Sex After HIV

How time flies. I’ve been officially HIV positive for the past nine months now. It’s still quite overwhelming how so many people are interested in how it is to be living with HIV. Overwhelming, but reassuring. I usually get asked questions like How are you coping?, What were your symptoms?, Why did you get tested?, Where did you get it?, and so on, and so forth. But so far, the most intriguing question for most seems to be How is your sex life now?

So once and for all, let’s tackle that question. So how is my sex life now? My usual answer, which is the most concise and honest I can give, is Surprisingly, not zero. I know! Gasps all around, right? But that’s the truth.

When I found out I was HIV positive back in April, I was still certainly having sex for the next couple of weeks. Let’s just say I needed to fulfill my prior commitments. But certainly, everything was kept safe.

I did eventually need to get out of meeting those guys who had gotten used to having unprotected sex with me. My alibis included reasons like I wasn’t feeling well, I needed to be home early, I needed to work overtime, or at some point even claiming to be seeing someone exclusively. Yes, that many different alibis, and more.

Meeting new guys was kept to a minimum, mostly because I was still dealing with the HIV thing internally. For the new guys I’d meet, one requirement would be that they adhered strictly to having safe sex. That way, I didn’t need to convince them once we met. I never liked using condoms, so for the first time in history, I knew I was keeping the condom industry alive.

I had mellowed down so much that, upon finding out that a poz friend of mine was part of an orgy one night, I became so disappointed that I went out looking for some action of my own that same night. It was an If-you-can-do-it-so-can-I thing. I know, I was acting like I was such an angel when I really wasn’t. But it was just an outburst of emotion at the time.

Since that time, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I can still have sex. My libido is still alive. I actually think it’s gotten worse, and I’m not sure if it’s just a side effect of the ARVs. In truth, since finding out I had HIV, I’ve already managed to have sex with 20 different guys. What?! Twenty?! Sound like a lot? Not really, compared to the almost 100 different guys I had sex with during the same period a year before. That should put things into perspective.

Of those 20 different guys, only one of them knew I was HIV positive before we had sex. Deny as we all may, the stigma attached to HIV is still there, which makes it such a mood killer. And I was able to tell that one person, only because he was also HIV positive. And just to make things clear, NO, IT WAS NOT E!

And one more admission, I’ve had bareback sex with one of those 20 guys. What?! Unprotected sex?! Gasps again. Fortunately, it was with that one poz guy as well. I know, I know, poz on poz action is still not safe when done unprotected. But we both knew that. And we still did it, and had no regrets. Not even when we did it a second time. C’mon, give us a break! Anyway, I think we agreed that we’d use protection next time. Still can’t wait!

Okay, one last confession, I think I've completely lost the New Virginity of it all. I sort of started the year out with a bang. A gang bang. Four versus one, just after New Year. What?! OMG! It was at that time that I was reminded that I treat sex as my form of addiction. The vice I run to when I get depressed. And if you recall, New Years Day did leave me down in the dumps. So I drowned my sorrows away with sex. I know it’s not an excuse. But rest assured, it was surely, purely safe.

So there. That’s what my sex life has been like since finding out I was HIV positive. Relatively decent, but still far from being dead. I know some of you are still picking your jaws up off the floor. But hey, go ahead, cast your stones. It wouldn’t be the Human Immunodeficiency Virus if I wasn’t human. And that’s exactly what I am. Just human.