Million little mistakes, p.21
Million Little Mistakes, page 21
You take Boy A. Adam, the tall blond who definitely knows massage and really, really passionately enjoys cunnilingus. When he gets done with you, you’re afraid he’ll have diaper rash on his face. Then he takes you to your gourmet kitchen and whips up a batch of vanilla cupcakes. When things get steamy on the kitchen counter, he takes one of the cupcakes, places it like a creamy target over your vulva, and sinks his cock through it right inside you. You are getting cupcake-fucked.
Soon you’re left spread out across the bamboo countertop, smeared head to toe with frosting, legs weak from flexing up in the air and panting like a long-distance runner.
Your session has concluded.
You call up and ask when Adam can come back and the desk says he’s in another session, but directly after that. Okay, good. Send Adam.
He comes back and ruts you again and again until you are really feeling a lot better about life. You ask if he can sleep over and he kisses you deeply, saying he’d love to. He even brought a toothbrush just in case. In the morning you order up a big breakfast and a fruit platter and Good Lord what this boy can do with a piece of papaya!
You spend the next several days trying out your boy on the special sets. You take him to the executive suite, where he puts on a three-piece suit and you put on a stiff secretary’s pencil skirt before he ravages you in the conference room. Then he rows you out on the placid lake in a boat called the Tru-Luv and does you doggie-style in front of a pair of elegant, staring swans. Then he lifts you up in the Sex Island ski lift and nearly wobbles the tram off the wire while pressing your face and chest against the steamy Plexiglas windows.
Adam is sweet, but not smart. He’s a little glassy-eyed and you’re pretty sure he’s high, but when you ask, he says, “I’m only high on you, baby.” Then, when you’re headed over to the fire engine, a small folded-up piece of paper falls out of his uniform pocket (he’s dressed as the fire chief) and you secretly look at it. It’s an entire list of “Things to say when you don’t know what to say,” provided to hospitality emissaries while out on dates with clientele. There are lines like:
“I like a woman who eats.”
“You’re not old. To me you’re brand-new, baby.”
“I’ve never felt a connection like the one I have with you.”
“Want to buy me a gift at the Companion’s Canteen? Leather goods are half off.”
“I’m only high on you, baby!”
He has used each and every one of them on you already and you did buy him a leather belt at the Companion’s Canteen. You’re calling reception to order up a new boy, but you inadvertently press the button that connects you with the automated billing center, which tells you how much your bill is to date.
Holy Jesus, you gotta get off this island.
You’ve already spent three hundred thousand dollars! You quickly call the front desk and tell them you’ll be taking the next helicopter out. You’ve got to get back to your life. The receptionist says she’s sorry you’re leaving Sex Island and would you like a good-bye send-off from your favorite companion with complimentary crying and discounted champagne?
No. Thank you.
You leave Sex Island. A week later you’re back home and having dinner with your family at the Sizzlin’ “T” steak house, when your throat starts to get sore. The next morning you wake up with the flu. Fatigue, sore throat, headache, and a heat rash. You go to your doctor to see if antibiotics or Tamiflu would help, but after you tell him you’re glad you got sick now and not when you were on your wild Caribbean vacation, he asks if you’ve had any unprotected sex recently.
Well, no! On Sex Island everyone wears condoms! (But then your mind sorts through your sexcapades with Adam and there is one, no, two incidents that stand out. Once you woke up and Adam’s very sticky, completely nude penis was stuck to your vulva. You practically had to peel it off. Then there was the time you thought the condom broke and you asked him if it did, and he said no but ducked quickly into the bathroom, saying he had to pee.) You tell the doctor no, you haven’t had any unprotected sex. He gives you a certain look, just the slightest flaring of the nostrils, and says he wants to do more tests.
He draws some blood and gives you a mouth swab, then tells you to go out into the lobby and read a magazine while you wait for the results. An hour later the nurse calls your name, you go back and sit on the crinkly paper on the examination table, and the doctor comes in with a clipboard.
