#patrick writes

Algia-Lyze was supposed to be just another painkiller. However, it soon became clear that it wasn’t going away anytime soon. The drug was far more efficient than anything that had come before it, and soon Tylenol and Motrin were things of the past. Algia-Lyze quickly became people’s answer to every pain.             The news reports were released a few months later: the FDA had allowed the drug to be certified, despite problems found during testing. Those who had ingested Algia-Lyze began to exhibit worrisome symptoms, most often cases of extreme lethargy followed by severe damage to the immune system. Those who took it in lower doses were affected to a much lesser degree, but everyone who had taken it was harmed. No one missed the irony of the “miracle” painkiller causing this much damage.             Production stopped immediately, and garbage bags were seen in streets across the nation, filled with bottles of the drug. Nevertheless, it took some time for scientists to find any way to stop the effects of Algia-Lyze. Eventually, it was decided that only blood transfusions from donors with “clean” blood could help. A clean donor would be paid for each donation.             I finally got around to giving blood on a Saturday in early December. I’d been busy, but I figured I owed it to the Algia-Lyze victims. I’d heard all about how you could save three lives by donating blood, and at this point, the more donors, the better. I wouldn’t be able to donate again until months later, but at least I’d be doing my part for the time being.             Walking into the nondescript building, I wasn’t surprised to see only a few other potential donors. The weather outside was pretty chilly, and there weren’t that many of us anyway: an estimated twenty percent of the population was still clean. Most of them were probably there for the money, but I didn’t really need it. I was just there to help. I took the necessary forms from the receptionist and sat down. In the stifling heat of the reception area, I took off my grey sweater.             Filling out my medical information and answering the questionnaire didn’t require much thought. Most of the questions could be answered with a simple check in either the “yes” or “no” boxes to the right-hand side of the page. I continued the mundane task until I hit the middle of the third page.             Have you ever engaged in any form of sexual activity with someone of the same sex?             Unnerved, I looked up at the secretary across the room. She glanced up, smiling. She was rather pretty, if not somewhat disheveled. Her white uniform needed to be starched once more, and her name was illegible under the dust on her identification tag.             Have you ever engaged in any form of sexual activity with someone of the same sex?

Well, it only happened a few - No. The question wasn’t asking me that. It didn’t care whether or not I’d done it only once or twice. It didn’t care whether or not my partners and I had been safe, or whether I was clean for HIV. The question only had two answers, and the clearest one here was a resounding

⃤ YES .

            I’m not a man who’s prone to lying. Raised in the Catholic faith, I had been instilled with many of the principle virtues of that doctrine in my youth. I was taught never to kill or steal, and, as I would learn via many a spanking, never to bear false witness against my neighbor, regardless of whether they lived next door or not. Everyone on earth was a neighbor to me, one of many in the family of God. I would move on to become an atheist, but I would never be able to shake the foundations of the morals which had been drilled into my skull as a child. Sometimes I would commit an action only to reflect on it and realize that I still believed it to be wrong.

            The truth was that I had had sex with another man. Years ago, yes, but it had still occurred. Yet it was also true that I was safe: I had never contracted HIV, something to which numerous doctors’ reports could attest. So why shouldn’t I give blood? It’s not as if they’ll ever know. Plus, don’t they screen the blood, anyway? These all seemed valid arguments. I also felt obliged, after seeing so many suffering on television and in the papers, to do something rather than simply allow the pain of even three people to continue any longer.

I walked up to give the receptionist my papers. She seemed to want to question me, but I happened to be wracked with a coughing fit at just that moment. Winter had not spared me from its onslaught of colds.

Before the young woman could say anything, a nurse came to lead me to have my blood drawn.

Have you ever engaged in any form of sexual activity with someone of the same sex?

Though she hadn’t said anything, the receptionist questioned me all the same.

            The room was spotless. As I laid down on a sheet of crisp wax paper, I looked to the white ceiling.

Have you ever engaged in any form of sexual activity with someone of the same sex?

The question came across my thoughts once more, but by now I’d made a choice, and there was no going back.

It’s for the best. My black shirt clung to my body in the hot, cramped setting.

It was an efficient procedure. The nurse rubbed my arm with iodine and then inserted a thick needle into the prominent vein of my left arm. Though by no means pleasant, it was not unnecessarily uncomfortable. I watched the ceiling for the majority of the time, sometimes looking down at the dark liquid being pumped out of my body, my heart never missing a beat. After twelve minutes, I was done with the procedure, and in another fifteen, I was out of the office.

Have you ever engaged in any form of sexual activity with someone of the same sex?

You’ll never know.

  At five in the morning, I was lying in bed and coughing my lungs out. I wouldn’t have wished this hell on anyone else. I’d only had pneumonia once before: that had been enough. On day three of this new struggle with the illness, I was a wreck. That coughing hadn’t been that innocent after all.

