Naptown 21 - Summer Internship - 5. Under the Weather - Cliff

Summer Internship

A Naptown Tales Novel by Altimexis & David of Hope

Under the Weather - Cliff
by Altimexis

It’d been a few weeks since Linda and I had been goin’ out. She and I have a lot in common. We’ve both been seen more than our share of life’s hardship for kids our age. Me, well, I lost my parents when I was ten, then got put in a group home, then in foster care, and just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I got sent to a Christian Camp for the summer. Not that there was anything wrong with being in a Christian Camp or anything. Actually, the camp was real nice and I really liked all the campers, and I certainly had nothing against being Christian - after all, I was a Christian before my parents got killed, and I guess I still was, when you get down to it - I just wasn’t real keen on God and religion after all the bad things that had happened to me.

But at camp, I found that evil really does walk the earth. There was a counselor named Gary who made me do things with him. I tried to resist his seduction for a while, but then his tactics became more threatening and I had no choice. He made me do sex things with him and with the other campers in my cabin, and if I didn’t, he told me he’d drown me in the lake, or worse yet, he’d kill some of the other campers and make it all look like an accident. There were times I’d wished he woulda just killed me and gotten it over with, but I coulda never lived with myself if he’d killed someone else on my account, and that’s why I went along with everything he made me do.

Sammy Franklin and I both had to do things with Gary, and with some of our other cabin mates, while he recorded it all on his camcorder, but it was never more than one or two of us at a time. We all learned how to perform oral sex and anal sex - how to give it and how to receive it, too. At first it hurt, but eventually I got numb and learned how to turn my brain off while it was happening. My dick worked OK - it had to or Gary would beat me - but there was no pleasure for me in anything we did.

As bad as everything had been, the absolute lowest point came when one of the kids in my cabin took out his frustration by molesting and beating up a little kid in one of the other cabins. If we’d have all been strong and pointed the blame at Gary, everything would have been fine, but we couldn’t do that. We were scared shitless, and we all did what Gary told us to do - all of us, to the last one. We all blamed Trevor Austin, an openly gay junior counselor in our cabin. That’s what Gary said we should do if anyone was caught - ‘blame the faggot’, as he put it. I felt horrible about doing that. Trevor was a good guy, and he had a terrific boyfriend, Kurt, who was teaching me things from the Bible that were actually making me think about going to Church again. The look on Kurt’s face when they came and took Trevor away is one that will haunt me ’til my dyin’ day.

Well, Kurt wasn’t about to leave well enough alone, so when Trevor was arrested, he set out, unbeknownst to us, to prove Trevor’s innocence. What he did backfired and nearly ended up getting us all killed, but like I said, Kurt’s one hell of a guy. He put his own life on the line to save us all, and now he’s getting’ a Congressional Gold Medal for what he did, and what he’s done since. Gary raped Kurt, too, and Kurt was forced to do all sorts of stuff, but in the end, he put Gary behind bars. What an amazing guy!

Most importantly of all, Kurt got me into a good home. Sammy too. He got us great foster families, and it’s a good thing he did, ’cause now we’re HIV-positive, thanks to Gary. Yeah, that’s the real kicker. A final parting gift from the bastard. He gets a jail cell and three squares a day, with all the meds he’ll need to live out what might well be a normal life, and we’re stuck taking all the same meds and maybe starin’ death in the eye, thanks to him.

But there’s no point in dwellin’ on all that. I go see a ‘shrink’ . . . Sammy and I both do . . . we call him ‘Doc’ and he really has helped us get through the whole thing. Doc’s a good guy and he’s always telling us to concentrate on the good things in life, and to put away the bad. That doesn’t mean we should forget about them - they’ll be with us for the rest of our lives, but by concentrating on the good, we can deal with the bad . . . and Linda’s definitely one of the good things in my life.

