Nicolas and another counselor at the BFC, discuss their experiences getting tested at other clinics.
N: So the times you went to get tested, what was different about it?
C: Well some of the places were awful.
N: Really.
C: Just absolutely horrific. Uhm. Let's see, what's happened to me. If someone asked me oh, so you're only sleeping with women, did you ever sleep with men? Like. Yeah, it was like, more men than you did. You know like come on.
N: This was a woman?
C: Yeah it was a woman. Just people not spending any time, what's your risk you know, I don't understand why you're here or why did you do that?
N: These are things they don't go into.
C: No they do, like why are you here, I don't understand why you're here.
N: Oh. Ok What do they want to hear?
C: What do they want to hear. I don't know, like that I was having anal sex with gay men? Unprotected anal sex with gay men?
N: So it's not ok to just want the test for
C: Well I actually have always had some sort of risk factor.
N: Hm. But according to them it wasn't enough.
C: It wasn't enough, it wasn't high enough risk and I was educated and white you know and I was probably pink, you know, there's just all this bias that I think plays a lot. One of my tests was in East Oakland, my very first test I had a lover, ugh, not a lover, I had a boyfriend who was IDU about eight months after I stopped living with him, and I hadn't been having sex with him for a long portion of our relationship because I didn't trust him, and I, and not necessarily because I thought about that he was going to have AIDS because this was like in 1982, but because I didn't trust him and I didn't want to sleep with him because I didn't trust him, I had no level of trust in him anymore, and uhm, so after I moved back home, there's a knock on my parents' door, someone told them that he had AIDS.
N: Uhm.
C: And so I went to get tested and I went to my health care. I had an HMO.
N: So you're in college or something?
C: I was 23. So I went to my HMO and they told me, my doctor was Indian, East Indian, and he said to me, you don't need an HIV test, what is it such a pretty little girl like you want an HIV, what could you possibly be doing? I said shooting up, I was like, what am I gonna say?
N: You just love to shock people.
C: He said, no you were not shooting up. Did you have a boyfriend who shot up? Well, cause I asked him I said I really do, I said like five or six times, I really do, I'm really at risk.
N: Is this your like family doctor, like someone who knows you or?
C: No, no, it was an HMO it was like going into Kaiser. It was signa.
N: So he doesn't even know you. Huh?
C: I was living in LA, you know, my hair was like this long, all curls, three inches long on my shoulder, and just have always looked. I was always the one who when the cops would bust a party I was always like go away to, eventhough I could have been the one who was being raucous, I just got away with shit, so he didn't believe that I could have possibly have any risk. He asked me if I was sleeping with Haitians.
N: This is 85?
C: This is 85 or 86, 86 maybe. That was my very first experience. And most of them weren't better, or not much better. I went to one in, over by Ashby Bart,
N: Oh, is that still, it used to be called the Church or something.
C: Yeah. I got an HIV test there,
N: What was that like?
C: Well, doing the form took six minutes.
N: That's good, mine took four and a half when I went.
C: To the Church?
N: No, when I went to Central Health Clinic.
C: It was amazing.
N: But the form and the whole when you come back and everything, like six minutes or?
C: Boom boom boom boom.
N: How long was your result?
C: There? Two, three. You're negative.
N: I waited like an hour and I got twenty seconds of her time. So that's real eye opening when you go to other places and see that basically it's just a money making operation.
C: I tell our counselors to go all the time, go get a test somewhere.
Index of test counselor narratives
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