Since I was working in the area, I popped along to the clinic to make a few appointments rather than waste ages on the phone. While I was there cheerfully appointing myself for blood tests, dieticians and the secret code-word "Medical" tests I realised that the guy next to me was this really sweet guy who I'd talked to one night about films and things and we'd said we'd do DVD nights and stuff some time. He was sniffing a lot and avoided eye contact, then the receptionist who was dealing with him was saying, "Oh, yes, we need to set you up with anumber because this is your first Medical Appointment." So yeah, I guess it does happen to other people I know, and not just people who I've known who've had it for ages and ages.

It's odd, it's not so long since I was that man, awkwardly not knowing how to say it's not a sexual health screen I'm booking in for, then they told me to ask for a "Medical appointment" rather than say, "No, I'm positive, I need a check-up for that." Now, I'm breezing up to the counter, my clinic number stored in my mind, booking myself in.

Am I really that okay with it already? I guess so, although I had low points over the weekend, they might have been coming anyway. Perhaps it's self-preservation that has made it all seem like a glib anecdote, that has turned it into a thing of numbers and figures rather than reflecting on just how poisonous I have become. It was certainly self-preservation that kept me from turning to the guy next to me, giving him a huge hug and taking him for coffee.

I think it's been really useful for me to have people who I've told about this who can talk to me about their perceptions and their experiences, but I'm still aware that I really should be exceptionally careful about how many people I have told. The temptation is, of course, to be bolshy and up-front about it, to tell the world, to blog elsewhere about it, to have a t-shirt made that says "breakfast PEP Included." in some kind of move to force it so hard into other people's faces that I can say, "I DO NOT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS!" so loudly that it's bound to be very obvious indeed that I really do have quite a profound problem with it.

A friend of mine who seems to know a bizarre amount about immunology and HIV for someone with an arts job said a few things that left me wondering about where I got it from, but as another friend said, how would knowing that actually change things? Would I find the man who infected me and do what, casually mention that he's murdered me? Beat him up to give me some perverse sense of retribution? No, there's nothing to be gained through that kind of knowledge or retaliation. I'm not retaliatory, although I suppose if I could pin it down to a specific mistake or moment, then I could feasibly make sure that person knows their status because I can't imagine anything more frightening than the thought that I could have infected people during the period between my infection and my diagnosis.

I remember talking to a man who burst into tears rather than have sex with me, telling me he'd just found out he was positive and told me about his daughter, his girlfriend and just how incredibly frightened he was about how, in his mind, he just saw himself totally as a toxin, as a biological weapon. It's funny, but since diagnosis, I've sort of perversely liked how toxic I am. Someone pulls a knife on you in the street, you bleed on them. You win. Other people's fear of what your very nature has become is quite empowering.

Is that such an awful thing to say? In some ways, I really like that I'm positive now. I like that my body contains enough of the virus to strike terror into people. Without condoms in a sauna, I'm a suicide bomber and we all know how romantic a notion that would be. I feel much less of an urge to top myself, to cut myself, to smoke, to take too much drugs. What's the point in making subtle moves to hurt myself or to bring my death forward when my body's taking care of that in a very real sense.

Don't worry, I'm not going to start barebacking or seeding anyone any time soon, I think the responsibility for inflicting something like this onto someone else is something for which I would not like to have just now. It's just the notion that I could. Deadly force. Becoming the medusa. It's power.