This story, for me, is about far more than a series of sexual encounters. Certainly, the sex is hot, and better yet, those scenes are really well written (narrating sexual action is not an easy task). But there's a sensuality and tenderness between Ken and the narrator that takes the story beyond mere bug-chasing porn. Instead of being a total pariah, Ken is humanized by the narrator's curiosity about Ken's sexual exploits -- that the narrator has his own purpose in eliciting details of Ken's sex life doesn't make his interest less genuine or impair our ability to see Ken as a man, more than a public health statistic or stack of medical records. In turn, the narrator's actions regarding his own health, likely incomprehensible to many, become at least somewhat easier for an onlooker to accept because the narrator has shown, through his acceptance of Ken, that he himself need not become a complete outcast. And Spermpig reminds us that though the ICD code of everyone who's HIV+ is the same, we each reached that point by our own separate and distinct paths.