Prevention and Policy
The Dirty Little Secret of Gay Men and Meth
Monday, June 20th, 2011
How addiction to crystal methamphetamine is threatening the gay community’s long struggle to turn a corner on the AIDS epidemic.
I really shouldn’t be trusted. That’s the problem with drug addicts like me. We’ve protected our addiction through a myriad of lies and manipulations for so long that being truly honest again is like learning a foreign language from scratch. So when, at long last, my recovery has convinced me that honesty is the only thing that can save my life, I shouldn’t be surprised that my friends are reluctant to believe me.
Their skepticism is well founded. My drug addiction perverted every value I hold dear, and truthfulness was the first to be abandoned. But becoming a habitual liar was only the beginning. As a gay man I worked tirelessly through the 1980’s directing AIDS agencies and advocating HIV education. Despair was a daily companion, and I witnessed the death of friends in manners too gruesome to be described. When I became HIV positive during those early years, every loss of a friend, every visit to intensive care, was like watching my own morbid future.
But once my addiction to crystal methamphetamine took hold by the late 1990’s, caring for my community or even myself had become unaffordable luxuries. The drug, a common presence on the dance floors I once enjoyed, had tightened its hold on me. I was no longer satisfied with occasional weekend use and pursued meth with a vigor unmatched by my devotion to AIDS causes.
This onetime HIV educator became a selfish addict who engaged in perilous drug deals and even riskier sex. The sad irony escaped me, however, as I continued down my destructive path, even contracting Hepatitis C through needles and enduring chemotherapy to treat it. All the while, my addiction raged on.
My experience isn’t unique and widespread meth abuse has been brewing in other populations for some time. But something about its peculiar grip on gay men feels all too familiar, like a dreadful echo of what we suffered a generation ago. And the implications have me worried.
Most of my peers remember what it was like in the early 1980’s, when friends stopped calling or simply died over the weekend. The nightclubs were cloaked in sadness and had a vaguely sinister vibe. Empty desks at work meant someone was mysteriously sick again. During those years of “gay cancer,†we were too petrified to acknowledge the coming storm.
Today those ominous signs have returned, along with the helpless wish that things will improve if only we don’t speak too loudly about it. But rather than AIDS picking off my friends with random cruelty, meth addiction is the culprit. And this time, it is unlikely our community emergency will have ribbons and walk-a-thons or attract research dollars. Society’s sympathy for men dying from drugs is quantitatively less than dying of a sexually transmitted disease. This really is a plague of our own design.
Recovery centers are teeming with gay men battling meth addiction, and the drug has a very tight, culturally specific hold on them. It has surpassed other illegal substances as the drug of choice among gay users. There is something about the drug’s mystique as a sexual liberator that appeals to men who are so often judged by their sexuality. Just as I once did, countless men are abandoning their relationships, their careers and their personal dignity in pursuit of the insidious thrill the drug promises and never delivers.
And meth appears to be mocking my community’s long struggle to turn a corner on the AIDS epidemic. HIV testing sites claim that meth users are five times more likely to test positive for the virus than non-users.
How to combat the growing threat has this activist at a loss. Gay men know we had compelling prevention campaigns for HIV in the early days. They were called funerals. But changing an addict’s behavior is a much more ambitious challenge than changing basic sexual practices.
It was my goal to bring attention to this crisis when I agreed to appear in a recent documentary about gay men and methamphetamine (Todd Ahlberg’s startling “Methâ€). In the film, I represent the voice of reason, the recovering addict remarking on what a sad scourge the drug has become. Only after the documentary was produced did I admit to anyone that I had relapsed prior to filming and had stopped using meth only hours before the camera crew arrived. Once again, my actions trumped my ideals.
It has been baffling to find myself literally saying one thing and doing another. The facts don’t lie: I have been working towards recovery for five years and my last relapse was only four months ago. The eight years I spend addicted to meth will leave scars. Thank God for the recovering addicts I have met along the way, who have shown me that long term success is possible if I will just “get honest†and hold myself accountable. My personal survival is the job at hand.
That’s tough for a former community leader to accept. I want to sound the alarm, organize a response, and join the growing chorus of gay men shedding light on our shameful secret. But how can I urge others to practice honesty when it has eluded me again and again? And what did the AIDS crisis teach me, what did the promises to honor the lives of so many dead friends mean, when I rewarded my miraculous survival by sticking needles in my arm?
I better sit this one out. The preciousness of life itself, and my own in particular, is a lesson I should have learned while caring for my friends dying of AIDS. It has taken a battle with an equally cunning adversary for that lesson to finally sink in.
(This piece appeared on Newsweek.com on November 28, 2007. My struggle with crystal methamphetamine continued, until finally getting clean and sober in recovery on January 1, 2009. — Mark)
Tags: culture, gay, meth, physician, recovery, Sexuality
Posted in Books and Writings, Gay Life, Meth and Recovery, My Fabulous Disease, Prevention and Policy | 3 Comments »
Hiding from the “AIDS at 30″ media storm.
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
I shuttered myself from most of the hoopla surrounding the “AIDS at 30†milestone (we seem to have agreed on June 5, 1981, when an item in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report reported deaths among gay men). The trauma of those early years is tough for me to revisit. Every media piece seemed to be about the past and it all felt emotionally overwrought and indulgent. I skimmed the coverage and secretly wished it would just go away.
