As soon as we reach the apartment, Juniper slips away into her bedroom to avoid further contact with me and Mac. Now that we've formed a special bond of sexual jokes, Juniper has decided that this can only mean one thing: she will be in store for a whole lot of harassment from us, and it's better to just get away while she has the option to do so.

I don't want to leave the apartment even after the other third of our ice cream shop group has gone away, and Mac has no intention of sending me back home, so it works out perfectly for the both of us that I am here. We're not really doing much, but it's enough for me. Mac is reclined in a supine position on the couch, hands laced into each other and supporting his head on the arm of the sofa. He takes up the entire space, his svelte body reaching both ends of the furniture piece with a little extra free area, so I choose one of the chairs from the living room, and all we do is talk about whatever we feel like bringing up and into the air. It's a peaceful, low stress environment typical of friends who have completely shoved small talk out of the way and have become more than just acquaintances. I like this kind of feeling. I like it very much, and I don't want to let go of it ever.

I don't know how, but we are now on the topic of Mac's ex-boyfriend, Stef. I think I may have subtly directed the conversation towards that route so that I could find out more about his previous relationships in order to form an impression based on the information, but I'm not quite sure. I must've persuaded myself really well that I did it for another reason, like the general thirst for drama that everyone has. I would like to understand what brought them together and what pulled them apart.

"I met Stef at a karaoke night event that Leo forced me to go to because he thought there would be drag queens that I apparently needed to see." A smile stretches across Mac's face at the memories of that night, a night that must have been truly wild. "To Leo's dismay, there were no drag queens, but there was a guy who was drunk off his ass and singing a quite unpleasant rendition of a Beatles song, some sappy shit about love and peace that I could tell he was too hammered to evaluate on his own. And you guessed it -- the guy was Stef."

"So did you approach him to compliment him on this amazing performance?" I wonder, fully aware that it's something that Mac would do as a tiny portion of comedy and as a way to confront the attractive guy he had just seen killing it on the stage.

"Actually, he approached me, if you can even call it approaching. Rather, he stumbled into me like the drunk man he was, babbling about how hot I was and some other stuff that is a bit too graphic to repeat when my sister could be spying on us through the walls." Mac laughs at another memory, this time of Stef specifically. "He was honestly so fucking extra."

I smirk. "Is that where you get your personality from?"

Even though he has no chance of seeing me in his position, Mac's eyes shift in my direction. "Love, I've been painfully extra for my whole life." He then continues his story. "He didn't have any friends at the club with him, and I wanted him to be safe for the night, so I took him back to the apartment, introduced him to the rest of the guys, and put him to bed right next to me, where I received the worst night's sleep ever through all of his incessant mumbling and flailing limbs." Mac presses his lids over his eyes, squeezing shut tightly. "It was fucking awful, but we stayed in touch after that, and he turned out to be a really great person when he was sober, and thus it began."

Mac's life seems so interesting by a matter of chance, while I have spent my full existence in Manhattan, New York with no significant changes or events that I can share as a story with new friends around a table. Perhaps it's a difference in personality that guides Mac towards more interesting incidents. I'm fairly sheltered in comparison to him or to anyone really, but Mac doesn't give a shit about social decency as he demonstrated at the ice cream shop with his middle finger's suspension in the air, and it carries him far. He doesn't have to worry about anything around strangers. He's every part himself, and "himself" entails a welcoming and bold spirit. It all works out for him.

"We dated for a few months, and then the AIDS Crisis started spinning its wheels and making a scene in the gay community, and when there's a new disease on the up and coming and you're its main target as a gay man, it's only natural to want to get tested for it as soon as possible. To my relief, I came up as HIV negative."

I know where this is going, and the end is not a fortunate one. I don't want to imagine Mac's young ambitions being crushed by his partner having a disease that no one in the government is doing anything about and probably won't for a long time, but Mac is describing it for me, and I can't wholly cover my eardrums to escape it like a small child would. Mac would want me to listen, especially since I pledged my allegiance to combating AIDS with his group.

"Three and a half months later, I contract the worst case of flu that I have ever experienced in my entire life. Headaches, muscle pain, sore throat, rashes, you name it -- they were all there. And you know, I was going to ignore it and let it pass as a normal occurrence, as everything that happens more than once has to have a ranking with one instance as the best and one instance as the worst, but I heard something from Elijah, who already had the virus, about it being a sign and that I should get tested again, so I did, and whaddya know, I was HIV positive this time."

Mac pauses to collect his thoughts, transferring from the plain truth and sequence of events to his opinion about it all. "I think it was the fear and confusion that blinded me from seeing that the situation didn't quite add up, and I also think it was a result of my unbreakable faith in Stef, too. Nevertheless, at some point I realized that I shouldn't have been HIV positive, because the only person I had sex with was Stef, and neither of us were HIV positive before, so he must have been cheating on me between my first and second HIV test."

Well I certainly didn't expect that part of the story. I expected Stef to be HIV positive, but I didn't expect him to receive the disease from someone other than his loyal boyfriend in whatever way that Mac could have hypothetically received it.

Now more intrigued by ever, I inquire, "What did you do about it?"

