|
AIDS
"I imagine what will happen if he gets infected with HIV."
Listen
to this Commentary!
By Leah Chapple-Stingley
The week before finals at school, my friend calls me on my cell phone while I’m riding the subway. So I’m thinking, I’m going to get a big fat juicy piece of gossip because his voice is unassuming and proud. He tells me that he had sex with someone he knew was HIV positive, but he did it anyway. Without protection…I can’t say anything right away. He’s happy because I don’t yell at him. I swallow…and whisper, “I told you I wasn’t going to get mad.”
Then the next day, at lunch, I started crying into my turkey and mustard sandwich. My tears mix with the mustard and drop on my shirt. My friend from art class tries to get me to talk and I won’t. She thinks some evil girl done broke my heart. I let her keep thinking that. But in my mind, I fast forward through my OTHER friend’s life imagining what will happen if he gets infected with HIV.
Then I rewind through my own life, back to when I was a kid, when someone I loved fell victim to AIDS.
I can’t forget the anger, the confusion. To watch a man in his early thirties die of pneumonia, because his immune system couldn’t fight back. All traces of life faded away, like paint in the rain. His warm brown skin, glistening smile, the muscular arms that once held me—all deteriorated. Our family friend was transformed into a pasty, stained, shrunken man in a hospital bed. He wore the same size clothes I did, and I was ten years old. His bones stuck through his skin coat like death. Of course his soul will go on forever, bright and more beautiful than his physical body ever was.
I wonder why we sleep with people without protection. The only way to keep myself from crying over what AIDS can do to a young healthy body is to think of the strong spirit, which will never fade away.
-Leah Chapple-Stingley is a student at San Francisco State University.
|
|