Revealing the intensely personal isn’t normally a problem for me; I wasn’t shy about addressing our darkest days in my video blog entry Once, When We Were Heroes (right), so it’s not like I can’t go there. Maybe the sheer volume this month of tragic stories and heartfelt blogs and “I Was There†interviews was too much for my scarred psyche.
It could also be an ego thing. All these extra voices showing up and piling on their stories. Hey Missy, that’s my gig, move it along, thank you very much. During the media frenzy of “AIDS at 30″ I felt like a professional drag queen refusing to venture out on Halloween. Too much competition. And from such amateurs.
This week I finally paid more attention to what has been written this month, and of course, it’s pretty damn good.
The 30th (what? Celebration? Anniversary? Commemoration? Did we decide on something?) yielded some tremendous coverage at The Body, my favorite online HIV resource. And obviously, how the hell can people appreciate our AIDS history is we don’t document it at every opportunity?
Asking the gay bloggers at The Body to speak back and forth between generations about their HIV/AIDS experience was inspired. Anyone under 35 is my favorite audience, although the over-40 crowd probably understand me a lot better.
I also really enjoyed Nelson Vergel’s interview with Dr. Michael Gottlieb (left), the man who published the first report of some rather strange deaths among gay men. Dr. Gottlieb also happened to be my physician in Los Angeles when I was diagnosed with HIV in 1985. During those days, I once forced Dr. Gottlieb to tell me his best guess for my lifespan, and he went out on a limb to say I could make it to 40. That birthday came and went, ten years ago. When the preeminent expert in the field gets it that wrong, you know we’ve had more success treating this virus than anyone had hoped in the early days. Thank God.
Elsewhere, I admired Regan Hofmann’s (right) recent editorial at Poz Magazine immensely. With nary a glance backward, she sat squarely in the present and outlined the thirty issues that are most important to the crisis today and in the future. It was also a solid primer on the emergence (and debates about) new prevention theories like Post-exposure and pre-exposure prophylaxis and “test and treat.â€
Once I allowed myself to “face the past” by checking out Karen Ocamb‘s amazing reports from the early days of the crisis, I was happy I did. Karen is a Frontiers news editor who has been covering LGBT issues in Los Angeles for 30 years, and in her collection of stories from the AIDS frontlines of the 1980′s (complete with video she shot herself), she takes us along to an early AIDS protest (left), to early treatment activism meetings and to the unfolding of the AIDS quilt. Karen’s close relationship with history and her “home movies” give the stories amazing intimacy. I recommend the series highly.
The media rush of tragedy and inspiration known as “AIDS at 30†is dying down. As much as I want coverage of HIV and for there to be constant prevention messages, I’m a little relieved. I can comfortably go back to debating our current treatments and campaigns, sharing sweet and funny stories about my life with HIV, and wondering why the hell the media doesn’t pay more attention to HIV/AIDS.
We all have our coping mechanisms. Allow me a little healthy denial.
As always, my friends, please be well.
Mark
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PLUS…
Sean Strub is once again ringing the bell about criminalizing people who do not disclose their HIV status, and it tolls for thee. We covered some of this ground when Sean and I discussed Five Things About HIV They’re Not Telling You, but in Sean’s newest posting at Poz.com, he takes this a bit further. Are we a few short steps away from prosecuting those who do not take their medications? Sean sees the intersection of “test and treat” and the treatment of those with HIV as criminals as a dangerous mix that could theoretically lead to forced treatment, just as a prisoner might be compelled to take meds. It’s a bit chilling, and perhaps fantastical, but whoever thought there would be people with HIV sentenced to jail for 20 years for spitting?
Our national disgrace known as the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) Waiting Lists continues, and the lines keep getting longer for patients waiting to receive life-saving medications. There are reports of patients who have died during that wait. The ADAP Advocacy Association (aaa+) continues its mission to combat this lack of funding, and in their recent blog they offer evidence that the most effective weapon in our advocacy tool kit is you, referencing a study showing that when people like you and me simply pick up the phone, it matters as much as high-powered lobbyists. And it’s simple! Take a look at my video blog from the last ADAP Summit and you can get instructions on exactly what to do. Meanwhile, I’ll be attending the upcoming ADAP Conference in Washington, DC, and will share everything I can with you.
How do we bridge the LGBT generation gap? That’s been the topic of two really terrific postings this month around Gay Pride, and the communication disconnect between young and old seems to be the culprit. I’d love to be an “older mentor,” but who would have me? What spaces encourage dialogue and a chance to share our history? Olivia Ford of The Body.com raises these concerns in her excellent piece What’s It Really Going to Take to Make it Better? Olivia knows that we have a lot to gain from inter-generational interaction, but beyond the It Gets Better Project, how do we accomplish this? Meanwhile, some people think that younger gay men are ungrateful little snots. Jake Weinraub is totally over it, in his piece What Sucks About Most Privileged Gay Men for The Bilerico Project. Both are definitely worth your time, and you should always join the conversation by posting a comment!
Tags: aids, culture, drag, hiv, politics, research
Posted in Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy | 3 Comments »
Calling HIV Negative Gay Men: This is Your Time
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
This is directed to HIV negative gay men. Listen carefully. This is your time.
I’ve lived with HIV more than half my life, and people often praise me far more than I deserve, simply for surviving. They use words like brave and courageous.
