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Lee Stobby,
On May 5th, 2017 without my consent, you exposed me to a potentially deadly disease, according to what you told me on May 7th, 2017 just as we were about to hook up again. Ever since then my life has never been the same.
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May 7th 2017, when after spending most of the weekend together, we were back at my apartment starting to hook up. Earlier that day you were late to meet me (our second date of the day…we had had brunch, then you had a business meeting and we were going to meet for dinner and drinks afterwards) by about a half-hour I believe and I said that if I was going to date someone I wanted to be treated with respect and not left waiting due to my childhood abandonment issues.
I now suspect had I not made it clear that I thought we were going to date, and you simply thought it was a casual thing, you never would have told me. I tried being empathetic to your admission. You were my friend and I was concerned.
I took “I’m positive” to mean you were HIV positive, meaning I needed to take PEP, which contains Truvada which you knew had given me pancreatitis and thus I wasn’t on it. Also PEP only works up to 72 hours after exposure, and every minute counts, and you didn’t tell me until I had probably 20 hours left to go see my doctor and begin taking pills that would likely make me very ill.
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I also noticed that your story changed a few times that night and I was worried, starting when I said I needed to go to the doctor and may have to take PEP, and I hoped the pills didn’t make me sick enough that I had to drop out of my LSAT prep course or miss the LSAT that I was studying for (they did).
If I recall correctly, when you switched your story from positive to undetectable you didn’t actually know what the word for undetectable was… I believe you said it was “that thing where you take a pill and you can’t give it to anybody”. I asked if you meant undetectable and you affirmed. You indicated in passing you took “a” pill for it; I am not a health expert and don’t know but I a friend on facebook who is an HIV specialist in SF has posted that it takes a 3 pill regimen to reach undetectable).
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All of it was enough of a risk for my doctor to agree to prescribe the PEP pills we knew would make me sick (though she said it was a lower risk if you were indeed undetectable, but we couldn’t be sure because your story about being poz/undetectable, and other details, had changed). With difficulty getting pills at the pharmacy, having an upcoming job delayed (ultimately losing it before it started clearly because I no longer felt comfortable introducing you), and starting to get ill, that Monday after you came clean Sunday night was the worst day, at that point, that I’d had since my brother died over a decade earlier).
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PEP is generally Truvada (which again you were aware had previously given me pancreatitis) and Isentress, which had previously made me sick as well. Hoping to reduce my symptoms, my doctor substituted Isentress with Tivicay.
I still had the same symptoms plus a lot of my food just randomly tasted like tobacco, got tremors in my hands, and I started spontaneously shitting my pants in public (I still deal with this to this day, though not as often. I still deal with the tremors sometimes too). You were out partying, even right near my house at the bars we would go to together.
I was mostly in bed puking in a trashcan crying and watching my future evaporate as I had to miss the LSAT and lost a job I’d been counting on to pay my mortgage for the summer. You were dating within weeks and your professional life was booming. I finally picked myself up and took the LSAT a couple of weeks ago to prove you couldn’t take that away too.
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You jeopardized my health and upended my life thoughtlessly just so you could get what you wanted from me sexually. I’m coming forward to make sure you can’t do that to someone else.
Your story changed even more by the time we spoke at my house Tuesday evening May 9th 2017 (after you followed me when I ran out of Gym Bar because you were blowing off my therapy suggestion and belittling me for bringing it up when I was simply trying to stop you from putting someone else’s health at risk without their consent).
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Ultimately the only consistent part of your story was that you had contracted after having bareback sex at a New Years Eve party with a teacher, who wouldn’t take your calls after you found out that you had it.
Initially you insinuated that this was a few months prior, which would have been 12–31–16, and that you had been celibate since, but couldn’t help your feelings for me.
Then your story changed to you were mostly celibate but had performed oral sex on a guy during your trip to the 2017 Berlinale festival without disclosing to him (I think this changed Sunday night but I’m not certain).
Then Tuesday 5–9–17, you explained how when you routinely perform oral sex on your homeless ex-boyfriend Pablo when you let him do laundry at your house. You snapped at me something to the effect of “I blow Pablo all the time, and he doesn’t care, so why should you?”.
I explained that I had a right to consent and with my medical issues and not being able to take Truvada I had a reason to care and that I wouldn’t have hooked up with you had I known the truth. That night you also mentioned that your friend Shep “knows”. Is he aware simply of your status or also that you exposed me without my consent?
While the consistency of the NYE party stayed the same, your year of contraction kept seeming to roll backwards first to 12–31–15 then to 12–31–14. The fluctuations alarmed me, as we had had sex in November 2013 and April 2014.
I asked you to firm up whether you were positive or undetectable (again you didn’t actually know the word for undetectable) and what year specifically you contracted. You told me that you were undetectable and had contracted on 12–31–14, “after we were together”. (I‘ve since seen evidence suggesting this too is inaccurate and the party may have been years earlier).
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You left and I thought we were on the same page and you would consider getting a therapist’s help to process your diagnosis and learn to disclose to sexual partners. You also made it clear you were planning on being celibate.
Seconds after you left my house, my gut told me to check grindr. I did and I saw your very salacious profile entitled something like “uncut only”. My stomach sank knowing I was likely being duped. This was the last time we saw each other and spoke (other than texts/facebook messages, and the one time I saw you in public and fled and you sent a gaslighting text like we were friends, misrepresenting your conversation with my mother and my illness 6–23–17).