"What was there to do anyway? I couldn't just leave him to die from the HIV he got, and I needed someone to support me in return. Yeah, I was hurt and somewhat convinced that he didn't love me anymore, but I still loved him, and I wasn't going to just abandon him to deal with his virus on his own."

I have no intention of belittling Mac's struggles with this disease and with his ex-boyfriend, but my opinion is that he doted on Stef far too much and was too lonely to push him away, even after he had been wronged by him. From what I gathered, he had his group friends, but that wasn't enough for him. Platonic love isn't always as visible as romantic love, and that was the case for Mac, so he was convinced that he needed the shitty excuse that Stef offered as affection. The only option that Mac would accept was to be complacent, because in his mind, dirt was better than nothing at all.

"I wanted to know why Stef cheated on me, but I was hesitant after he fell ill, because I knew he would be in a rough state that I didn't want to make worse."

Why is Mac only considering Stef's circumstances? Mac was also dealing with HIV alongside his now ex-boyfriend, but he has mentioned his own circumstances only once. Mac doesn't seem like one to be selfless and only consider others. He's big on justice and being fairly represented, especially when he's being treated poorly like he is with this whole thing. Is Mac just reflecting how he was during this period of his life, or is this still a touchy subject for him? It isn't like Mac to tell stories this way, and even I know that after a few days of being friends with him. He was in a rough state as well, and his state was probably even rougher than Stef's, because he had to deal with the knowledge that he was cheated on by the person he was still trying to protect.

"But one day, I finally mustered up the courage to ask him," Mac says as he internally dreads what comes afterwards, even though he knows exactly what it is and has most likely replayed it in his mind thousands of times. "And he just went off on me, telling me that I was too boring for him, too predictable, things that you shouldn't even blame people for. This other guy apparently had those qualities that I didn't, and that made all the difference in how our relationship played out."

I won't let him degrade himself like this, not when he has so much potential and so many spectacular characteristics to his name. "Mac Bennett, you are probably the most amazing person I have ever met, and I only met you on Tuesday. You're without a doubt more than enough."

"Apparently not for Stef." His mouth twists into a frown for a few moments before remembering that he needs to finish his tale of woe. "Stef died about four months after that conversation, and somehow it hit me more than it should have, considering what he did to me."

"You loved him," I conclude, despite never having experienced the emotion myself. "That's why it hurt so much."

"Lord knows why." Mac rolls his eyes. "I don't even know who this guy is whom Stef used to cheat on me, but he must've been pretty important, 'cause he killed Stef, and now he's about to kill me."

The atmosphere is silent as we both think of something to say -- a response for me and something new to add for Mac. I expect him to be solemn because of the topic's own solemnity, but he doesn't seem to care. He has probably told this story thousands of times, maybe in front of a large crowd of AIDS activists, while this is my first time hearing it, and it shakes me to the core.

When Mac finally speaks, it doesn't fit the mood in which I have dug myself into in my head, rather a disappointing realization that he just discovered. "Ugh, I got secondhand sex," he groans, totally disgusted by the concept. "Isn't that just bizarre?"

Ordinarily I would laugh at his jokes, but this is no laughing matter, at least not to me. I signed up for a friendship whose expiration date is as unforeseen as any ancient mystery on this planet, and I'm scared for what will happen now that I'm here and invested in him. I can't just leave him to escape the loss of a friend -- I don't want to anyway -- but I also have no idea how this will play out. I know that it's terribly selfish to think of myself when Mac is literally dying, but what kind of emotional toll will it have on me to see him deteriorate? What will happen to him? He's making a joke out of his secondhand sex, but that's what's killing him, and it's very real. That secondhand sex is going to cause a tragedy like no other.

Noticing my lack of speech, Mac unlaces his hands and sits up to turn around and face me to investigate the problem. From Mac I receive a concerned expression and a search across my visage. "Harlow, is everything alright?"

I shouldn't care this much at this point of knowing a dying man, but I do, and the thought of Mac dying plants tears in my eyes. "You just told me that you'll be dead who knows when, and now you're cracking jokes about it."

Mac flops back down on the couch again as a subtle indication that he has dismissed my foolish apprehensions. "I try not to think about the gravity of the situation any more than I have to."

Sickness and death usually aren't topics in which people feel joyous when discussing, but they have to be taken seriously. There would be no jokes about them if they could only be made by people who are struggling with them, but Mac is proving me wrong, and I don't like how he's messing with the regular flow of things. Why is he laughing about being cheated on? Why is he laughing about his proximity to the grave?

"But you have to recognize that you can't just make a farce out of a fatal condition."

"I don't have to do anything," Mac counters, a slight edge of aggression barely detectable in his tone. "I was stuck with this shitty disease, so I might as well make the best out of this by being comical about it." Comprehending that I have nothing to reply, Mac swings his legs off the couch and thus pulls himself upright. He pats my knee before standing up and making his way to the kitchen to grab something to eat, probably as a distraction hiding behind a need for food even after eating ice cream recently. He nods to me. "Good chat. We should do this more often."

~~~~~

A/N: what an emotional chapter

now mac isn't so mysterious anymore ?? hmm

~Da[n]k