“Yeah. And, well. This is the hard part, because you have been so nice and I’m not sure I deserve nice, and there’s one more lie, Micah.”

  My stomach flipped.

  “I’ve never been tested, either.”

  “What?”

  He lowered his head and chewed on his lip. “Well, I did technically get tested, last year. But I never went in for the results. I mean, if there was some kind of medicine or a cure, but there isn’t. So finding out is kind of fatal.”

  My head went fuzzy. I thought about all the things he’d told me. I tried to catalog all the things, and then my mind was flooded with memories of us at the train tracks. And we’d used a condom, but still. We’d kissed. And this was a death sentence. And he hadn’t been tested.

  “Please tell me you’re careful,” I said.

  “I am. Truly. I’ve been careful every time, but.” He stood up and adjusted his pants and sat down again.

  “But?”

  He sighed. A jogger ran by and CJ ran his hand through his hair.

  “I haven’t told you this because I haven’t told anyone, okay? And it was the kid’s story that made me realize that I’m a fucking idiot, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, my face hurting because my jaw felt so tense. “What happened, CJ? Just tell me.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Back when she was alive, my mom and Jack used to take me to East Hampton in the summers. This was a bunch of years ago. It was the summer before ninth grade, 1984, and I was a live wire. I was fourteen; I had just hit puberty and I was incredibly curious. Think me with a double portion of hormones.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “We used to go to this beach called Two Mile Hollow. It’s a private beach and really nice, and we had a permit to go there. One time, as we’re driving home, Jack says something like, ‘Les boys were out in force. All the way to the left, if you walk.’

  “My mother chuckled.

  “Something about that stirred my interest. I didn’t really know what it meant, so I asked.

  “ ‘The boys who like other boys. Playin’ for the other team. Those boys.’

  “I knew that was Jack’s way of saying gay, and I knew I was gay, even if I had never told a soul. Once he said that, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head! And I was so scared the next morning, when I told them I was going for a bike ride, that they knew I was going to check it out. But they didn’t seem to care, or say anything, so probably they didn’t know?

  “I’d never met a gay person. I didn’t know how. I was fourteen. I had seen porn because my friend Casey had lent me a dirty magazine, and I had found myself always looking at the guys instead of the girls. I just needed to know for sure.

  “So I biked six miles to the beach by myself. I used to do a lot of stuff by myself. Parental supervision, anyone? And when I got there, I walked left along the ocean, kicking at the waves, glancing toward the beach whenever I could without being too obvious. I got to the part where the crowd shallowed out, and suddenly it was just men, mostly couples, and then, as I walked farther, the men on towels didn’t seem to have bathing suits on! I think my eyes could have popped out of their sockets. I noticed a man running toward the water as I passed. He was totally naked. I turned around and he waved at me. I waved back but kept walking. I knew that it probably wasn’t a good idea, because he was a full adult and I was fourteen, but I was really curious, you know? So after I went a bit farther, I turned and I walked back to his towel.

  “ ‘Do you know what time it is?’ I asked the guy. He was naked and, let’s say, aroused.

  “I won’t bore you with the details, but basically I was like, ‘I’ve never talked to a gay person before. Are you gay?’ But he was pretty single-minded in his interest. Not much for small talk. Any talk, really. He told me his address and invited me to stop by later.

  “I left the beach and biked home thinking no, obviously I can’t do that. He was older than my stepdad. But I had braces on my teeth, and I was ugly and skinny and I couldn’t imagine the next time I’d have that opportunity again, so I … well, I made this thing up about going to the movies with my friends in town, even though I didn’t have friends in town. My mom by this time had checked out. Jack hadn’t, but he was in vacation mode and I think he was just happy to get rid of me. He drove me to town, and I walked to this guy’s house on the edge of town.

  “I think it’s kind of funny now. I was thinking we’d talk, but we definitely didn’t. He took me inside and he laid me down on his bed and he did whatever he wanted to me. When it got to the last part, I have to admit, I was like, I don’t see how that adult-size thing will, you know, fit. I said as much and he told me not to worry and he put me on my belly and, um. Yeah, didn’t fit. But that didn’t exactly stop him and I screamed and I cried and he kind of held me down and did what he did and then he pulled out and said, ‘You’re bleeding,’ and I went to the bathroom and sat there and was like, Well, I guess that’s sex.

  “So it wasn’t the greatest first time ever. And I think it colored everything, you know?”

  His face looked tight. His neck. I could see inside him, almost, and I couldn’t look away.

  “I mean, to the extent that I am self-reflective, which is not a ton, I see it has definitely impacted me. Like, you’re not dancing at the Gaiety, I am. It definitely introduced me to a different side of the gay world than I would have known otherwise, and while I took a year off after that, when I started up again, it was always with adults, like my sophomore English teacher, which is a story for another time. Also, I don’t do that getting penetrated thing almost ever, because, yeah, no thanks.

  “So when I say that I didn’t have adult supervision, I kinda mean it. Like, who lets their fourteen-year-old son go bike riding alone all day? Who leaves their kid alone at home all weekend? They did that, too.