You know what takes courage? Getting an HIV test every few months. You, waiting nervously while your most personal sexual choices are literally being tested, waiting to find out if you’ve been good – or if you’re going to pay for a single lapse in judgment by testing positive, when the look on the faces of your friends will say you should have known better.
I have no idea what that must be like. I took the test over 25 years ago. The positive result was traumatic, no doubt about it, and I soldiered on during some awfully frightening times. But I have a significant psychological advantage over my HIV negative friends: I only took that damn test once.
During all these years, I’ve acted irresponsibly at times or taken chances I hadn’t intended. But there has been no further judgment from a blood test. That reckoning was faced long ago.
But you – whether you have been sexually active for a year or a decade – have very likely faced some tough choices and behaved wisely. You keep doing the right thing.
This is your time. The word courageous is for you.
If you don’t define yourself, in large part, by the fact you are HIV negative, start now. It is your accomplishment. It says you are taking care. And it says you are eligible to participate in vaccine trials or mentor someone else trying to remain negative.
There is ongoing research now that is focused on HIV negative men like you. Exciting new studies are investigating drugs to prevent infection after something risky has occurred, while other studies have shown promise for a drug regimen that might block infection before it happens.
And right now there are vaccine trials waiting for men like you to help find the ultimate weapon against HIV. They need volunteers, badly.
This is your time. This research is about you. This call to action is for you.
I can already hear the rumblings on both sides of the viral divide. People are so quick to take offense, so afraid of being misunderstood, of being labeled or blamed or ostracized.
My fellow positive brothers are so bruised by stigma that it can be hard for them to lift you up. They’ve been rejected by you. They don’t like hearing “maybe we should just be friends†and they don’t like seeing “UB2†in your online profile. They might be positive as a result of one heated mistake, or due to sexual assault, or by trusting (or loving) the wrong person — and they deeply resent feeling judged.
Maybe they think your negative status is the result of pure luck, or that you don’t like anal intercourse, or you’re lying.
Meanwhile, your sacrifices go unrecognized. You’ve seen some positive friends take early disability, hang out at the gym and get help with the rent. They receive so much support and empathy that it must feel like there isn’t much left for you. Every year we all swarm the streets for the AIDS Walk, and you can’t help but wonder if your parade will ever arrive.
These grievances and resentments give me a headache. It doesn’t matter much to me who is most injured. How infinite is our compassion for one another? I don’t care anymore who gets what. What matters most is who does what.
This is your time. This truce, this call to a higher purpose, is for you.
You are fully human, like everyone else, my friend. You are courageous, afraid, selfish and compassionate. You make difficult choices and you make mistakes. And we need you so very badly.
Thank God for you. This is your time.
(This piece was written as part of the GA Voice commemoration of 30 years of HIV/AIDS. I was honored to contribute to their special issue. — Mark)
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If you haven’t caught up with the blog from gay theologian the Rev. Chris Glaser, his thoughtful posting about the rapture, and what it means to be left behind, is a great introduction. Chris has a way of bringing Christian teachings back to their essential meanings (in other words, without the hateful language and intent we have come to expect from fundamentalists). As a child he didn’t want to go to hell, but he was afraid of the rapture because of his fear of heights. And who in their right mind would leave this poor doggie behind?
Sadly, as the lives of thousands of people living with HIV/AIDS hang in the balance, our federal government has funded numerous “pet projects” – including such programs as Jell-O wrestling at the South Pole, testing shrimp’s exercise ability on a treadmill and a laundry-folding robot, all funded by the National Science Foundation. These facts, from the ADAP Advocacy Association’s (aaa+) newest blog posting, paint a dire picture of our national healthcare priorities. The blog also begs the question, “Where is the leadership?” I would urge urge you follow aaa+ and stay tuned for ways in which you can advocate to solve this national disgrace.
A New York Times article on the scientific history of AIDS does a great job of showing how naive researchers were in the beginning of the epidemic (a 1981 New England Journal of Medicine editorial didn’t even allow for the existence of a new microbe), but, more importantly, it highlights the ways in which AIDS activism and research has rewarded all of mankind with swifter drug approval and better patient advocacy:
“The relative speed with which the therapies were developed owes much to the efforts of cadres of activists who demanded that the Food and Drug Administration loosen the rules for clinical trials and speed its drug approval process. Efforts to develop anti-H.I.V. drugs have paid handsome dividends by leading to development of other drugs to treat other viral infections, like the liver diseases hepatitis B and C and certain types of herpes viruses. Also, AIDS advocacy has spurred leaders of campaigns against breast cancer and other diseases to adopt similar strategies.”
As always, my friends, please be well. And I hope you will “share” this posting with your friends and colleagues. Here’s to a wonderful summer!
Mark
Tags: aids, culture, gay, gratitude, help others, hiv, research, Sexuality, testing
Posted in Books and Writings, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy | 4 Comments »
Walmart, the G word, and internet activism.
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
Forgive your enemies. It messes with their heads.
– Unknown
Walmart is selling the new It Gets Better book. Just don’t call it gay.
Okay, this is really a story of how a selfish act turned into a firestorm of activism. It has drama, self-righteousness and the hottest new book to hit the stores!
Yesterday I was mindlessly wandering around the internet. Don’t judge. I’m a blogger, it’s in the job description. I eventually did a search for any reviews of It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living (I posted a fabulous review of it last week and wondered if there were others). The book goes on sale today and if you can, you must buy one for yourself and then for your local school or library.