In the pale grey light filtering through my windows, I probably looked as good as I felt. I hadn’t moved much, excusing getting up for the bathroom and food. The last time I’d been out had been to -

            Have you ever engaged in any form of sexual activity with someone of the same sex?             Oh.             It hadn’t occured to me until now that my blood had been donated when I was coming down with the pneumonia. My blood...which was possibly carrying the virus.             Have you ever engaged in any form of sexual activity with someone of the same sex?             I might as well have, for all the good donating my blood had done.             A few weeks passed by and I recovered from the pneumonia. But that was the least of my worries. I tried to track down my blood. I really did. But in doing so, I found out that the donation process was nothing at all like it had been before the appearance of Algia-Lyze. Nothing was tracked. Nothing was tested. Blood was so desperately needed that any and all donations were taken in the hopes of stopping people’s pains as quickly as possible.             My blood’s floating around there somewhere right now. Possibly infected. Possibly not.

If History is Written by the Victors, I Will Win this War:

A Personal History of Coming Out, Love, Fights, and Filipino Insurgents

When thinking about my life, there are so many things to think about. I had an amazing childhood, raised by my loving mom and dad. I played with my brother and shared so many experiences with him. As time has passed, I’ve seen best friends come and go, each leaving some imprint on my life. Similarly to other students, though, high school has been a very tempestuous time for me. The vicissitudes of life only seem to get even more confusing as hormones and emotions inhibit my ability to think clearly. Somehow I’ve suddenly come face to face with decisions which may affect the remainder of my life, or at least shape it greatly. I get worried over choosing food at a restaurant, much less which major I’m going to pursue or which college I wish to attend.

This is going to be in the style of a confessional. And honestly, I’m satisfied with that. I really appreciate the chance to reflect, and it’s been such a long time since I have been able to do so. I get so caught up with my life at times that I lose track of myself. As IB students, yes, we’re supposed to be reflective, but it becomes difficult when one is working so hard at succeeding at several other glorified traits.

My life consists of myriad facets, the same as anyone else’s. It becomes difficult to choose an area to explore. However, one topic, typical of many teens, comes to mind: my relationship. Not with my mother, father, brother, or friends. No, those are important, but not necessarily something which I would like to reflect on. As with many teenagers, my relationship has come to be a significantly large aspect of my current life. Yes, at times, it begins to overshadow my other interests, but for the most part I attempt to separate it from my feelings in regards to school, extracurriculars, etc. However, reflection upon it is well needed, as it often stresses me out more than is necessary.

Being inspired by Murakami’s works, often so blunt and unapologetic, I’m going to work past the “difficult” portion of this personal history first. I’m homosexual. Unabashedly, proudly, and at times flamingly gay. This in itself could constitute an entire novel full of reflection. My middle school years and early high school years were full of constant worry and self-doubt. What would people think? Would I be accepted? Was it right?

As you can see, much of that fear is gone now. Yes, I do still fear people’s judgment. No, I don’t feel it’s wrong. Within the confines of my life, my school, and this class, I feel free to be who I am. In the same line, I’ve learned that I also don’t need to go around telling everyone about my sexuality. It’s not like people come up to me and tell me they’re heterosexual. So I just go about my school day as any other student, and realize that while I’m outside the norm, I don’t need to go about and prove that this is so.

I didn’t really need to say any of this for the purpose of this assignment, but seeing as this is a reflection on my personal history, it felt appropriate. It also helps clear up pronoun troubles for the remainder of this assignment. I really detest using “their” and “them” as singular and “gender neutral” alternatives when “he” or “him” will suffice. Therefore, I thought it best to simply get rid of this confusion and go off in this tangential (and almost Murakami-esque, I’d like to think) direction.

As I was saying, my relationship has become quite “taxing” as of present. It has been for some time. So I thought what better way to represent this with a war? Yes, I understand the cliché inherent in comparing love to war. I feel there have been almost innumerable comparisons between the two. “Love is a battlefield,” as they say. I’m thus left with a wide range of situations with which to create an analogy for my relationship. There’s the War of 1812, caused in part by the fact that the British never really leftAmericaafter their falling out during the Revolutionary War. There’s the War on Terror, which occurred mainly because our nation (mistakenly) believed that theMiddle Eastwas hiding weapons from us. But for my intents and purposes, these didn’t fit as perfectly as I’d hoped. No historical event will ever match every single nuance of a person’s life, unless one is a veritable walking history book, as the narrator of “The Fall of theRoman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler’s Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of Raging Winds” appears to be. Therefore, I chose something semi-obscure yet within the scope of my knowledge: the Philippine Insurrection. 

When theUnited Statesfirst interacted with thePhilippines, it was to meet “philanthropic” goals of ridding the nation of the Spanish. TheUnited Stateswas in an imperialistic war withSpain, and striking at the weak naval fleet the Spanish had stationed atManilaallowed Americans to overcome troops there with relative ease. General Dewey wiped out the few decaying Spanish ships, and further fighting saved the Filipinos from the Spanish who had oppressed them for so long.

