I’m a 21-year-old straight guy with a boring, straight sex life. Until a few months ago, when something terrifying happened.
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So I agree–awful decision–to meet up. When I get to the bar where we agreed to meet, she calls me and tells me to come to her friend’s apartment instead. When I get there it’s totally dark. She calls again and tells me not to turn any lights on when I come in, just to get naked in the bed and wait for her. I decide to leave, as I’m afraid I’m going to get robbed or beaten up. She calls again and says we can meet at another nearby bar. I wait at the bar for ten minutes. Another phone call. She tells me she can’t come to a public place because she isn’t comfortable, but asks to give me oral sex. Another awful decision: I go back to her “friend’s apartment” and comply with her original instructions. I don’t turn on any lights, I get naked, I get in bed. A slim person comes into the dark room, but there’s a towel covering her face and I don’t get a look at her body. She starts going down on me; it’s awful and uncomfortable.
Since the moment this happened I’ve been living with a crippling fear of HIV. During the summer I got tested three times, but that only calms me down for a few days until the panic sets in again. I told my best friend about this and he pushed me into therapy, and now I’m seeing a psychiatrist.
OK, let’s get to the advice part of your letter. Aside from staying in therapy (which I recommend), getting retested (at three and six months), and refraining from stripping naked in a darkened apartment and accepting blow jobs from “women” with towels over their heads, how can you put your life back together? By taking this statement of fact to heart: Your chances of getting HIV from the encounter you describe–briefly being blown, a moment in someone’s ass–are vanishingly small. Even if this person is HIV positive, it’s still highly unlikely that you were infected.