I noticed Walmart was selling it online. Huh. That’s ironic, I thought. I went to their site and immediately responded to “Be the first to write a review.â€
“Like many people who grew up gay and afraid…†I began, stealing a line from my own posting last week. My paragraph ended with a link back to my site for the full review. I pressed “enter,†and up popped a scary red box telling me that my posting contained profanity and I better remove it before all hell breaks loose.
No one can break hell loose better than Walmart, I figured, so I scanned my review and found nothing objectionable. Well, nothing objectionable to me. I needed another perspective, so I co-opted the psyche of a mid-19th century Amish diary farmer and presto! the word “gay†jumped from the page like the demon-possessed adjective that it is.
I’ll admit I didn’t hesitate to delete the word from the post or get indignant, because here’s the selfish part, my friends: I only wrote a review to plug my blog. That’s one of the marketing secrets of blogging: post on as many other sites as possible, and always sign with your blog address, to attract like-minded readers. Damn me and my insatiable thirst for blogging fame!
After an hour, my Walmart posting was still “waiting review,†and only then did I find the episode vexing. What the crap is taking them so long, I steamed, and hey, why’d I have to delete the word gay, anyway? It screwed up the whole rhythm of the sentence! Oh, and it might be discriminatory.
(As of this writing — and I will keep this updated — my review, minus the G word, has yet to be posted. I have sent e-mails to both the media contact at Walmart regarding this issue, and left feedback on their corporate page. There has been no response.)
This is where everything accelerates and feels like the first half of The Social Network, when their computer explodes with hits and they’re writing code on windows and stuff. I posted a mention of all this on Facebook and my more activist oriented friends pitched a fit. Hmm, I mused, this could be a legitimate concern for people. And bring readers, my God, readers!
I posted another mention of it on the It Gets Better page on Facebook. Then blog guru JoeMyGod contacts me to verify the story, and lickety split, the story is on his site and sixty commentors are furious about it and/or think it’s no big deal and/or being snarky with one another. Plus, Joe has linked back to my blog review on my own site and my traffic is like rush hour. Nirvana!
But that was so, like, yesterday. Today I have a posting about all this on The Bilerico Project, and I’m hoping to lure people like Towleroad and The New Gay into my web of political outrage. Linking to them one sentence ago could help, no?
The fact is, the internet has been dicey when it comes to sorting out what’s dirty and what’s divine for many years now. Scores of people never receive my mailings if I have the words “gay†or “sex†or even “AIDS†in the subject line. And Walmart, well, they may misguidedly believe that, by disallowing the word “gay,†they are preventing people from saying “that’s so gay!†in the product reviews.
I have a problem with that. I like the word. It defines me quite nicely. And I hate to surrender it to homophobic people simply because they might use it against me with an insipid teenage catch phrase.
Oh my. An outburst of activist righteousness has escaped me, and a sincere one at that. I hope you’ll take note of it – and then send this link to every single person on your e-mail list.
Please be well,
Mark
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A more substantial debate is raging among AIDS advocates right now – does PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) help or hurt prevention efforts? PrEP, in layman’s terms, is the strategy of giving a pill regimen to people at risk of contracting HIV – the regimen appears partially effective, in early studies, in keeping them from becoming HIV infected. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, for one, has gone on record saying “there is no magic pill,†because they fear PrEP will lead to riskier behavior. But other HIV advocates, like many involved in IRMA (International Rectal Microbicide Advocates) believe PrEP is worthy of further investigation. Yes this sounds wonky, but trust me, it has everything to do with the future of HIV prevention and it’s worth your browsing these links and forming your own opinion.
An important AIDS conference has news to share: the 2012 International AIDS Conference (AIDS2012) has launched its web site. Major plans are underway for this conference, the first to return to the United States since the ban was lifted on those with HIV traveling to the United States. Exciting details are leaking about what should be a massive conference, including early plans for the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt – in its entirety – to be displayed once again in D.C. during AIDS2012.
Posted in Books and Writings, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy | 3 Comments »
Touring an HIV+ gay sex club. Plus: the porn stars that got away.
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
The idea that HIV positive people still want sex is as old as The Denver Principles, the 1983 manifesto drawn up by gay men with AIDS that demanded “as full and satisfying a sexual and emotional life as anyone else.†The document also stated that people with HIV/AIDS have an ethical responsibility to share their status with others.
Fast forward to today, and HIV positive gay men are as open as ever about their status and their sexual preferences (setting aside, if we can for the moment, the increased stigma and discrimination facing HIV positive people of all stripes who disclose their status these days). And those sexual choices may not include HIV negative people at all, thank you very much.
Last year I taped a tour of a sex club that hosts a monthly “Poz4Play†party, and sat down to interview Bill, the party’s disarmingly unflappable host. In this video blog (the video, above, is PG rated but the language is explicit), I revisit the tour and get an update from Bill about the strong reaction to the original video, which includes a frank conversation on barebacking, the risk of other STD’s, and serosorting.
Serosorting, or limiting sexual partners to those who share your HIV status, has become the de facto prevention technique for many gay men with HIV. Research indicates that the tactic may have value in containing the spread of HIV, but as you might guess, it isn’t so effective when it comes to HIV negative gay men who attempt to serosort amongst themselves. People who claim to be negative are often wrong, misinformed or simply lying. HIV positive men who claim to be positive are less likely to be wrong about that fact.
