a blood-filled clinic in Harlem

The craziness of this week all started on Tuesday when I took on a new job. Damn, everything is happening so fast! I essentially walked into this non-profit after school program in Harlem for a meeting with the director who ended up liking me immediately and hiring me on the spot. After I told them a bit about myself, and gave them a few ideas about what I would like to do, the director basically asked, "when do you want to start?" and "how much do you charge?"

Since then, I've been thrown into this whirlwind of a world that is all about young people and their attainment of knowledge and development of character. I'm now an integral part of an HIV/AIDS initiative that they got two grants for and I will be teaching the young people to write and perform poems dealing with the AIDS epidemic. We are going to make this process into a documentary, a video, and eventually a full scale spoken-word play. It's really exciting, tangible stuff and it turns out they're going to end up paying me well for my services. My job title is "poet in residence" which looks really good on a resume.

I start Monday. Right now, I'm in the process of creating a cirriculum for a 3 week intensive course on HIV/AIDS and performance poetry. I've never worked with young people on such an intimate level. I've given talks and given one day workshops while on the road, but I've never stuck around long enough to develop relationships with them. I've gotten really used to dealing with college-aged people and perhaps have become almost too comfortable with that age group. So, this is my chance to break out of that and it's scary. I'm very intimidated by young people, always have been. I essentially have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what will work or what will tank. I don't know if my method of relating to college students will work in relating to this age group and this demographic.

Fortunately, I have two staff members who are going to be helping me on this project, though I'm leading the course. I met with both of them today to discuss our cirriculum for the next three weeks. They're both have masters degrees, like myself. One has a masters in visual art and the other one in performance. We're going to be a really dynamite team and I think our backgrounds complement each other really well. They've definately had more experience working with young people than I have (though I'm not sure if they know that) and I felt subtle hints of condescention at times, on their part. I felt they got a little self-righteous at times in their approach to young people. I'm still not sure if this tension was real or imagined. I'm willing to say that it was the latter.

Interestingly enough, right before I went to the place for my interview, Rene and I had gone to a free clinic in Harlem to get tested for HIV. We went early in the morning, filled out our anonymous forms, sat in the waiting room, kissed and waited. Held hands and talked. It was actually a really good time. I've never gotten tested with someone before; it was incredibly romantic and sexy. These days, they prick your finger, take your blood and the results show up in 20 minutes. As I waited, I thought about all of the dirt I've done and the irresponsible behavior that I partook in in the last year or two. Before they draw your blood, they ask you all these questions about all of the partners you've had in the last two years and "if you're hiv positive, will you be able to provide all of the names, addresses and phone numbers of all of your partners in the last two years?" "if you're hiv positive, would you be likely to commit suicide or homicide?" The questions were really starting to scare me! The questions themselves just made the likelihood of having the virus so real. All of that illusion of invincibility flew out the window, me, as a sexually active woman.

The lady called my name for my results. She asked me to close the door. I was like, "ooooh shit!" Literally, the minute I sat down, she told me I was negative and that was it. I was in and out of there in 10 seconds. When they called Rene, and he went in and closed the door, I counted down the seconds in my head. 10...9...8...7... my palms began to sweat, thinking, ok, he should be out really really soon. I heard the door groan open and he emerged from the hallway. We left the clinic, smiling and holding hands as if we were leaving a lollipop store. Then, he took me to my interview and waited outside for an hour, in the car. Meanwhile, I was inside, finding out that I would be dealing with HIV/AIDS much more and for much longer than a single morning in a blood-filled clinic in Harlem.