Brian Dorsey

Brian Dorsey worked at GHAP, while he was an undergraduate in Columbia College from 2001 to 2004. He later went on to become a doctor specializing in internal medicine.

Interviewed by former GHAP Advocate, Will Hughes — July 28, 2012

Q: If you can remember how you first got involved with the group?

Dorsey: Sure. So as a freshman I moved into Carman, and I was on I think the tenth floor, and a person who ended up being a very good friend named Doug was on the eleventh floor. And one day he brought me one of the fliers. We were both kind of just looking to get involved with like the gay community at Columbia, but I didn’t really want to do like social kind of events, I wanted to do something that was a little less social and more community service kind of oriented. And I came into school thinking I wanted to do clinical psychology, kind of like a perfect fit. So then we just went to, if I remember correctly, there was kind of an information session and then after that they had us fill out like a brief application, and then they just, back then it was a guy named Ryan [Kull] and Laura, but Ryan was the one who like contacted us and told us that he wanted to talk to us more. And then we went to training sessions and that was, if I remember correctly, there was kind of a mock interview that Ryan watched, and then if he was satisfied with like your approach then he started scheduling you for shifts.

Q: Were they still doing the floor talks?

Dorsey: You mean like when they came around to every floor at the beginning of the year?

Q: Yeah, and they did the AIDS 101 presentation? I can’t remember when they started doing those.

Dorsey: I was a freshman in 2001 and I don’t remember them doing that. I do remember like the first week we had a floor meeting about date rape and like appropriate sexual conduct, but I don’t remember there being specific like AIDS 101 kind of classes. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but I don’t remember them.

Q: Laura and the advocates would go around and do an AIDS 101 to all the freshman floors.

Dorsey: Yeah, no, I don’t think we had that. We just had a no means no kind of thing.

Q: Yeah, I was just trying to figure that out. What was it like, the training process, and like once you started seeing people.

Dorsey: So, you know, it turns out that through GHAP I met Laura, and then Laura introduced me to one of her really good friends, Ron Wenshall, who was a psychiatrist in the area. And I worked with him through all four years of college, and then four years after college. And because of being introduced to him I decided to go into medicine instead of psychology. So GHAP kind of did, it was one of those like turning points in my life, it kind of like set me on the path to end up where I am know which is not exactly where I planned on being when I went through Columbia, but what was the training like? I just remember meeting, I think it was on a Monday afternoon; we would meet for a couple of hours every Monday and there would be different topics. And, you know, the topics would be either about like HIV, the testing protocol, sexual transmitted diseases, harm reduction techniques on the one hand. On the other hand they would be about like empathy, like good communication tools when you’re talking with a patient. And it’s funny, because those, I never really thought that it would influence me so much, but now I find myself using the same things that Ryan taught me when I was like 18 years old as a freshman at college. It’s kind of funny. Like I never really thought it out until you asked me just now and I think about this. So I mean I think, for me personally, you know, it was great to learn the harm reduction stuff, the sexual health stuff, but I think what in my life has been the most useful about my experience at GHAP has been, you know, learning the communication strategies on how to interact with patients.

Q: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it seems like particularly going back with some of the stuff with Ryan and Laura started, how like both the peer model and so many different venues, but queer educated. Having mentors were non-existent, but just to know as much as possible, because that’s all you can do. I’m ahead of myself. But what you were saying about like, I don’t know, not holistic, because I think it’s standard around the world, but I don’t know just talking to people with very open ended questions.

Dorsey: Yeah, you know, in your first year of medical school they give you classes about how to talk with patients. And to me I was like sitting in those classes being like this is ridiculous, everyone should know how to do this, but it’s really not a skill that comes naturally to quite a few people. And honestly I’m not so sure it would come so naturally in medical school if I haven’t gone through three years of GHAP. I didn’t do GHAP my senior year. So I think that part was really useful. In terms of my actual experience there, I would say the majority of my, the vast majority of my interaction with patients were like heterosexual couples. Every once in a while I’d get a gay kid. And I actually only remember two people ever coming back HIV positive out of the three years I was there. And the one kid that I actually remember in-depth is, he actually, I’m not 100% sure he was even a part of the Columbia community. I remember doing an interview with him and then Amanda [Crosier], she was kind of, she was a post doc, and she started out as an advocate and then she kind of ascended the ranks and became like, not a director, I’m not exactly sure what her official position was, but she was above the other kids. And she had told me that that kid came back positive and that he actually refused treatment. And it’s just like one of those kids that will always stick in my brain, you know?

