I Have AIDS

The soft rain dripped slowly, mixing with the tears on Carmen’s face as she walked hurriedly out of the restaurant. She had used the alley exit instead of the front door because Carmen was free-spirited, and also kind of stupid.

“Carmen! Wait!” huffed Tony as he raced to catch up with her. He would have caught up sooner, but he had to to run around the building when he realized the idiot had used the back door again.

“I love you, Carmen!” he panted finally catching up to Carmen and grabbing her arm. “I love you, and I can’t live without you. Nothing in this world makes sense unless you’re in my life. I’ve never met another partially nude stripper who uses heroin to flirt.”

Carmen’s heart swelled with love but she drew away from Tony’s touch.
“Don’t you see?” she shouted at the sky. “We can’t be together...I...I...I HAVE AIDS!”

Tony’s eyes filled with tears as his mouth formed a giant grin. He began to laugh.
“That’s great news! I have AIDS too!” Tony spat out gleefully.

“Oh, okay,” Carmen mumbled at the ground, her crying coming to an abrupt stop. 

“What’s wrong my love, we can be together now!” Tony said half chuckling.

“Well, I mean, it’s just that... great news? I mean, that’s kind of harsh.”

“I didn’t mean, you know, it’s great that you have AIDS. That’s still a bummer. It’s just that, we can be together, which is great! I still wish you had no AIDS though.”

“Uh huh. It’s just...I noticed you were still chasing to be with me even though you didn’t know I had AIDS, and you didn’t seem to have a problem not telling me about your AIDS.”

Tony began to nervously shift his weight from foot to foot, which was difficult considering one was lodged so firmly in his mouth.
 “Well, I mean, I would have told you eventually.”

“Before or after we had sex?”

“Carmen, babe, why are you doing this. Can’t we just be happy that we can be together and no one has to feel guilty or scared?”

“Right, just one more question. Let’s say there was only one dose of AIDS cure in the world, and we are the only two candidates to receive this cure. Who should it be?” Carmen’s eyes had reduced to mere slivers, and yet they glowed with enough intensity to dry out Tony’s contacts.

“C’mon babe, you know I would give it to you.”

“Well of course you would, because you would have no problem infecting me again, you son of a bitch.”

“What was the right answer to that question?”
The light in Tony’s eyes had been extinguished by confused frustration.

Carmen had more questions.
“How did you get it?” she managed to accuse in an asking way.

“Usual way I guess, I snorted a bunch of cocaine mixed with molly. Ended up in a clothing optional basement and had unprotected sex with a bucket of used condoms.”

Carmen snorted and crossed her arms. She needed the pause to find a way to attack this news, which happened to be the exact same way she had gotten AIDS, without sounding like a hypocrite.
“That is so typical,” she hissed, ruefully and truthfully.

Tony was beginning to wonder why he was trying so hard to be with Carmen. Other than, of course, dat ass. Goes without saying.
“I have to be honest,” resigned, Tony continued, “I thought we were going to sing a duet about loving each other and then make out and stuff.”

“Oh, I’ll sing you a song. It’s jazzy number called ‘Read the Fucking Room, Tony’.”
Carmen was still in a state of disbelief that Tony thought this situation was the height of romance. In whatever year she considered contemporary, AIDS meant a drastically shortened life span.  Considering she just confessed she was running low on life expectancy, his glibness was starting to get weird. They barely even knew each other. They just happened to be neighbors and she had lost power, needed to borrow a lighter, but the weirdo only had matches. Then she had dropped her heroin and came back to find it, and he was all judge-y about it, like what the hell? 
And then she just had to get horny, because dude was kind of hot, and she needed it so bad. All of which of course made her sad, because...
“I can’t even have casual sex because I’m too worried about spreading my curse,” Carmen cried, because again, AIDS could not be easily managed or cured during her time.

“You know what, I’m just going to be gay, like everyone else I know,” Tony mumbled dejected, yet genuinely bi-curiously.

“You can’t just decide that.”
Carmen had really had it up to here with Tony.

“No, but I can live a lie. I’ll pretend to like it while I think of women. I’ll live a lie so I can live in peace!”

“Oh, we all know you have no problem lying to the people you sex it with!” shouted Carmen, he anger clouding the part of her brain that helped form effective insults, “I hope your koala speeds down to clown town!”

Tony had known Carmen long enough to slowly start backing away when the nonsense insults started.

“Get back here, I will fucking crisp up your cucumber cobbler!”

Tony turned and just started running. He ran all the way to the nearest gay bar, about 20 feet away. He ran inside and started making out with the hottest guy he saw.
Maybe this is what Tony had wanted all along.

It would certainly explain why he kept telling women he had AIDS despite being perfectly healthy.