[Viva] OOps I meant Cocktail Parties

[Peggy Frank]

Hi Margarite and VIVA, 

 I’m writing because I need your help. I am in the process of creating a giant, six or seven-foot cocktail glass, which I’ll deliver to Kingsbrae, a sculpture garden in New Brunswick on May 31, 2013.  This is exciting because I was selected as one of 16 participants in their National Competition - which is not focused on health! I see the trip as an opportunity to share and gather information so I am making several stops along the way.  See the attached schedule.

The cocktail glass is made from roughly the exact number of plastic pill bottles I’ve used since discovering I was HIV positive: 1,962. I still need more pill bottles (about 500 more) so if you have a bunch that you can deliver to PWN in Vancouver, or Vancouver Island PWA in Victoria, please drop them by. would love to have other POZ people from across the country contribute to the piece, including bottles and notes to put in the bottles.

I’d also like to show an amazing film - ‘Positive Women Exposing Injustice’ and talk about 'Intimate Moments'. I’m excited and will stop in as many towns and cities as possible as I drive from BC to New Brunswick. If POZ people have intimate stories that they would like to share - perhaps in a book beside the sculpture - please send them.  Limit yourself to 200 words please (unlike the second story below). 

To make the piece International, I’ve asked a community of women I work with in Kenya to make beaded ribbons, which will adorn the finished piece.

To follow my progress visit: http://peggyfrank.blogspot.ca/



Please write back if you can organize a small gathering - call it a cocktail party if you will, or if you can connect me to the local PWA group. I will try to borrow a projector but we would need a wall or a screen for the film. I have no funding for this trip so please find a meeting place that is free.

 Examples of Comments shared by people living positively.

• My understanding of this particular circumstance [sexual intimacy] is...unless there is an open wound in the genital area or you are menstruating, and your partner has an open wound that would be the only way I can see a possibility of contracting HIV. Having said that, being undetectable, the chances are so very slim and next to none. I am undetectable and my daughter and I were camping, I got cut and didn't realize it. She has very bad eczema on her hands and they crack leaving open sores. My blood got into her wound and she has been tested. No HIV appeared and it has been 6 months. Anal sex I wouldn't take the chance with because the membranes are so thin that they do break easily.  - January 2012
 
• I’ve had two heterosexual relationships that lasted years since I seroconverted. Neither partner was POZ and both remained HIV free. We used condoms most of the time. One relationship was at a time when my viral load was, at times, extremely high.  The other was post-cocktail. My viral load has undetectable for more than 10 years. In one of those relationships we had plenty of unprotected oral sex.
I've also had one short relationship where sexually attraction was mutual - we moved from kissing to penetration too quickly to prepare ourselves with a condom. He remained HIV free and we were aggressively 'fucking'.  In the case of another short-term relationship with a man who refused to wear a condom, I was unhappy about our ability to protect both of us - him from HIV and me from any other STI that he might have been exposed to before this relationship. After we had sex one night, I noticed small amounts of blood coming from my vaginal area - likely an abrasion.  We never had penetrative intercourse again, (I was scared, and perhaps he was too). Unprotected hand stimulation was used for arousal and to arrive at a climax. He remains HIV negative.
When I think back to when I was infected, in Africa, I know that it was a single exposure to a highly virulent male. It was not a relationship, but a domination event. While still in Africa, I later had a relationship that included sex. This relationship lasted for months, continued when I returned to Canada. I can't recall always using a condom. He was checked when I found out I was positive. He was negative, even though our intercourse would have occurred at a time that the virus was most active in my system. I have lived with the virus for over 25 years and had several partners and none have seroconverted. 
- January 2012
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