Q: Mm-hmm. So you mentioned a lot of the straight couples that you would see. Was it like routine testing? Were people still very worried in the way that they were earlier?

Dorsey: So I was at Columbia from 2001 to 2005 and at the beginning, like from 2001 to 2002, there was, I don’t think there was much concern at all. Generally what would happen, it would be like a straight couple and the guy didn’t want to use condoms anymore. So the girl was like let’s go get a battery of STD testing, and if you’re negative on everything then we won’t use condoms. So we would interview the girl and be like, I understand your thought process, but you may want to consider to continue to use condoms unless you’re 100% sure. And then the guy is, it was always nice that they wanted to get the test done and get out. But in my 2002, 2003 like crystal meth was really big, especially like amongst the healthy, and I did see more straight kids then. But I think there was almost like more risky sexual behavior going on. I’m not so sure how much it really effected the Columbia community per se, but I just remember being more aware of like more risky kind of sexual behavior starting in my sophomore and junior year.

Q: Interesting. And you said it was mainly centered around crystal meth use?

Dorsey: No, I just remember like there was a big, you know, back then crystal meth was like big in our city. It wasn’t very big on campus, but it was pretty big in the gay community in the city in general. There were private citizens running ads on a Chelsea telephone booth with like hot go-go dancers with the same like; buy crystal get HIV for free. Like really trying to impress on people that they’re having fun with their drugs, but it’s leading them to do things that will kind of put them at risk. And now, I think especially now in club land, I think there’s less emphasis towards crystal use. Maybe on that point the advertising stuff had some effect.

Q: Interesting.

Dorsey: I don’t know how much of that is related to GHAP.

Q: That’s interesting, the thing about just how in so many ways that these trends were true, but at Columbia less so, because it’s quite insulated in a lot of ways.

Dorsey: Yeah. But like I said, that one kid that did come back positive, I’m not even 100% sure if he was a member of the Columbia community. But we never asked people to show us their Columbia ID, I don’t know if they do that now, but we never asked. And at the beginning, like now I bet you guys are like confidential but not anonymous. Is that true?

Q: Yeah.

Dorsey: All that stuff was changing when I first got there. I remember having to explain to people that there is a difference between testing centers and we weren’t 100% anonymous anymore.

Q: What do you mean by changing?

Dorsey: I thought at some point that they were anonymous, even not having to give a name.

Q: They say in the advocate reports to encourage people to use fake names.

Dorsey: Originally?

Q: Well, that’s more like ’85 to ’87. Yeah. Now you can use a fake name, but then for some of the paperwork you need to put in your real name.

Dorsey: Or put in the name that they tell you.

Q: Yeah, exactly. But it’s something that it happens.

Dorsey: Okay.

Q: So you said it was changing?

Dorsey: From my time, I guess, I just remember having the conversation with everybody about the difference between a completely anonymous testing site and a confidential site, which we were at that time. So I guess I had always assumed that at some point immediately previous to those discussions they were anonymous.

Q: That seems that that probably is right. If you started in 2001, I can imagine after the cocktail and the inhibitors, all those things have changed some of the like things that were so important to maintain anonymity about. But that changed partly before your time.

Dorsey: Yeah.

Q: So I guess like for specifically for some of the gay people you saw, were they higher risk? Was it routine testing? Can you talk about that?

Dorsey: Sure. Most of the gay kids I think were worried, but it was routine kind of testing, for whatever reasons, that one kid that sticks out in my brain, I remember him being very high risk. And I remember leaving the interview really worried about this kid. And I must’ve said something to Amanda, that’s why she was so proactive in telling me what happened. But really I don’t remember anyone being super high risk except for that one person. It was all just like kind of routine stuff.

Q: Yeah.

Dorsey: I don’t remember anybody like exchanging sex for money, and doing IV drugs, nothing like that. The highest risk I think I had in Columbia was like, you know, the kid that had multiple sexual partners at the same time, which is not highly unusual behavior for a college student.

Q: Yeah. And I think for me I’ve had a few people that I thought were like actually at risk of being HIV, and the rest are very minimal. Do you mind just kind of like what the arc of getting into medicine (for you) after you graduated?

