"Why do you need to take a test?" a friend asked. "Just don't do anything risky." And as much as we say "Wear a condom every time," many people, of all ages, are having unprotected sex in varying degrees. Media outlets and AIDS organizations alike are pointing to new drugs and declining death tolls, screaming "Hope." People feel invincible again. Not me. Taking St. John’s Wort twice a day seems like over-the-counter Olympics to me. I would rather be pushed out of a moving truck than comply with a cocktail drug regimen.

Turning up positive would hurl spit in the face of everyone who's ever cared enough about me to say "Be safe," "Play safe," and "Stay safe." As I leave work, board planes, and finish my last-call beer, it's a constant refrain. My mother says it. My friends say it. Complete strangers grip my shoulders and urge me to play by the rules of the plague I grew up in. How can I disappoint these people by failing the one test I never cracked a book for?

In high school, public health workers scrawled the words "Abstinence" and "Condoms" on the blackboard, preaching doomsday. Meanwhile, teenage boys in my class were stealing one condom at a time from their fathers' sock drawers. Safety required that we all become gentle thieves.

But the guest speakers never taught us what to say when someone mutters, in the dark, "I don't like condoms." No one is teaching kids to say "No, honey, it is not that big. Wrap it."

Most of my generation, the much-heralded "second wave of infections," never saw life during wartime. We never moved our friends, limp-limbed, from one TV set to another. We never scrambled to de-gay an apartment for the arrival of a dying friend's parents. We never followed T-cell counts like NCAA playoff scores. We have never been sufficiently scared.

I became sexually active in 1987, well into the epidemic. Presumably, I should know how to protect myself. There's no excuse for me to seroconvert. But to this day, I’ve never lost a friend to AIDS. When I say that to folks over 30, they race for their address books, to show me the dozens of names that are crossed out.

Several friends, all in their 40s, were discussing AIDS over a Blizzard at Dairy Queen. The topic was bareback sex. The consensus was outrage. How could young men, who have the benefit of safer sex education, put themselves at risk?

Barebacking, or condomless sex, is reportedly happening all over the country — especially in urban centers. Men who bareback have either made a conscious decision to evaluate risk on a case-by-case basis, or they’re HIV+ and are willing to risk reinfection or exposure to other bugs.

An oft-heard myth is that young people are the only ones participating in unsafe sex. What seems deadlier to me is the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” approach that many people bring to sex. Because this is such a sex-negative culture, most people are reticent to discuss sexuality. People who don’t talk about sex are less likely to interrupt a heated moment to say “Get a condom.” It’s silence and shame that will kill us.

In the midst of the discussion, one of my friends looked up from his ice cream cone, face flushed with anger. Having buried too many friends, he said "It's 1998. After all we've been through, I have no sympathy for anyone stupid enough to get this disease."

I am less afraid of dying than I am of facing people without sympathy. So afraid, in fact, that I couldn't even go to my lesbian doctor for an HIV test. The stigma of seroconversion, in this day and age, is that high. So I took a home test.

The test requires that you prick the soft pad of a finger to fill a thick gauze circle with blood. I've never had a problem with needles, blood, or pain. As a toddler, I was stitched up for countless mishaps — I fell on rocks, taunted crotchety dogs to bite me, and pulled sterling silver trays onto my head. In my crib, I picked the stitches out of my forehead and ate them. Clearly, I inherited my mother's threshold for pain.

I took the test on a Monday afternoon, the same week I'd given up caffeine and TV. I'd spent the weekend sleeping from withdrawl. My friend Lee gently reminded me that I have a tendency to create stressful situations for myself. Later that evening, I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up in sweat drenched clothes. My fever was 101. "Great," I thought. "Time for another will."

As I reached page six, my boss called to tell me everyone at the paper was sick with the same bug. I fell back asleep, relieved that this virus would only be a houseguest.

My test result was negative.

I don’t have the collective wisdom of the folks who lived through the early years of the holocaust. For me to stay negative, I must keep talking about sex. I must reaffirm my commitment every day. And I must constantly ask my elders “What was it like?”