Welcoming Guest Writer Travis from Oregon, USA

Please welcome guest writer Travis from Oregon, USA, to the growing list of writers, artists, poets and musicians who have contributed to the International Carnival of Pozitivities. This post from 2 years ago comes with a warning for strong language, discussion of drug use and sexual content, but the story is compelling and should be heard. I hope that you will join me in welcoming Travis and his experiences as an HIV+ man.

Writer's Biography

Travis is a 43 year old man who lives in Oregon. He works as a community living specialist for developmentally disabled adults and has been living with HIV for 15 years without knowing it and for the past 3 years on medication. His interests include a lifelong herbalism fixation, making herbal remedies, and growing rare medicinal plants. He has lived in remote mountains for half of his life. Needless to say, he loves the mountains and camping.

Always and Forever

Mar 19, 2006 9:10 pm
Mood: crazy

god- its so hard to find a place to start. The beginning i guess is traditional. he was just a boy when i first saw him...a beautiful, sandy haired, blue-eyed skater boy. it took only the first glance to know, in my soul,that i loved him. watched him for many years with an almost abnormal crush on him. we were friends. when his parents kicked him out, i let him stay with me. his parents were professionals- a doctor and a lawyer, who were so busy achieving they didn't have the time to raise him. so he stayed with me.

when my fortune turned low, i moved from that cabin- a cabin in the woods- to a school bus of all fuckin' things. worst living situation to ever have, never do it boys. that metal skin condensed water like Noah's flood. but we were buds and dealt with it. he had his friends and youthful life, i hit the bar drinking and gettin' stoned and going thru the guys like it was a candy shop. i was considered attractive and never had a lack of lays. he saw all this coming and going, me not really gettin' the picture that he might like ME BACK.

he went with me in that damned bus to another town where i wasted (only guy i say wasted about) my time pursuing a blond actor wanna be. well, he is in an applebee's commercial, i guess he's an actor? while i was frittering my time away with that guy, this young man found a woman who gave him sex. not realizing his emotional needs, he hooked up with this woman and made a baby. she told me in confidence that she didn't really want a father, just a sperm donor.

by different circumstances, we all ended moving back to the town we had previously moved from. he was faithful to her and would not have sex with me while he was with her. he wanted to make a family and love work. that was him- always loyal. i mean the type of loyal that only exists in movies. when his boy was almost 2, and she had refused to let him sleep with her and the baby, and refused sex, and then refused to kiss hold or love him, we went out and got drunk one night and on the way back to their apartment (he was now letting me sleep on his couch) we stopped off in the graveyard and had sex. i gave him a blowjob i will never forget.(to be fair, i remember every bj i gave him).

by this time she was fairly sizzling with the desire to have that baby all to herself with no one. her and i talked, by this time i finally realized i utterly loved him without compare. she so wanted him gone she told me point blank if wanted him and would take him away to by all means do it. so i did,with her blessing. i'm not a complete idiot,after all.

we moved from Oregon to the [San Francisco] Bay Area. i lived in a room in a ritzy part of s.f. and he had a room in mt. view, working at a trader joe's. i made fetishes by the hundreds for a notorious african high priest, under the table profit, more $ than i've ever made before or since. after the s.f. scene didn't work (living with breeders) we got a room by the month in a mt. view crack motel.(good choice, huh?) we spent some time doin' some good dope ourselves. when we realized we were spending $900 for a room with no glass in the windows, we decided we'd be better off livin' in the car. so i continued to make fetishes at campsites, and we tooled around CA for about a year. when we pulled our heads out of our speed addled asses, we took that damn car back to Oregon-Eugene. we gradually got an apt. and he got a job at safeway and i played the good but lazy wife. this went on for a year or two.

we both hated eugene but were making a go of it. me and a friend went down to ashland for the day and on the way back, we ran out of gas about 6 miles out of town. i, being a ditz, hadn't wore any shoes that day. so by the time we walked into town from that my tootsies were toast. i stopped at a convenience store and got a coke, cussed and read a want ad paper. i saw an ad for 1&1/2acres of land out in the sticks, in sagebrush desert land near to where i had originally grown up. cowboy land, hicksville. usa. but it was $70 down, $70 a month.

