I have never seen a group of young people look as pitiful as those I witnessed this summer. They were seated across from each other in a small waiting room - some with their heads resting nervously in their hands, others with the saddest, most contemplative looks on their faces. For half an hour I sat and watched, trying to burn their expressions into my memory. I wanted the image of these young, pretty, handsome and very worried faces emblazoned on my mind. I wanted to keep the picture of the good-looking man sitting across from me in the same memory file as the poster of rotting male genitalia on the wall behind him. I wanted to always remember my first trip to an HIV testing center.
It was surprising to me that my friend would choose to work in a place like this, a place where at least half the people she counsels every day will be told that they have a monster of a disease living inside them, just waiting for the chance to invite any number of opportunistic diseases in to ravage their bodies. It was even more surprising that, in my entire germ phobic and paranoid splendor I'd decided to apply for a volunteer position at such a place, but as I looked at all these faces - most of them reflections of me - I knew that I could relate.
I understood the sad faces. The way a girl sitting in the corner wore an expression that made me imagine that she was replaying every questionable experience of her past. The way a teenage boy looked at his friends when his number was called, making his way down the hall into the room to get his results. I understood. I empathized. I was proud.
I was proud that, with this level of HIV awareness, it was possible that the next time I visit the Web site for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention I would see a headline stating a noticeable decline in new HIV cases in young minority men and women instead of the usual "increase" or "continuing."
According to a publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Fact Sheet - HIV/AIDS Among US Women: Minority and Young Women at Continuing Risk" on its Web site, young minority women have a lot to change when it comes to their disease prevention methods.
"African American and Hispanic women represent less than one-fourth of all U.S. women, yet they account for more than three-fourths (78 percent) of all AIDS cases among women in the United States."
Those statistics, coupled with a prediction I once read, figure that by 2025 there will be so many HIV positive cases in the world that people will use their HIV status as a method of identification as much as they use race or gender. This should be a cause for concern for everyone.
Young people are notorious for having immortality complexes, lacking the ability to link their actions to serious ramifications. That kind of attitude was fine in the 1960s, when the worst possible outcome of an anonymous romp was a month or two of penicillin, but we have bigger worries these days.
Major medical advances have reduced HIV from a death sentence to a chronic illness, and images of seemingly healthy HIV positive people like Magic Johnson have taken some of the terror out of AIDS. But judging from statistics, I think certain levels of scare tactics are important in keeping people - especially young people - healthy and HIV-free.
As much as we would rather not be reminded that behind all our partying, drinking and lovemaking lay serious consequences, a little whisper of caution every now and again is highly necessary. Take a trip to the nearest HIV testing center and look at the faces of people just like you - like the guy you sat next to on the bus or the girl you were dying to go home with at that party last weekend - and be scared.
