The first draft of my book “The Sea of Peroxide” has been completed. It runs about 84,000 words and it should not surprise anyone, especially any writer, that I am immediately starting on the second draft, then many more until I am brave enough to show it to anyone with eyes and an IQ above 30.
As has been described elsewhere on this site, the book attempts to document my work experience as a New York City Paramedic as AIDS went from about 700 cases per year into the thousands. I could not do it alone so I incorporated the observations of about 25 other paramedics in the time period that roughly covered 1982 to 1995.
As to My Work
Though after leaving the job I would go on to other careers, it was a secret I closely guarded. No one knew. The years I spent as a pre-hospital care provider remained sacred. They were not to be shared with co-workers and certainly not with board members I did not like nor diluted even with those with whom I had a cordial relationship.
Of those years, my work for EMS was barely acknowledged with family. I am fairly sure they thought it a step down; one of a string of busted careers and a path that led away from an undefined trail. Truth be told, I had always known where the main trail led. It was so hard to fully reach until 12 to 15 years ago. I am a writer. It is who I am and what I am. In retrospect I should have majored in English and gone to journalism school.
There is only one other job I ever truly loved: becoming a paramedic. There were times when wearing the uniform seemed noble and sacred. There were a few times when I saved lives. There were occasions when I helped to heal rather than adding to the pain and hurt.
Why then, this particular book at this specific time? Are there dark secrets about myself I have secretly hidden?
I am aware
I have grown older. My gray hair, arthritis and wrinkles do not lie to me either in the gym or the mirror. Many of the men and women with whom I served have passed. What of their sacrifice? What of what they encountered with the disease has been lost to time or mocked by a city who sold us out to politicians and FDNY? Who stands to remember?
AIDS is hardly a “Gay Disease.” Yet unlike COVID-19, it is a disease used to judge, demean and often to ridicule those unlucky enough to contract it. While keeping the secret of my profession, I worked with many fundamentalists, red-necks, homophobes, fake-liberals, racists and anti-Semites who were all too happy to believe that HIV was God’s punishment. The profession profoundly changed me. I needed to document that change within myself.
Strangely
I am fully expecting that my attempt to capture the era will not resonate with all my fellow paramedics. The effort, the main line the narrative follows is memoir. It is mine to embrace, to remember and to suffer. For I was driven to a brink and I was in deep pain for many years. Perhaps I could have never written this book without the pain.
Once, while starting over in Colorado, I had to take a temp job as a receptionist in an engineering firm. The other receptionist was in the process of quitting. She was one of those 30-something, bleached-blond paramedic/fire department wannabe’s who was vaguely considering a change of career and was talking about going to “P-School.” She condescendingly explained that it meant paramedic school. Of course, she hadn’t even gone to EMT-1 school.
“Oh,” I replied, “that sounds interesting.”
She gave me the “you-have-no-idea” look. Later that day, I overheard a friend of hers asking about her temporary replacement (me) by giving me a number.
It seems that on a scale from 1-10, I was a “0.” I always wondered if my score might have increased to at least a 3 or 4 had she known I not only knew what a P-School was, but that I worked as a paramedic in Manhattan during a time of unbelievable sadness and fear.
Why would I write the book I am writing? Perhaps to give my former co-worker at the receptionist desk an insight into the world as it really was, and not her suburban fantasy of who she claimed paramedics to be.
