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Negatives and Positives The nicest guy to ever ask you tons of question about your sexual history, Tony Buckman does his part to help keep folks healthy and well By Mark Ewert What is your job? HIV counselor. How did you start? I started by working at a South of Market clinic, and have just continued working on different projects with them, with different populations of people. And now I work in the AIDS Office on HIV vaccine studies, and on a large HIV counseling study called Explore. How long have you been doing it? About seven years. Who or what was your inspiration to enter this field? Hmm ... The "who" was a good friend of mine who was working at the clinic and recommended me for a job there; the "what" was the experience of working with clients who were interested in learning more about HIV and how to protect themselves. Pet peeves about this career? I hate giving positive results. Plus it's frustrating when people have difficulty admitting that what they're doing is risky. (Pause) And I hate the paperwork. If you weren't doing this, what would you be up to? I would be a pastry chef. That's been my lifelong dream. Any perks to this job? The perks are counseling people who are open to looking at themselves; being able to talk to people and share the experience, the enriching experience, of them talking about themselves and learning . [ San Francisco | MetroActive Central | Archives ]