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Page 5
Tapestry
June 26, 1995
Tapestry's apartment, Lower Haight, San Francisco
James is one of his roommates
MW: I know you have a lot of friends who are also positive, but how do you feel about the way your negative friends respond to you?
Tapestry: Funny you should ask, the issue became huge in the past twenty-four hours. This boy that I have a big crush on, we fooled around for the first time last night, nothing really serious. But, um, we were about to go at it again and he was feeling sore around his penis. He went into the bathroom to check it out and I'm lying there in bed thinking, "my God! What did I do? What happened? What if my teeth snagged his penis, maybe I cut him, what if I infected him?" When he came back he was saying, I think I rubbed it raw. And taking a look at him, yeah, that happens when you masturbate too much and you're a boy. Anyway. Naughty! Very, very naughty! But, he asked me, "do I have anything to worry about?" Considering everything we did, I thought, no, he had nothing to worry about.
MW: He knows you're positive?
Tapestry: Yeah, he knows that I'm positive. He has no problem with that. Actually, all the people that I hang out with that are non-positive know. It's present for them and they let me know when they're ignorant about things. Keith was really good about that. He could have completely freaked out saying, "Oh, my God, what did you do to me?" But he laughed about it. I was the person who freaked out. I'm more scared about infecting somebody than anything else. This is not something one gives as a gift, it's not an act of love.
You can't assume that a person knows what is safe for you and what is not, especially in sex. I've heard too many horror stories where guys say "I was giving him head and he came in my mouth and I really didn't want him to do that, but..." You should have told him. "Well, he kept hitting me and I wanted him to stop." Well you should tell him. The other person may have a completely different perception of what's going on. That's not healthy.
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