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Mina would rather talk about her drink and draws than the complications something as microscopic as a virus lent to her love life.
She pictured her parents in the seemingly never-ending moment of silence. Her mom continuing to gesture toward her father, the confusion on his face as he mouthed that he didn’t understand what she was trying to tell him and her hand movements getting more and more erratic until finally she whispered in frustration, “Mina’s got a boyfriend.”
“Not a boyfriend, Mom. We had one date.” And only one kiss, but a thousand tender gestures over the course of the evening.
“But he knows,” her mom said, confused.
“I told him before our date.” She left out the details of the tell; her mother would only sigh and remind her to think before she spoke.
“You know I think it’s important you tell someone before...well, before you’re intimate.” Mina’s mother had never been comfortable talking to her children about sex. HIV had changed the type of advice her mom felt she should give and brought “the talk” that should have happened over a decade ago into the forefront of their relationship. Not that her mother was any more comfortable with the conversation, just that she didn’t think she could avoid having it any longer. Intimate was the compromise. The soft look in Levi’s eyes as he’d looked at her last night had been more intimate than the last time Mina had had sex—not something she was going to share with her mother, though.
“But I think you need to get to know a person a little better before disclosing your status.”
“You don’t know how well I know Levi,” Mina pointed out.
“No, I don’t. But you’ve not been in Montana long enough to know someone very well. Not well enough to know...”
Her mother couldn’t bring herself to finish that sentence, so Mina finished it for her in her head. Not well enough to know if they will confuse a disease with a character flaw. Not that it was possible to ever know anyone that well. Of the two cousins Mina had been close to her entire life, one had reacted to her positive test result with a hug while the other had remained a Facebook friend where a “like” on a post was as much interaction Mina could hope for.
“It was only a date, right? You weren’t intimate with him already?”
The heart of the misunderstanding between them was when they each thought the tell should happen. Mina and her mother agreed that the tell should happen before sex. Some people argued that, if you practiced safe sex, disclosure until a more serious relationship had developed wasn’t necessary. But Mina fell into the camp that believed it might not be medically necessary—especially with a low virus count like she had—but disclosure after the fact was a sure way to end the relationship in tears and distrust.
Where Mina and her mom disagreed was how well you had to know someone before sex. Mina fell into what she thought of as the modernist camp, where sex and a relationship were not synonymous. The pre-modernist camp, represented by her mother, seemed okay with premarital sex—or had given up the fight long ago—but believed anyone you were sleeping with was by definition your boyfriend.
It was a generational difference, one that Mina probably wouldn’t have noticed if sex hadn’t suddenly become something her mother felt she had to talk about with her. Still, this was where Mina’s life was.
“We didn’t have sex, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Her mother sighed. “Your father and I worry about you is all.”
Woven through her mom’s simple statement were all the past relationships Mina had had, post-positive. The men she’d been mad for, who had freaked when she’d disclosed her status, ending all possibilities of anything more by claiming they’d just wanted to be friends, and she’d misunderstood. Or worse, discovering they suddenly had a girlfriend back in Iowa.
Still, those weren’t as bad as some of the men who’d nonchalantly said, “No problem,” then pretended like her virus didn’t exist. They wouldn’t talk about it. They didn’t want to see her take her meds. They pretended her nausea was bad chicken. At least she’d known where she’d stood with the men who bolted. With the men who’d stuck around but were never fully present in her life, she’d felt like she was constantly pretending to be someone else. Someone healthy, whatever that meant. She felt as healthy as anyone else. Sort of.