Looking back on it, my boyfriend did help me out of a pretty rough spot. He was really only a friend then, but one that I needed. I could talk to him about anything. He offered a hand out of my depressed and confused life at the time. I was lonely, and I’ll admit it. He gave me an outlet, a person to talk to about all my feelings, and he wouldn’t judge me, as he felt the same things I did.

From there, much as in the case of the Philippines, things took a turn for the worse. While the United States “freed” the Philippines, it ended up buying them for $20 million from Spain when signing the 1898 Treaty of Paris. Despite rebels fighting for years for independence from Spain, the Filipinos were now under a new power. Despite the leader of the rebels, Emilio Aguinaldo, initially welcoming the aid of Americans, by slighting the Filipinos and not representing their desires at the Paris peace talks, the United States came to be seen as simply another power grasping for control of the islands.

As time passed in my relationship, similar things occurred. Both of us went into the endeavor with gusto. I was experiencing a wave of emotions and hormones hitherto unknown, and he was guiding me along the way. However, the fact of the matter was that this time of happiness was eventually cut short over the summer, startlingly and without warning. He had not consulted with me in any way about his feelings, and I was left without a voice in the outcome of my own relationship. A few weeks later, we started dating once more, but I now had some sense of doubt in my heart, and I did not give my heart over to him in the same, complete manner which I had before.

President McKinley’s administration Westernized the Philippines; he began to affect me in a similar way. I began to take on a few mannerisms of his, try wearing similar clothes. In essence, I began to lose a sense of my true self. I did not mind this, of course, until I began to see instances in which he would manipulate my emotions. Much like the enraged Filipinos, I was not content to sit back and let myself be used for another’s means.

As we would break up and get back together, my morale and rage began to lower and raise respectively. Rage eventually won the battle between the two, and I began to fight back against my boyfriend through subtle ways. I would be passive aggressive. I would joke and use sarcasm in an extremely hurtful manner, and in ways which I knew would hurt him most. Like the guerilla warfare occurring in the Philippines, ours was a battle fought through subterfuge, based upon assumptions and scathing remarks which stung like bullets. While I succeeded for a while, eventually I realized that I could not “win” my relationship through cruelty, and eventually he won by employing different strategies.

The Filipinos lost mainly because they were isolated. Living on an island, they were cut off from resources, and American troops slowly began to win when they realized that cutting off civilian aid would cripple the insurgents. Further, public works programs and more pro-American policies advertised by such representatives as soon-to-be president William Howard Taft gained citizens’ trust, breaking down another barrier to annexation of the islands. I too was broken down, by cutting out the advice of friends, and through allowing his kind words and actions to lull me into a false sense of security. Eventually my fighting spirit was as powerless as Emilio Aguinaldo became, finally captured by American troops after this strategy was adopted.

I allowed his actions to control me for some time. When he was angry, it was my fault, and I took the blame. When he was happy, I had done my job. Some part of me still rebelled, however. The Filipinos never allowed themselves to be fully dominated by Americans, and so I still fought for my own independence. Though I did not suddenly gain my sense of self back, as the Filipinos did on their independence day of July 4, 1946, I was slowly able to become autonomous from my boyfriend. I was able to think for myself and process whether or not his or my actions were the “wrong” ones in any given case.

Throughout the years, as between any two countries, the Philippines and the United States have experienced conflict. During World War II the Philippines were even taken over by the Japanese, who used it as a naval base. This compares startlingly well with the bouts of jealous which are prone to overtake me, a quite zealously paranoid boy. Yet today the countries exist amicably. There is no ongoing war between the Philippines and the United States. Some elements of the attempted annexation exist, such as the implementation of the English language on the islands. Yet the countries bear no real ill will toward one another.  The United States even grants the Philippines millions of dollars in aid.

This final, easygoing relationship is what I strive for each and every day. I know it’s going to be difficult. It has been. Yet through seeing the problems which have occurred and regaining the idea that only I may decide my own future, I have learned how to fix various aspects which caused so many arguments in the past. Yes, there still remain many issues which need to be addressed, but I am hopeful that they will be able to be smoothed out. Some may argue that this is foolish and that I should just give up and move on. I’ve even thought about how stupid I may seem to others. But I figure if the Philippines and the United States can have a positive relationship after trying to destroy one another from 1898 – 1902 (and killing thousands on both sides), then my relationship can always turn out to be a great one.

            I realize this is outside my normal range of written expression in this class. I don’t usually incorporate anything this personal into any of my work. I attempt to use an objective voice, and stay away from colloquialisms and “stream of consciousness” – style writing. Yet I feel that in reflecting on myself, these serve my purpose best, and allow me to explore my own history to a degree which only I myself can.