  “But also. Um. He didn’t use a condom, because. I don’t know. It was 1984. I knew about condoms and that you should use them, but I didn’t know as much as I know now, obviously. I asked him if he had AIDS, and he laughed. ‘Would I be hanging out at the beach if I had AIDS?’ he said. I didn’t know if that made sense, but he was an adult, you know? So we did it, even though I didn’t know if a person could have the virus and not look sick.

  “And the point is, when I told you that I’d been tested a bunch of times, I lied. I did get tested that one time last year, but obviously the lack of follow-through means it doesn’t really count. So I lied to you about that, but I’ve been thinking, and honest to God, I don’t think there’s any other lie left, anything I haven’t told you. You said you loved me, and I don’t know if you really love me, but I figure I can’t keep saying I’m damaged goods without telling you what that means. And if you want to walk away and cut your losses I will totally understand. But. I will tell you anything and everything if you’ll still be my friend. Because you are a good friend, Micah, and I want to tell you everything.”

  I was frozen. No part of me could move. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to walk away. I wanted to never, ever leave.

  So I said what was true. “I’ve never used condoms with Napoleon or Lucas.”

  His mouth shot open. “Are you serious?”

  I nodded.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “We’re in high school. I am pretty sure they’ve never been with anyone else. I haven’t. Other than you.”

  “You’re not at risk from me. We used a condom, and you can’t get it from kissing. I told you that.”

  That may have all been true, but honestly? I was now more worried about what I did with CJ than what I had done with the other two guys. And that was something I was gonna have to keep to myself.

  “Well, thanks for telling me,” I said.

  “Ouch. Cold.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t know how to process life and death in like two seconds.”

  “I get it.”

  “We have to get tested. Both of us. You know that, right?”

  He closed his eyes and sat down. He put his head in his hands and he sighed loudly and dramatically.

  “Yeah,” he said. “And thanks, by the way.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “For the ‘we.’ ”

  December 1987

  We had to wait until my period of being grounded ended, so it wasn’t until the Monday before Christmas that CJ and I went to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis offices in Chelsea to get our HIV tests. I told my mom I had to buy presents for Deena and other friends, and she was too tired to insist on coming along.

  The nurse, a brassy redhead with a cougar tattoo on her right forearm, drew my blood, counseled me on safer sex, and then delivered the fantastic punch line.

  “You’ll call in two weeks for your results. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.”

  “What?” I almost yelled. No way. They couldn’t make me wait for two whole weeks. That was inhumane.

  “Two weeks,” she repeated as she deposited the needle in the red medical waste bin. “I know it sucks. But look at the bright side.”

  I waited for her to continue. “Which is?” I asked after she didn’t.

  “I just meant it like the saying. You know. ‘Look at the bright side.’ ”

  CJ and I met up in the waiting room, both with our elbows wrapped in gauze.

  “Two weeks,” I said.

  “I figured you knew.” He opened the door and we walked out onto Twenty-Fourth Street.

  “I did not.”

  “Chelsea Square Diner?”

  It sounded as good as any other place to begin the interminable waiting period.

  * * *

  We ordered cheeseburgers with steak fries and sat in a booth in the back, and we proceeded to have the world’s most awkward conversation.

  “What if I have it? We, I mean,” I asked, covering my fries with ketchup.

  His eyes went wide, and that communicated fairly well the macabre truth of what that would mean.

  “You’re not gonna have it. Neither of us will. I had risky sex with one stranger, basically. You had it with two non-strangers. It’s gonna be fine,” he said, but his tone was uncharacteristically checked out, un-CJ-like. “I haven’t had any symptoms and it’s been three and a half years. I think it’s probably fine.”

  It sounded to me like he was trying to convince himself.

  He shook his head, and I sat there, wishing I knew what to say to make the butterflies in my gut stop fluttering so wildly.

  “What in the world would I even tell my mother? She’d kill me before AIDS did. I just. I can’t believe this. Any of this. How did this happen?”

  CJ threw his hands up. “Don’t look at me! You put yourself here before you even met me. No condom? What were you thinking?”

  I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to rewind to a place where I didn’t know CJ and I never had to worry about AIDS, and that thought was so unfair that it made me hate myself. My choices had brought me here. Not CJ.

  “You look pissed,” he observed before he took a bite of cheeseburger.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  We ate in somber silence for a bit. I was thinking about that night on Greenwich Avenue, when I told him I loved him, and he responded by going home with Sammy. And maybe he was “damaged goods,” but that didn’t make it hurt any less. The tension grew, and I silently said goodbye for the zillionth time to CJ. Who didn’t love me. Who had introduced me to a world that was undeniably scary. Who had, in the time I’d known him, brought me from where I was to this place. Even if it wasn’t his fault, here we were.

  He took a pickle spear off the silver tray, the communal one that had been on the table when we’d sat down. He started to massage the pickle lasciviously. I cracked up a tiny bit despite myself. Then he licked it slowly while looking in my eyes. Finally, with the sexiest of looks on his face, he started to slowly insert it into his eye.

  That got me.

  “Ow!” he said. “Pickle juice in my eye. Major ow!”

  “Why are you like this? Who hurt you?” I asked.

