Strike One: Blackness

Before I ever spoke my first word, the world had already written my obituary.

Strike one.

I came into this world wrapped in melanin, heavy with history.
They weighed me at birth, but they did not measure the weight of my inheritance—
The chains still wrapped around my name, the echoes of cotton fields buried in my blood.

Before I could crawl, I had already been warned:
This skin is both armor and target.
Black boy, be careful.
Black boy, be silent.
Black boy, don’t give them a reason.

But Blackness has never been just about existing.
It has always been about proving.

Proving I was worthy.
Proving I was capable.
Proving I was more than whatever assumption walked in the room before I did.

My parents never had the luxury of ignorance.
They raised me knowing that life itself would demand more from me
—more effort, more resilience, more proof that I was equal.
That I was better.

I remember the first time I felt it for myself.
The weight of being measured. Judged.
Not as an individual, but as a representation of something bigger than me.

A school competition.
An award that should have been mine.
I had done the work, but when they handed out the trophy,
they gave it to the white boy who stood beside me.

And I remember the look on my father’s face.
Not anger.
Not surprise.
Just knowing.

As if he had already prepared me for this moment long before it arrived.

“You have to be twice as good to get half as much.”

I carried that lesson with me, tucked inside my ribs.
It became a silent mantra.
A quiet, unshakable truth.

That Blackness is both burden and fuel.
That I would always have to prove myself worthy of what others received without question.
That I could never afford to be average.

Strike Two: Queerness

Desire bloomed in me before I had words for it.
Before I knew the language of longing, I knew shame.
Before I knew how to love, I knew how to hide.

Home was safety.
Home was Blackness wrapped around me like armor.
But queerness?
Queerness was something I had to figure out alone.

Outside, I immersed myself in a world that my family didn’t know.
Or maybe they did, but we never had the conversation.

I was my own tour guide.
Navigating streets I had no map for, meeting people who showed me pieces of myself
before I had even learned to recognize them.

I learned everything through experience.
Through nights in spaces where the music was loud enough to drown out the fear.
Through conversations with strangers who understood me better than the people I had known my whole life.
Through hands that held mine in dark corners, through lips that spoke my name like a promise.

Queerness, for me, wasn’t about rejection.
It was about compartmentalization.

I could exist in both spaces—
I could move between the world of home, family, structure, and history
and the world of freedom, discovery, and self-exploration.

And for a long time, I thought that was enough.

But some truths don’t like to be contained.
Some identities are too big to live in separate rooms.
Some parts of yourself will demand to be reconciled.

And eventually, I would have to ask myself:
Was I hiding because I was afraid?
Or was I splitting myself in two because I thought it was the only way to survive?

Strike Three: ***+

I wasn’t even supposed to get tested that day.

I was doing a favor.
Something small.
Something forgettable.

Dropping off empty *** medication bottles for a friend.

I didn’t think twice about it.
Didn’t flinch when I walked through those clinic doors.
Didn’t feel fear, or suspicion, or the weight of a single **** thing.

And then—
Why not?

I was already there.
Already standing in a place where people came to check, to know, to confirm their worst fears.
But not me.
I was just passing through.

Not because I felt sick.
Not because I thought he was cheating.
Not because I had any reason to believe my body had already been rewritten.

Just because.

Because I was young.
Because I was naïve.
Because I had never learned to see myself as someone who could be touched like this.

So I sat in that chair.
Let them draw the blood.
Watched the crimson thread coil into the vial like it meant nothing.

I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t careful.
I just existed, unbothered, wrapped in the safety of my own innocence.
And it’s wild—insane, really—to think about now.

How casual I was about it.
How I thought this was just another box to check, another errand to run.
How I walked out of that clinic and never looked back, fully expecting a clean bill of health.

The Diagnosis

The walls of the clinic felt closer than before.

Like they had shifted inward, like they had grown teeth since the last time I was here.

The counselor looked at me—not with pity, not with fear, just a quiet knowing.

Positive.

The word sat between us like a heavy thing.
Like lead on my tongue.
Like something I needed to spit out, but couldn’t.

And that’s when it hit.
Everything was about to change.

The Confrontation

I went to his place.

A tiny space off San Jacinto, a door that led to nothing.

Inside, it looked like no one lived there.
But I felt the opposite.

And there he was.
Standing above me.
Waiting.

I didn’t ask him to sit down. I didn’t soften my voice.
I just said it.

“I tested positive.”

He blinked. Breathed in. Breathed out.
Then, so casually, so easily—like he was telling me the time, he said:

“I was going to tell you.”

And then I left.

The Silence After

For over ten years, I carried that thought like a second diagnosis.
A sickness buried deep, gnawing at my insides.

I deserved this.

I let the world convince me that a moment of trust was a crime.
That my body was a consequence.
That my worth had an expiration date.

I was 21 when I tested positive.
I am 35 now.

And I am still undoing the damage.
Still pulling myself out of that dark place.
Still reclaiming my body, my breath, my right to exist without shame.

Because it was never my fault.

And it was never his to take.