should anything more happen.

So I left the house braving the rains and got to Greenhills just on time. We met. He looked good. We needed to walk right into the movie, so we didn’t have much time to talk before that. Not much talk inside either, as we seemingly concentrated on the movie. Silence. But it was comfortable. There was only one incident of attempted physical contact inside, when he put his hand on my knee in the latter part of the movie. It was a bit unexpected, I wasn’t sure if he was being cheeky. Not that I didn’t like it.

We walked out when it ended, and he asked that I accompany him to the mall to buy something. Sure. I had nothing against it. At least I wasn’t just sent off, right? He asked if I had plans that evening, to which I said no. Then he told me he wanted to see the other movie that was also showing. I didn’t get it right away, but he wanted to see it that evening too. Hmm, two movies in one night. Well, it’s been a while since I’d watched one movie at the cinemas, let alone two. So, I agreed. And on we went.

Still no talking. Probably because it was another good movie. But the previous attempt of his hand on my thigh went… further. He caressed my knee again, held my hand, and kissed it. I didn’t know a proper way to stop it. I’ve never needed to. Needless to say, groping in movie houses is improper. And needless to say, we were improper.

Ok, so it didn’t go much further, which is a big WHEW for me. We grabbed some coffee after the movie, and he dropped me off near where I live. The evening was good. I admit it made my weekend. But walking home, I realized that I was in a dilemma.

I know I have HIV. And I will tell some people eventually. But I maintain that this should be on a need-to-know basis. So who needs to know? People I had encounters with before, people I trust and people who deserve to know. It seems, definitely, new acquaintances do not need to know, unless we’ve built up enough of a friendship to deem them to need to know. But when the time comes that we’ve built enough of a friendship, it’s much, much harder to reveal my secret. Questions as to why I didn’t tell them before will come up. Especially if by that time, we’d gotten into compromising situations. I realize it’s easier to tell a complete stranger. Should I immediately assume that anyone I’m about to meet will want to get frisky with me? Should having HIV be a premise to the person I introduce myself to be?

So that’s my dilemma. It’s like trying to figure out whether the chicken or the egg should come first. I don’t have ready answers to my questions. One additional thing I’ll have to figure out. Soon. I never imagined watching a movie could be this problematic. Sigh.