My Bad Boob

A couple of weeks ago, I watched the film ‘Dallas Buyers Club’. I went expecting to see a gritty portrayal of a rodeo star’s experience with HIV. I wasn’t expecting to spend most of the film scrunched down in my seat, crying fat, silent tears into my scarf. I cried when the doctor surprised the main character with the news he was a dead man walking, because I remember clearly the shock and denial I felt the moment my doctor issued my death sentence. I cried because I remember thinking - in the midst of the most horrific conversation of my life - “This is why they tell people to sit down for bad news.” If I hadn’t been sitting when he told me, I’d have surely found myself on the floor in a broken heap.  But the scene that hit me like a sucker-punch to the back of the head was when the protagonist’s young friend, a transvestite, told his father he was HIV positive. When the young man broke the news to his father, he apologised.  I cried, because when I told my parents, I apolo