Jonathan's POZ Blog

This has been a tough week, just one infection after another, and now I have to go back to the doc for more poking and prodding. Twice a year I spend two months sick, sinus infection becoming bronchitis or pneumonia, then thrush racing down my gullet. Nasty stuff, and very demoralizing. I hope I finally I have a handle on it, with the same sort of antibiotics they give to people who just ate a rabid monkey.

Seems like things might all come to a head at once, and I get a little overwhelmed. Of course, my instinct is to tuck my head into my shell, turn off the phone, and avoid at all costs. Perhaps not effective, but man, it can kill a weekend ☺

I am probably not going to die any time soon. Latest bloodwork shows a whopping 58 CD4 cells, and a percentage of roughly five percent. Luckily, my viral load is off the charts, so I am moving upwards in at least ONE area, hehe.

That means it might be time for more research into drugs, even dabbling in them if I have to. I don’t harbor the illusion that I can take a toxic drug regimen every day on time, in perpetuity. But if I can whack my virus down, and build up three hundred or so T Cells, I might be able to buy another year or so off meds again eventually. That sort of thing I can handle, I think. Entry inhibitors coming into trial in January, and my doctor wants me on that roster. Though sadly, they would still be on a menu rife with other, more toxic drugs. And I don't know if I have the energy to try all that again. One pill a day? As if.

I don’t have the energy I used to. And I don’t have the attachment to the future I used to. Each time I get sick, its like a ball that, when dropped, bounces a little less high each time. Rebound meets entropy. Entropy eventually wins. I know that. Another reason to use my time doing stuff that makes me happy.

So as soon as I am cleared for human contact, I intend to get out of the house more. Hang out in town, write more at the cyber café. Volunteer more at the ferret shelter. Go to the gym. Go to the mountains. And in the meantime, write what matters, for the right reasons. Like for POZ, to get that new laptop eventually, or that car repair I've had my eye on. I also want to go to New Orleans again, next Halloween if not sooner. There's stuff I want to do, to have done. And maybe, sometime in the middle of playing with ferrets, writing on the laptop, walking in the crisp autumn air, I can find the courage to fall in love. It's about time for that again, I think.

There is a procrustrean paradigm at work, I think. We want someone to understand us, and we are willing to leap through flaming hoops of self deceptive fire in order to make it work. But at the end of the day, we have only ourselves to thank, or blame. No matter what we have stretched, what we have broken, what we have altered to make our selves and palatable, understandable, we remain essentially the same. At this point, anyone I meet for friendship... or more ... is going to have to be okay with what, who I have to offer. I don't have time nor energy to pretend anymore. And no matter how frustrated I get with the health issues, I actually like who I have become. I'm a little crazy. I'm a little lost. But I have gone past shame, and past apologizing. That counts for more than I can articulate.

I look in the mirror. I don't see AIDS. I don't see diminished T cells and fatigue (except maybe around the eyes, I think I am getting tired eyes). I see the same flawed, passionate, guy I was ten years ago. Need to bleach the hair again, I think. Not to hide the grey, really... but to remind myself that I'm worth the effort. I am the "face of AIDS," and at the same time, I'm not. I'm the face of Jonathan. And that's what's important. I have locked eyes with Death on the subway, casually nodded and looked away. I have slept in the dank sweat of sickness. I have burned myself on my own passion. And at the end of the day, I'm okay with what I have done, and who I am.

The autumn skies are clear and blue. I owe it to myself to life my clear, blue eyes to them.

I went to get the mail tonight, taking the ferrets in my little geeky pet stroller. Anyone who has had ferrets knows that, barring carrying them in your arms (slippery eels, ferrets) it’s the only way to travel. They love the stroller. Sometimes, when I let them out to play in the apartment, Benjamin Ferret will leap into the stroller, and wait until I give him a tour of the living room. They’re funky like that.

It was a full-ish moon. A waxing gibbous, technically, I think. Once the ferrets got tired of wrestling in the confines of the mesh-screened stroller, they settled down to enjoy the ride. Looking down, I noticed Benjamin, my brave, smart, sick one, on his back, four paws in the air, eyes wide open. He was watching the moon. He was basking in the glow of the cool, blue light. Utterly unlike any other light to which he had been subjected in the cruel, small confines of my apartment. Like me, he was awed by the enormity of the world outside. Unlike me, he rolled on his back to bask in it, where I would have hidden, HAVE indeed hidden, more times than not.

I got the mail, and headed back to the apartment. Stopped at the curb to sit, and contemplate the crisp autumn air, the pale moon, my silent, contemplative companions. We looked at the night sky, my pets and I. Looked at it as though it were poetry that, if we only tried hard enough, we would understand.

I have been unwell. Not sick. Sick denotes cures, treatments, that sort of thing. Business. Simply unwell. I am tired almost all the time. I sleep, wake, have some cereal, sleep again, wake, watch television, and then? Sleep. A few months of that wears a person down. But it’s where I am. Week after next, a CAT scan to see why my levels are so whacked out, if there’s a tumor or some damage to something. And maybe that will explain the fatigue, the withdrawal. I honestly feel that I am orbiting the earth, not dwelling upon it.

Fights and battles and righteous warfare that used to consume me so much, so often, now feels like dwindling clarion calls from a skirmish forgotten. I am finding myself ignoring friendships, ignoring emails, going through the motions of the most rudimentary parts of life. Not that I am angry or sad or hurt by ANYONE who has tried and failed to contact me lately. It's just a general withdrawal, something only the most stalwart could hope to penetrate. I am certainly not that, and don't rely on others for such fortitude. Only my beloved pets seem to offer me any connection right now.

And the moon is blue, and cold, and distant. We stare up at it, Benjamin Ferret and I. Duncan ferret went to sleep as soon as he realized the stroller was not an avenue towards a larger playtime. He is young, and dismisses the moon as something always there… like his youth, I imagine. He is not yet wise, like Benjamin Ferret and I. He does not feel the encroachment of years, of the stars and their slow entropy. Duncan ferret knows the now. Benjamin knows that now is fleeting, that moments must be cherished, because they are not likely to come again.

I feel like that moon sometimes, dissolving into the sky, into the night, onto a peaceful sea. And I cannot imagine a real death being more profound, more of a true merging of what we are and what we are capable of being, than that. And there is both hope and love and deep despair in that feeling. No matter what I accomplish, who and how hard I love and am loved, no matter whose lives I save, or whose I shorten with apathy, I really am nothing more than a glimmer in an incomprehensible ocean. And that’s an ok thing, really.

There is something both humbling and empowering there. Because without every single glimmer in each moonlit sea, there would be something vital missing, some important piece of reality lost. Those standing before that moonset would notice the loss, however subliminally, and it would be like seeing the pixels in a special effect in the movies, or noticing the jarring transition between poorly edited scenes in an otherwise flawless film. Continuity counts, I think. I think it counts more than I can articulate. And it’s cool to be a part of that.