Yeah, Linda’s had it kinda rough, too. She’s HIV-positive, just like me. She wasn’t raped or anything, but she had a pretty bad thing happen to her. Her mother was a drug addict, just like Sammy’s mother is, only Linda’s mother used heroin, which she injected using needles that weren’t clean. She shared the needles with other IV drug users and I guess some of them had AIDS. Linda was born to a mother that was HIV-positive - a mother who never had proper medical care. If her mother had been on the right drugs during pregnancy, Linda would have been OK, but she didn’t, and so Linda had HIV at birth.

Linda’s early years were a lot like Sammy’s, only her mother wasn’t well enough to be a prostitute, and she stole to support her habit. If it hadn’t been for her grandmother, Linda might never have survived. Eventually, Linda’s mother came down with AIDS, but she refused medical treatment because it meant going into drug rehab. I couldn’t believe she would do that. Linda’s mother died in less than a year.

Linda now lives with her grandmother, who loves her with all her heart. She’s getting the treatment she needs and has been living with HIV for all of her thirteen years. She’s thriving. It just goes to show how far HIV treatment has come.

I really like Linda . . . I like her a lot. Ever since we started going out, I’ve been tryin’ to get my best friend, Brad, to get a girlfriend too, so we can all go out together, and maybe make out together, and maybe do more. A couple weeks ago, we did do more, but things didn’t exactly work out the way I’d planned it. After spending some time hanging out in Broad Ripple, we were going to go back to our own houses to make out and see if we could maybe go all the way. Well, both Brad and I were pretty successful in getting our girls into the sack, but we didn’t count on the surprise element of our brothers. You see, my foster brother and Brad’s brother are boyfriends. They both just got their driver’s licenses and my brother, Jeremy, just got a new Boxter for his birthday, so we figured they’d be out driving for, like, forever. Wrong!

Never underestimate the sexual appetites of a couple of sixteen-year-old boys! When Jeremy and David got home to David and Brad’s house and found Brad in bed with Charisse, all hell broke loose. The worst of it was that Charisse turned out to be an outright homophobe and stormed out of there, leaving a totally dumbfounded and very apologetic Brad in her wake. When he owned up to what was going on, and my role in the whole ordeal, boy, did my brother let me have it.

The thing is, Linda and I aren’t in it for sex. We really do love each other. I’m still not sure I buy the seriousness of what Jer said about the need to use condoms, other than to keep Linda from getting pregnant. Linda and I are both HIV-positive and even if the strains are a little different, I would think the medicines would work the same on both, so what’s the big deal? Still, ever since that first time, Linda and I have been careful. We’ve been using condoms most times . . . I think we’ve only forgotten them maybe twice since then.

Although one time she started her period in the middle of me fucking her. What a time to not be wearing a condom! Well at least I didn’t have to worry about her getting pregnant, even if it was kinda gross. She was so embarrassed, but I told her it was cool and all. I really, really do like her. I mean, if you can deal with having her blood all over your dick, that must be love, right? I know there may be hurdles ahead for both of us with the HIV and all, but I think she may be the one.

Just recently I’ve come down with a summer cold, however. It’s probably nothing, but the last few days I’ve had a sore throat, and some swelling in my neck and I’ve felt kinda feverish. It’s prolly nothing. I haven’t told Jeremy - I don’t want to worry him with him going off to his summer internship - but Carlotta, my nanny, she’s insisting I go see Rick - he’s my HIV doctor. Even the common cold can be serious with HIV. He’ll prolly run lotsa tests - I hate tests but, hey, it comes with the territory. The most important thing’s to make sure that my CD4 count’s OK.

If my CD4 count starts to drop, it’s prolly ’cause the HIV’s getting the upper hand, and my viral load’s on the rise. Can’t let that happen - not even a little bit. Yeah, even the common cold can upset the balance, strain my immune system and put my whole system outta whack, just like that. Or my HIV could mutate . . . or I could have picked up a new strain from Linda, but like I said, the meds I’m on should still work, so I think that’s the least likely thing.

In any case, Rick knows his shit, and he has lots of tricks up his sleeve. If my count drops, he’ll know what to do. He always does. . . .

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