My friend Stephanie emailed with a desperate request -- she needed someone to be part of a panel discussion of former Peace Corps Volunteers who had worked in HIV prevention. Steph and I were both in Senegal together, and she continues to occupy various temporary positions in Peace Corps Administration, moving around from role to role like a kind of community-development troubadour. We hadn't communicated much since I accidentally stood her up for a lunch we'd scheduled many months ago. I gathered she was pissed off, but I was freaking over some work-related bugaboo and so the closest I managed to an apology was something like "oops." It's a shame, because Steph was the last member of my volunteer group with whom I maintained decent contact, and the one I perhaps missed the most. But you know how people are. When someone gets mad at you, what do you do? Get a little mad back. I mean, they don't have to get that mad. What the hell's wrong with them, anyway? What a blessing has been bestowed upon us by our creator(s): we each have the miraculous ability to believe we're right almost all the time.

Steph made no bones about the fact that she was getting in touch with me because she expected me to settle my score by dutifully appearing on the panel on World AIDS Day. I would have to talk for a few minutes about my HIV prevention efforts in Senegal and how this has affected my life since my return. Of course I immediately agreed, partially to expunge my record with her, but also because what could be better than getting to drone on about your heroic Peace Corps service before a room full of people who are obliged to listen? Everyone I know is tired of my tales of hair-raising adventure and personal triumph. They know about putting the motorcycle in a dugout canoe to cross a river, the car wreck that killed my fellow volunteer, the mind-numbing and omnipresent heat, and teaching women in the village how to hold a pencil before we could start basic math classes. But this would be a room of fresh meat. And Steph and I decided we would go out to dinner afterwards, thus completing the cycle of redemption.

Unfortunately, the crowd would consist mostly of other returned Volunteers, most of whom have their own personal history of wild experiences, sad tales and moments of achievement. There was no point in trying to impress them. I figured I'd just prattle for a little while, put in a plug for volunteerism at a couple local organizations I support, and pass the mic to the next panelist. I didn't bother to prepare any comments.

On the day of the presentation, Susan asked me if I really thought it was wise to go on a panel discussion commemorating Peace Corps' HIV prevention programs, in the presence of the head of the organization, with no idea of what I might talk about. I could see some wisdom in her perspective, as I had just begun to suffer from a mounting case of public-appearance jitters. Generally I despise being put in a position that will require me to speak up in a group of people. It was difficult to understand how this I had ever thought this was a good idea, even if did repair frayed ties with old friends.

So I started writing a brief presentation, which soon spiraled out of control into an impassioned treatise on the importance of staying involved in a community and seeing the human results of your actions, which I won't bother trying to summarize here. It was kind of heavy, and when I read it out loud to Susan I was immediately embarrassed by its drippy do-gooder sentiment. I had not written an informative digest of how my HIV-prevention efforts in Senegal had affected my later work; I had tried to plumb the human need to reach through the barriers that seal us off from each other.

"This is ridiculous," I told Susan. "Why should I be scared of this presentation? I've climbed ladders so tall that most people would pee themselves halfway up, and it would take the droplets of pee a grotesquely long time to fall all the way back to earth."

"Fear is situational," she said, which wasn't entirely helpful, and then she told me to go take a couple Valerian Root capsules, which turned out to be quite helpful. By the time I was sitting down at the table before a small crowd at Peace Corps headquarters, I was pleasantly self-medicated with herbal mellowness and unconcerned about embarrassing myself. Any remaining anxiety had disappeared completely by the question & answer period, by which time I was uncharacteristically comfortable hogging the microphone to share my personal beliefs about whatever topic was tossed to me.

Stephanie confessed that she was too tired to go out to dinner, thus perhaps bringing the cycle of redemption to closure of a more bilateral karmic nature.