I had the chance to attend the world premier of the new film, Holding Trevor, at this year's Frameline 31st annual LGBT film festival. The description sounded quasi-cliche, but I was happily suprised to find that it was a refreshing and incredibly well done film. The writing and acting were both incredible! It's a film about friendship and love - and loss, really. Three friends are the focus (two gay men + one straight woman), and in particular the relationships that Trevor has.

In the film, I was struck by the writer's decision to have a woman test positive for HIV. It's actually a remarkable scene. One of the gay men suggests they all get tested, and their straight woman friend Andi goes along for support. Suprisingly, she's the one that tests positive - not either of the gay men.

In particular, what was suprising about this decision was the fact that she had only had sex *once* in recent memory. We're led to believe, then, that she contracted the virus through this one encoutner that she was too drunk to remember. During the Q&A with the cast and crew after the film, I asked the writer about that deliberate decision to have her seroconvert after only one encounter. He said something about wanting to go against type, and also that he felt that tragic things happen to random people (I think he may have said "innocent" people here), whereas there are 10 other people out there essentially asking for it. This didn't satisfy me at all, so I said that I felt like every new case of HIV was tragic - not just those infections in people who aren't whores. He backpeddled, but it was clear how he felt.

I was walking home afterwards with my friend Jackson, and I mentioned my discomfort with his answer. Jackson made a good point. In film, there's no good narrative to tell, it seems. Had the woman have had a lot of sex, then it would have reinscribed the age-old slut-gets-sick narrative that we all know and hate. However, by choosing for the character only have one sexual encounter, the writer essentially sent the message that you can get HIV from one encounter. Which, of course, you can - but it's highly improbable (especially if they didn't have anal sex). In fact, for vaginal intercourse, the odds for a negative female partner with an HIV-poz male partner would be about 1 in 111,111!!!!!! That's right, 1 in 100 and 11 THOUSAND.

Highly unlikely. She'd sooner get mauled by a tiger while visiting the zoo. Possible? Sure. But probable? Definitely not.