THE BLACK PRINCE
THE BLACK PRINCE
On Tuesday I kept my appointment with The Black Prince the first black hemophiliac I met personally. I had seen his picture and he was shorter than I had imagined. He had the limp and great teeth. He also had a surprise visitor that day, a young woman from Philadelphia who was a film-maker. Her brother had been factor VIII deficient and had recently died of AIDS. The Prince took us to a sidewalk cafe around the corner from his office where we had soup and salad and iced tea. The streets of Washington were busy with pedestrians and traffic. Street vendors hawked their wares.
The woman said that her family and friends were urging her to do a film about hemophilia since there didn’t seem to be a lot out there. She had read the proposal we had drawn up.
“It’s a good story,” she said, “you’ve been working on this for a while, haven’t you?”
“It’s a bear to get funded,” I said.
“Some of the fractionators might fund this,” The Prince said.
“So far Bayer and Glaxo and Armour have said no.”
“The national meeting is in Philadelphia next month. You may want to go there.”
“I was hoping to be filming there, but it’s the money thing.” I said.
“It’s the money thing.”
“It’s the money thing.”
“It’s a good story.”
“Who cares?”
I talked about the weekend retreat at the Camp; the Prince knew many of the people I had met. It was a tight community, a small world, a Family. I wasn’t sure what I was doing there. I had no family attachments with hemophilia—everyone in my family was dying of lung cancer and heart disease. I didn’t feel the pain but I was learning the language. I was hungry for the story and I knew I wouldn’t quit, but I wasn’t all that sure I wouldn’t be fired. Maybe I would be unable to break through the walls because all I was beginning to talk about with those directly connected to the blood thing was the money thing. They already knew about the blood thing.
The Prince pulled out a piece of plastic and picked up lunch. He said he was ready to go on AZT.
“You know how Brent feels about that?” I said. “He thinks it will kill you.”
“It’s my choice,” he said. “It’s nothing but a bunch of letters.”
We walked back to the office in the afternoon sun. I felt confident that I had made another contact. It was important that I got my face out there, let them know who the bear was. I didn’t have a lot of time before I would run out of money to journey to make those contacts. If I didn’t have the contacts in the community there would be no reason for additional funding. There would be no story.