On an important side note: is avoiding HIV enough? Research indicates that poz-on-poz sex is much more likely to include barebacking (unprotected sex), and that means the potential of pitting a sometimes compromised immune system against other sexually transmitted diseases. If the idea of catching gonorrhea simply makes you feel nostalgic, what about (the far more dangerous) Hepatitis C? A recent study found that 75 percent of new hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections in HIV-positive men occurred in those with no history of injection drug use (IDU) – the more typical transmission route for HCV. Barebacking is the suspected culprit.
Everywhere on the gay hook-up radar, positive men are asking, telling, and serosorting. “Disease free, UB2†in online profiles is being countered by the cheeky “HIV positive and plan to stay that way, UB2.†Meeting sites are engaging in some serosorting of their own by offering poz dating and hookup options.
And over at the gay bareback porn company Treasure Island Media (TIM), director Paul Morris has named it “the year of living positive (sic),†with a series of videos featuring openly HIV positive actors. While one might appreciate Mr. Morris’ enthusiastic wish that everyone “fuck freely and without fear,†he’s a little light on the real-life implications of such a lifestyle.
I exchanged e-mails with Paul Morris in an attempt to interview a real-life couple he just re-signed to exclusive bareback video naughtiness. The couple includes an HIV negative top and a positive bottom, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to educate gay men by going “behind the scenes†and speaking to these two actors in a way that focused on their real life and didn’t demonize them.
Paul was complimentary of my blog and confident that his actors would communicate with me if I would e-mail my questions to them. I did so, and my queries included: how big an issue was HIV to them? Did one worry for the other’s long term health? Was the positive partner on meds? How did they handle feeling judged by those who disagreed with their bareback porn star habits?
Note to self: do not attempt to “get real†with bareback porn studs or their handlers. I never heard from the actors, or another peep out of Paul Morris. His silence betrays his grandstanding on the topic (his own press release gleefully refers to him as “universally reviled,†which would look great on his name tag at the next Gay Erotic Expo). Or, perhaps Paul Morris really does know his audience, and figures they’re uninterested in his stars once the DVD is back in the sock drawer.
It’s also possible Treasure Island Media is just distracted with appealing their recent $21,000 fine by California OSHA for, among other things, not developing procedures for things as basic as Hepatitis B vaccinations. Maybe the Oscar winning song is right, and it really is hard out there for a pimp… or for a porn empresario.
Please be well,
Mark
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For another view of gay men, porn and barebacking, check out my most Googled post of last year, “Did the Bareback Time Machine Kill Chad Noel?†It is a melancholy epilogue on the brief life of a gay bareback porn star (right) and what his childhood friends remember about him most.
One of my favorite HIV sites, LifeLube, has started an ongoing series called “Andrew’s Anus,” and it’s about sexual health for gay men and the human papillomavirus, or HPV. But wait! The series is written from the point of view of Andrew’s anus! It’s fun and witty and has great information and I hope you’ll check it out.
There’s a lot in the news about marketing the female condom to gay men. If you’d like a frank demonstration on using the appliance for anal sex, check out my video from AIDS2010 in Vienna with Wendy of The Pleasure Project (right). She leaves no question unanswered, and trust me, I ask them all. Our interview begins at the 4:05 mark.
Mike Barr has returned to the pages of POZ Magazine, or at least to their web site, as a blogger on the topic of Traditional Chinese Medicine and HIV/AIDS. His knowledge on HIV treatment is stellar, so if you have any interest in eastern approaches, his blog would be an excellent start.
Tags: aids, barebacking, culture, gay, hiv, research, serosorting, Sexuality, testing
Posted in Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, Prevention and Policy | 12 Comments »
My Fabulous Disease: The Top Ten Postings of Year One
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011
“The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”
– Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Ernest
How was this judged, exactly? I was afraid you might ask. Not on the number of hits or any formal voting procedure. I relied purely on feedback received through the year and from posted comments, but mostly, umm, I picked my favorites. So there.
presented in reverse order
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#10. The Wisdom of Youth at AIDS2010. My skills (and physical stamina) were sorely tested when TheBody.com sent me to Vienna for the 2010 International AIDS Conference. Every day was a sprint around the massive conference center in search of stories that inspired or amused me. In this episode, I was blown away by a collection of teenage (!) activists from around the globe who gave a press conference and then chatted with me (try being nineteen and an HIV advocate in Afghanistan). Then I interviewed an actual muppet with No Strings, a program that uses puppetry to communicate with African children about AIDS, transmission, and grief. Awesome.
#9. The Real Poz Guys of Atlanta. Nothing has been more important to my long term sanity and well-being than the support of friends, so I decided to let you meet a few of them in this ongoing series of videos. In this, our second get together, my friends Craig, James, Antron and Eric and I (all of us are living with HIV) bake brownies — recipe included in the post! — and dish about our HIV, doctors, families and love lives. To top it off we all engage in some surprisingly moving “show ‘n tell,” by bringing things to our dinner that represent something about life with HIV. If you need to feel the love of friends right now, check this out.
