Staying Positive

I was telling the doctor the details of our shabby honeymoon, and next thing I know, he’s excusing himself. I’m sitting on the table, completely naked, reminiscing alone on the night Ella and I made love beneath the Alaskan moon. It must have been negative temperatures that night, but I was warm, tangled in the folds of her. We were almost young in those days, less paralyzed by the circumstances of our surroundings. She was still singing back then. I was still a working man. She had this golden tongue that could lull the sun to sleep. I wish I could tell Ella that I’m seeing a doctor who I call by his last name. For a while, she’s been telling me I’m too old to keep seeing Dr. Sara, my pediatrician. She said it’s time I be a real man and go to a real doctor. So, here I am, on the table, vulnerable and naked, reminiscing alone on the night we made love beneath the Alaskan moon, waiting for my real doctor to return. 

I get the lack of a moldy fish tank in the waiting room, but I wish they would invest in some art for the walls. It’s at least two minutes of this waiting and thinking, and something about the blank walls mixed with anticipation makes my hands sweat. Dr. Grealdein is probably coming back soon, and I don’t want to make a bad impression in the case he tries to shake my hand, so I walk over to the pile of my clothes in the corner, and while I’m bending over, balls hanging, wiping my hands on the inside of my jeans, he walks in. I tell him anticipation makes my hands sweat, as if he hasn’t heard that one before. 

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” I want the good news. But I also want to come off as brave. So, I ask for the bad. “It’s herpes.” My eyes start to well. He tells me I’ll live. I tell him I don’t want to. He reaches out to hand me a tissue, as I’m crying openly now. As if I wasn’t feeling vulnerable enough, I mistake it as a comforting gesture, a hand to be held. He lets me hold on for a moment before pulling away. I start to feel okay about the whole mishap, and just then he bee lines it to the sink, washing his hands for an unnecessary, offensive amount of time. He returns to his spinning doctor chair, and again, I am alone. 

He’s sitting there spinning, in his suit, on his throne, while I sit, still and naked on the thin paper they cover the patient table with. I ask him if he’d like to check my heartbeat and look in my ears. 

“This isn’t that kind of doctor’s office,” he says, and after a long pause, he asks me to please put on my clothes. 

“What’s the good news?” 

“The good news is you’re positive.” 

It was already mean, and then he chuckled to himself. To himself, as if I wouldn’t understand the joke because how stupid must you be to confuse an escort for a schoolteacher and end up in his office. I hate him, but I laugh too, like we were gentlemen getting drinks at a bar and I got herpes from an escort, and he’s been there, don’t tell the missus, haha. I wish Dr. Sara were here instead. 

I don’t know how I’ll tell Ella. I think about leaving her, but I don’t know where I would live or who I would go back to Alaska with in May. I remember how she cried for days after we watched Harry Potter, because she had been so moved by the talent of child actors. I think about the robin she brought home right after we moved in together. His beak was broken like someone had cut the tip right off, and he was too depressed to fly. Ella taught him to use his broken beak like a straw. It took months. She would make each of them a pile of finely chopped nuts and seeds. Then, she would get on the floor, sort of make her mouth this O shape, and inhale. It took months, and her breath always smelled like bird food, but it was so true and beautiful that I didn’t mind. For our anniversary coming up, I whittled that broken beak robin for her. I start to cry again. 

I ask Dr. Grealdien for the tissues, and he tells me he’ll give them once I put my clothes on. Now I’m standing up, totally exposed, crying this pathetic cry that you cry when you remember you’re in love, trying to put my clothes on, but the pants are inside out and I can’t fit my arm all the way through so I’m grasping at the fabric and dabbing the inside of my jeans on my cheeks to catch my tears. Dr. Grealdien is just watching the whole thing from his stupid throne that’s just a swivel chair, but we both know it’s the difference between men like him and men like me. 

He gives me this look like he also wishes Dr. Sara were here instead. 

Once I get my clothes on, I ask if I can go to the bathroom. Dr. Grealdien tells me I’m an adult and can do whatever I want. I scoff because I know that and only asked to make conversation as a favor to him. 

“I’ll be back,” I say. 

“That won’t be necessary. I have other patients to see. This pamphlet has all the information you’ll need moving forward.” 

He hands me a pamphlet. On the cover is a cartoon man with red dots covering his lips standing with his hands over his penis like he’s on a road trip and has been holding it in since Pennsylvania. Above the photo in Comic Sans it reads:

So, you got herpes. How to stay positive after finding out you’re positive. A guide for living with an STD.

Dr. Grealdien tells me he’s heard this can be really helpful. It’s obvious he wants to remind me he’s never had to read it. I tell him thanks, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. I drop the pamphlet in the bin on my way out.

I go to the bathroom and wait in the stall for a minute. When I walk out I stop by Dr. Grealdiens’ office and he isn’t there, so I go in and grab the pamphlet, even though he’s moved it from the bin to the table like he knew I would come back for it. While I’m walking out I bump into him and he looks at the pamphlet in my hands and winks like a man who knows he’s better than you. 

The truth is, I’m a survivor, and he’s not. 