so my husbund (by that time we knew we were keepers) called this dude in portland, made the arrangements, sight unseen. we got a picture in the mail of our little bit o' sagebrush paradise. we worked thru that winter, accumulated camping supplies, smoked a jay and looked at our picture every day. in spring we loaded our shit up and in one sweep moved to the sticks. we were broke but free. we learned how to make an adobe cabin, going to the nearest jesus store to fill our 55 gal drum in the backseat of a dodge 4 door. god life was hard. but we could see any visitors miles before they got there. no noise. only gods outdoors.

he got me a puppy for company when he was gone, i continued to build and run around naked. no one to see! after a few years we had enough money to have a well drilled thru 300 feet of volcanic rock. we got an old fashioned, little-house-on-the-prairie hand pump. everyone thought we were nuts, but we wanted something we could fix ourselves, seeing that town and repairman and electricity were many miles away. didn't want to rely on some dude for our drinking water. each year became better. he got himself a little ranch dog so mine would have a companion. there we were, 4 dudes livin large in the sticks.

on 3 occasions he looked at me, at sunset, and said 'baby it don't get no better than this' But after 10 years we wanted to see persons again, so we moved, for a season, to the rouge valley, for fun and socialization. rented a little cabin in the woods there, but 10 minutes to town by bike. the mother of the folks we were renting from channels aliens, and the aliens said they should raise the rent, so we told em to fuck off, got a teepee and moved to a rental space at a hotsprings.

he got the job he always wanted, he was a fireman! and man, was he sexy when he came back from a fire in those duds! fuck the smoke smell and charcoal and chainsaw grease, we never waited to clean up for lovin. i got a job working for a group home for developmentally disabled adults. he was so proud of me! and me of him. we were never more in love, he was more attractive each year!

that was november. we celebrated x-mas a week early, got each other toys that only woods boys would like. on the day of new years eve, he got ill and went to the hospital. just before midnight we found out he was sick, he had highly advanced cancer. his dad graciously got us into a house with a view, quickly, so he'd have a house and not a teepee to come back to. it was the prettiest and most expensive house we'd ever lived in. one month later i heard him scream in the shower, i went in, got in the shower w/ my cloths on and held him while his hair washed down the drain..

may 24th he died while his dad and i were mowing the lawn. his dad and i washed him, and i personally wheeled him into the oven. i so hate seeing smoke coming out of that stack, i walk by it every day i go to work. i hate it so fuckin much. so fuckin much. and while we're at it, i SO FUCKING HATE GOD for taking the one real, loyal thing in life away. we never cheated, didn't need to, we had an affair with each other for our lives.

before he died,he was in so much pain that i couldn't hold him, it hurt too much.one night we were watching t.v. in our 2 easy chairs. he reached out his finger, and asked me to reach with mine as well. when our fingertips touched, he said love? and i said 'love' and then he said the thing that i will never forget- 'i love you, no regrets, Always and Forever'.

after he died i thought of walking in front of a truck, or shootin' the hugest bag of dope in creation. but i was a coward and didn't have the guts. and no one else would take care of our two furry sons, our dogs, in the way they need. i've kept on, went to counseling that was ineffective, moved to a house with a big yard for the dogs, and sit here telling you all this cause it's the only thing that is purging my soul.

and then this last week or so i find myself drawn to a beautiful boy that i e-mail on this site. i feel so guilty, i know my husband would want me to love, he told me so before he died. but i still feel guilty. but i'm so fucking lonely to be held. but who in the fuck would go to bed with this kind of baggage?( mourning a husband and being AIDS positive) (and i am proof that it can incubate for MANY years before the symptoms manifest - getting tested regularly is a key to survival) thankfully i'm not so guilty i can't beat off, but i always end up cumming thinking thinkin' of my man. so again- who the fuck would want this baggage? but i feel so good when this cute boy e-mails me, a boy that most likely i'll never get to meet in the flesh anyway. so thanks guys, for letting me rant,it's the only thing thats helped.

Always and Forever.

Categories: ICP Guest+writer Travis HIV/AIDS HIV AIDS cancer International+Carnival+of+Pozitivities