#8. Locker 32, your room is ready… to be hosed and sanitized. Okay, so here’s my bawdy comedy side, in a farewell essay to the gay baths. In my former, youthful and/or drug fueled days, I was a staple in such establishments, and the value of how one looked sauntering about in a towel was a misguided priority that, frankly, I’m still working to shake from my world view. But there’s no such depth in this funny essay, just a final look at the baths on my very last visit, or as the piece begins, “the last time I went to the baths… I stepped in poop.” Hold your nose, and enjoy!
#7. The Price is Right, thirty years after coming on down. “When I was 19 years old, I vacationed to Los Angeles and won a car on The Price is Right.” So begins my book “A Place Like This,” my first-person account of my years in Hollywood in the 1980′s. I use the game show story to reflect on the young man I was and what dreams I had, while AIDS looms in the near distance ready to wreck the plans of a generation. I’ve always liked this as its own essay, though, and thought it would be fun to include the actual footage of my winning the car, so the reader can watch the little story come to life.
#6. My T-cells Could Use a Facelift. I’ve probably posted the heart and soul right out of this poor video, using it more than once this year, but it remains a favorite of mine because it strikes the heart of my issues as a gay man, a man with HIV, and an aging one at that. We’re the guys that can still remember being youthful but we just don’t quite hack it in the cruise clubs anymore. I know I shouldn’t miss it, and yet… The video also lets me show off my butt pads and discuss my not-so-subtle tactics to avoid growing up. Maturity is hard won in my household, my friends.
#5. A Facial Wasting Update. This is when I realized the real potential of my little digital camera: when Dr. Gerald Pierone agreed to let me film our consultation about my facial wasting (lipoatrophy), and the procedure to remedy it. This episode is actually our second video together, when I returned for a follow-up treatment — it reviews footage from the first visit but also gives a more accurate look at the treatment results. At the end of the first episode, I was so pleased with my new face that I shot my closing with such bright light I looked like I was voguing in a Madonna video. I don’t make that mistake again.
#4. I am the man my father built. Why are there passages in our life that we return to, again and again, those milestones that shape us and serve as references points our entire lives? Camping in the woods would seem an unmemorable scenario for a young gay boy like me (behold my pubescent self, right, in repose). Dad wasn’t trying to butch me up, he simply reveled in being different, like pitching a clear plastic tent when all the other fathers and sons on the campout had normal ones. But every time dad instilled in me the value of being different (“that’s the beauty of it,” was his most common exclamation), he was preparing his son for the world in a way he never imagined. A love letter to my dad, and I hope you’ll read it.
#3. Examining death, including the one I caused. To be honest, I thought I was doing my ex-partner Chris Glaser a favor by reviewing his most recent book. But that blithe arrogance evaporated when I read his elegant book about death, “The Final Deadline.” Chris devotes chapters to manners of death and their lessons for the living, and to my surprise includes one about the death of our relationship and there, suddenly and in black and white, was the wreckage of a romance, and the crushing hurt I had caused when I chose my escalating drug addiction over my partner. Reading this book would enlighten anyone, but no one more than me. Chris’ capacity for forgiveness and finding teachable moments is more beautifully rendered in his book than anything I might conjure.
#2. Once, When We Were Heroes. Another one I’ve posted to death — the video version has been on my main page for ages — but it’s as if I’m afraid I’ll never write something quite like it again. It sprang from my observations about so many of us that lived through the horror of the 1980′s and how mundane our lives are today. So many of us were called upon to do courageous things, or withstand terrible grief, and today we’re shopping at Macy’s and planning brunch. Which is a miracle and perfectly allowed, of course. It just makes me realize that you can never know what the man on the treadmill at the gym might have once withstood, or how resilient our own spirits are, when we once thought they might never survive.
#1. The Day Larry Kramer Dissed Me. Pure whimsy, no doubt about it, and the funniest part of this fictional account of a disastrous trip to the mall with Larry Kramer was how many people didn’t know I made the damn thing up. Not until they read the footnote. Reactions were all over the place: how dare I ridicule an icon, they wanted to know. I would be dead if it were not for him, they wailed. And “this is hilarious, please do HRC next!” I have not had the honor of meeting Larry Kramer but idolize him as an activist and as a writer. And if my “six degrees of Larry Kramer” friends are telling the truth, the man himself got the joke and liked it (and even left a posted comment for all to see).
Honorable mentions: My provocative chat with activist and POZ Magazine founder Sean Strub, “Five Things About HIV They’re Not Telling You,” had prevention advocates either impressed or aghast, and that’s a good thing. My favorite little video was the Gay Pride PSA That Will Never Air, which begins with funny stories before it punches you in the gut with a message about drug addiction. And speaking of addiction, there’s a precious vision of recovery is in the simple essay “A Dance to an Atlanta Night,” in which I enjoy some simple pleasures with friends who have seen me at my worst.
I feel like I’m hitting my stride. Thanks to all of you for your words of encouragement, and I mean that. This has been an awesome adventure because of you. As always, please be well.
Mark
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Tags: A Place Like This, acting, Aging, aids, barebacking, culture, drag, family, gay, help others, hiv, lipo, meth, physician, politics, recovery, Recreation, serosorting, Sexuality
Posted in All Other Video Postings, Books and Writings, Family and Friends, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, Meth and Recovery, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy | 2 Comments »
The Hilarious Idiocy of Anonymous Gay Sex
Monday, February 7th, 2011
The cute robots in this video are about to get down ‘n nasty after hooking up through a gay chat site. There’s just one problem: the horned up bareback bottom forgot to ask the top about his HIV status. What follows is a funny, pornographic (NSFW), painfully realistic “negotiation†in which stupidity rules the day.
