Tales from the Syringe Exchange

"My parents would never understand this."

I've got this really bad habit of baring myself early. And the very cute but potentially hostile lesbian, Feminist studies intern didn't look scares me. I am the minority there. The staff are women or transgender man-women or guys who are not white. I'm the reviled, clean cut, unblemished, untarnished child of a society that has always cradled my kind: white men. But David likes me.

I'm at the needle exchange for my first time without Shelly. Earlier today I arrived for training. David, the health educator and Syringe exchange big-man, sat down with me in his open office on the second floor of the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center to guide me through the training. The training came in Power-point pill form, a wave of comfortability washed over me. I had only attend several hundred hours of PP lectures since graduating high school. As we started, I began wondering about David.

Who was this person. David is a latino, light skinned, with big brilliant, hazel eyes. He wears a mustache-goatee combo and slicks his hair back, but the product is matte and his hair is without sheen. He wears baggy clothing: tee shirt and jeans. In his left ear he has a single earring; the letters SF in gold. It is his eyes that give him away. If you gouged out his eyes he'd be a very formidable and intimidating character. But his large eyes transmit compassion that is enforced by his choice of lifestyle and employment. David speaks slowly and deliberately, especially when explaining something. Expletives are threaded throughout his normal speech, even as he instructed me now with other office workers present. His normal way of speech has a urban cadence, he casually adds the word "hella" in as an adjective, its kin being "wicked". All that is description fodder because what matters is the content of his mind is good and clear and the profundity of his actions.