My Pet Virus
The True Story of a Rebel Without a Cure
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $14.99
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
Iwas destined for a life of medical drama from day one," begins this comic memoir with a mission. "I was born in the month of July, and my horoscope sign is a disease (Cancer). The symbol for Cancer? A crab (the sexually transmitted critter). Not only that, my parents named me Shawn Timothy Decker, which makes my initials S.T.D.
Shawn Decker isn't quite the All-American boy. Sure, he gets caught shoplifting copies of Penthouse; is crazy about prowrestling, especially "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair; and never has a problem getting dates. But he's also a hemophiliac who discovers, at age eleven, that he has contracted HIV from tainted blood products.
Instead of becoming self-pitying and dying (as first predicted), Shawn develops a twisted sense of humor, meets Depeche Mode through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and writes on blogs and in Poz magazine about what it's like being hetero and HIV-positive in rural Virginia. He also turns to gay men for advice on dating women and, almost twenty years after getting HIV, marries Gwenn Barringer, who is HIV-negative and a former competitor for the title of Miss Virginia. Together Shawn and Gwenn travel the country, speaking to high school and college kids about how to live and love with HIV (and how to avoid getting it).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Growing up in the small town of Waynesboro, Va., Decker was diagnosed with hemophilia at 18 months, and then in 1987, while in sixth grade, he found out that one of his many blood transfusions had infected him with HIV; the diagnosis of full-blown AIDS came 12 years later. His drug regimens and general ill-health made him unfit for an eight-hour workday, and finding a woman who was comfortable enough with his HIV status was less than easy. For the purposes of Decker's book, he's not interested in pity, preferring instead to take the offensive usually with purposefully bad humor, referring to himself as either a "thinblood" (for hemophiliac) or "postoid" (for his positive status). It's a refreshing tactic, for Decker focuses more on what he's doing to move ahead in life than on how he's suffering. Decker's bravery is inarguably admirable, but it distances him; by book's end when he has married a beauty queen, with whom he tours the country speaking about sex and HIV we respect him but hardly feel as though we know him.
