Me, Myself and Someone Else by Graeme Aitken

Author:Graeme Aitken [Aitken Graeme]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC011000FICTION / Gay
ISBN: 9780987329332
Publisher: Graeme Aitken
Published: 2012-11-04T04:00:00+00:00

5

Chapter Five

FOUR MONTHS LATER

To: Various

From: [email protected]

Subject: You’re invited to a party!

As you may know, I failed to celebrate my birthday last year, but I’ve decided to make up for it this year. I’m having a party to celebrate my 31st birthday and to show off my recently renovated house to those of you who haven’t seen it.

Address: the newly improved 10 Ridge St, Surry Hills

Date: Friday 17th June, from 9pm

I was having a party. What’s more it was not a birthday party passed off as a housewarming party, but an unambiguous celebration of turning the ungainly age of thirty-one. There were several factors that had conspired to make me mend my attitude, but ultimately I had also felt like hosting a party, a proper grown-up party. Not like my affairs in Kings Cross where the booze was cheap and plentiful, Strauss did an unscheduled drunken drag show, and someone had sex in the toilet. No, I wanted an intimate, classy affair that befitted my advancing years: with catering and an attractive waiter attending to my guests, so that I was free to circulate.

It was Ant who’d first put the thought in my head. He’d given me a talking to. I’d been on the phone to him, complaining about how I couldn’t afford a trip to New York and that I had to find some other way to avoid my birthday, when he cut me off. ‘Stop it, for fuck’s sake, just stop being so fucking fatuous.’

Ant seldom swore and I was shocked that he’d sworn at me.

‘Don’t you realise how lucky you are?’ he railed at me bitterly. ‘You know, some people don’t have the privilege of knowing they have countless birthdays stretching out ahead of them, across the decades, without any clouds or question marks on the horizon.’

Ant had always been intensely private about being HIV positive. Only a handful of people knew. Even now he was alluding to it, rather than talking about it directly, which was typical of him. Although I could acknowledge being a little insensitive, Ant’s reaction did seem rather overblown. It made me wonder if something was going on. I apologised. Then, I tried to assure him that he did have countless birthdays ahead of him, that HIV was perfectly manageable.

He interrupted me again. ‘It might be manageable, just, but it’s far from perfect. It complicates everything. My sex life, my prospects of a relationship, work, even holidays. You’re talking about travelling to America, but do you realise that legally I’m barred from going there because I’m HIV positive?’

Ant’s vehemence left me at a loss for words. ‘Are you okay?’ I finally asked tentatively. ‘Has something happened?’

‘Yes, I’m fine, I’m managing,’ he said sarcastically.

There was a silence. He paused for a moment before he continued. ‘Though Kip is having treatment this week for “lipo”. I haven’t seen him in a while but apparently the wasting in his face is pretty bad.’ Ant’s voice crumpled. ‘Stephen, I just don’t think I could stand it if that started happening to me.

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