Kai Wright:
Number one. That I'm an idiot.
Number two. That I'm an insufferable idiot. I have opinions for a living. I have a lot of opinions. I'm a man with a lot of opinions, but I am doubtful. I am doubtful of what I'm doing, and it's not just knowledge, but just in general, that you went to the party, or you were at dinner, or you were talking to someone, and you were just a bloviating fool.
Number three. The ocean.
Number four. Flying. Which is a common thing, but is a particularly relevant thing to me. And part of why that's relevant is...
Number five, which is that my boyfriend will realize that I am an insufferable idiot who ruins flying for him and that he will dump me and I will be alone.
Number six. Dead air. Now that I work in radio I am terrified of dead air and I’m not only terrified of dead air on the radio, I've discovered, but dead air period. In conversations I always feel like I have to fill that space with my voice.
Number seven. HIV. I have spent the entirety of my adult life terrified of contracting HIV. It's all consuming. I'm forty five. As a gay man of my age, I literally came out and went to the AIDS clinic. Just, sex and disease were so closely tied for so long. Like, I take PrEP. I take Truvada, which is a pill a day that you take to prevent HIV transmission. It is incredibly effective. We know that from the science, and every three months you still get your blood work done, and every three months I am convinced that I am going to be positive. It's totally divorced from behavior, you know? I mean, listen, I'm no angel, but it is totally divorced from behavior. There have been times where it really would have been front page news that I managed to contract HIV if I had done so and I was convinced that I had done so.
Number eight. Not being prepared to grow old. There's no one to take care of me. I don't have kids. My partner and I, we didn't have kids, you know? And we don't plan to have kids, and so there's no one to take care of me.
Number nine. Anything that is small and fast. Mice, bees, sometimes moths. Remember the scene in The Wrath of Khan where Khan puts the thing to control Kirk's officers’ minds into their nose. And it wraps around their brain, and that's how he controls them. That scene. That is one of the most terrifying scenes in film.
Number ten. Mortality. I grew up in an evangelical church and I think almost constantly about the void and the death that follows because everything about life is really death in evangelical churches. I don't have a memory of not thinking about death.
My name is Kai Wright and these are 10 things that scare me.
