HIV disclosure: To kiss and tell

We both clearly wanted to take things further. But as I kissed him – a random stranger I’d just met – my mind was racing. How should I tell him I am HIV positive?

I didn’t want to interrupt our hot-and-heavy makeout session but I knew I had to say something before any clothes came off. I pulled away just enough to whisper my status, innocently, in his ear.
He pushed me away, furiously. My good-looking hook-up got ugly and stood up to walk out, as if he shouldn’t have ever been there without a hazmat suit.

We’re taught early – starting from sex ed in school – that it’s safe to share food or utensils with those with HIV. One would think that the ability to share food would logically extend to sharing tongues, but it’s still one of the most common concerns a person has with an HIV-positive person.
If you have HIV, how do you kiss and tell?

People tend to preface an inquiry by admitting it’s a dumb question. It isn’t dumb – HIV transmission is so heavily tied to sex that simply being aroused can be confusing. Kissing is one of the safest of sexual activities when it comes to HIV transmission, but, like always, things have a possibility of getting complicated.

The most important factor for infection is the bloodstream – HIV has to enter a person’s blood to infect someone. Skin is an excellent barrier, so if ever you should have blood, semen, vaginal fluid, or breast milk flung in your direction, rest assured the virus cannot infect you through your skin. Yet, if any of these fluids land on broken skin there’s a level of risk. An open wound – usually fresher than 48 hours – is considered a way for HIV to enter the bloodstream.

The same is true for the lining of the mouth. Oral tissue, though softer, is still a barrier for HIV, so a perfectly healthy mouth can and should kiss to the heart’s delight. But oral tissue can be compromised. Biting your lip, burning your mouth on a hot pizza or jabbing a tortilla chip into the roof of your mouth can cause open wounds. These things happen randomly, but luckily we tend to notice them when they do. And usually most folks aren’t too accident prone with food.

It’s generally said that saliva does not contain HIV. It actually can, but in amounts so minuscule that it would take more than a gallon of saliva to enter your bloodstream to even risk transmission. While I have come across some freaky things in my lifetime, I’ve yet to find anyone who loves sloshing around in gallons of other people’s dribble or injecting it into his or her blood. So medical professionals declare saliva is not one of the bodily fluids that contain HIV – that sexy slime we love tossing in each other’s mouths can’t hurt you.

Open wounds not only create entryways but emergency exits as well. Often when we bite our own lips, we instinctively use our finger to check for blood. Since blood is one of the major bodily fluids that carry HIV and other infectious diseases, it is best to not shove it in anyone else’s mouth regardless of your status. But if you taste some blood slipping into your own mouth from your partner, it does not necessarily mean the time has come to panic.

In order for kissing to actually transmit HIV, both partners would need to have open wounds in their mouths. And again, while I have seen some wild things in life, people who love to passionately kiss with bleeding mouths are not one of them. It would be an unlikely and extreme scenario for something like this to happen accidentally.

All HIV organizations and even the Center for Disease Control declare that kissing is either an extremely low or practically non-existent risk for HIV. Only one documented case of HIV transmission via mouth-to-mouth exists. According to Rick Sowadsky, M.S.P.H., the circumstances of this case were quite unusual: Both partners had extreme cases of gum disease and blood consistently mixed with their saliva.

So to kiss and tell is quite easy.

After my hopeful one-night-stand walked out the door, I invited him back inside to talk. We sat down as I began to ask him what he knew about HIV. While explaining HIV and kissing, I made a few bad jokes and we had a couple good laughs. At the end of our conversation, he was no longer a mere trick but an actual person. And we returned to a makeout session that, this time, lasted for the rest of the night.