In the parking lot, I see these two FedEx workers–this couple, standing by the wall, kissing and talking like they don’t have to remember they’re in love. I try to start my car, hoping each will be too infatuated by the others’ lips to pay me any mind. She isn’t starting and after a few failed revs, they stop kissing and start looking. I usually wouldn’t mind her taking this long to start. On a good day, I actually kind of like it, it’s sort of this game we play, this call and response. It’s rewarding, honestly. Today I want to skip the whole thing. It’s making me embarrassed by her, and I hate feeling embarrassed by her, but I can’t help myself; it just happens when there are people watching. It’s like kissing in public, I’ve just never been able to get comfortable doing it. Ella loves kissing in public. Sometimes I think she likes it more than when it’s just the two of us. On our first date, we kissed outside the restaurant for half an hour. I kept my eyes open the whole time to make sure no weirdos were watching. I’ve just never been able to get comfortable doing it.

The FedEx couple clearly doesn’t understand that this push-pull is our dynamic. I don’t need the looks today. Honestly, I don’t. But finally she sings for me and I’m off. I turn on the radio, and “Let’s Fall In Love” comes on. It’s one of Ella’s favorites. I take it as a sign that things will be alright. She used to sing me this song in her Louis Armstrong voice while she made dinner. I would walk in the door after a long day’s work, I was still a working man then, and hear her singing her scratchy song. I would come up behind her and take over Ella Fitzgerald’s part, and we would do this amazing duet. Basically, it was our thing. I miss her and her golden tongue. 

I need to stop by Mom’s before I go home, but I know it will be hard to act normal after my diagnosis. Mom can always tell when something is wrong. I visited her house a few weeks before all of this, and she could tell I was upset–which was funny because I hadn’t even known I was upset. I was over there, not thinking. I was upset, making her tea, and when I brought it to her on the chaise, she said, “Glen. What’s happening here?” She pointed at my heart. I told her there was nothing happening there, besides the normal beating. What I meant was, nothing’s wrong. 

“Glen. Tell me now.” 

“I don’t know, Mom. I don’t.” 

“Glen. Did you know you weren’t whistling today while you made my tea?” I told her I didn’t. 

“Glen. You whistle an awful tune every time you make my tea and today you weren’t whistling. And Glen? I bet it’s because you were thinking. So, why don’t you tell me what you were thinking about?”

And so I told her I had been thinking about how Ella wanted to go on a camping trip and I was trying to plan out the details, the supplies we would need, and what we would eat, and if it might be a good idea to put one tent inside another. She stopped me. 

“Glen. Remember the camping trip we took when you were eight? Remember the mishap with the wolf? Don had to shoot it in the middle of the night?” Don’s my stepdad. 

I told her I didn’t remember that, which was weird because wasn’t eight pretty old? 

“Glen.” She said, “Memories are fickle.” I started to say something, but she cut me off, “Glen. I didn’t tell you the bad part. You saw it happen, Glen. He thought you were asleep when he did it. He thought you were asleep, and while the echo from the shot was still ringing, Don looked up and–Glen. You were hugging that dead wolf’s warm body.” She closed her eyes and said, “Glen, you loved him.” At the same time, she was saying that I had begun to cry. She closed her eyes and nodded in this way she does to say “I know, Glen. I know.”

So, basically, she knows me pretty well. 

I just keep driving and reminding myself to whistle while I make her tea, and if she thinks something’s wrong, I’ll just have to tell her her gut’s getting old and can’t be trusted because I am fine. I say it out loud and start to cry again. This is not gonna be easy. But I either tell her I’m fine or I tell her I have herpes, and that would open a world of questions. I’m driving and thinking and whistling, and I remember the last time I tried to keep a secret from Mom. I was 17. It was after dad left the second time, so we were having dinner just the two of us at this Chinese place we love, and when I got back from the bathroom, she said, “Glen. Where’d you go?” 

“Men’s room, Mom.” 

“No, Glen, I mean someone’s not home.” She pointed to my brain. 

That’s when I told her. “I got a girl pregnant.” 

“Is she keeping it?” 

“I don’t think so, Mom.” 

“Glen. Father or son. I love who you are.” 

That was the last time I tried to keep something from Mom. 

I haven’t been over there in two weeks. I couldn’t go after what I did. Not because she wouldn’t understand, that didn’t even cross my mind. I knew she would, that’s the whole thing, you know, that’s the entire problem. If I told her what happened, she would see it a certain way, a way where I was doing the best I could, where it wasn’t my fault–it was never my fault. The worst part is that she would probably convince me that was true, that I had been tricked. She was always convincing me of stuff like that–that’s what Ella always says, at least. 

When I was 12, I stole the neighbor’s cat. For a month, I kept it in my room despite all the signs they hung on our block. “Missing Cat! Our baby Churchill is a 25-pound tabby cat. Please bring him home. $2,000 reward and no questions asked. Churchill, we love you so much.” I even helped with the search. 

When I told Mom, she said, “Glen. So, you took the cat. First off, you were probably worried they were maltreating him. Right, who lets a Tabby get to 25 pounds? And you know, Glen. Did you ever think that maybe when your dad left, it left a void? Glen. You tried to fill that hole by being a father yourself. By being the man for that cat that you needed him to be for you.” 

I’m not sure anymore, but I think I took him to test if a cat always lands on all fours. 

Once, when Ella was still singing, before our place became so lived-in and her voice was absorbed by the old cushions and muted by the dust on the walls, she told me there was nothing I could do to lose her. I think that was true then. It’s hard to say now. Those were the old days, when we would sing our duet and kiss in parking lots, and like lions we’d make sweet, sexy love. Those days, she would fall asleep in my arms and I would hold her precious body tight and say to the night: Take me, baby, I’m all yours. And the night would take me, just like that, send me off dreaming, my mind floating to these amazing worlds while my body stayed put, guarding my girl.