He tells you that your mouth swab tested positive for the HIV virus. You probably caught it on your “vacation.”
Not possible! Doesn’t it take years for that virus to show signs? Nope. He says symptoms can start immediately and you’re lucky they did, because you have a few more options, but before you go too far down the treatment options path, he says it’s prudent to wait for the blood tests to come back, just in case the mouth swab was a false positive. A false positive? What the fuck is that? Are these people deliberately fucking with you with these confusing terms? Do you or do you not have HIV?
He says he’ll know for sure in a week.
So you go home and lock yourself in your bedroom and weep. You pray to any god that might listen. You make deals, swear off all vices, and promise to donate all your money to AIDS research if the universe will just make you healthy. Friends call, they want to go out for coffee, for cocktails, to the movies, but you don’t pick up the phone. How can they go merrily along with their stupid lives when yours might be over?
No, think positive. If you believe you don’t have HIV and you mean really believe, then you won’t. The universe will correspond to your thoughts! In fact, your flu starts to lift and your symptoms begin to clear. Hallelujah!
Then the doctor calls. Your HIV blood test was positive.
You have AIDS.
No, you don’t have AIDS, the doctor explains. You have the HIV virus, and with the right treatment program, you might never get AIDS. HIV only becomes AIDS if your T-cells drop low enough, and you’re nowhere near that now. The particular doctor you see recommends you wait to start treatment. Some studies recommend starting treatment right away, but then the side effects of the medications will start right away, too. Diarrhea, nausea, lethargy, chronic fatigue, fevers—it can be debilitating. Many people have to stop working and socializing when they go on meds. All they do is sleep.
This doctor leans toward what other studies say, which is that a newly infected HIV patient should wait until symptoms of the disease begin, and that could take up to a decade or more. The idea is to get yourself as healthy as possible before that happens—begin vitamin supplements, exercise regimens, get the body and immune system iron-clad—so when and if your viral load jumps, you’ll be in the best shape to fight it off. People who go straight onto medication hobble themselves right out of the gate and don’t give their body a chance to get ready before the battle begins, if it begins at all.
You decide to take his advice and wait for treatment. You go home and do major research on AIDSMEDS.COM, where you learn about all the things you can do to get your body strong before starting a drug cocktail. You read story after story about people living with HIV, and the one thing you learn is you’ll need help. Nobody goes through this alone and no one has to. So you start off by telling your whole family what’s happening. You just get it out on the table. Splat. The ones who can stay will stay, the ones who have to go will go. So be it.
Then you start exercise programs—jogging, swimming, biking; you take megadoses of vitamins, wagonloads of supplements, and impose strict dietary restrictions on yourself. (No wine! No sugar!) You get tested for any household toxins or food allergies that might compromise your immune system. (Mold! Red meat! White bread!) You fast, you cleanse, you colonic. You eat healthy. You won’t allow yourself a single mini marshmallow.
Not one.
Soon you’re a regular at the gym. Your body slowly starts to change. Your skin firms, your arms tone, your legs narrow. People say you look fabulous! What’s your secret?
You just look them in the eye and say, “I have HIV! Isn’t it super?”
Every night after your cleansing regime, you sit down and power through new studies, recent findings, current reports. There’s a new expensive HIV gene-therapy treatment. Scientists discovered that certain people are immune to HIV, because they have mutant CCR5 genes in their white blood cells. Little ugly tough-guy monster genes that inhibit HIV. Everyone else, like you, for example, has normal nice-guy wimpy CCR5 genes that say, “Hi, Mr. HIV Virus! How ya doin’? Come on in and put your feet up! Take cream in your coffee? Of course you do!”
The doctors speculate that by cutting CCR5 genes out of white blood cells, they might make a patient resistant to HIV. It’s worked on rats and the procedure is simple. First they do a simple blood draw and remove some of your healthy T-cells (assuming you have any left). They snip out the CCR5 genes, throw them away, and grow approximately ten billion new T-cells in a petri dish. Then those new, improved T-cells go back in you and go to work. Hopefully.
