When I was arrested in February, I was stuck with 25 others in a fetid holding cell in which we inevitably coughed and breathed on each other in very close quarters for three hours before we were let out. This was a holding tank for “K-11’s,” the county’s designation for those who are gay or transsexual or claim to be. I was with a fair amount of “street people,” most of them regularly incarcerated, and no paragons of health.
I’m pretty sure that’s where I was exposed to Tuberculosis, for which I tested positive when I arrived at the North Kern State Prison Reception Center at Delano in April. I was put on a year’s worth of prophylactic (preventative) medication (standard for the HIV+). I do not presently have active TB, nor can I transmit it, but I was exposed and might without treatment, have developed it—a sensitive matter as both my maternal grandmother and uncle died of it.
At both Delano and during my first month at Chino, the meds were brought to the dorm in which I resided. Since then I’ve had to get my meds twice daily at the infirmary and I’ve assumed that twice weekly they threw onto my handful of pills the two extra TB tablets. I found out yesterday what no one had bothered to tell me, that I had to go across the way to the clinic to get my TB meds. This was why my dorm officers kept getting calls that I hadn’t taken my pills. I would respond that I certainly had been— it wasn’t until someone finally clarified it was the TB meds that we cleared up the problem.
This confusion did, however, occasion a visit to the TB nurse, Ms. Oyen. She was very simpatica. I decided to tap into her evident concern for all matters relating to infectious diseases and public health, and told her about: 1) the incident at Cedar Hall where the White “Rep” engaged in a witch hunt for HIV+ inmates based on a misleading newspaper article given to him by a C.O. about HIV antibodies in saliva;. 2) the restriction on the use of hair clippers by the HIV+ imposed by ignorant and fearful inmates at my present dorm at Redwood Hall; 3) the ongoing hacking cough of TeFunk, the incredibly built, but physically embattled black guy who bunks across from me. He desperately needs to see a specialist; his current last-ditch diagnosis is an “allergy to dust.” Nurse Oyen thought lung cancer needed ruling out. We both hope she’s wrong, but she said the boy definitely needs an MRI and to get that, someone in authority must intervene.
As we talked about these things, and she looked through my file to determine how much time I’d missed on the TB meds, I noticed she was listening to a Christian radio station. The gooey, praise-onto-you-my-Lord Muzak ended, and some overt preaching began, low enough to be audible but not intrusive.
I had to wonder what this probably born-again fundamentalist Christian woman really thought about me. We’d really hit it off. But I was also an unapologetic sinner, an openly gay male with HIV. Maybe she thought nothing at all; or maybe she wasn’t at all conflicted — hate the sin, love the sinner.
And maybe, in addition to possibly getting a memo issued about HIV transmissibility, or getting TeFunk to a specialist, I might have made things just a little easier for a friend, brother, cousin or even son of this woman if and when she (as most everybody does eventually does) discovers that she knows and loves someone gay.
And maybe not.
MCO 2004
