Volunteer Counselor Offers Hope to Those Threatened by AIDS

The words fall like an executioner’s blade, and the cut is never clean. Michael Brown sees the impact every time he has to tell clients--usually male, usually homosexual--that they have been exposed to AIDS.

“You can watch it happen in their face,” Brown said, “because they’re absolutely open. . . . I want you to know that it’s not pleasant. . . . Their fear is so profound that they shut down.”

In that frozen moment, however, Brown finds opportunity. As the volunteer executive director of The Center/Long Beach--one of the first AIDS screening facilities in the nation--he tries to tell his stunned clients that what they initially perceive as a death sentence could instead be a second chance at life. Few are easily convinced.

“It takes a tremendous amount of energy because you don’t want to be cruel, but you’ve got to get them to listen,” Brown explained. “You don’t have to feel sorry for them, because all those clients that are (testing) positive feel sorry for themselves. What they need is, ‘Look, this is not the end of the world.’ ”

Private Counseling

In a basement back room of the center’s muddy-colored building at 2025 East 10th St., Brown and a corps of other volunteers spend two days a week privately counseling men and women who have had their blood tested for HTLV-III, an antibody associated with AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome. It is found only in people who have come in contact with the virus that causes AIDS. And while its presence doesn’t necessarily mean that someone has or will get the incurable disease, the antibody is its only known precursor.

Researchers believe an exposed person has, at worst, a 5% to 20% chance of contracting the disease. But Brown preaches to his clients that even those odds could be significantly reduced if they modify their life styles in a few sensible ways.

“I have no doubt at this point,” said Brown, who holds an academic rather than medical degree, “that if you begin to take certain sexual precautions and if you begin to . . . give some attention to general life style, your diet, your drug use, that you could probably reduce your risk of developing active AIDS down to almost nothing.”

It is a message that Brown firmly believes, although one grounded less in science than in the endless optimism that generates from the 46-year-old native of Long Beach. The fact is, no one knows with certainty if or when AIDS will strike an exposed person. To date, it mostly victimizes male homosexuals and intravenous-drug users but remains an increasing threat to the general population.

Far from a white-coated researcher who hunts for cures in the bottom of a test tube, the blue-jeaned Brown confronts this epidemic in the faces of its victims.

“On not very good days, it’s tough,” he said. “I’ve had as many as nine” counseling sessions with people who have tested positive.

Some Turn Violent

And the range of reactions is “incredible,” he said. Some take the news casually. Others want to strike out at someone else. “This one guy, his reaction went blank. All of a sudden, he got angry: ‘They should close down those bathhouses; they should close down those bathhouses.’ The guy wanted to take absolutely no responsibility for his behavior.” Still others crumble in tears.

“I suppose that I really feel bad” for those he counsels, he said, “but the reality is that somebody in that (counseling) setting has to have control. You also have to have a belief that there are things that they can do. You can’t overempathize with people. . . . It’s much more assertive intervention.”

The center’s free antibody tests are administered on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings from 4 to 8. All clients are asked to complete an anonymous “health practices” questionnaire that eventually could help officials better predict who is likely to develop the syndrome.

If a person’s blood tests negative, he or she is advised to return in several months for another test because it sometimes takes that long after an exposure for the antibody to appear.

Immediate Retest

For those who test positive--as do roughly one out of every five--there is an immediate retest, individual counseling and weekly support-group sessions to help them cope.

“We find out with some ‘positives’ that they just disappear,” Brown said. “We don’t see them; we don’t know where they go. They just withdraw someplace.”

Brown is a doctor of political science, not medicine. And his methods are more spontaneous than disciplined. But those who work with him say he is well suited for what is an emotionally draining job offering only spiritual reward.

“He is absolutely the most brilliant, dynamic individual I’ve gotten to work with,” said Ray Kincade, a registered nurse who coordinates the center’s testing program with the Long Beach Health Department. “Mike’s approach is very client-oriented, and he has an ability to get right to the crux of identifying the value of the test results” in each client’s case.

Robert Lawson, a businessman who serves as treasurer of the nonprofit center’s board, marvels at Brown’s ability to “take people and make them at ease” even in the most uncomfortable setting.

‘Persistent Person’

“I’m a very persistent person,” Brown said, sitting back in a center office and puffing on a cigarette despite a nearby “No Smoking” sign. (The office is borrowed for the interview; Brown said he doesn’t have his own because he wants to be up and involved with every center activity.)

He has a brother, a sister and parents who have been married nearly 50 years. And he remains rooted in the academic world, with degrees from California State University, Long Beach, and USC, and a teaching post at California State University, Fullerton, where he also served as director of human services, helping to coordinate curriculum, from 1974 to 1980.

When he needed a respite from the bureaucracy of academia, Brown said, he spent two years in the Hollywood Hills restoring California bungalows but returned to Long Beach in 1983 to find that the center needed volunteers skilled in remodeling. Once staff members recognized his organizational abilities, Brown became a permanent fixture.

“For me, that’s the gratification. . . . making something change,” Brown said. “In academic life you’re using your mind all the time. In organizational life you’re sitting on committees that never do anything. . . . The one thing about working with (building) materials is they change under your touch, and you’ve got something to show for a day.”

Under Brown, the center has had much to show, offering a variety of counseling and assistance, mostly to homosexuals, in addition to AIDS antibody screening. The center, funded largely through contributions, serves about 3,000 clients a month in addition to those tested for the AIDS antibody. Brown boasts of a new recreational program that is open to anyone who wants to build friendships that aren’t solely “sexually based.”

“AIDS is not going to be with us forever,” Brown boldly predicted. “I personally believe that within about three years we’ll probably have a vaccine.” Considering that his job is to keep mobilizing himself and others against what some fear is an undefeatable foe, who would expect him to believe anything less?