You elect to have the procedure. They say it’s new, it’s experimental, and it costs about five hundred thousand dollars. Fine! I have HIV, you fuckers! Hook me up!
So they do. They take an infected blood sample, send you away, and have you come back in two weeks after they’ve grown CCR5-free T cells in a dish. Then they hook you up to an IV drip and make you sit in a chair reading Better Homes and Gardens for three hours while your new T cells march into your veins. You cheer them on. “Hey, new white blood cells! You rock! Get ornery, motherfuckers! Go say, ‘Hi, Mr. HIV! How’s about I blow your head off with a rocket grenade?’”
The IV drip finishes and now all you can do is go home and wait. On your next checkup three weeks later, the doctors are astonished. They say your T cells have rocketed and your viral load has plummeted to near zero. Your HIV is “undetectable.” That’s the word they use. It means there are fewer than twenty-five copies of the virus per one milliliter of blood. In your case, there are no copies. None.
You are clean.
You fly out of your chair, twirl the doctor around, dancing and screaming. Nurses come running, you kiss them all on the cheek, and you zoom out of that hospital, speed-dialing every person you ever knew and shouting, “I’m completely clean, bitches! Clean!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
This feeling is on fire. You can’t afford to keep anyone away from this, you want anyone who ever had the red vine creeping through their system to know what this is like. You start a fund at the hospital for gene therapy, available to those HIV-positive patients who normally couldn’t afford it. You take all of your lottery money, every single penny, and put it all in this fund. You have to give up your house and turn in your car but you don’t care. You move in with your parents and take the bus. You sing. Burst out laughing. You can’t help it, you’re going to save people’s lives! As many as you can.
The fund is so odd, so unprecedented, with so few, in fact with no restrictions, the press takes note. Normally to be eligible for a fund you must qualify. Be of a certain age, income level, be in a specific stage of the disease, and so on … but not your fund! Your fund says, “This money is for anyone who needs HIV gene-therapy treatment. Age, gender, income, health condition, treatment compatibility, disease stage, shoe size do not matter.”
The local news station does a story on you and it’s picked up by the Associated Press. Nightline calls you. Senators working on health care reform call you. People start to donate to your fund. Patients, parents, siblings, children, congressmen, Hollywood actors, other countries, and your grandpa. They send what they can, and some of them send quite a lot.
The fund becomes a foundation and elects you CEO. Starting salary of three hundred grand a year. You have friends in Washington, D.C., and in Congress who help pass laws legalizing the federal funding of gene therapy and stem-cell research. Your name is lauded everywhere. Banquets are thrown, hospitals name auditoriums after you, and you receive thousands of packages, presents, and private notes from recovering HIV patients, who tell you their stories and thank you for your work.
In a stunning surprise decision, you’re awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said their choice was an early vote of confidence in your foundation’s ongoing commitment to improving worldwide health. With the HIV therapies you’ve made available free of cost, the face of this horrific worldwide epidemic is changing.
They see great things in you.
You buy a farm in Vermont and a small condo in Washington, D.C., alternating between the two. In your office there are children’s drawings pinned above your desk. For this is the true river running wild over the groundswell in your heart. The drawings you’ve received from children. They’re often of shining suns and families holding hands, and underneath the pictures are large Crayola messages. Block print and determined. Your hand shakes when you read them. They say, I feel better now. I go in the sun.
You live a glorious life and don’t pass over until you are ninety-nine years, four months, and three days old. They count every single day in heaven.
67
From section 35
You decide to keep the money, for no reason except it’s too stupid to give it away and you don’t believe in curses or bad luck. What you do believe in now is karma.
It’s your fault Sam is gone. It’s only because of you Sam was on that ship. You are responsible for her death, and now you have to work it off. You have to do something big. Something amazing. A true test of character and courage.