  He gave me that toothy smile and raised his eyes twice in quick succession.

  “For once in my life, I’m sitting with someone who actually knows the answer to that question.”

  My heart melted, and reality smashed me in the face, in a good way. Here I was with CJ, whom I still happened to love, on a Monday afternoon, at a diner in Chelsea, watching him eye fuck himself with a pickle.

  “Is there some way we can just start at zero and have a mass apology and be okay? I’m tired of being weird with you. I want to go back to before the weirdness,” I said.

  He fluttered his fingers in a majestic manner, then rotated his palms above his head as if it were some sort of religious cleansing ceremony.

  “We are hereby back at zero,” he said, and we shared our first real smile in a while.

  We talked about positive things, pun intended. What we’d do when we both found out that we were negative. Unspoken was my out-there love for him. We put it away; we didn’t discuss. Instead, I told him about my future as a movie director. He told me about becoming a Solid Gold dancer, only back in the early 80s, when their dances were more innocent.

  “Back before everything was so sexualized,” said the guy who had just publicly made love to a pickle.

  “I totally get it,” I responded, and I grabbed a pickle, put it between my lips, and sucked it in.

  * * *

  That night, when I started to go a little stir crazy with no one knowing about the test, I waited until my parents were fully distracted by Barbara Walters and finally used the business card Rick had given me. It took him a few moments for him to figure out who I was, even when I said my first and last name. Then he was like, Oh!

  “Remember when I asked if you’d keep a secret and you said no?” I asked him.

  He laughed. “I do.”

  “Well, what if I told you I have something going on that I really need to talk about, but I can’t talk to my parents about it because they’d totally freak, but a gay man would probably not freak out as much if I told them?”

  “How about lunch tomorrow?” he asked. “Can you come by my office?”

  “I can and I will,” I said.

  * * *

  Rick’s office was located on East Fifty-Fourth Street, a part of town I never went to because I never had a need to be among the yuppies dashing for lunch in between meetings in impossibly tall skyscrapers. I looked around at all the businesspeople rushing who knows where, and I prayed to God I would never be one of them, that I’d be talented enough to make a living as a producer or a director or something like that.

  Or marry someone who could make enough money so I’d never have to yuppify.

  Rick looked relatively sharp in a gray suit and blue tie, his hair shiny and perfectly parted. He gave me a slightly uncomfortable hello, told his secretary to hold his calls, and took me to Jackson Hole on East Sixty-Fourth for ginormous burgers.

  “So,” he said once we were settled and ordered. “Spill.”

  I took a sip of my Dr. Brown’s cream soda. “Yesterday, I went and got an HIV test.”

  He exhaled and closed his eyes. “Okay,” he said once he could look at me again. “Is there reason to be concerned?”

  I felt frustration rise into my temples like heat. “Well, yeah. I mean, if it’s positive, I die.”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, is it likely you’ve been infected? Have you been unsafe?”

  I bit my lip. “With two kids from school.”

  He sucked in his teeth. “How unsafe?”

  I told him the details, which was super weird. We barely knew each other, and at the same time, it felt good getting rid of the secret.

  “You into them is less risky, but not without risk,” he said. “And what do you know about them?”

  “I think they’re both virgins, but then again, how would I know that? I was a virgin until Lucas, and then I wasn’t when I was with Napoleon, but we never talked about it. Who’s to say they aren’t doing the same?”

  He nodded. “True. Have you had other contacts?”

  I told him about CJ, and to my relief, he echoed CJ on the risks.

  “If you got HIV from kissing a boy or having oral sex with a condom, you’d be the first, I’m sure. That’s just not how it’s transmitted.”

  I ate a fry, relieved to hear someone say it, and also grateful to CJ, for rolling that condom on me.

  “So what happens next? I ask. “I’m supposed to call, like, the day after New Year’s for my results. What if I’m positive?”

  “First off, I don’t think you will be. But if you are, we’ll talk to your parents about it. It’s not easy to talk about, believe me.”

  He sipped his milkshake.

  My heart slipped into my throat.

  “Wait.” I said.

  “Yes, Micah.”

  “You have it?”

  “I’m HIV-positive. Which is different from having AIDS. That’s where I am, for now.”

  “Oh,” I said, and my hands and feet went numb.

  He shoveled fries around his plate with his fork. “I’m fine, so far. Found out last year. I got tested and I was positive. My lover, Gabriel, took the news worse than I did, even though he tested negative. He left me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh well,” he said, but his tone told me it was anything but “oh well.”

  “Does my dad know?”

  Rick shook his head.

  “Oh,” I repeated.

  “Yeah. Not sure how that would go. People get pretty irrational about HIV and AIDS. You can’t get it from casual contact, but as soon as I tell people, they stop wanting to play racquetball with me.”

  I tried to imagine what that would be like. If I turned out to be positive. Would Deena stop wanting to hang out with me?

  Would my parents?

  I was pretty sure CJ would be okay with it.

  For all the people in my life calling him a troublemaker or dicey, that fact had to be worth something.

  Sitting and talking to Rick was better than I thought, once I got used to it. He was kinda funny for an old guy, and he really listened to me. That was nice in one way, and terrible in another.