I'm back at the free clinic. It's two days after Christmas, and they're drawing more blood, this time for the enzyme test of liver function and the RNA test to see just how bad this Hep-C I've just found I've got really is. I ask them to do another HIV test, and while they're at it they might as well check for gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia. This is gonna require quite a lot of my blood, and a little piss thrown in for good measure. It's like sex, these days: a clinical exchange of carefully contained bodily fluids.

"You think it's okay for you to sleep with other people even though you go nuts when I just talk to other girls?"

"Well, yeah. I can separate sex from love. You can't."

* * * * * * * * * *

She can separate sex from love, and has. They do not occupy the same bed.

Sex with her was exhilarating at first, but soon became disheartening. It was about slamming her against the wall and fucking her, or fucking her from behind, or her grabbing my cock roughly, straddling me, shoving me inside her, and she was usually dry, and then fucking me hard, pelvic pounding, bruises, bites, a contest to see who could hold out the longest, who could break whom

"Okay, I'm done," she'd say and roll away, but she wasn't done, nowhere near it. I was, however. Almost. Which meant I'd have to wrestle her back down and finish fucking her until I came. And she'd struggle; sometimes I'd get her and sometimes I wouldn't. A contest.

She would bite hard enough to draw blood. I was covered in scratches and bite marks. One bite became infected and left a scar. She would slap my ass or my face and want to be slapped back. She liked to choke, and be choked. I was always painfully aware of her presence, and at first I liked that--no drifting off into fantasy, she was real, she was present, I could feel her. I was always painfully aware of her presence…but she wasn't there.

Soon it became nothing more than a painful masturbation, mechanical, an act, a fuck, after which she'd stride to the bathroom to clean herself off without ever looking back. There was no love. Her partners were interchangeable, she didn't know who we were and it didn't matter.

"All the women hate me and all the men want to fuck me," she'd say. This had become her identity.

* * * * * * * * * *

"I'm good in bed, aren't I?"

"Yeah, you are."

"Better than those skank whores you used to fuck. Better than Stacey."

"Yeah, baby."

I'd come quickly.

"You're becoming a 30-second man. All my men become 30-second men."

"I love you baby," she'd say. But she never said it after sex.

* * * * * * * * * *

That night she calls me and says she loves me. She's going to visit a friend who is very sick. She wants to be there for him. She's spending the night and they're going to have sex. It's all she has to offer him.

I ask her for the details of the other guys. It's important, I say, because I've got to know what I'm facing. It's not really. She's a health hazard, a disaster, avoid at all costs, and if I'm completely honest with myself the truth is I want the details so that I can revel in the pain of the betrayal, maybe work up some hate for her and certainly work up more hate for myself because I always knew she was poison. I'm an emotional masochist.

"I don't know," she says. "How am I supposed to remember?" She thinks about it. "Two, I suppose. But one of them wasn't a drug addict, and I had safe sex with him."

* * * * * * * * * *

"You're leaving me aren't you?" she says in panic. "You're leaving me."

"Baby, I haven't gone anywhere. I'm right here where I've always been."

It's never the same. The lies begin. She's confused now--should she tell me she was sleeping with someone because I might like that better than hearing she's loaded? She can't get her stories straight. She stops calling.

* * * * * * * * * *

He's 24 years old and dying of just about every disease there is. It's tragic. It's from 10 years of drug abuse. They get high together.

"I hate feeling all paranoid like this," she tells me the next afternoon. "I remember what it was like when I was a speed addict, running around doing errands all paranoid. It's awful."

"Why are you so paranoid?"

"Oh, we did some speed this morning. Not last night," she hastens to add. "Last night we just laid around. We didn't do any speed until this morning." It's important I know she didn't use until this morning, because she knows it's not good to mix drugs with sex. You should always use before or after.

When we first met in August she was so proud of not having used in almost a year.

"So let me ask you--between the time you stopped shooting up for a year and the time you shot up at Thanksgiving, how many times did you do speed?"

"None." She searches for an explanation of why she's using now. "Cleveland is pretty dry of coke these days," she says. She pauses for a moment. "At least that's what people tell me."

* * * * * * * * * *

"I think you should get tested."

"I don't want to get tested. We're all gonna die anyhow. You just think I'm a drug addict skank."

"You share needles. You have unsafe sex with other iv drug users. I read the infection rate is 70-90%."

"I don't give a fuck. You're always comparing me to other people. I'm not like other people. I'm not like any girl you've ever met. I don't give a fuck about other people's infection rate. Stop comparing me."

"I'll tell you what. I'll get tested first."

* * * * * * * * * *

"You think I gave you the Hep-C, don't you?"

"Who knows, baby. What does it matter? I've got it."

* * * * * * * * * *

Thursday night is club night. I fly out to visit her. She has me arrive on Friday morning and has me leave on Thursday afternoon. I'm a little outraged, but she insists that her club night is her own. "You don't understand how important it is to me. It's been a ritual for over 8 years. I've only been seeing you for 3 months."

We argue some more.

"You must think I'm a total skank," she says. "Do you think I'd drop my boyfriend off at the airport and have sex with some stranger that same night?"

* * * * * * * * * *

"I'm really worried about this Hep-C thing. I'm scared to find out I have it." And so she goes out and gets loaded and gets laid. "What else is there to do if I'm stressed out? I need my release. Besides, why else would anybody go to a club except to get loaded and get laid?"

* * * * * * * * * *

She calls me Christmas Eve. "You're just like the rest of them," she screams. "Never there when I need you. Fuck you!"

I call her back. She’s drunk. She says she hates me. She says she needs me. She says it's my fault she's spending Christmas all alone. She hangs up on me, and Christmas day she doesn't return my calls.

The next day she leaves a message. "I had a shitty Christmas. Leftover pizza. I hope you had a nice holiday."

* * * * * * * * * *

We reduce our lives because we are under the illusion that we can manage that smaller life. The personal and the professional, the spiritual and the physical become hopelessly entangled as less and less needs to mean more and more. Eventually there'll be nothing left but me alone in a single room with a bottle and a bag, stupefied and panicked at how so little managed to become so hopelessly out of control. I'll have nothing left to escape from but me, the thing I fear the most, and no where left to go but dead.

* * * * * * * * * *