From London suburbia to rural Louisiana, Susan Cole describes how she got wed to a dashing
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HIV doesn't affect girls like me: I have a dazzling array
of designer handbags, went to a private school and was of the Cosmopolitan
Magazine generation of "Smart girls carry condoms". Unprotected
sex was not an option, not until of course the safety and smugness of
a fairytale wedding to a dashing American. Which gets me neatly on to
how I got It.
Picture the scene: 1998, I moved from the mediocrity of suburban Croydon
to rural Louisiana, USA to marry a man I believed to be rich and sensitive
with an overwhelming passion for me. In reality he turned out to be an
alcoholic, with massive debt, flatulence and an overwhelming passion for
guns and college boys. Taught me a lesson about smugness. Part of the
immigration process was to have a routine HIV test - it didn't cross my
mind for a moment that I could conceivably be positive. The tests were
done in New Orleans by one of the designated immigration doctors, who
was, I believe, a dermatologist - just the person you would want to tell
you about your positive HIV result.
I went to pick up my results two weeks later and was ushered into a room by a nurse with eyes wide with panic. "Well the good news is that you don't have syphilis, but the bad news is you're HIV positive," she said, thrusting the bill for the tests into my hand. When I was able to pull myself out of
the euphoria of not having syphilis, my primary emotion was one of disbelief. It had to be a mistake. The nurse was joined by the doctor who eyed me nervously, with evident dis-
