Here I am, single again, and what a crazy feeling. This is actually the first time that I’ve broken up with a man. Ordinarily I just wait for him to die. That’s the tough part of dating someone who is HIV negative—it has to end somehow.
   
Rarely have I been single for more than a few months. I avoid the bars because of the smoke and alcohol, so I tend to find my men in airport terminals or at the supermarket (in produce because the ripe ones have a hollow sound when you thump them). But it was summertime and I thought I would try something new: The Personals.
   
First I tried the New York Press personals and found out that I couldn’t call from my area code without putting up collateral. So I resorted to my local paper, The Daily Misnomer, but all the ads in it were the same. You know:
   
Boring, white guy seeks large-breasted women to cook and clean and procreate; must be into hanging out and watching TV. Football fans a plus.
   
No thanks. My next foray into the personals found me perusing Philadelphia’s City Paper. I found some real interesting ads such as this one:
   
Real guys fed up with head-games; sluts need not apply. I do not want to deal with any cock-teasing bitches who think it is okay to walk around half-naked tempting men with their flesh. If you are a real woman, not a slave to fashion, who believes in a reasonable hem-line, please call me.
   
I called. It was my dad.
   
Just $1,684 and several ads such as Women with four breasts call Dan later. I still do not have a boyfriend. But boy, did I have fun!
   
I thought I might learn to disclose my HIV status to total strangers. What was I thinking?! After witnessing reactions ranging from horror to projectile vomiting, I though the only solution was humor. To counter fear and angst in my potential mates, I decided I would come up with a Top Ten list of reasons someone would want to date me, but I couldn’t think of ten.
   
So I finally decided to go to a personals newsletter for people with HIV called The Companion. The pickings were slim for the heterosexuals, so heed this call and sign on up. My ad went something like this: Juicy, ripe and sweet woman wants to jam…
   
Well, that only got me a lot of heavy breathing. My suggestion to anyone writing an ad: Lie like a rug. Everybody else does. In one ad I answered, the guy claimed he looked like a cross between John Holmes and Alec Baldwin. Turns out he’s this guy with a foot-long nose looking like Alec was stuffed in his stomach. I screwed him anyway. It was OK.
   
The next guy told me on the phone that he worked in pharmaceuticals. Turns out he’s a narcotics detective with an intimate relationship with steroids and dumbbells. Fucking him was like sleeping with a whole continent. Alas, as wonderful as these men must sound to you, they just weren’t right for me.
   
So, I moved on to cybersex. And I though I was freak. Have you ever visited some of those chat rooms on America Online? I mean the “other rooms”? even I was incredulous: 600lb. woman needs toilet training and Fleshy midget seeks women with goiters are two of the milder ones.
   
I created my own room—Open sore fore everyone!—but no one showed up. I did post some messages on the Hetero AIDS Forum. Now I’m in a long-distance porno trading circle and met John (not his real name), who has sent me details on every sexual position known to man, and a few known only to a rare sub-species of Galapagos flamingo. He’s also sent video stills of himself jerking off. That I find exciting, but he lives in Iceland so we won’t be exploring our ornithological fantasies soon. Not in the flesh, anyway.
   
The other man that answered my online plea soon figured out he had seen me in Ft. Lauderdale lecturing on the importance of raising your sexual chi. It so thoroughly shocked him that his chat-mate was the manic who insisted the audience stand, shake their hips and moan in a public forum that he changed his phone number and cybername. Oh well. It’s better that he didn’t get involved with anything that might stress him out.
   
It really seemed to be my summer for meeting men. I met them everywhere I went. Being the dedicated investigative journalist I am, I felt I had found a rich source of information I flirted shamelessly, let them pick me up and take me home, and just when they thought they were home free with this sexy, ripe goddess I would discuss safer sex. When they balked—and they always balked—I would disclose my positiveness and observe their reactions when they found out just how close they had come to a pussy with the destructive capabilities of a Trident submarine.
   
So I think I have had my fill of male sexuality this summer. It’s time to explore my other possibilities. I have been told that I am ambisexual (which means I can be equally aroused by a chair leg or a kerosene can). So let’s see what lies on the other side.