How to Make a Diamond

I maneuvered my way through the 7:03 a.m. train to Penn Station crowd to sit facing him just a few seats away, stealing glances to see if his face could make me feel what his bare calves promised on the platform: Muscular, hairy, and barely visible under black jean-cut shorts. He was broodingly sexy but also innocently unassuming, and very much in his own world with his giant headphones likely playing some fantasy goth band. But each time I tried to see what he looked like, I was met with deep brown eyes looking back into mine, with a resounding “yes.”

‘Is that a tragus piercing?’

I pulled the meaty cartilage on the inside of my ear while pointing at his. I had gotten up a few minutes early to watch the last of Queens pass by, hoping he might join me. He confirmed that it was indeed that rarest of piercings, his face open and kind, his headphones now around his neck. We began discussing more important things, suggesting we reconnect for the train ride home after class tonight, before taking different subway lines downtown.

It was the Spring of 2003, so we didn’t pull out smartphones to exchange social handles, but we did secretly alter our schedules to ride the train together the rest of the week. Throughout these round-trip rides, we shared that he was gay (and single), and I was trending hard in that direction (but we already knew that). There was something so soft and yielding about his face that I associated with homosexuality despite the tattoos, piercings, and black clothes (and my interest was too unyielding not to have a sexual element).

It turned out we were both closeted and living at home, but for different reasons: I’d had to bail on school the previous semester to get hospitalized for bipolar disorder and was playing catch-up with myself, regaining my family’s trust and my own after being swept up in psychosis and substances while also trying to discover,

Was I only physically attracted to men, or could I fall in love with one?

He, on the other hand, had to ‘re-closet’ himself to return under his conservative first-generation parents’ roof, agreeing it was all a phase to be welcomed home after a relationship imploded, and he needed a place to crash and pay for school. They, in turn, hired a Santería ‘witch doctor’ to behead a live chicken and swing it by its feet so the blood sprayed upon his naked body, and prayers were incanted to turn him straight, which he agreed did the trick.

So, the Long Island Rail Road became our twice-daily date, sneaking make-out sessions on the evening return when the lights flickered under the tunnels. It was our only safe space, but it wasn’t enough, so I started bringing him home to my mom’s, where he was just my buddy Dylan.

I hated lying, but she was happy I had a new friend who was also studying at a good college in the city, especially after my previously disastrous semester.

It was hard to fathom that in just six months, I went from being an asexual mental patient to now passionately sucking face with a cool, cute peer who I wanted to not just fuck but protect and get to know better. After picking him up from work to see his co-workers clamor to get a glimpse, I experienced emotional recoil, wondering if this is too much too fast, if he’s even the right one for me.

‘Brett, I got some news today and I just hope it doesn’t freak you out.’ Dylan said from my passenger seat in the parking lot of the chain restaurant where he worked as a waiter on the weekends.

I took his hands, but my heart paused. ‘That would be hard,’

The fluorescent parking lot lights dramatically backlit and obscured his face.

‘I went into the city to get test results at my clinic today, and I didn’t expect to be positive. I just wanted to be safe because I have a history, and this is all new for you, but I was wrong,’ he stared impassively through the windshield.

‘What was wrong?’

‘I am positive.’

He turned to look at me with the resigned misery of a child who knows it is about to be hit, the sad Travis album we loved singing in the background. I had gone to a similar clinic the year before after losing my virginity to a girl I didn’t respect in my dorm room, expecting these same results from that one interaction. Back then, you had to go to a specific clinic in a very specific part of town and wait a harrowing 72 hours before returning for the results. I didn’t know he had gotten tested, but I saw now that my test was whether I would leave him to deal with this alone or not.

I said I wasn’t going anywhere, but I had no idea what would happen.

Physically, I held him, and silently I cried, but my mind careened wildly as an upswell of emotion for a man I was debating breaking off with an hour earlier, overwhelmed me.

Dylan was only 23, but that was still 4 years older than me, and a lot can happen in that time. I saw him lying face down in a dark room, a line of men out the door waiting to fuck him, condoms conspicuously missing.

We held each other and listened to “Why Does It Always Rain on Me?” as I calculated the likelihood of my co-infection. We hadn’t fucked yet, but I had sucked his dick…I was awful, so he hadn’t cum, but there was no definitive literature on the internet, or pamphlets at any clinic to assure me I couldn’t possibly have seroconverted from pre-cum.

My first test came back negative, but it can take a while to show, so I returned to the Hispanic Aids Forum in Times Square every two weeks to get tested. I knew it was was overkill, but it was how I managed my anxiety to be present for him after he took me to there meet his counselor.

I thought I had been going through it with my bipolar, but this made my mental health struggles feel trivial, years spent masturbating into my belly button, facing a hall of mirrors.

And now, tho the numbers were in my favor, what the percentages failed to take into account is that I deserved this. Why else would my first romance be so fucked? Just as I had deserved to hear those voices in my head, there are certain things the universe sends our way to justify our inherent shame and unworthiness. This was what I had been waiting for, bracing for, building up my pain threshold and endurance for.

I learned that when someone becomes HIV-positive, they can experience swollen glands and flu-like symptoms, so when my neck stiffened and I could no longer swallow, relaxing into the illness was impossible. Each day of fever, every scratchy swallow was a confirmation of the fate keeping me in this state.

My PCP dropped me when I told him about my relationship. I was only 19 and still saw my family doctor, who said I was putting myself in danger with Dylan, and he didn’t feel right hiding this from my parents. He sent a vague letter home, ‘firing’ me, which confounded my mom when she opened it. When my body refused to heal, I was sent to a lymphologist to rule out cancer before dropping out of school for a second consecutive semester to recover from what turned out to be a bad case of mono.

‘Are you ok?’ Mom kept asking, and I knew she meant more than my health; she could see I was mortally and morally preoccupied. My nervous system was shot. I decided getting one big secret out in the open could help me feel safer in the home I was now convalescing in, that it wouldn’t feel as strange having my new ‘friend’ stop by every night to bring me Pedialyte and watch movies together if she knew we were in a committed relationship. So I came out to her for the simple reason that I needed one less thing to worry about, it was like loosening a pressure valve in my swollen chest.

She hated how Dylan’s parents had disowned him, and made it clear we were welcome here. Her only concern was that I would have a harder life being gay, but she was also relieved that her only son (who had always been so alone) was indeed capable of loving and being loved.

With a legitimate safe space and loving ally, I was now the patient, and Dylan was thriving: Going to his appointments alone, taking his meds & doing his schoolwork on the train so he could see me straight away. It was less than a year since I was in South Oaks Mental hospital, and as much as I had promised to just ‘put it behind me’, I now saw that there was so much I had never dealt with, and the longer I put it off, the more difficult it would become, and the sicker I would get if I didn’t. Loving Dylan was my first step towards re-embracing life after rejecting myself and living in the shadows.

It turns out that love & life can be messy, but I want it all, and I don’t have to be perfect to try.