Rose Tinted Glasses

So I’d been for my first sexual health screen that was necessary for me to work within the industry.

The only trouble was that even though all my test results were returned two weeks later as negative the NHS clinic I visited wouldn’t give me the HIV certificate I needed to be able to do unprotected sex scenes.
Initially id been directed to this fancy private clinic in central London for my test but I couldn’t see what they did that any government clinic couldn’t to justify the £150 fee.

I now had no choice but to part with my cash to ensure I got my ticket to work.
I had to go through all the tests again. Not that I minded. They were a little uncomfortable and I’ve never been a fan of needles but I didn’t have the worry of the unknown this time as I already knew my results.

That anxiety would return in three months time when I had to update my certificate and go through the whole process again. Infact it probably took me a whole year of having these tests before the panic and paranoia became completely absent from my mind during these health checkups. Either that or I had effectively managed to train myself not to think about it. You’re so confident your OK but you can’t help thinking if you’re sitting in this clinics waiting room it must be for a good reason and you know exactly what that reason is. You’ve been shagging people without using condoms for the last three months with your fingers so tightly crossed that they have the same level of respect for you that you have for them. They have the same piece of paper saying they’re free from a list of specific diseases as you but accidents can always happen.

I was in my young teens when the AIDS message was being promoted. It had been discovered about 5 years earlier.
I remember watching some US event on MTV that was aimed at young people and using dance music to get the message across. I was only about 12 or 13 but this fatal virus scared the hell out of me despite me naively still thinking this could never happen to me.

I was now, nearly ten years later, in the same group as intravenous drug users and gay men. People who pay for sex or are paid to have sex are in the high risk category. The fact that we get regular HIV and STD tests is just damage limitation and we as a group of people usually chose to turn a blind eye and lock it up safely in the back of our minds. Is it any wonder we become alcoholics and drug users?

Had I really thought about what I was doing or had the insight I now have I probably wouldn’t have ever agreed to have unprotected sex for a living. All the people around me were doing it and explaining that as long as I got these tests done everything would be ok. They were romanticising the whole thing and portraying things through rose tinted glasses. I don’t feel angry at them though. They’ve spent so long numbing themselves to the dangers they were just trying to reinforce this in their own minds by trying to fool me too. If I bought it that would suppress any surfacing worries they had. A bit like how an alcoholic sometimes goes and sits in the park with the winos in a last bid attempt to try and convince himself he doesn’t have a problem. He just likes a drink. The winos are the real alcoholics.