Missing the Big Picture by Donovan, Luke (great book club books txt) 📕

church after high school, I continued to pray every night before I went to bed and believed that I had a personal relationship with God. I have always felt that God communicates to us through other people. Before I started attending the men’s support group and met Mike, I had many misconceptions about HIV and AIDS. Just weeks earlier, if I had heard that an older man with AIDS was living next to me, I probably would have been judgmental and not empathetic at all. But I knew that Mike was a very nice person, and it helped me realize that people with AIDS can be beautiful, too.

Two weeks later, after I told my program director that I had a job offer at the AIDS Council, my supervisor at the workshop suddenly left and her position became vacant. I applied for that position and got it. I was now a program coordinator and a supervisor of three individuals. I got a raise but was only making $27,000 a year. I had a bachelor’s degree and almost three years’ experience working with the disabled. The job always kept me on my feet; the disabled people I worked with were always one step ahead of me.

I had one client who would call off work all the time. Each time, he would always give way too much information. One time he called in stating that he had to go to a biopsy and have an enema. Another time he called in and said he had a back virus. Another time he had diarrhea and gave the consistency of his bowel movements. Once he called in stating that the power went off in his house and he was going to stay home from work to make sure that it stayed on.

There were the times when I had to literally chase clients who went running from the workshop or would interrupt meetings. We also had one client with Asperger’s syndrome who would stay in the bathroom for up to five hours at a time. He, too, enjoyed telling everyone about his bowel movements. I liked my job at the workshop, but I realized that human services work could never pay the bills. I decided to go back to school, and I entered the most demanding, underappreciated, yet most rewarding field in existence: nursing.

I think what I learned most about the workshop was that people with mental retardation are very sexual beings. There were incidents when I would have to investigate two people with Downs syndrome touching genitals and would remind them sternly that their behavior was inappropriate for work. Once I had to call a residential manager and tell her about an inappropriate-touching incident that occurred with one of her residents when the phone cut out. I called her back and asked, “Where was I?” She then said, “You said something about penis.” It was a great job and a terrific program. It was a great opportunity to see people who were labeled as mentally retarded have jobs, earn a paycheck, or scream in pure ecstasy when they were nominated “worker of the month.”

I was now in nursing school. I couldn’t work two jobs and go to nursing school, so in July 2007 I resigned from the adult group home. I definitely enjoyed my time there. It was the only job I ever had that when I walked into work, the clients would tell me that they missed me and that they were excited when they found out I was coming in. I was able to go to amusement parks, concerts, movies, and Lake George as part of my job. I got free food and hugs from the clients, and overall, I became a better person. I almost felt like a parent sometimes, when I would see one of the clients walk out of the house in the fall without his coat and had to fight with him to wear it.

I think the resident who was disappointed with me leaving the most was Anthony. My last day, I picked him up from a visit at his mother’s house. His mother and brother were there, and they were telling Anthony, “Don’t worry—he said he would come back and visit.” Just as I overheard them, I noticed that they were standing near where Carmine’s senior picture hung in his grandmother’s house. I was glad that I was given the opportunity to work with Anthony. Carmine’s family is made up of very nice people, and it’s too bad that all that high school drama made us enemies. I was glad that I was able to rectify something.

When I was in nursing school, I still worked full time as the program coordinator at the workshop. In my free time, as much I tried to stop, I would go online to various gay websites, trying to meet men. There were some situations that I wish I hadn’t gotten myself into, but I was too stupid to avoid them. In 2008, I walked into this man’s house and, upon entering the kitchen, he turned off all the lights. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel his body rub up against me. I asked him to turn the lights on, but he said he didn’t want to, so I left.

I also turned down a lot of offers, and I often wonder what could have been. There were many guys looking for threesomes with their friends, and there was an older gentleman who wanted to role-play with him being a coach and me being the “bad jock.” I didn’t like sleeping around, but I was lonely and wanted to be with someone. It was really embarrassing that I was worse at dating men than I was at dating women. I did make some platonic friends online, and I would go to the gay bars occasionally. I never told my co-workers, my other straight friends, or my family. I just couldn’t accept myself. Luckily, I did find another hobby that occupied some time.

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