Tayari's Blog: World AIDS Day: Get Tested. I Did.

I must admit that I didn't get my HIV test out of some sense of commitment to testing. It happened when I was in the doctor's office for my yearly exam. I got off the table and went in to see the doctor for my prescriptions and such, no big deal. "So," she said. "Go in there for your blood work. And an HIV test?" She said this last thing with a little lilt in her voice that made it a question. You see, you can't test someone for HIV without her consent. "Um, okay," I said.

Like many people, I didn't consider myself to be particularly at risk. But then, I thought that this is how people get infected. Whenever you think you are too safe, too chaste, too bourgie, too married, too ANYTHING, you put yourself at risk. You also undermine any moral authority you have to urge others to be safe.

When I was in college, I worked with Sisterlove, a black women's AIDS organization. I was really young then, a teenager, so I didn't really understand the conversation. The issue was whether the women working at the center used condoms even though they were married. The conversation got heated fast. I can't remember what they decided, but someone in the group said, "How can we urge the women who come here to protect themselves, insist that they use codoms, when we have decided that we are immune. Why are we safe? Because we're middle class? Because we're married? Can we tell them, 'you need to use condoms, but not me, because I'm a married lady. This virus does not care about the ring on your hand.' "

The long of the short of it is that you can't help anyone else until you admit your own vulnerability, until you accept the possibility of HIV in your own life. As long as you think it's a problem for "other people", then you are part of the problem yourself.

This is something that I thought about when my doctor handed me the forms to sign consenting to the blood test. I didn't believe myself to be at high risk, but just by being a black woman, I am in a high-risk group. I signed, my hand was unsteady, and even though my signature was a little garbled, it was still my name.

"Okay," I said to her. "I'm ready."