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By Root 1086 0

the same as the general population, then that would put an end to the question.” While the FDA has encouraged the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health to organize such studies, Dayton noted, none is currently planned, nor is there funding to support them. Even if data were presented and the policy changed, the best-case scenario, he posited, would likely be a five-year deferral for gay men following their last sexual encounter, still far beyond what’s required for other groups. In my case, I would never qualify as a blood donor so long as I’m with Steve—and definitely not so long as he has AIDS. And neither of those will change. In the FDA’s eyes, Steve’s and my realities are the same: My blood’s as bad as his.

When he and I first got together, friends were dying of Kaposi’s sarcoma, Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, and toxoplasmosis, all of which can now be prevented or treated. And while protease inhibitors certainly extend lives, they contribute to new health problems—heart disease, lipodystrophy, and kidney or liver dysfunction. Overtaxed organs may finally just give out. Should Steve ever get that sick, I would give my life for him, by which, in practical terms, I mean I’d donate spare parts of my living body—a kidney or half a liver, whatever he needed. And I could—there is no restriction against healthy, HIV-negative, gay men donating organs for transplant. The final irony is, were I to die today, I could literally give Steve my heart, yet when it comes to blood—such a simple, plentiful gift—I am not allowed.

TWELVE

Blood Lust

BLOOD LIVES IN NEAR-TOTAL DARKNESS. WITHIN THE body it travels along the many thousands of miles of vessels under the deep shade of bone, flesh, and skin. Except during its jaunt across the eyes. These red threads in the whites of the eyes aren’t veins but arteries, it dawns on me early one morning. So obvious once you think about it, the color’s the giveaway, the blood so bright because its cells have just taken a deep breath. In the same way that the eyes gradually adjust when you enter a dark room, the closer I study my reflection, the more blood I begin to see just under the skin’s surface.

The hot water in the bathroom sink has once again fogged the mirror, and I give it another swipe of the hand. In the swath of me, I see the venous blood that purples the circles beneath my eyes, the blue earthworms of my temples. If I shut one tired eye—and oh, how the second wants to follow—I see the web of tiny capillaries on the outside of the lid. It’s as though I’ve showered in luminol, that blood-revealing solution used by crime scene investigators.

Shaving, I try too hard not to cut myself, and I do. Though minor, it’s enough to make me flash on a scene that’s stuck in my head since my last reread of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: It’s a little past sunrise, a few days into Jonathan Harker’s visit to the count’s Transylvania castle, and the young man is shaving in his room. He fairly jumps out of his skin as a cold hand settles on his shoulder and Dracula utters, “Good morning,” though nowhere in the mirror can the count be seen. Jonathan’s nicked himself and the sight of blood running down his chin seems to quicken Dracula’s. Only the crucifix hanging at his throat keeps the count from pouncing. “Take care,” Dracula purrs before retreating. “Take care how you cut yourself. It is more dangerous than you think in this country.”

Thinking about this exquisitely creepy scene makes me realize how differently it would play if it were set in the vampire world created by contemporary novelist Anne Rice. It wouldn’t take place during the daytime, for one thing, because Rice’s vampires can be injured or destroyed by sunlight. The crucifix, on the other hand, would cause no harm. Nor would the vampire be invisible in the mirror. In fact, since possessing great beauty is a prerequisite of being “turned”—so that the insult to God might be greater, as one vampire explains—Rice’s creations might even consider it cruel if denied their reflections for eternity. Also, unlike in