Dorsey: After I graduated? Sure. So I went to Columbia, in 2005, I got a degree in psychology because I thought I wanted to do clinical psychology. But in the beginning of 2001 I had started working for the psychiatrist and I was very into the kind of like rapid changes he could get with just giving people medication, I kind of knew right away I wanted to do something more along those lines and not necessarily just talk therapy. But because I was a psychology major, of course, this was a premedical requirement. So from 2005 to 2007 I kind of just took like classes here and there, and from like 2007 to 2009 I just kind of worked and enjoyed life. And then I got into, I got to medical school in fall of 2009. So like I, you know, I went to, I started down the path of medicine because I kind of wanted to imitate this guy who I really look up to, and I still do, we still talk all the time, and I actually would never have met him if it wasn’t for Laura and my time at GHAP.

Q: And, I’m sorry, what year of med school are you in?

Dorsey: I’m going into my fourth year in like five days. And I’m thinking of going into general medicine. I started out thinking I wanted to go into psychiatry, but, you know, I think that internal medicine kind of gives me the opportunity to treat like the whole patient instead of just the brain. And I think that once I finish internal medicine, if I’m still into psychiatry I could go down that road. But if I start doing a psychiatry residency then it’s really hard to transition back into internal medicine. Plus, if you do medicine you can kind of do as much basic, like mood disorder psychiatry that you feel comfortable with. Plus you can do all the general medicine kind of thing. If you just do psychiatry you’re kind of limited. You’re a physician, but you aren’t trained in the internal medicine specialty. After all this work in med school I’d think I’d want to do both.

Q: Of course.

Dorsey: Well, I would prefer to stay away from like, if I ever did psychiatry I’d want to do more psycho forum, more mood disorder; anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and kind of stay away from more of the psychotic spectrum. When you’re in training you don’t really get the opportunity to kind of guide what kind of patients you get. So I don’t know just yet. I’m in the programs for psychiatry right now.

Q: Kind of related, I don’t know how much you might know about this. What was the relationship with the health service like? That’s something that really changed and went through ebbs and flows through the years.

Dorsey: I thought it was a positive, I mean, I don’t know anything about the administrations interacted with each other, but I thought it was a positive one. We used a room in the health services clinic in John Jay. And like we would, like the secretaries would greet our patients, they would greet the other patients that were there to see physicians. I think at the end of every year health services gave us, I’m pretty sure it came from health services, gave us a certificate that said we were involved with the GHAP program. I’m pretty sure it had like health services and a GHAP proctor on it. I thought it was fine. You’re asking the question, it sounds like there was at some point a contentious relationship?

Q: Not so much contentious, more that GHAP was this orphan without a home. But like now it’s very much integrated just with what the providers do, and like you said, where our clients were greeted through the receptionist, of like the normal health center.

Dorsey: I think it was like that, yeah. We would just kind of find whatever room wasn’t being used by a physician or a nurse and we would just kind of occupy it.

Q: We actually have the old director’s office, it’s like the GHAP club — well, not clubhouse, but it kind of is, it’s got a couch, it’s very comfy, that’s where we are when we’re not counseling people.

Dorsey: Well, that’s good, because I don’t remember, we kind of like would sit in like an office, we kind of like all crammed in there, and people would try to study, but you’re trying to like find a spot. So now that you have a couch it sounds really neat.

Q: We’re spoiled. What were the people you worked with like? Talk about that. And also just as an immediate follow up, if you know of any that you would particularly recommend me talking to.

Dorsey: In terms of other advocates, quite honestly I haven’t been in touch with any of them since I left. Made some long lasting friends out of the program, but I remember always having a good time with them. There was a Christmas party every year. The person that sticks out in my head is Amanda. We did actually keep in contact for a little bit and she went to medical school.

Q: Cool. I guess then we kind of covered a lot. Anything you want to add? Broad thoughts?

Dorsey: You know, I think what you’re doing is awesome. I don’t know if I have any more to say about GHAP. I’m glad that it’s still going. I’m glad that there’s documentation on the history of it. Laura is an amazing person. Honestly. I’d actually be interested to know, have you found that the people in the ‘80s and the ‘90s were kind of more militant and ended up becoming activists in the gay community? Or like more involved from the late ‘90s or 2000?

Q: Well, a lot of, the people from like the first group and the second group, they were all in ACT UP, or various activist groups like that. So, yeah, it’s the way people working in a medical setting on HIV and AIDS, and for 15 years, that was inherently political, so you didn’t really have a choice.

Dorsey: Right. Well, that’s cool.

Q: Does that answer your question?

Dorsey: Yeah. Definitely.