I have had conversations exactly like this one. And I’ll go even further: in my crystal meth days, I had chats like these through glory holes. “If you’re clean, we’ll do it raw,†the gentleman in the adjoining booth would suggest, to which I would reply, “You’re going to take the word of a stranger you’re talking to through a three inch hole in the wall…?â€
The joke, if there really is one, is on the bareback bottoms who “restrict†their hookups to men who claim they are negative. These misguided folks are almost certainly already positive and don’t yet know it, leaving the door open for them to infect others.
The lesson in all this, of course, is not to put your life into the hands of someone you’ve known for five minutes. Or five months. The responsibility not to get exposed to HIV (and hepatitis and other STD’s) is entirely yours. And another thing: if you’re a sexually active “man about town” and your last HIV test was months ago, the results don’t really matter anymore. Go get a new one.
I exchanged e-mails with the producer of the robot video, who prefers the anonymity of cyberspace but nevertheless has strong feelings about the curious mating habits of the gay male. “If (HIV negative) guys are out there having anonymous sex with strangers, they’re having plenty of contact with HIV+ guys.” he wrote me. “Is there really something that they’d do with a stranger from Manhunt or Grindr that they wouldn’t do with someone who says he’s HIV+? It seems that what bothers them is knowing the truth.”
“I’d like to think that gay men could educate themselves enough to apply a safety standard to their conduct that doesn’t stigmatize anybody,” he goes on, perhaps a bit optimistically, “rather than hide behind a curtain of fear and blame.
I explored a lot of this territory is one of my older videos, “Mark’s R-Rated Sex Pig Blog.†In the video I discuss risks like barebacking and reenact my glory hole conversations (left), complete with a wall, a hole, and my friend Brian playing “the mouth.†And since the video was done before I got a handle on my meth addiction, you can see the ravages of addiction on my face, which is a lesson all its own.
This funny, bawdy robot video says more about the state of gay male sexual risk than any of the horrid public health campaigns out there today. It is exactly the kind of message I would have praised in my recent video conversation with HIV activist Sean Strub about HIV prevention campaigns.
If you want to do something about new HIV infections among our gay brothers, here’s an easy task: send this video to every sexually active guy you know.
Sometimes the truth hurts. In this case, it’s also hilarious.
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Kudos to Maureen McCarty of The New Gay for flagging this video for me. Finding potty-mouthed robots chatting about risky sex is exactly what makes a good editor, I always say. — Mark
Tags: barebacking, culture, gay, hiv, research, serosorting, Sexuality
Posted in Gay Life, My Fabulous Disease, Prevention and Policy | 6 Comments »
AIDS Activism 101: Steps to end the ADAP crisis.
Monday, January 31st, 2011
Activists held an “emergency summit†this weekend to address the growing AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) crisis, and I’m taking you there. In this video episode of My Fabulous Disease, you’ll learn about the panic over ADAP, and exactly what you can do to prevent thousands of AIDS patients from losing access to life saving medications.
The video is also a revealing glimpse into real-time activism, including tensions among the advocates themselves (mostly over the role of Big Pharma), and emotional moments of personal frustration and fatigue from years of AIDS advocacy.
The weekend was organized by the ADAP Advocacy Association (AAA+) and held in Ft Lauderdale (Florida has, by far, the longest waiting list of patients now waiting to join the ADAP program). The lead sponsor of the event was the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
The 2011 Emergency ADAP Summit featured presentations from the National Alliance of State & Territorial AIDS Directors and an impressive assortment of advocacy groups such as Housing Works, A Brave New Day, Broward House, and the Florida HIV/AIDS Advocacy Coalition. Even pharmaceutical representatives were there to explain their drug assistance programs for patients, adding a layer of “civility vs. activism†tension that kept everyone on their toes.
If you’d like to know if there is a waiting list in your state, you can find this information on the AAA+ web site, and the Fair Pricing Coalition provides information on the various pharma drug assistance programs.
The pleasure of devoting my weekend to this issue was doing it alongside some amazing people, particularly friends from the blogosphere I was meeting in person for the first time. Here’s a happy group of us taking a break from the proceedings, including (clockwise from top left) myself, POZIAM blogger Christopher Myron, Dab Garner (Dab the AIDS Bear Project), Sherri Lewis (“Straight Girl in a Queer World“), and POZIAM founder and blogger for The Body, Robert Breining.
But let’s return to the theme of the video episode: doing what you can to help end this funding crisis, meaning, pick up the phone and call your elected officials (VoteSmart.org will tell you who they are and how to reach them). And to make it as easy as possible, the video give you a lesson on what to expect from the call and what to say. I can still find calls like this intimidating, but these instructions make it simple for you.
Thanks for watching and, as always, please be well.
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Activism means getting the word out. I hope you’ll help increase calls to our elected officials by sharing this posting. ;]
Tags: aids, help others, hiv, physician, politics
Posted in Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy | 17 Comments »
Five Things About HIV (They’re Not Telling You)
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011
In the early 1990‘s, I was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion with national public health officials. They wanted to gauge what those on the front lines were thinking about HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns. I gave them an earful.
