I like to think I played it pretty cool today, all things considered. I breezed into the clinic and announced I was there for an HIV test as if I’d done it every day of my life.

At time, I was fairly confident, and had left the house with the attitude that I’d just go down to St Ann’s Bay, waltz in, be granted a “Negative” like it was owed me, and go home.

Smash cut to 3 minutes later, and the doctor and I are staring intently at a thin piece of plastic the size of a stick of Wrigley’s. At one end is little area where a drop of my blood is being slowly diluted by testing liquid. Most of the rest of the strip is given over to a bar where the dark fuschia infusion of blood and HIV testing solution is creeping up a piece of something resembling litmus paper.

The whole thing could not have taken more than 5 minutes but it felt like forever, and I was glad I was sitting down. My legs had left any semblance of solidity long behind and I was certain that were my teeth not clamped together, my stomach would have leapt out of my mouth and made a run for it.

This was not my first HIV test- one is required as part of the medical clearance proceedings before placement, but it’s done as a matter of course along with so much other blood work that I never really felt as though I was Getting Tested for HIV.

Waiting, watching is nerve-wracking, and I suddenly understood, really understood what my boyfriend had been saying the night before about his previous testing experiences. The waiting is the worst few minutes imaginable, watching the blood-mixture slowly move towards the end of the strip, stop-WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?- start moving again-OHMIGODISTHATBAD? Awful. My hubris had slunk away into a corner halfway through so I tried to distract myself by thinking about more pleasant things, like the fact that I’m incredibly fortunate to have someone in my life with whom I can have serious, grown-up discussions about serious, grown-up things like HIV. So lucky, very very lucky to have such a really wonderful man in my-AHGH! THE DOCTOR HAS A MAGNIFYING GLASS. WHYISHELOOKINGATMYSRIPWITHAMAGNIYINGGLASS?!!!!!.

The thing about it is, no matter how careful you are, things still happen. HIV is a virus, and a virus does not care if you a good or a bad person. You cannot reason with a virus, you cannot make bargains or offer sacrifices. That kind of magical thinking gets you nowhere, and with HIV especially gets you and others killed. Maybe not right away. But eventually.

Furthermore, this is the Caribbean, which after Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of infection in the world. HIV has never before seemed so real to me. The Bahamas lead with a jaw-dropping prevalence rate of 3.1%, followed by Haiti (the numbers for Haiti are astronomical, over 100,000) with 1.9%, then Jamaica, “land we love” at 1.7% of the population (about 32,000 people). [I grabbed these 2009 stats from the Avert website http://www.avert.org/caribbean.htm]

So, with a statistical sword of Domoscles hanging over my head, with all sorts of WHATIFWHATIFWHATIFs running through my brain, I held my breath as the doctor put away the magnifying glass and scribbled something on the ruled index card that is made out for every patient at every clinic and doctor’s office around the island. I couldn’t see a thing he was writing, but I tried to guess the letters (is it an “N” or a “P”- wait, was that a “G” or an “S”?) based on the movements of his hands. Flipping the card over blank side up, he casually looked up and said “I’d like to give it another minute.”

ANOTHER MINUTE?? The “WHATIF”‘s have reached a newer, more parananoic pitch, and although I nodded with what I hoped was an admirable degree of sang-froid, I was certain the voices in my head were audible even to passers-by on the street outside.

After 60 more seconds of eternity, he handed me the card and pronounced me “Negative”. “I just like to make sure there are no irregularities that would require further testing,” he said. “That will be JA $1500″.

More palpable relief was never felt.

So, tomorrow, when most of the people I know back in farin are sitting around overburdened dining room tables with lots of people they love (but maybe aren’t sure they like at the moment for one reason or another), and are expressing the usual gratitude for food and family, I will be grateful for something else entirely.

I will be grateful for parents who instilled strong self esteem and a healthy attitude about sex and how to have it safely. I will be grateful for inexpensive testing supplies which allows people the world over to be able to afford to know what their status is. I will be grateful for fairly easy access to condoms. I will be grateful for choice and education. I will be grateful to have a partner who cares enough and respects me enough to have difficult conversations about a potentially scary thing.
I am grateful to be able to share that my status is a resounding “Negative.”