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Volume 34
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Tour De Life by Beau Burriola

DARK BIRTHDAY
(Dear Readers: Each year, as part of tradition on a personal anniversary, I present to you this column. Thank ya'll for reading over the years.) I don't make cake. All I know of making a cake is a box of Betty Crocker cake mix and a cardboard jar of icing, but each year on April 10th, I pulled together my small amount of cake-making knowledge to do my annual ritual. 'What makes it German Chocolate?' I thought to myself as I emptied the powder into a bowl. 'Or why did the Germans decide chocolate wasn't good enough the way it was and had to change it?' It's box cake. How German can it be? The bad jokes help. Today is supposed to be a sad day, an important day. I want everything to be right; it's the only way I'll remember this years on down the road. It has to be a memorable night, just like last year. Okay... let's see... egg, milk. Funny. Even a box cake feels a tiny bit homemade Mix.... pour... wait. A bottle of wine seems appropriate, even if I can only drink half of it. I pour a glass, toss the pan in the oven and hold my glass up. "Happy Birthday virus, you fucker," I say to the air before taking too large of a sip. It burns. Good. I realize that it seems sort of morbid to celebrate the anniversary of an HIV infection, but I do it because I want to remember. I want to appreciate the virus for what it is, a worthy enemy that I must never stop fighting. My personal ritual has changed only slightly over the years, but is mostly the same. I never want to forget that every little thing I do is another way to fight the virus. Everything. Like a carrot. Four days at the gym. Being the boy who smiles in spite of it all. Tickling people. Skipping. Telling someone I love them. Hearing that someone loves me. Not being afraid to love. Thanks to early Gay men who have fought this fight, there are now a million things I can do to live a normal life and give HIV the finger. "Where are those damned candles?" I say to nobody loudly as I dig through a drawer of plastic and metal kitchen thingies. There, at the back of the drawer, I pull out a small pack of cheap birthday candles striped white and red and blue and green. The small candles look both festive and sadly fragile in my hands. I notice I've got more muscle. I notice I am stronger. More wine. He had just come over and said in a cool, calm voice "I'm positive." I remember the heavy, unbreakable silence. What do you say to that? I remember feeling oddly outside of my body, as if that wasn't me sitting there but a television show and two actors playing out a scene from a time long ago to a generation before mine. I listened to him try to explain the unexplainable. I felt so vulnerable at that moment because all I had worked those years to build imploded in those two tiny words. The sorrow was too great for tears and too foreign for any reaction to seem appropriate. I just sat there. On this, the anniversary of my virus, I can't help but look at the path I've traveled. It feels so unfair sometimes because I feel like I played by the rules and got burnt, and yet I know people who play in the middle of the road every day and they manage to stay HIV-negative. It's easier to blame someone else. It's done. The smell of boxed cake fills the air when I take it out and ice the cake in silence. I'm careful to cover the whole cake with the thick icing to make it beautiful; a strangely symbolic token of the respect I exhibit for my worst enemy. As it cools, I light candles on the table and set a place for one. More wine. I stand back and look at my handiwork. It's oddly beautiful, a fitting symbol for an un-beautiful virus in sometimes beautiful people. I will celebrate every year that I live in spite of HIV. I will make a cake, think about how far I have come, go further every year from here on out, and above all I will remember. Each candle represents another game point for me; another refusal to be beaten. Over time, the candles will be so many that the life I've lived in spite of the virus will eventually mean I've won. "...and I will win," I say to myself, closing my eyes and blowing out the candles. Happy Birthday virus, you fucker. May your journey be fraught with antioxidants, soured by my good mood, spoiled by my sense of humor, and may you always be looking over your shoulder waiting and wondering how I'm going to find another way to kick your ass. Beau Burriola is a writer respecting symbols and rituals in life. www.beaubrent.com
visit Beau at www.beaubrent.com