I went on a date with Pradeep the next day. He had named some museums and said that we could go to Humsafar Trust. When I met up with him he asked me if I wanted to go to a clinic with him as he was due to get his third and last Hep B vaccine. I told him I did want to go. We went by train and Mumbai trains are sometimes so packed that people hang out the doors. Nandan tells me that every day newspapers show pictures of the faces of the dead who fell out of the train and died, and now need identification. Pradeep planned the trip for the slow part of the day and still the trains were so packed between certain stations that there was no room to move or even turn around. Pradeep and I were still being goofy and flirty and he would stand close to me and smile as he got pressed close to or against my face. We were against a wall in the aisle of the center of the train and I felt that even though we were entirely surrounded by people who were even hanging outside the train holding on for life, we were also alone because no one could turn their bodies to look at us. I started stroking his leg with one finger with my messenger bag in front of him and then just progressed over the thirty minute ride to stroking his dick through his pants while he kept a straight face. When we got off the train we could not stop laughing because we felt like we shared a secret.
Just outside the train stop we went to the FPA clinic. It was a large place which served many client populations and Pradeep had understated its importance in his description so I was pleasantly surprised. He told me that he used to work there as an outreach counselor and it was apparent that he was well-known and well-liked there. This made me more interested in him because it meant that he had good connections to Humsafar and this place, and probably also he knows other places. The FPA clinic’s mission is to do HIV education to anyone who comes there; Humsafar is only for MSMs. Pradeep was showing me around the place and it seemed to be equipped as well as any counseling clinic I have seen in America, with one big difference in that it also had a room with lots of single beds. Pradeep said it was for women to get abortions, but I am not clear on whether abortions were actually performed at this place.
I suddenly felt underdressed as I was wearing jeans and a collared t-shirt, and Pradeep introduced me to a male and female manager of the place. They both spoke Western counseling and public health jargon and I became aware that Pradeep also can talk this way, which surprised me somewhat as his English is good but not so good that I expected him to be more familiar with the lexicon of civic planners than the outreach workers in Seattle typically are. I was belted with lots of information I wanted and when I asked questions they were easily able to anticipate why I had asked the question and they told me what I wanted to know in addition to only answering my question. Throughout this they told me about their funding streams and oversight processes and that if I wanted access to the data which they collected then I should both contact their parent organization to request clearance to receive answers to questions and contact researchers to get their previously published interpretations of the numbers. The manager made a trusting gesture by telling me trivial bits of information which were not private but were beyond the purview of what they were supposed to tell strangers who come into their clinic and start poking around, and I took this as a hint that he would be willing to get me whatever I wanted if I made the request to his supervisor that I wanted his help.
After the talk I got some papers including an 2008 annual report. It is a beautiful document and I am eager to consume it and adapt it for Wikipedia. He apologized that it was outdated and told me there was better information for me.
Then Pradeep got his shot and we left.