Stupid Night

I neglected to mention that we did kiss as well which I am not sure is relevant

Hey, Worried…

Thanks for your question. From what you describe, there is extremely LOW risk for getting HIV from the activities you were doing. Here’s why.

You need three things to be at risk for an HIV infection to happen:

First thing: a high risk body fluid infected with HIV. Generally, if someone is infected with HIV, the virus is going to live in a few “high risk fluids” - their blood, sex fluids (vaginal fluid, period blood, semen and pre-cum), or “deep tissue” fluids (brain and spinal chord fluid, lymph fluid, the fluid that lubricates your joints and gut, etc.). Sometimes it can also live in breastmilk if a mother in infected. “No risk fluids” like saliva, sweat, tears, urine, poo, skin oil, vomit, snot…none of these are going to have enough HIV in them to cause an infection to someone else.

Second: you need an entrance to the bloodstream. This can be a fresh cut, sore, scrape or bad rash, and sometimes “wet membranes” that can sometimes absorb viruses into the body - such as the lining of the anus, the vagina, the pee-hole and under the foreskin of the penis, the mouth (only if there is significant gum disease or fresh cuts or sores in the mouth), and sometimes the eyes (pretty rare). These same wet membranes are also usually pretty thin, and easy to irritate or tear (like with the friction during sex), so they’re more fragile and easier to get past for a virus than regular skin.

Third: you need an activity that gets someone else’s high risk fluid into your bloodstream – you need to SHARE your fluids. This can be things like sharing needles for drugs, tattooing and piercing (where you inject traces of the first person’s blood – still in the needle – past the natural barrier of your skin directly into your bloodstream), unprotected anal, vaginal or oral sex (where the HIV in someone else’s sex fluids gets into your bloodstream either through being absorbed by the membrane or by getting into microscopic cuts and scrapes in the membrane), childbirth (where the mother’s blood is getting onto the wet membranes of the baby, and the placenta gets damaged) and sometimes breastfeeding, and occasionally job-related exposure (like accidental needlestick injuries for nurses working with HIV+ patients, or cuts during surgery on HIV+ patients – both pretty rare ways to see HIV transmitted, but it happens once in a while).

If you don’t have all three things, there is no risk of passing HIV from one person to another. Alternatively, if you take one out, you reduce the risk. For instance, using a condom during sex: you have the possible entrances to the bloodstream (wet membranes and microscopic tears), you have the sex fluids, but you put a barrier in the way, which prevents SHARING the fluids between partners. Easy-peasy, and you still get to “get off” and have fun.

For the situation you describe, you can apply this equation. You would have to get HER sex fluids into YOUR blood stream for there to be a risk. For you to have been at any kind of risk, you would have to have fingered her vagina, then immediately licked your fingers afterward (risk for different STIs that can live in the mouth), or masturbated/"jerked off" right away (getting her vaginal fluids into any minute cuts that might be on your penis, under your foreskin, or inside the pee-hole – all places where HIV can survive and infect you). However, by itself, fingering someone’s vagina has never been shown to transmit HIV between two people. As far as kissing, there is really nothing to worry about, since kissing has never been shown to be high-risk for HIV.

I hope this helps. Please call us on the infoline (1-800-665-2437) if you have more questions.

Heidi.