Hold Tight Gently Read Online Free Page B

gold medal contentionwith a total of 2,496 partners, of whom he professed to know the first names of no more than a hundred.
    He was outspoken and unashamed about his “sluthood.” Not every fuck had been magical, but the vast majority, he insisted, had given him pleasure. And what, he wanted to know, was wrong with that? No coercion had been involved, no pederasty, no exchange of cash, no pretense at faithfulness or romance. Like other gay male sex radicals of the day, Mike denounced the puritanical fuzziness that sanctioned multiple monogamous orgasms in order to produce children but frowned on a comparable number with multiple partners to produce pleasure. He did “not accept the concept of sexual addiction at all.” A bit later, after he’d become a spokesperson for a segment of the People with AIDS (PWAs) movement, he’d read his sexual history somewhat differently, referring to his generation of sexual liberationists as “predatory, shame-based, dark, use-once-and-throw-away, no contact sex—[all of which went] deep into our wiring.” Later still—in part as a result of reading books by “sex-positive” feminists—he’d reclaim and celebrate his “slut” years.
    There was one hitch: the escalating number of STDs. Mike was in and out of Sonnabend’s office so often that they eventually shifted to a first-name basis. Mike was fond of saying that “if it isn’t fatal, it’s no big deal,” but Joe was less nonchalant about his multiple, incessant infections. When Mike contracted hepatitis for the third time and developed fevers, night sweats, and bloody diarrhea, Joe hospitalized him. Consommé and a battery of tests were his diet for a week. His acne and hemorrhoids improved but a firm diagnosis remained elusive. Sonnabend called in a tropical disease specialist, but the best he could come up with was “atypical malaria.” Mike had never been to the tropics, and the paracytology tests failed to confirm that diagnosis or any other. The doctors were back to where they began—scratching their heads.
    And not just those in New York. The appearance of other, seemingly anomalous symptoms among young gay men was beginning to puzzle physicians elsewhere. The most perplexing were Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), typically associated with the suppression of the immune system; and the appearance of purplish spots on the skin. Sonnabend was among the first to recognize that the spots were indicative of lymphatic tumors, a rare cancer known as Kaposi’s sarcoma(KS) that was traditionally associated with elderly men of Mediterranean origin. Mystified, doctors began to compare notes with colleagues around the country.
    Mike wasn’t Joe Sonnabend’s only patient to experience night sweats and weight loss. As the numbers mounted, he decided to send blood samples to the University of Nebraska, the only place at the time with up-to-date T cell testing technology. Joe drew blind samples from three groups of patients whose histories he knew well: ten were in monogamous relationships; ten were in sexually open-ended relationships, both partners “dabbling” with third parties; and ten were, like Mike, “sluts.” Sonnabend’s theory was that the degree of immune deficiency would correlate differently for each group—a theory confirmed by the test results: the monogamous group had on average the highest count of protective CD4 cells, the sluts the lowest.
    Knowing that Mike was “highly suggestible,” Joe refused at first to provide his individual results. He gave Mike assorted excuses: the technology was new and its reliability not fully tested; yes, the three groups did have distinctive patterns, but no one knew why; and so on. “Well, you must think it means something ,” an impatient Mike persisted, “so you might as well tell me. I promise to keep my blabby mouth quiet.” And so Joe finally did: “Your immune system is shot—your crucial CD4 cell count is lower than I’d hoped.” “How low?”