“Why won’t you tell gay men that being a top is less risky?†I lamented. They always resisted “promoting†anything that might conceivably transmit HIV, no matter how remote the odds, and it drove me nuts. “Give us something to feel better about…” I said. “Won’t you even say that oral sex is lots safer? Why can’t you throw gay men a bone?â€
Gay men are still forced to piece together the latest facts about HIV, largely due to the reticence of public health messages — or in some cases, just plain homophobia.
Thank goodness for people like Sean Strub, lifelong AIDS activist and founder of POZ Magazine. In his blog posting on Poz.com last month, Sean joined a chorus of advocates who are furious over a fearful New York City public health commercial. The spot says “it’s never just HIV,†and shows horrific HIV outcomes that include broken bones, insanity and even a gruesome shot of anal cancer.
Sean sees the campaign as another example of how public health gets it wrong, investing in failed “fear-based†messages while keeping a lid on information that could make a real difference.
In this video episode of My Fabulous Disease, Sean and I discuss five things we believe either represent what is wrong with prevention campaigns, or demonstrate strategies being ignored by public health officials. Pay attention to my links in this post, because I document the research and campaigns we discuss.
We refer to Swiss experts who suggest people with HIV with undetectable viral loads may be non-infectious (for more on this topic check out a great video interview with AIDS physician Paul Bellman, M.D. and his article “Vanquishing AIDS” posted on AIDSmeds). We discuss an infamous 1987 Australian commercial called “The Grim Reaper,†(photo, above) and refer to research that concludes that fear-based messages do not change long-term behavior.
You might enjoy comparing the difference between the NYC “It’s Never Just HIV†spot (in all its frightful foreboding) to the endearing, life-affirming Japanese campaign “Little Taiko Boy,” (left) which presents sexuality in an honest and entertaining manner — complete with music, shirtless dancers, and a drag queen goddess! By the time the goddess presents the film’s lovers with bejeweled condom packages, I was enchanted… and happy for them and their impending bout of safer sex.
Does anything in our talk surprise (or offend) you? Did you know HIV negative people could take a drug regimen immediately after exposure (sexual and otherwise) and greatly reduce the risk of becoming infected? Do you agree that stigma against those living with HIV may be greater now than ever before? This is an important community discussion, and I’m always up for constructive debate or dissent.
Meanwhile, my friends, please be well.
Mark
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Guess what, everybody? This is my 100th posting on My Fabulous Disease! I want to thank you for your warm welcome to the blogosphere since I launched in March, and I hope you will help celebrate by sharing this post with friends or colleagues. And I just joined Twitter! Follow me @MyFabDisease. Thanks!
Tags: aids, barebacking, culture, gay, hiv, politics, research, Sexuality, testing
Posted in Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy | 15 Comments »
My mega-blog week with The Bilerico Project
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
This week I am honored to be a “guest host” for The Bilerico Project, the leading online blogging salon for GLBT commentary, politics and culture. My job is to contribute three times a day and get out of my HIV rut! I’m having fun with pop culture topics you don’t normally see around here (although my most discussed posting so far is about the tension between HIV positive and negative gay men, and it has managed to piss off both).
Here’s a collection of the postings so far for the week. You can always post a comment here, or feel free to leave one at the posts’ Bilerico location. Any friend of mine is a friend of theirs.
The Critic’s Foyer. When Gene Shalit announced he was leaving The Today Show after 40 years of reviewing movies, somebody had to take the job, right? With apologies to Mr. Shalit’s “The Critic’s Corner,” here is my gay, snarky, snappy review of recent movies. This was a fun video to produce!
Jocks are Sexy. Straps are Silly. Jockstraps are a costume, like wearing a harness to a leather bar. Right? I consider the topic oh-so-carefully and provide some history of the garment. At least finding the pictures to use with this post was fun.
Positive vs. Negative: The Truce is Broken. My post about “the tense truce between HIV positive and HIV negative gay men” got me in some hot water (wait until you read the passionate comments!). I wrote about the angry responses I received to my video that praised HIV negative gay men, saying that a nerve had been struck that dealt with buried resentments between positive and negative. Some readers, though, just thought I came across as sarcastic in the video, and it was my style that ruined the substance.
Dancing Away the Sins of the Mother. The series Dancing with the Stars has a way of showing you a celebrity as you’ve never seen them before or, as in the case of Bristol Palin, allowing us to see her humanity and gumption and forget for a moment who the hell her mother is. Bristol has grown on me, and challenged my tendency to demonize opponents — and even by extension, their kids. Bristol’s future on the show doesn’t matter. She’s already done something amazing.
The Top 5 Most Adorable Animal Videos. It’s shameful how spoiled my three dogs are. Thank God my partner is worse about it than I am. So you can imagine how much fun it was for me to research and then create this list. Warning to cat lovers: the list is dog heavy, but a few cute kitties make the grade.
The week is still unfolding; I’ll check back with more Bilerico posts later. Coming up next week: a great new video episode, wherein HIV exercise and nutrition expert Nelson Vergel takes me to the gym, cleans out my fridge, and lectures me about white bread.
Tags: Aging, aids, culture, family, gay, gratitude, hiv, lipo, meth, recovery, Recreation, serosorting, Sexuality
Posted in All Other Video Postings, Books and Writings, Family and Friends, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy | 3 Comments »