God's House

It is said that it is better heard from the person herself, the story, how it really went.

But I was in the dark for a long time, so this story is not what I would call mine.

My husband is gay, I knew it before he did, I just never knew the things he did with how he was until it is too late. I am HIV positive and the virus will become AIDS in a few months. My body is giving out and I can’t do anything to stop it.

Today is my husband, Johnson’s funeral. He was a practicing homosexual, unbeknownst to me. I have nothing against it, I just wish he left me out of it.

They say you can’t die of AIDS anymore, not in this day and age, but I am among the few who are not lucky enough to respond to treatment. There are a number of us who’ve been left out because people thought AIDs is no longer a public health threat.

But it is. I exhausted my insurance and my life savings trying to get better. When I die I will be buried in a pauper’s grave because all I have left is the shirt on my back and grocery coupons to get me by.

I heard it said once that HIV is God’s way of cleaning house. That He sent it to the human race to wipe out homosexuals. I cried when I heard that, because I was diagnosed at that time and I wasn’t homosexual. I was an accomplished woman, a loving wife and mother, someone society would be proud of.

But my dreams went kaput because the man I trusted wasn’t totally honest with me. He treated my trust like a trivial toy, something that can be assigned value or denigrated without thought for the person who bequeathed it.

Upon his death, I learned he had twelve affairs behind my back in the five years we were married. I dread to know the number of his one night stands.

So am I part of the scum God wants to be rid of by letting HIV infect the human race?

I don’t want to think so. I believe in the benevolence of God. I believe I am the collateral damage of a person’s bad choices. I just wish Johnson was honest with himself, but most of all me. Had he been so, I don’t think he would’ve needed to sneak behind my back and tell me lies, but most of all pull the wool over my eyes so that I wasn’t able to make informed choices for myself.

I wish he was honest about what he wanted in his personal and sex lives. I wish he was man enough to admit that monogamy bored him, that he wanted variety so at least he’d have found likeminded people, people who don’t mind risking their entire lives for a few minutes of sexual pleasure. I wish he didn’t have to involve the sanctity of marriage and the security and health of other people in his twisted decisions.

Had he been up front about what he really wanted, I wouldn’t be in the poor house unable to take care of my three children, who will be orphaned within the year.

I don’t believe, as I die, that God is cleaning house. I am dying because a man was too selfish to accept how different he is from other people and was too much of a coward to admit this difference.