That’s when you see an article in a travel magazine about people with disabilities training to climb Mount Everest. Mount Everest? Seriously? That’s the tallest mountain in the world. One out of every five climbers dies up there! Well, that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? Absolution comes hard. Forgiveness is found on mountaintops, not in cookie jars. You have to do this. You’re going to do this.
You can see why mountain climbing is a millionaire’s sport. The gear you need is stupid expensive! Climbing helmets, down parkas, pile jackets, climbing boots, wool socks, gaiters, booties, crampons, pitons, ice screws, ascenders, chock nuts, pulleys, snow stakes, carabiners, trekking poles, ski goggles, army knives, water bottles, pee bottles, sleeping bags, stuff sacks, ice axes, and the list goes on.
Gear is one thing, but guides are another, and you find the best. Mr. Brad Kitchell is ranked number one for climbing and guiding on Mount Everest. He runs a training camp in the Himalayas, and he says it’s pretty late to start training. His next climb is in four months and usually people train for six. You swear you’ll do whatever it takes to catch up, you’ll train for as long and as hard as he says and you’ll also pay double. That seems to convince him.
One astronomical payment and a stack of signed disclaimers later, you’re on your way to the Himalayas. When you finally arrive at the training camp, doctors run a battery of tests: EKG, EGD, VO2 max, pulmonary, blood, urine analysis, and so on…. Physical trainers assign you a sadistic schedule, where you exercise for eight hours a day, always doing something absurd, possibly for their amusement, like running ten miles while wearing a backpack filled with damp kitty litter, or jogging up and down the aluminum bleachers by the track while carrying big rocks. It’s a brutal regimen and your body rebels by vomiting, bleeding, and occasionally just passing out. But those trainers are sadists. No mercy for you. Your freaking heart could pop out your left eye socket and they’d say, “Really? You’re giving up now?”
So okay, you know it’s crucial to push your body past all known limits, but more than once you want to take that seventy-five-pound kettle ball they make you do walking lunges with and lunge it right at their heads. Whenever you’re not training, you’re playing sports with other members of your expedition. Basketball games, volleyball tournaments, and racing each other in the Olympic-sized swimming pool.
Weeks are spent climbing rock walls, practicing rope techniques, learning crazy-ass knots, walking in crampons, and crossing slippery crevasses on aluminum ladders. (The last two are done in the camp’s indoor ice-skating rink.) Your teachers use an effective combination of Zen meditation, careful explanation, patient repetition, and good old-fashioned yelling until you’re “one” with your harness, ice axe, and jumar. Until you could teach your mother how to rope-up, tie-in, belay, lead, rappel, aid-climb, lower and climb while attached to fifteen other people and not screw up your rope systems. Knots are apparently not your natural talent. Kitchell says the only way to untie some of your knots is with a hatchet.
At dinner you sit with your fellow trekkers and wonder together what the top of the mountain will be like. You’re almost like children gathered around candlelight, sharing bits of knowledge with each other, trying to conjure an imaginary place. You talk for hours and listen endlessly to each other’s adventure stories, everyone opening their treasure chest of trips and sharing all the lucky breaks they had, the near disasters, the once-in-a-lifetime sights, the unexpected lessons, the best diarrhea cures.
It’s a great group of people, twenty-two in all and from all over the world—Australia, Iceland, Canada, Brazil—and everyone is smart. Maybe world travelers just tend toward intelligence. They see more. Listen more. The group gets along well enough to stumble into heated political debates about environmental policy. You can hardly keep up. It’s like a world summit where the dignitaries wear wool socks.
You won’t all go up the mountain together, though; the group will be split in half. Mount Everest has two main climbing routes, and in order to keep the treks safe, the groups have to be small. So one group will go up the mountain on the north side and the other group will go up the south, and you’ll meet at a prearranged point near the top. Both routes are epic and amazing and safe. Well, as safe as Mount Everest gets.
If you take the north side of the mountain, go to section 140.
If you take the south side of the mountain, go to section 142.
