Into the Breaches Britches

Previously, on Battlestar Galactica…

After Ric and I closed down Jeckyll’s my first night out, a group of about a half dozen of us—all of whom were destined to become dear friends over the next few years—walked down the street and descended upon the local Denny’s for breakfast.

Sometime around 3 am, Tina and Rick dropped me off back at my dorm.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Ric said.

That—more than even the incredible evening I’d just experienced—set my heart and mind racing. Could Ric actually be interested in me?

As it turned out, he was. Quite. He came over that Saturday afternoon, and while my memories may be clouded by a thirty year old romantic haze, I don’t think we left that room—having pushed the two twin beds together together to form a king—except to venture out for food, until late Monday evening. Neither John Mcguire or I had known what we were doing when we attempted to lose our virginity. Ric Hathaway showed me how it was supposed to be done.

After that, we spent five of every seven nights together, either at his place or at mine. But it was too good to last. Less than two weeks into our torrid affair, I came down sick. Fever, chills, muscle pain, sore throat, swollen glands, tonsils the size of walnuts…sick to the point of being totally unable to go to class and barely able to walk my ass over to Student Health. The diagnosis? Mono. Big surprise, eh?

This put the brakes on our passion more quickly than I ever could have imagined. During the week or so that followed with me stuck in bed and totally incapacitated, Ric came by once to bring me some food. When I was finally starting to feel somewhat back to normal and was getting around again, he was distant, distracted, evasive. Trying to set up dates was impossible. People said he was whoring around. I saw the writing on the wall and finally stopped calling.

A week or so later I stopped in at Louie’s after class, and while going through my mail, opened an envelope from my dad. My folks knew that I’d been down with mono, but I feigned ignorance when they questioned the source of my malady, fearing it would raise too many questions I wasn’t yet ready to answer. Inside was a get well card and a newspaper article about upper respiratory gonorrhea. At the bottom was a hand-written note: “Don’t give him anything but love.”

WTF?!?

I flipped the article over, and judging from the pictures that were on the back, it was obvious that it had been clipped from some gay publication.

WTF?!?

I passed it around the table and amid the snickers, everyone said, “Your dad knows, dude.” (Okay, they may not have said dude. Grant me some literary license, okay?)

“But it looks like it was cut from some gay rag!” I said.

Shrugged shoulders.

A few days later I returned to Louie’s and found the table abuzz. Ric was over at Student Health, sick with something called hepatitis. Hepatitis? What the hell was that? “He’s bright yellow,” someone said. “You need to go get a gamma-globulin shot,” said another. “What for?” I asked. “Anyone who’s had contact with him—even sharing a glass or some food needs one so they don’t come down with it.”

Lawdy.

You should’ve seen it: a little parade of us all marching over to Student Health in unison, with Tina leading the way. “I live with the guy,” she said. “Of course I’ve shared his food!” “And I drank out of his glass more than once,” Brian volunteered. They both then looked at me, and smirking they said, “And we all know what you’ve done!”

Lawdy.

I was the last to go in for the shot, and by the time I got there, the doctor just rolled his eyes and said, “Ric Hathaway?” I nodded. “You know, we have a limited supply of gamma-globulin, and I need to save what we do have for those students who really need it,” he said. “How do you know you’ve been exposed?”

Feeling a newfound surge of gay pride swell within my breast, I said, “We’ve been having sex.”

“Drop ‘em and bend over,” he said, shaking his head in disgust.

What? Without buying me dinner first?

This was back in the day before there was an alphabet soup of hepatitis strains, much less an internet where I could’ve researched both mono and hepatitis before blurting these things out to my folks, but I assume that what Ric had is what’s now called “A.” (Not unlikely considering the number of times I had gotten sick from eating on campus.) But given my own history with the “B” virus and never having had any symptoms from it (preventing the determination of exactly when I contracted it), I can’t help wondering if—in addition to the mononucleosis—Ric actually had the “B” strain and also left me with that as a memento of our time together.

(To be continued…)