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On Gay Modern Love (The Steep Price of Our Forbidden Kiss)

In which The Gay Recluse provides a gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love offering in The Times.

By KAYLA RACHLIN SMALL and THE GAY RECLUSE

THE rules forbade me from being within three feet of her. I knew those rules; she knew them. Sharing a drink meant coming a yard too close. But I wanted to touch something of hers, to claim my territory. So with an inch of her ale remaining, I reached for Toma’s glass and said, “Let me have a sip.”

She did nothing to stop me. The liquid disappeared, and with it went the infection-control protocol that had been drilled into us for years.

Like everyone else – yes, even lesbians — with cystic fibrosis, Toma and I carry certain bacteria that are harmless to the general population but catastrophic if transmitted to another cystic fibrosis patient. Our lungs, carpeted with thick, sticky mucus, provide a chemical environment in which typically innocuous germs can wreak havoc, causing more chest infections, more weeks in the hospital and a diminished chance at living into our 30s.

As with sexual orientation, the illness itself is transmitted genetically, so when people slide away from me down the subway bench because of my coughing, they’re wasting their energy. I can smear a bacteria like s.maltophilia over the tester lipsticks in Sephora and no one will be harmed. But stand too close to another person with cystic fibrosis, and I could kill them, or myself.

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