a fellow worker, a fiftyish, heavy set, african-american woman, has been reading this book for about a week now during her breaks.
the book is j.l. king's on the down low, a look at the closeted sub culture of so called straight black men, most of them in heterosexual relationships, getting it on with other men.
what? you're worried now? i asked her one night. she has been married for about three decades now to this same slightly stooping man, a deacon in their church, who always drives her to work at night.
you'll never know, she answered. and that was that.
two nights ago, we had, among others, an admission that piqued her attention. a good looking brother, buffed and all. he was admitted for the very banal complaint of loose bowel movement for the past three days.
you see, she confided to me after getting the vital signs of the new admission, this brother is on the dl, too. for real.
why? i asked her. have you seen his bag? it's got more goodies there than what i have in my dresser. she was talking about the guy's sufficiently stocked shaving and grooming kit.
ever since the book's author went on a required pilgrimage to oprah (subsequently his book topped the national bookseller’s list), most of my sister friends have been reduced to bumbling dl detectives.
but i can’t blame why she’'s paranoid about this just-talked-about-in-the-open phenomenon. new aids cases among black women are 20 times more than that of their white counterparts. and aids is one of the top three killers among black women nowadays. and the thesis of the book, despite the absence of a well documented study, is that the dl phenomenon is behind the deadly rise of the infection in their community.
in what could be the most read chapter of the book, signs, the author claimed that what a sister has in her arsenal that is most powerful to protect herself from subterfuge savvy brothers is her intuition, her sixth sense, that according to the author is never wrong. no proof, just a hunch.
before i came out, i used to have girlfriends, as in girlfriends not girl friends. and so far as my experience would bear me out, a woman's intuition is never the sonar sexuality detector that it is vaunted to be. i told her this but she would have none of it.
she told me that in the book, a wife, apparently with a nettlesome sixth sense, asked her gay male friend to hit on her husband. if i got her story right, the target husband took the bait and bam, he was outed right there and then.
isn't that an inspiring story, after all? i asked her. where's the inspiration? she said.
i would have launched on to my explanation but another patient rang the call bell for a pain medication. i left her to read her book again in peace.
after i administered the pain shot, i heard my new admission from across the other room talking to the phone, apparently to her worried girlfriend. i heard him saying it's nothing really.
but for a worried sister, nothing these days is everything. the diarrhea that could be fulminating aids. the well groomed man who could be a flaming bisexual.
i walked back to the station and ratcheting in my mind was my explanation of the inspiring story of the outed husband.
look, i was planning to say to my colleague, that truly was an inspiring story. not only was the wife ushered finally into the light but most importantly, the self denying husband himself.
i came back only to find a note from her that said she went for her break in the staff lounge. she left the book on top of the sheaf of papers i was working on. the book's mostly white, glossy cover shone faintly like an examining penlight against a patient's dim eyes.