Читать книгу No-Accounts: Dare Mighty Things - Tom Glenn - Страница 6

Author’s Note

Too many people have contributed to the writing of this book for me to acknowledge them all. The seeds of the story came from my years in the 1980s working with AIDS patients under the auspices of the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, D.C. The clinic’s training, support, and spirit made me understand the nature of the battle against AIDS and inspired me join in the effort. The manuscript went through intensive review in three different critique groups. I am especially grateful to Mary Eccles, a fine writer of children’s books, and Ellen Kwatnoski, Author of Still Life With Aftershocks, a novel about the struggle of a woman to cope with the illness of her brother dying of AIDS. Su Patterson was of invaluable assistance in the final edit, and the staff and students of Apprentice House touched me with their sincerity, expertise, and hard work.

No-Accounts sprang from my horror at society’s and the medical establishment’s withdrawal from people dying of AIDS in the mid-1980s. Fear of the disease resulted in those who could have helped pulling back from patients; some men literally died on the street because family, friends, nurses, and doctors were terrified to touch them. I couldn’t tolerate that, so with the consent of my wife, I volunteered to be a buddy, a sort of caretaker-cum-nurse to gay men with AIDS. At the time, we didn’t know how AIDS was transmitted, so we had no idea of how much danger we were in. It didn’t matter. The work was too important to let risk stand in the way.

We buddies did everything for our patients, even administering medications and giving injections, because there was no one else to do it. As the only straight man working with staff and volunteers in a gay clinic, my biases and stereotypes about homosexuality melted away as I watched the self-sacrifice and courage of gay men fighting a fatal disease. I went through seven patients in five years before I simply could not face yet another death. For a while I worked with the homeless and finally became a hospice volunteer. The searing experiences from those years of volunteering were the raw material from which the story of No-Accounts is drawn.