My Pet Virus by Shawn Decker is probably the funniest book you will ever pick up. Now, I admit, this isn’t something you expect to hear about a real-life-story of a kid with hemophilia who ends up contracting HIV through a blood transfusion, but that’s only because you don’t know Shawn Decker. Shawn has faced down his HIV positive status with a twisted sense of humor and a series of anecdotes that will challenge what you think you know about prejudice, AIDS and life as a teenager while making you laugh until your guts hurt.

In addition to writing My Pet Virus and performing in the band Synthetic Division, Shawn, and his HIV-negative wife, Gwenn travel the world educating people about AIDS and safe sex. They believe that if a “positoid” and a “negatoid” (Shawn’s terms–read the book and find out more) can make a sexually active marriage work, then maybe other people should be aware of how to do it, too. In addition, Shawn has recently finished his first fiction work, a story about vampires, and if you are anxiously awaiting the release, you will find updates at his blog Shawn & Gwenn: Blog.

Even though Shawn has just finished one of the more hectic times of year in his life, he agreed to sit down and answer a few questions for our Geek Crafts readers.

So you grew up in a small town as a hemophiliac, HIV positive kid who loved
Depeche Mode…did you ever see yourself traveling the US speaking publicly
about your cult-hit memoir and safe sex?

I really had no idea I’d be talking about my HIV status with my friends, let alone strangers.  At age 20, around the same time I definitively decided that Black Celebration was Depeche Mode’s finest album, I realized I wanted to open up about my HIV status.  At that point, I’d been diagnosed half my life, and it seemed like an exciting thing to do.  Also, I was inspired by Pedro Zamora, who’d been on MTV’s Real World reality show.  He was young, HIV positive and speaking at college campuses.  He passed to spirit a couple of years before I started educating about HIV, but I was able to meet his partner, Sean, and his roommate, Judd Winick, both of whom I thanked for the inspiration.

This site is by geeks and for geeks so I have to ask, what new piece of
technology are you using that you can’t imagine life without?

I’m all about my new iPhone.  Just downloaded episodes of Dexter and watched them on a cross country flight- my quality of life has dramatically improved.  My only problem is that the screen doesn’t diangulate for texting.  Yes, I just made up the word “diangulate”.  My old cell had the slide-out keyboard feature, and texting became a huge part of my life.

But the iPhone’s text screen is too small.  I’ve approached my doctor about having an experimental surgery to have the size of my fingers reduced by 35% so that I can text at the level I once did.  That’s how much I love my iPhone.

Do you and your wife ever find yourselves wishing for a more “settled”
existence, rather than telling the world about your personal lives and
educating them about condoms? If you ever do, what keeps you two on the road?
It gets a little crazy during World AIDS Day, which is December 1st every year. We’re on the road and in the air for about two weeks straight. Twice we’ve been in Fargo in the dead of winter for World AIDS Day travels. The honchos who decided the “taint” between Thanksgiving and Christmas would be the perfect place to permanently tattoo World AIDS Day should have given that particular date a second thought- it’s a cold a hectic time of the year!

But I truly love what we do. Not to sound cheesy, but I really think that Gwenn and I met for the dual reason of falling in love and being compatible not only as partners, but also as educators who are comfortable putting all those details out in the public realm. Speaking, and the reaction we received from students, is also what inspired me to write My Pet Virus.

You’ve been teasing your blog readers with the prospect of a new book. Are you going to let your agent keep it this time?

Yes, it’s in his In Box where it will stay until he reviews it!  I totally freaked out the first time I submitted the book.  This is my first stab at fiction, and all the really good ideas didn’t pour in until I hit “SEND”.

And what inspired you (aside from the obvious) to take on a fiction story about vampires?

Vampire stories have always been a metaphor for the outcasts of society, and in the last twenty years the subtle and none-too-subtle references to the HIV/AIDS epidemic have been a huge part of the genre.  As someone living with HIV, I wanted to play with the idea of vampires in modern times.  What if the virus did affect vampires?  How would they respond?  I also love the 80’s films I grew up on- Fright Night and The Lost Boys-, how they infused humor into a genre that can be a bit too pretentious.

Well, one of my vampires is a drama queen.  The story centers around a group of boys entering their freshmen year of high school, so that’s to be expected.  But I promise you this: my vampires don’t wear cufflinks or have ponytails.  Though one of them does secretly own a Jonas Brothers record.

• My Pet Virus
• Shawn & Gwenn: A Boy, A Girl, A Virus
• World AIDS Campaign

Brad the Vampire Crochet Doll

If you are just itching to get your vampire on, and can’t possibly wait for Shawn’s new book to come out, Brad The Vampire Crochet Doll may be just the answer. Deadcraft posted this vampire with tons of personality in her Etsy shop, and he is hungry for someone to take him home.

• Brad the Vampire Crochet Doll

Vampire Bite Cupcakes

Now here’s a recipe you can really sink your teeth into (I’m sorry, the puns just keep pouring out!). Nicole posted these Vampire Bite Cupcakes on Baking Bites. They actually “bleed” when you bite them! She reccomends them for a Twilight party, but I know you’ll be baking them up to celebrate the imminent release of Shawn’s vampire book.

• Vampire Bite Cupcakes

Enormous thanks to Shawn Decker for contributing his time and humor to Geek Crafts. If you haven’t picked up My Pet Virus–don’t take my word for it, Borders book stores picked as one of their “Original Voices”,  and Augusten Burroghs has showered it with praise. I actually read the book when I was in a not-so-great part of my life, and by the time I closed it, I felt like a new world had been opened up. You cannot help but to be inspired by Shawn’s dedication to his cause and great sense of humor. If you’ll pardon the cliche, you’ll laugh and you’ll cry (but mostly because you are laughing so hard).