It was unimaginably awful, that moment when I realized my crippling depression was due to the fact that I had a long and healthy life ahead of me. I had spent my life living in acceptance of HIV’s terminal effect on life. I had held that foremost truth in all my life choices. But the rules had changed. I had to live. At least that’s how it felt to me. I had to live a long life. Not I get to, not I want to. I had to.
Read MoreThis is an open letter to ask that you help get the word about the messages contained within my novel. Whether you read or buy the book is irrelevant. Its message is what you need to share, now and loudly. Writing this book took over a decade. It took all those years, not just because it was a process in which I had to make sense the horrible losses of many friends to AIDS, and loss of my mother who lost a five-year battle to Cancer, the year after the AIDS crisis had “ended.” In spite of all that loss, what I most needed to explore was what I lived as soon as the “crisis” was over.
Read MoreToday is June 27th. It is and average day leading into prime time summer summer. And due to the lingering cold, summer started late this year. Today, you probably want to cut your work day short, enjoy an ice cream from a Mr. Softee truck, hit the beach or the park, spend time with your kids, or do any one of a thousand things that go with the season we all love to enjoy.
Read MoreI am going to take a break from the AIDS and HIV prevention in today’s blog, because I am much more than just an HIV + man. I often found myself frustrated with the gay community’s amazing ability to weaken itself with subdivision, as if being white, gay, and HIV+ were not enough to separate me from the whole of humanity, I am also expected to be identify as a “long-term survivor,” “over-forty,” “hairy,” “bearish,” and now expected much more than I am comfortable with, a “Daddy.” And make no mistake I recognize all to well the safety and comforts that are found in the subdividing “sameness”. They are powerful tools in making a community and creating empowerment for in individual. But there is an inherent dichotomy in that as well.
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