MY PURPOSE IN LIFE

I've been working in the wonderful world of HIV education & prevention for almost 10 years now.

I've had frontline positions where I've trekked up and down the streets of the Tenderloin, Filmore and Bayview/Hunter's Point districts of San Francisco. I passed out condoms to sex workers, taught them how to put a condom on with their mouth, gave HIV tests to drug dealers while they were hanging out on the corner. I even held a make shift class at a barbershop on how to find the clitoris. I was on a crusade to get Black people to at least talk about HIV/AIDS and know their status.

The most rewarding position I held was conducting workshops in residential hotels to Black women. We talked about healing, self-esteem, the wonders of masturbation, negotiating safe sex with asshole partners-Anything to get them to stop for a minute to think about themselves, their self worth, their health, instead of what bill wasn't going to get paid that month, where their kids were or other life factors that made them put their health on the back burner.

I didn't sleep the night before I had to disclose my first positive result. He was 33, from Bayview-Hunter's Point. His girlfriend, who was a regular in my workshops, brought him to get a test. It was his first year out of jail. He was in there for 6 years. She was a sex worker for her boyfriend. Her regularly scheduled test results was always negative. She practiced safe sex with her johns, but she trusted her man and knew he wasn't fucking around because he was in jail.

They both showed up. He came to my office and she waited outside. I prepped him and finally gave him the positive result. He wasn't surprised. "By law, you can't tell my girl the results right?" He was right. He then told me he must have caught it while in jail. "A niggah can beat the meat for so long. After a while you don't care what you get as long as you get something." I stressed to him the importance of starting to use condoms with his girlfriend. His chest began to puff up.

"If I do that, then she'll know I got something. I can't do that."
"You're aware that you will pass the virus on to her if you have sex with her without protection?"
"Well, she be out there on the streets anyway, so I could just tell her she caught it that way."

A little over a year later, her results came back positive. He accused her of giving it to him and beat her to make the lie seem more real. That was one of the many reasons that made me leave the frontline.

Now I'm in management. I used to think that my job was meaningless, being that I sit in meetings most of the day, write grants and compose reports. I thought I sold out, staying away from the "frontline" and only worked with clients when I felt disconnected from the community.

But I now know that I'm needed.

If there wasn't someone behind the scenes ensuring things were in place, there would be no frontline.

WORLD AIDS DAY 2005