A Queer Story
Part 5: Forget about HPV

(Part 5 of a 6 part story)

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In the blackening blur that was to be the next four months of my life, I thought of the human papillomavirus precisely zero times. I did not think of it when I tacked up navy blue sheets over my bedroom windows to keep out the sunlight. I did not think of it when I left my room only to piss and force some kind of food down my esophagus. I did not think of it when I cried or punched the mattress. I did not think of it when, very suddenly, I felt much better. The acute illness ran its course, and while I was left to gather up the fragments of my life’s map, my immune system went about seizing control over the HIV.

I quickly learned the pace of living with HIV. One of its more undesirable realities has nothing to do with becoming ill, but rather visiting the person intent on keeping you healthy —the HIV specialist— far more often than you would prefer. My HIV doctor happens to look like a well-aged Rudolph Valentino, but his attitude is strictly street-smart Jersey girl. As we become better acquainted, I like him more as a person, but somehow less as a doctor. Maybe its his barely concealed contempt at my barrage of questions, many of which are impossible to answer or specifically designed to suggest how little he really knows.

Several visits and at least fifty vials of blood into our ambivalent relationship, I think of HPV and disclose my condyloma and their surgical removal. He seems mildly annoyed that I forgot this when initially giving my complete medical history and wastes no time in throwing on gloves, shoving his fingers up my ass, and looking around. He informs me that there’s nothing there now, but that we have to keep a regular eye on it, as HPV in HIV positive gay males is associated with a profound increase in the risk of anal cancer. My prior experience with HPV floods back into the present, and without hesitation, I question the man who seems to hate my questions.

“OK, what do I need to do to make sure HPV doesn’t come knocking again.”

“There’s nothing you can do. It will or it won’t.” He’s absurdly curt, but it seems more generalized —aimed at the cosmos rather than just me. He sits down and looks at me. “You know, I actually went to a clinic in San Francisco to learn how to perform anal paps and basically administer an HPV prevention, testing, and treatment program aimed specifically at gay men. The whole thing was apparently a waste of time, since we’ve never actually instituted any of it at this clinic.”

I am intrigued by his level of annoyance, wondering if perhaps I’d underestimated him. I push a little farther. “If this is such a problem in gay men, especially those of us HIV positive, why aren’t we receiving the vaccine? Even somebody like me that’s already been infected might be prevented from getting a different strain, an oncogenic strain, right?”

His eyes widen. “Oh sure, and if only we could get that approval!”

“Well it’s being tested in males, isn’t it?”

His mouth widens, his eyes roll. “This is meant to be a preventative vaccine. In women it is aimed at inoculation prior to any extensive sexual activity —like girls nine to twenty. Now just imagine trying to get together a control group like that for young men. Imagine telling parents that you’d like to test an HPV vaccine on their sons, just in case they take to getting butt-fucked.”

I am astonished, momentarily that my doctor just said “butt-fucked”, but more lastingly at everything his commentary seemed to imply. If Gardasil was being used on males in other countries, is the problem with its approved use on males in the United States nothing more than our cultural fear of the queer, most especially the kind that likes take one in the ass? Once again, I’m compelled to Google.

Read the final chapter, Part 6: Drag at the Cellular Level to A Queer Story now.

by R.H.K, a man in Philadelphia, PA, age 38


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