Thunder in the Blood
“They operated from two rooms over a Jewish tailor shop in Finsbury Park. The tailor’s son was a haemophiliac, and had contracted HIV from an infected batch of Factor 8, and the tailor – appalled at the lack of facilities for people with HIV – had donated the rooms free of charge. He was a small, round, powerful man whom I’d met through a colleague at work. His first name was Charlie, and in the absence of anything better, the priest had called the project after its sympathetic landlord.
I took ...the tube up to Finsbury Park twice a week. For a while, I sat in on other people’s groups and updated myself on the literature; then I was given my own slot in the counselling rota and my own quota of clients. There were five in my group, four of them men, the other a girl of eighteen, a junkie who’d been on the game. The men were all gay, all newly diagnosed and we sat together for hours, one-on-one to begin with, as a group a little later on. We talked a lot about the small-print things, insurance policies, various welfare benefits, travel restrictions, problems with vaccinations and so on, and once we’d got to know each other and there was trust between us, we ventured even further.MoreLess
I took ...the tube up to Finsbury Park twice a week. For a while, I sat in on other people’s groups and updated myself on the literature; then I was given my own slot in the counselling rota and my own quota of clients. There were five in my group, four of them men, the other a girl of eighteen, a junkie who’d been on the game. The men were all gay, all newly diagnosed and we sat together for hours, one-on-one to begin with, as a group a little later on. We talked a lot about the small-print things, insurance policies, various welfare benefits, travel restrictions, problems with vaccinations and so on, and once we’d got to know each other and there was trust between us, we ventured even further.MoreLess
Read book Thunder in the Blood for free
Write Review:
User Reviews: