My Fabulous Disease

When I was nine years old, I took my parents’ album of the Broadway musical “Damn Yankees” and memorized every syllable of Gwen Verdon’s show stopper, “Who’s Got the Pain When They Do the Mambo?” Once I was satisfied with my lip-synching and choreography (I decided that a mambo was a dance in which young boys gyrated and flung themselves on and off the living room sofa), the number was ready for public display.

The premiere was a simple affair, exclusive and unannounced. Mrs. May from across the street had stopped in for afternoon coffee, and opportunity knocked when Mother busied herself in the kitchen for a few minutes.

Not a smart move, Mother, leaving Mark alone with the company.

“Mrs. May, would you like to see me do a song?” The unsuspecting woman gave a polite “yes, that sounds nice” and before Mother could run interference I had turned on the stereo and dropped the needle at the precise moment where Gwen breaks into song.

Mrs. May stared and stared, her hands folded neatly in her lap, as I brought out every sashay, twist and thrust in my dancing arsenal. My moves may have been imperfect but I vocalized brilliantly, thanks to Gwen. As I struck my final pose, arms reaching for the heavens, frozen and triumphant, I saw mother standing in the doorway, holding a plate of cookies and breathing heavily through her nostrils.

Future performances would be limited to my bedroom, where I could conjure an audience cheering with acclamation and mothers wouldn’t put you on restriction.

It is that boy, the cheerful but feminine performer, that I always feared would creep out of me as I navigated young adulthood as a gay man. I worked to shed his characteristics, to replace every soft gesture with a wooden one, to embrace the gym and tank tops and Levi jeans with the same fervor I once had for my beloved Broadway musicals, with mixed success.

And then, a lifetime later, as I worked for an AIDS agency in Atlanta in the 90’s, destiny called. An upcoming drag contest to benefit our agency was suffering from poor participation, and my boss asked if I would consider entering.

Being a drag queen, even for a night, terrified and delighted me. But the performer in me won out, wouldn’t you know, and Anita Mann was born. I created an interactive video rendition of Donna Summer’s “This Time I Know It’s for Real,” (even then, long before this blog, I was toying with the possibilities of video) and won the contest.

Soon I was performing with “the camp drag queens of the south,” The Armorettes, who hosted a Sunday night show to raise funds for AIDS organizations. Over the years they have raised over $1 million dollars, and their show was a sellout every week. But my own phobic notions lingered.

I didn’t want to be known as a drag queen (“It’s comedy! I’m a performer!” I would insist). I never appeared anywhere in drag but on that stage – I would always get dressed at the show, and was often out of drag for the final curtain call, in a bid to display whatever masculine credentials I had to offer.

I would hear other gay men make disparaging remarks about drag and I withered, unable to admit I was playing to a packed room every Sunday.

The nexus of shame and shamelessness is a complicated one. Each week I put on full display the very things about myself that I had worked so hard to reject – my femininity, my silly pursuit of acceptance through laughter and applause. And just as I gained confidence in what I was doing and why, I would lose a potential boyfriend when he learned of my weekend talents.

As a growing drug addiction encroached on my free time, I abandoned Anita Mann to its demands. For many years thereafter, Anita’s dress and wig would be relegated to a duffel bag hidden in the back of the hallway closet. I had found a vocation in drugs that offered twice the shame and every bit of the need to keep quiet about it.

It took a few years in recovery from my addiction before Anita would make her comeback. Armed with a TV set and a sense of the absurd, Anita performed at a benefit for those of us in recovery, in what may have been her finest hour. Her rendition of “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” grows more insane by the moment, and perfectly embodied my interest in multi-media performance.

And yes, I am aware that I speak of her in the third person. Maybe it is because I view her as a character I have created, and perhaps it is the remnants of shame, and of my need to keep her at a distance.

It’s strange, how those things about which we have drawn the most shame are also able to liberate us, not to mention help others. My HIV status. My drug addiction. My drag personality. As I have embraced each of these, I’ve found self-acceptance and a way to carry a message of hope, and even joy, to others.

Anita Mann limits her performances these days to recovery related engagements. It seems fitting that these two aspects of my life, both once secretive, have found their place together. Anita has a voice now as well, doing a sort of recovery stand-up and even singing live when the occasion permits. Anyone in recovery might enjoy watching the highlights of her recent stint at the Crystal Meth Anonymous conference in Atlanta, which includes her bittersweet rendition of “Happiness is…”

Meanwhile, I still struggle with the need to project as much masculinity as I can muster. I swagger more than I sashay. I sport a beard when possible. And I work to maintain a strict gym regimen.

It’s important for me to stay in shape if I expect to fit in that dress.
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PLUS…

The HIV Cruise Retreat is going to be sold out early this year, because the cruise ship, unlike previous years, is taking back unsold cabins from the cruise organizer that are not sold within the next week. In years past, cabins for our group could be sold much closer to departure. This is probably due to the popularity of the Halloween voyage, and it means you must act now to get a spot. I love this event. Contact Paul Stalbuam at 888-640-7447 or visit www.HIVCruise.com.

Tags: acting, culture, drag, gay, help others, hiv, meth, recovery, Recreation
Posted in Anita Mann and Acting Gigs, Family and Friends, Gay Life, Meth and Recovery, My Fabulous Disease | 9 Comments »

Lessons Learned from Kissing a Straight Boy

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

Last night I kissed a straight guy full on the lips. Then he tenderly put his arms around me and kissed me back. Tonight I’m going to do it again.

It sounds like… conquest. Or breaking a taboo. At the very least it fulfills the fantasies of many a gay man.

And it makes me wonder why.

The object of my affections is a man named Travis, and he plays my lover in a play we’re performing about a gay couple doomed by drug abuse.

Travis is most certainly straight, judging by the dorm room condition of his dressing area, his raunchy jokes and the effortless masculinity he possesses and that I can only approximate.

At an early rehearsal, long before any kissing would ensue, the director motioned me aside to share some surprising words.

“Let’s take our time working up to the kisses,” said the director. He lowered his voice a little. “Travis has never kissed a man. He’s straight.” It sounded like a condition.

And in a way, it was. It immediately colored how I acted around him, on stage and off. The play covers our courtship and as we rehearsed I felt another type of courtship happening. Was he watching me, thinking that’s the guy I have to kiss? Was I masculine enough? Did he think I was cute? Did he even care if I was attractive or not? Was he disgusted at the thought of touching me?

Obviously he was comfortable enough to take the role. But to be honest, he was nervous and it showed. I finally got the nerve to say something about it during a break.

“So Travis…” I began. “You’re straight and you’ve never kissed a guy I hear.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Sorry about that.” He was actually apologizing for being straight, and I felt like doing the same thing for being gay. “I guess it’s an issue for me but I’ll get more comfortable. I did a nude scene with a gay guy before, but I wasn’t playing gay and we didn’t kiss or anything.”

This man was on stage naked and found it easier than kissing a guy? I would French kiss the entire cast and crew of “Ugly Betty” before you would find me dangling uncovered on stage.

Bringing it up helped immensely. We not only joked about his “condition,” but we also discussed mine: HIV. It allowed me to engage in some basic HIV prevention education with someone who might not otherwise get candid answers to his concerns. Yes, he knew you couldn’t get it from kissing, but hearing it definitively made him more at ease.

We made a deal that we would start kissing when we no longer needed to hold scripts, and when that time came, I didn’t hesitate. And bless him, neither did he.

It was a brief, perfectly ordinary kiss. And it was done.

Once the occasion had passed I think we both realized it was much ado about nothing. But it got me thinking about why the fact he is straight made the idea of kissing him somehow more… exciting. Why? It may be as simple as wanting what you can not have. And that’s a common desire.

It’s the other implications that bother me. Do I see a straight man as innately more appealing than myself? As better, as a more authentic specimen of Man? That would suggest I think of myself as less than ideal because of my sexuality.

Whatever the reasons, it’s not the only preconceived ideas I had about my straight co-star. I questioned if he could pull off the gay thing. Or would something, like his macho pride or his clueless heterosexuality, prevent his performance from being “authentic.”

But something happens every performance that surprises me and shames my prejudices. This lumbering straight dude who bristles when I call him “sweetheart” offstage becomes an affectionate, giving lover onstage. His eyes smile at me. He pulls me closer in our bedroom scene. He shows a sensitive, willing and playful vulnerability.

It has been an enlightening experience. I now realize how little faith I had in his talent, much less his humanity. I’m not alone. Half the cast is gay, and almost all of us play multiple roles in various sexual combinations. Between our sincere desire to understand our characters and getting to know each other, the backstage chatter runs somewhere between Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer.

We’ve all learned a lot. I learned that if something got in the way of portraying a gay couple on stage, it wasn’t the straight man’s phobias.

It was mine.

(This posting is from the December, 2007 archives, during a theater stint in my beloved Atlanta, where I will return to live in January. On another note, I thank everyone for your messages of concern and support over my recent breakup; they have sustained me during a difficult time. — Mark)

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PLUS…

I was familiar with studies showing that attractive people tend to get favorable treatment in our society, but did you know that your likeability can affect the quality of your health care? A new posting on Klick Pharm’s blog “Digital Rx” shares a study which finds this to be true. “As an educated and knowledgeable contributor to the process the e-patient must bring forward what he or she knows,” says writer Brad Einarsen, “but it seems that it is important to do it in a collaborative and, for lack of a better term, friendly way.”

This week in pop sleaze reports, Ashton Kutcher is still fending off rumors of a tryst in a hot tub, while his wife Demi Moore showed up at her latest movie premiere looking ghastly; her stick-thin figure reignited concerns about her health and drug use. But among all the salacious reporting was a terrific article by Jennifer Morton of POZ Magazine that carried a simple question: “Dude, Where’s Your Condom?” wanted to know why Ashton, according to the US Magazine story by his one night stand-er Sara Leal, engaged in what we gays call barebacking. “Quite frankly, whatever happens between Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore is their business,” writes Morton. “But if Leal’s account is true and he is having unprotected sex with strangers, he’s risking a whole lot more than his marriage.”

Tags: acting, culture, gay, hiv, recovery, Recreation, Sexuality
Posted in Anita Mann and Acting Gigs, Books and Writings, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease | 5 Comments »

The Twilight of the Redhead

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

According to family lore, my arrival at birth with a full head of orange hair was met with shock and awe. My five older siblings ran the gamut from blond to dark brown, but they otherwise lacked my peculiar genetic mutation. Although the hospital nursery staff was abuzz with delight, my own family debated whether the color would last while they double checked the identification tags.

It lasted. In fact, the color bloomed like a Van Gogh painting. Before long I would learn the price of being different… and how intense childhood ridicule can be.

Look, it’s Freckle Face Strawberry! Howdy Doody. Bozo. Opie. I didn’t know whether to chop off my hair or hide underneath it. Only little old ladies and a few teachers seemed to appreciate it, but their cooing and stroking – they always needed to touch it, like a lucky charm – never endeared me to the bullies at school.

When puberty hit and the startling orange hue crept further down my torso I was beyond mortified. How could my body play such a cruel joke? Did this adolescent sissy really need another reason to be kicked and taunted? I actually made it through two years of junior high gym class without once taking a shower, usually by fiddling around at my locker – folding and arranging my clothes, feigning trouble with my combination lock – until it was safe to get dressed.

When I came bursting from the closet while in high school, I managed to finally celebrate my red hair along with my sexuality, and reveled in both. I mastered every hair product known to man, blow drying and spraying my head into a Farrah Fawcett extravaganza before a night out at the local gay bar. I discovered the men who loved redheads, and at last, I’d found the ideal purpose for the trait that once humiliated me.

It even became crucial to my vocation, during a brief stint in my twenties in television commercials. Casting directors saw dollar signs on my head, and I became the freckled pitchman for everything from McDonalds to Popeye’s to Barq’s root beer. I treated my hair as a gay Samson might, with the latest gels and shampoos and conditioners, and in return it made me money and got me laid.

Whatever I became through the years, this single aspect of my identity pre-dated everything. Before the writer, before the AIDS activist and the drug addict and the actor and the childhood sissy, I was a redhead. From the very womb.

And then, not quite. Sometime in my thirties, the color began to slowly drain from my scalp. The orange and reds eventually surrendered to a strawberry blond, and even those tones became weaker, like watering down a pitcher of Kool-Aid, as my fiftieth year approached.

It must sound ridiculous, but I felt the loss deeply. We had been through so much together, my red hair and I.

I tried to take heart in having, whatever the color, a full, thick head of healthy hair, guaranteed for life by the family gene pool. That is, until a few months ago, when I stood in the shower and felt strands of hair sliding down my face, in a massive march from my head to the drain. After decades taking HIV medications, I had begun a new treatment regimen and its woeful side effects were ruthless and immediate. Within weeks my hair was thinner, dulled and brittle to the touch.

One of my private, most selfish fears has been realized. I have AIDS Hair.

But while removing clumps from the shower drain is a jolt to my vanity, it isn’t the trauma it might have been. After living with HIV for nearly thirty years, I’ve witnessed how creative it can be in its cruelty, down to the slightest of indignities. The sudden damage to my hair has been worrisome, I’ll admit, but part of me knows that it had long since served its purpose. There is something correct, even poetic, in this twilight of the redhead.

Years ago, as I began rebuilding my life after years of drug addiction, my therapist made a withering observation. “You’ve got no second act, Mark,” he said after one of my self-absorbed ramblings. “You make a nice first impression. But then what? Not much.”

The work that I’ve done in the years since his pronouncement have taught me the value of more important traits, of lending a hand or paying attention to friends or standing up for our community. And this evolution appears to have swept away one of my most stubborn sources of willful pride.

The last decade has given me the gift of other, more meaningful assets. They lie beneath, away from the gaze of strangers and first impressions.

My best features are now visible only to those who really know me. And they are just beautiful.

Mark

(I hope you’ll consider sharing or re-posting this, now or whenever you run across something here you appreciate. This blog has become a wonderful outlet and voice for me, and I must admit, I love new visitors!)

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PLUS…

Sometimes I blurt out a blog posting that belies my supposed serenity and enlightenment, like the rant I posted on The Bilerico Project (“For God’s Sake, Put Your Shirt On”) about gay guys who can’t seem to keep their clothes on when posting pictures on mainstream social media sites like Facebook. Pecs and traps and biceps? On glorious display. The friends who are beside them in the photo? Cropped out. Guys will even chop off their own faces, as not to distract from the wonder that is their abs (and, as we all know, it’s not the friends you keep, but the abs you maintain). Anyway, I had some fun calling them out about it, and the comments have been kind. Well, except for the twenty-something that claimed I was just jealous I wasn’t sleeping with young hotties. Umm, ouch.

My favorite HIV/AIDS online resource, TheBody.com, has just opened a brand new section on the importance of drug adherence and tips on maintaining your regimen. As part of it, I was asked to produce some short “Day in the Life” videos of people living with HIV and how they fit their pills into their schedule. It was terrific to produce a video about Damaries Cruz of south Florida (right), who shares her misgivings about starting therapy at all, and her collaborative relationship with her physician. And the story of Tree Alexander is an inspiration, as he works to maintain his treatment regimen even during a period of homelessness. The reaction of his large family to his HIV diagnosis was wonderful and astounding: they threw him a “stay healthy” party!

Tags: acting, Aging, culture, family, gay, gratitude, help others, hiv, meth, recovery
Posted in Family and Friends, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, Meth and Recovery, My Fabulous Disease | 11 Comments »

Why Are We Still Haunted by the Boys in the Band?

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

When I was 15 years old, I couldn’t wait to attend a local community theater production of The Boys in the Band. I was intrigued by the play’s dark and mysterious reputation, and had heard that it included a lot of homosexuality (funny how that word isn’t used much anymore). It sounded like exactly what this budding young queer needed: some lessons about the yellow brick road ahead.

I didn’t like what I saw. The characters, a group of gay men celebrating a birthday, were mean and sad and angry with one another. And they were all presented like weird, exotic animals, bitching and crying for the lascivious thrill of a very shocked audience in Shreveport, Louisiana. I left the show feeling terribly disenchanted, fearing my life was destined to be drunken and pathetic.

It was the theatrical opposite of an It Gets Better video.

In the insightful and appropriately melancholy new documentary Making the Boys, the remarkable journey of the groundbreaking play and movie adaptation is discussed by playwright Mart Crowley and a host of gay cultural voices, old and new.

When The Boys in the Band opened off-Broadway in 1968, homosexuality was still classified as a mental illness. The play’s behind-the-scenes peek at gay men in their natural habitat was fascinating to audiences and greeted with enthusiasm from the gay community. Yes, they were maladjusted, self hating fags, but they were our maladjusted, self hating fags.

But in 1969, as the movie version was being filmed only blocks from the Stonewall bar, a riot occurred at the club in response to constant police harassment. The modern gay rights movement was born. Seemingly overnight, New York gays stood up for themselves and demanded some respect – from others and, more importantly, themselves. By the time the film version of The Boys in the Band opened in 1970, the story and its sad characters felt like a politically incorrect relic. We wanted nothing to do with these old, bitter friends anymore. They didn’t reflect our “pride.”

Opinions about the show vary wildly, as evidenced by the interviews in the documentary. Gay playwright Edward Albee (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?”) always hated the show and still does. The surviving actors (the theatrical cast all recreated their roles for the film) staunchly defend the humanity of their characters. And younger gays interviewed about the show have no idea what the hell we’re talking about. “I don’t really know about any boys in the band,” states perplexed fashion star Christian Siriano. “Honey, I’ve got dresses to make!”

The Boys in the Band has become a litmus test for how you view our ability to love ourselves. And those boys continue to reverberate and reflect our attitudes and tribulations as gay men, and that includes the AIDS crisis.

Watching the film today, I’m struck with an odd compulsion. I see these characters laughing and bitching, and I want to reach through the screen and shake them and warn them, to tell them about something coming, something too awful to describe, of a plague they can’t possibly comprehend that is coming to kill them all.

Indeed, at one point in Making the Boys, we are shown photos of the actors, of the men who played these iconic characters we loved and then hated and then, finally, simply accepted. And listed under each of the actors’ names is the year he died of AIDS. 1984. 1985. 1988. On and on it goes, through what appears to be a majority of the cast.

The moment brings about such emotional confusion, of regret and interrupted affections. It’s like hearing of a death of a long lost friend with whom you had a troubled relationship.

Our boys continue to live on through the film, performing their roles on that screen exactly the same way, defiant in their stereotypes, no matter how many times we revisit the movie.

What has changed, for better and for worse, is us.

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PLUS…

You know who would probably have had some choice words to say about this blog posting if he were still alive? Vito Russo, author of the milestone book on gays in film, The Celluloid Closet. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the book’s publication, writer Mark Adnum provides a provocative re-examination of the book and the attitude of its author. And to hear Adnum tell it, Russo was a hard-to-please bitch who happened to address the topic of gays in the movies at the right time (although others were there first, according to Adnum). This, from Adnum’s piece: The Celluloid Closet is saturated with frustrated references to “tortured little gay boys,” “homosexual fools,” and “sad-eyed queens.” Russo couldn’t stand “screaming queens” or “doe-eyed, timid faggots,” yet oddly “self-hating gays” really rubbed him the wrong way also. Ouch. So, was Russo a gay activism icon, or just another bitter boy in the band?

HVTN 505, also known as the HIV vaccine clinical trial, continues to struggle to find study participants, and that’s a shame. You know I never miss an opportunity to encourage HIV negative gay men and engage them in the HIV/AIDS arena, and this is the best possible way in which they can make a difference to public health. But… maybe they just aren’t sure what is involved. Well, Kyle Bella outlines his experience as a trial participant in great detail in a recent Bilerico Project posting — from the criteria to the risks to his physical exam — and it’s great information for anyone who might be interested. And be sure to visit Hope Takes Action to browse the list of trial sites.

The ADAP Advocacy Association (aaa+) has a new petition that is easy to access and sign — and it adds your voice to all of us who are horrified about this national disgrace. Most recently, Sir Elton John joined the chorus of advocates demanding that Gov. Rick Scott of Florida do something to alleviate the waiting list (there are more than 3500 patients in Florida alone who are waiting to participate in this program). So… just click here to sign a petition at the Elton John AIDS Foundation, asking that ADAP get the funding it desperately needs.

Tags: acting, Aging, aids, culture, gay, Recreation, Sexuality
Posted in Books and Writings, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease | 10 Comments »

The Book with a Promise: It Gets Better

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

There were moments while reading It Gets Better, the new book inspired by the YouTube video project to help bullied youth, when my heart leapt to my throat and hovered there. It happened a few times, quite unexpectedly, usually while in the middle of some essay from an author I’d never heard of. In an instant, I found myself fighting back tears over the pain of someone who was once convinced they would never be happy or accepted in this world.

These emotional bombshells are the secret weapon in this collection of essays: moments of aching truth that pierce the sometimes distracting hype associated with the “It Gets Better” project and deliver an emotional wallop.

In case you don’t know (really?), the It Gets Better Project is the brainchild of writer Dan Savage and his partner Terry Miller. In response to a rash of gay teen suicides due to bullying, the couple realized they didn’t “need permission from parents or an invitation from a school” to reach troubled LGBT teens. All they needed was YouTube to talk to them directly, telling kids to hang on, that “it gets better.”

Months before social media helped topple governments across the globe, this simple idea led a revolution of its own. It reached millions of kids and made The Trevor Project, a crisis hotline for LGBT or questioning youth, a household name. As the YouTube channel exploded, celebrities and elected officials joined the chorus of messages from everyday folks.

And now, the book. It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living (released on March 22) is “inspired” by the video project, meaning some of the essays are original written pieces while others are edited transcripts directly from videos. It’s an earnest, uneven, truly inspirational collection, with enough of those heart-in-your-throat moments to keep you reading.

Interestingly, the most famous names in the book have the least impact. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Al Franken, Suze Orman (left), and even Ellen Degeneres are all here, but their pieces feel about as passionate as thumbing through their cue cards. Maybe fame leads to caution.

You’ll have to settle for celebrity twice-removed to tap a wellspring of real emotion. Randy Roberts Potts is the grandson of the late, ultra-homophobic televangelist Oral Roberts, and Randy shares a family secret more salacious than his own homosexuality: his uncle, Ronald David Roberts, was also gay, and he was so despondent after coming out to his famous father that he killed himself with a gunshot to his heart.

Randy’s own story is filled with religious and social trials, but there is victory. “I had to fight hard for it, but it finally happened,” he writes, “the freedom to just be myself.” And then he can’t resist this: “My grandfather was famous for telling people, ‘Something good is going to happen to you!’ And, it’s strange to admit it, but he was right.”

I still have the voice of lesbian Gabrielle Rivera ringing in my ears. Gabrielle appears on page 45 and not a moment too soon, bursting with truth and anger and passion. “It kind of doesn’t get better,” she proclaims. “…but what happens is this: You get stronger. You learn how to love yourself. You learn that other people are just crazy and caught up in their own crap.”

I’ve never been more moved by a dinner menu then I was reading the entry of food blogger Adam Roberts, who shares exactly what he prepared the night his parents came for dinner to meet the parents of his partner, Craig. Adam intersperses his coming out story with details of the night’s short rib and polenta, and the care, the sheer detail and love, with which he prepares the meal touched me deeply. By the time he served the flourless chocolate cake I was a complete mess.

Krissy Mahan from upstate New York (why are so many of my favorites from lesbians?) assures her readers that “not all gay people are urban… I’ve been really happy being a big rural dyke.” She loves country living but says “I’m sure there are some things that are kind of frustrating to you, and you’re probably rockin’ the flannel shirt every now and then, but that is going to be totally hot to somebody someday. It’s gonna get real better.”

And even an actual reformed bully makes an appearance in the book. Joseph Odysseus Mastro is a straight 29-year-old from Oakland, California, and he has a confession to make. During high school, Joseph “was belligerent toward kids I recognized as being in the theater group, screaming ‘Fag! Faggot!’ at them.”

Beyond apologizing to them, Joseph turned to community service. At 19, he began handing out condoms and lube outside gay clubs on behalf of an AIDS agency. “Some of my straight friends would ask ‘why are you helping out the gays?’ which is a reprehensible question in the first place, but I respond that… there are gay men who have HIV, and they’re who I want to help.” Joseph wins the Reformed Bully of the Year Award, hands down.

The real excitement of this book is imagining where it will end up – a public library in South Dakota, the reading room of a youth center on an Air Force base — and how, because we must, we get this book on the shelves on every junior high and high school in the country.

Last year, my (also gay) brother Dick and I sat down at our Mom’s house and turned on the camera. For the next few minutes we traded stories about growing up gay in the same family – about 15 years apart – and even brought out photos from our youth. We teased each other like brothers do, and it was apparent we love one another, because we do.

Our It Gets Better video became a popular entry, and we were honored to be included in this book. There we are on page 300, near the back, in a transcript of our chat that reads like a sassy play with two very gay characters. It is neither the best nor the most moving essay in the book, but it does show an easy love between us, and that alone may be of value to a LGBT youth out there. I couldn’t be more proud.

Like many people who grew up gay and afraid, my soul may have survived those years but I have a few scars left behind. It Gets Better gently strokes these wounds — the toughened and the still-tender ones — so that young people today might take heart and make the journey to adulthood a little more safely.

There’s no denying the power of this project, and what could easily be the most important book of the year.

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Word from the organizers of the annual HIV Cruise Retreat is that there are now more registrants for the November cruise to the Caribbean than ever before! I was honored to be the M.C. for the cruise last year, and honestly I had more fun than I could have imagined (nope, I’m not getting paid to participate or to promote this event). Take a look at the web site for video from last year’s event and consider joining us. It’s a largely gay group with straight allies, but without barriers or attitude, just sincere support and a lot of fun.

Tags: acting, culture, family, gay, gratitude, help others, politics, Sexuality
Posted in Books and Writings, Family and Friends, Gay Life, My Fabulous Disease, News | 4 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.

#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 »

My Fabulous Disease: The Complete Video Collection

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Here is a brief description and link to the entire collection of My Fabulous Disease videos, stretching back to the premiere episode in 2008. The videos have been viewed in classrooms, at conferences and in support groups, and you’re welcome to re-post and share with proper credit.

This list is always available to you for browsing — just look under Categories on your right for “A LIST OF ALL “MFD” VIDEOS.”

HIV Criminalization Face-Off: One Poz Man and His Accuser. February 7, 2012. What if you could witness a face-to-face confrontation between a man living with HIV and the sex partner accusing him of not revealing his status? Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on that wall? The fireworks could be mighty, as emotions raged between the furious accuser and the positive person trying to defend his actions. What might that meeting look like, exactly? In this video, you’re going to find out. I was proud of how this video turned out, and gratified by advocates who considered it a solid and well balanced look at this controversial issue.

The ‘My Fabulous Disease’ Holiday Spectacular! December 13, 2011. That’s right folks, this is fun for the whole family! In fact, MY whole family gets in the act, as we share holiday cheer, get a lesson on Christmas cookies from Mom, and even get a visit from Santa. When we filmed this video, I told my family that there were people watching my blog who didn’t have a close relationship with their family, and discussing HIV was out of the question. They took this to heart, as you will see, and their compassion shines through. Merry merry!

The Long Road Home from Relapse. November 29, 2011. Okay, this isn’t a video but I didn’t want you to miss it so I’m making an exception. This is a honest account of my drug relapse and it quickly became the most viewed blog posting in the history of this site. While my perception of the reasons and fallout from my relapse continue to evolve, this is how I felt at that time. I hope it might help others — either to give you a sense of addictive thinking, or remind you why you never, ever want to go back to using.

Sailing the 2011 HIV Cruise Retreat. November 15, 2011. I realize how fortunate I am. So many of us are not able to take the time or devote the money for a cruise like this. It’s my hope that this video blog will inspire you to seek community, in whatever way you can, and never forget that a sense of humor sure does help the journey. And what a journey this 7-day Caribbean cruise was! There was plenty of social events, educational workshops, excursions to the shores of various islands, and let us now forget the parties — The Mad Hatter Party was worth the fare alone, but then The Blue Party, hosted by my comic alter ego Anita Mann, reached new levels of madness and joy. You can get more info about the event at www.HIVCruise.com. The event welcomes men and women, gay and straight, and they are a truly inspiring, fun filled group.

Divorce, Stress, HIV… and no jokes. November 3, 2011. This is a rather personal blog video, there’s no doubt about that. I was even a little apprehensive because it doesn’t offer the usual helpful tips or the “entertainment value” of my other videos. But one of my problems has always been trying to be the life of the party when I’m not feeling it. So I was relieved and pleased that there was so much love for this video, in which I sit down with my friend (and a therapist) David Fawcett to discuss divorce, loss, HIV, and what to do when life isn’t all that damn fabulous. This is a different Mark than you might be used to, unplugged and exposed.

Finding Support in an e-Patient World. September 26, 2011. You’re part of a healthcare revolution in cyberspace, my friends. It’s changing the way people find treatment information, relate to their doctor, and support one another. In this video blog from the e-Patient Connections conference, you get to meet some of the marvelous people who are leading the charge. And guess what? It turns out that there are people living with a wide variety of conditions who are online and advocating for themselves and others. This moving and funny video will teach you something.

7 Ways to Save Money on Your Meds. August 16, 2011. With all the doctor appointments and wellness activities we engage in, living with HIV/AIDS can be a full-time job. And the truth is, it doesn’t pay very well. We’ve all been feeling the pinch of tough economic times. So I hope you’ll find some savings in this video blog, “7 Ways to Save Money on Meds,” featuring Jason King, a patient advocate for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Jason has some tips that your pharmacist may not be telling you.

I’m Gonna Wipe That AIDS Right Off of My Face. August 2, 2011. Most of us know “the look,“ and I’ve started to get it. It’s the telltale gullies and sunken cheeks associated with longtime HIV infection or (more likely) medications. Many of my friends and colleagues in this struggle suffer from it, and they may either be comfortable with it, proud of it as a badge of honor, or simply resigned to it. I salute us all, whether our features tells our HIV story or not. But meanwhile, I’ll do what I can to wipe that shit off my face. In this video, I revisit Dr. Gerald Pierone for a treatment of Radiesse and Sculptra, and get information about the more permanent facial filler, Artefill.

The Entire 2011 ADAP Conference in Nine Minutes! July 19, 2011. The 2011 ADAP Advocacy Association (aaa+) conference held July 5-7 in Washington, DC, was bursting with spirit. Dozens of advocates from across the country met for three days of workshops and speakers, and in this video blog, you’ll see the entire conference boiled down to only nine minutes. I’m the cliff notes of HIV/AIDS events! The AIDS Drug Assistance Program waiting list continues to grow on a daily basis, denying patients the very medications that can keep them alive. This national disgrace deserves our attention and our phone calls to our elected officials, urging them not to forget the most vulnerable among us.

Should AIDS Activists and Pharma just get along? July 12, 2011. Am I an AIDS activist, ready to question authority and demand high standards of service for those living with HIV/AIDS? Or am I a “resource” for the pharmaceutical industry, so that they might craft more effective community programs that will lead AIDS patients to “care.” This video on treatment activism mulls over the conflict, provides some historical context, and keeps the red spray paint at hand, in case the activism needs to go “old school.” This became the most “shared” blog posting of mine to date, and very quickly, too. I think people responded to the mix of education and edgy advocacy.

Dab Garner’s 30 Year Story of Survival. June 28, 2011. This video is quite simple, really. One man explains to you what happened to him, from becoming one of the first AIDS patients in San Francisco to his life today in the service of others with HIV. Dab Garner has clearly put things into perspective, and his calm manner shows a man at peace with his fate, his survival, and the ghosts around him. It’s an amazing story, actually. And considering the importance of passing our history down to younger people, it might not be a bad idea to share this video with someone you know, maybe even someone under 35 years old.

Vacations and Retreats for People with HIV/AIDS. April 28, 2011. Summer is approaching and vacation plans are being made – but have you ever considered a retreat or getaway with other people living with HIV/AIDS? It might sound odd to seek out a vacation event just for people with HIV. For me, my status is only a part of who I am, and I’ve gotten pretty good at disclosing when I need to. But for many of us it’s tough getting past that hurdle. So joining a group of others living with HIV might be a fun solution if you’re looking to make friends with other people living with HIV and build your support network.

The Hard Facts on Erectile Dysfunction: Pills, Pumps and Prosthetics. April 6, 2011. My friend and HIV fitness author Nelson Vergel (“Testosterone: A Man’s Guide”) returns for another visit, this time to discuss erectile dysfunction and HIV, including the treatments available and issues specific to those of us with HIV. He also gives detailed information on the use of testosterone replacement therapy. Quite an informative video.

A Special One-Year Anniversary Posting! March 8, 2011. After weeks of teasing you with announcements and Top Ten listing, I finally put an end to milking the occasion with this, a special video celebrating one year of blogging on my site. This is lightweight, no doubt, but I do answer the most popular questions I get about myself and the blog, and it gives me a great opportunity to thank you, my readers and watchers. It has indeed been a great first year, and this video demonstrates my gratitude.

Touring an HIV+ Gay Sex Club. Plus: The Porn Stars that Got Away. March 1, 2011. I revisit a video tour of a public sex venue from last year and catch up with the host of “Poz4Play,” a monthly gathering of HIV positive gay men. Along the way we discuss serosorting (limiting partners to those who share your HIV status) and if these parties offer real prevention or a false sense of security from other STD’s. Meanwhile, I share what happens when you get “too real” in your line of questioning with porn stars (hint: they stop returning your e-mails).

The Hilarious Idiocy of Anonymous Gay Sex. February 7, 2011. When someone brought this YouTube video to my attention, I laughed out loud at its amazing recreation of an online hookup between two gay men, and the level of stupidity that is often involved when negotiating sex. The person who created this video prefers the anonymity of cyberspace, but I think he deserves a medal for perfectly demonstrating what we’re up against when it comes to making intelligent sexual choices.

Hitting the Gym with HIV Fitness Expert Nelson Vergel. February 3, 2011. Fitness expert and author Nelson Vergel gets my growing waistline to the gym for a lesson in aerobic activity and weight training and the benefits and risks to those with HIV. Part Two in an ongoing series of fitness and nutrition videos with Nelson.

AIDS Activism 101: Steps to end the ADAP crisis. January 31, 2011. An interesting and practical look at the steps to take to have a voice with your elected official, by getting the activists at the 2011 ADAP Summit to cle4arly explain what was happening with the program, and then easy directions to contact your elected official about this (or any!) advocacy issue.

Five Things About HIV (They’re Not Telling You). January 18, 2011. Activist and POZ Magazine Founder Sean Strub stops by for a game of ping pong and then a very provocative discussion of why public health campaigns keep getting it wrong in terms of messages to gay men, and some things that gay men should know that have not been widely reported.

HIV Fitness Stud Nelson Vergel Raids My Fridge. January 11, 2011. The first in a series of fitness and nutrition videos with HIV fitness expert Nelson Vergel. In this video, Nelson raids my fridge and gives simple, practical tips on eating right, mysterious “diet” labels, and the importance of proper pooping!

Recovering Joy. December 14, 2010. Why include a video of my performing in drag at a Christmas benefit for people in recovery from drugs and alcohol? Because it’s funny. And because I wasn’t very funny when i was an active addict, and there are a lot of wise messages contained in this very funny rendition of “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” as read by my alter ego, Ms. Anita Mann.

Once, When We Were Heroes. November 28, 2010. This is an essay that won a 2008 award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalism Association, for best written piece of the year, but I created this video version because I wanted another way of sharing its message. It potently describes the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and draws a bittersweet line between life than, and now. The best of my work.

My T-cells could use a facelift. November 11, 2010. This is the video that might be my personal favorite because it is funny and speaks to my issues of aging and regret and selfishly trying to hold on to old behaviors. Watch as, through video editing magic, my mature self and my young, selfish self argue about the effects of aging in a gay culture. Funny and wise, I think.

My Video Report aboard the HIV Cruise Retreat. November 1, 2010. During my maiden voyage as M.C. for the HIV Cruise Retreat, I didn’t know what to expect. But as you’ll see in this rollicking video diary, our group bonded and laughed and learned. Absent were so many of the social tensions that usually follow a group of largely gay men around. We all just cared for one another and had a terrific time. I hope I can return every year!

The Price is Right, 30 Years after Coming on Down. October 18, 2010. Would you believe I won a car on the Price is Right, back in 1980 when Bob Barker still had dark hair, and I have the video to prove it? I sure do! You’ll watch the video and get to read an essay about the entire experience, and how it haunted me for years, when the advent of AIDS ruined all those wonderful plans I had told Bob Barker I was making for my life.

In Praise of HIV Negative Gay Men. October 13, 2010. Oh man, did this one ever get me into trouble. Here I thought I had such a great idea, doing a video to praise an encourage HIV negative gay men for staying that way, and acknowledging the fact that, in many ways, their struggles without HIV are harder than mine with it. Oops… this video offended just about everyone, mostly for a perceived sarcasm in my delivery. I’ll let you watch and decide for yourself.

The 2010 HRC Dinner (in under four minutes!). October 10, 2010. I attended this national dinner for the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC, and had fun teasing the event by presenting the bloated evening in less than four minutes. My snarkiness was rewarded — it has become my most-watched video because, as it turns out, there appear to be quite a lot of people who like people being snarky about HRC. Just sayin’.

Fighting Back Hard Against Bullying. October 5, 2010. This essay about gay bullying includes the video “It Gets Better with the King Brothers,” the video I made with my (also gay) brother Dick. We had no idea it would become one of the most watched videos for the project, and it now slated to be included in the “It Gets Better” book out in March, 2011. People seemed to like our brotherly love!

Condoms & Bareback Sex at the Gay Summit. (September 20, 2010.) As gay sexual advocates met at the annual Gay Men’s Health Summit in Ft Lauderdale, there was an assortment of workshops and speakers focused on a golden oldie: promoting condom usage among gay men and how to address barebacking. Included is an interview with activist (and one-time bareback poster boy) Tony Valenzuela.

My Forbidden Love for Gay Monsters. September 28, 2010. This essay on my crush on Quentin Collins from Dark Shadows, and love for horror movies, gave me a chance to show off a video I produced for a stage production of Night of the Living Dead. I had such a blast making it!

HIV Stigma (and my lover Jack) at USCA. September 14, 2010. At the United States Conference on AIDS held in Orlando, I learned about a new project to address HIV stigma (which seems to be growing, not shrinking) and the reasons why. I also provide a tour of the conference itself and get some designs lessons from Jack Mackenroth, the Project Runway hunk who is HIV positive and is behind a public awareness campaign.

Sex While HIV Positive: The New Criminals. September 6, 2010. This video was significant to me for two big reasons: making it introduced me to the heroic activist Sean Strub for the first time in person, and it gave Sean a chance to very clearly outline a misunderstood topic. At a time when treatment successes and public acceptance of HIV/AIDS has made strides, why are there horrific laws that not only unfairly fault those with HIV, but are based on bad science?

Does the Gay Men’s Health Summit make me look fat? August 26, 2010. Also while at the Gay Men’s Summit in Ft Lauderdale, I attended a workshop on body image and gay men — and not a moment too soon, since my expanding waistline was threatening what my culture (and I) valued about the perfect body.

AIDS2010 for Dummies: An Entertaining Review. August 3, 2010. This is a collection of ALL the videos I produced while in Vienna for the 2010 International AIDS Conference, and it’s quite a colorful collection. I left the research-oriented reporting to others and followed the people, sights and sounds of this amazing conference — teenagers from around the world teaching about condoms! An AIDS prevention musical featuring sex workers (STAR WHORES)! The rallies and the protests and the celebrities are all here. My thanks to TheBody.com for sending me to this event as their correspondent!

The Gay Pride PSA (that will never air!). June 15, 2010. What begins as a funny reflection of what gay pride has meant to me (organizing a parade starring ME as a drag queen — when I was eleven), becomes something much, much different in this short video. I guess the wreckage of my drug addiction was still haunting me. What results is a sweet message about PRIDE that suddenly punches you in the gut. I’m proud of this one.

Six Tips for Choosing Your HIV Doctor. May 28, 2010. When I began making plans to move from Atlanta back to Ft Lauderdale, the most daunting task was having to find the right doctor in my new city. Luckily, my Atlanta physician, Dr. David Morris, walked me through some practical tips that anyone can use. Watch his advice — and then watch as my cameras capture my very first meeting (really!) with my new doctor in Ft Lauderdale, as I follow the tips and grill him with questions!

What It Feels Like for a Mom. May 4, 2010. How does our HIV status affect the ones who love us most? What fears are they not telling us? I’ve always wondered, so I sat my mother down for an interview about my HIV, what it was like raising two gay sons, and how it affected the family when we experienced our own AIDS tragedy. She never flinched at the questions, and her answers are sincere and revealing.

Has My AIDS Crisis Ended? April 18, 2010. As the annual AIDS Walk strolled through my community, I remembered the crisis mentality of earlier Walks — and how getting myself to a Walk at all no longer seemed so important. Has my “crisis” lifted? As part of this video I sat down with U.S. Congressman Barney Frank and asked him about the difference between the emotional toll to gay men, “then” and now.

Facing Change. March 25, 2010. While packing for my move back to Ft Lauderdale from Atlanta, the chore of separating my belongings (“deciding what to keep and what to throw away…”) brings up some emotions (it also brings up a face in a box, more than ready to tease me for feeling blue). I give the packing a rest long enough to get honest about the reasons for the move, and the beauty of second chances.

The Real Poz Guys of Atlanta. March 11, 2010 (originally posted on TheBody.com on February 23, 2010). Another fun evening of friendship and chocolate and secrets with my supportive group of friends in Atlanta. This time, we bake brownies and talk about everything from our doctors to our love lives, and then have Show ‘n Tell! A great example of the value of strong social support for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Anita Mann’s Infamous TV Set Number. (Filmed in 2008). Set to Nancy Lamott’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” my drag queen alter ego battles herself locked in a TV set in this, her finest hour on stage. This performance was taped at a fund raiser for gay and lesbians in recovery from drugs an alcohol, since Anita (and I) are in recovery from crystal meth addiction. Laughter isn’t just good for my t-cells, it is also vital to my recovery from addiction!

A Facial Wasting Update. (Originally appeared on TheBody.com on February 2, 2010). In a previous video I took you along to my first appointment with Dr. Gerald Pierone to address my facial wasting, and that video focused on how my wasting affected me personally. This video, told more from the perspective of Dr. Gerald Pierone, takes you along on my third visit for facial fillers to treat my wasting (lipoatrophy) with Sculptra and Radiesse. Hope you’re not afraid of needles.

Serosorting and Sex Clubs. (Originally appeared on TheBody.com on January 4, 2010.) This quickly became my most-viewed video blog to date. Was it the intelligent discussion about serosorting (limited one’s sexual partners to those who share your HIV status), or was it the guided tour of a gay sex club? Hmm. At any rate, Poz4Play sex party host Bill Trimble leads me through the titillating hallways of his monthly sex party “exclusively for HIV positive gay men.” Then we have a seat next to the sling and enjoy an equally interesting conversation about the sexual choices gay men make — and why Bill believes he is providing important HIV prevention.

My Search for Meaning. (Originally appeared on TheBody.com on May 27, 2009.) Such a tiny topic, eh? And yet when you are faced with such tragedy like the AIDS crisis you can find yourself asking, “What’s it all about?” I’ve shared my frustration with the topic and then conduct interviews with psychiatrist Dr. Jesse Peel, AIDS physician Dr. David Morris, and gay theologian Rev. Chris Glaser. Interesting food for thought.

You Gotta Have Friends. (Originally appeared on TheBody.com on April 22, 2009) So many people wrote to express their appreciation of this video and its simple plot: I invited four friends over for dinner and conversation, and all of us are living with HIV. The intimacy of the conversation is real; these are, in fact, good friends of mine. We cover everything from how we disclose our HIV status to friends and dates, to what our mothers think (and which ones are supportive). Antron, Craig, Eric and James demonstrate that in the sometimes stressful world of HIV, friends really matter.

Treating My Facial Wasting. (Originally appeared on TheBody.com on March 25, 2009.) After dealing with facial lipoatrophy (wasting) and seeing it so evident in my videos, I decided to do something about it by visiting Dr. Gerald Pierone in Vero Beach, FL and being treated with injections of facial fillers. Facial wasting and fat displacement are common side effects of both HIV infection and the medications used to treat it. This topic was updated in a later video when I returned to Dr. Pierone, “Facial Wasting Update.”

Mark’s R-Rated Sex Pig Blog. (Originally appeared on TheBody.com on January 28, 2009.) Barebacking, glory holes, casual sex and disclosing my HIV status are all discussed in this bawdy, provocative episode. Aging and negotiating sex as a gay man is as funny as it is frustrating, if you ask me. My favorite part: negotiating safer sex through a glory hole. The video is notable for another, unrelated reason: I was only one month clean from my crystal meth addiction and you can still see the ravages of drugs on my face, which is a lesson all its own.

The Drug Addict Takes a Holiday. (Originally appeared on TheBody.com on January 13, 2009.) Ouch. This one is tough for me to watch. After my former partner Ben ended our relationship when I ended up in drug rehab, I visited him in the home we had shared in Ft Lauderdale and tried to make sense of our past — and what may happen in our future. This video is also a visual testament to age, past drug abuse and HIV meds catching up with me, as evidenced by the lipoatrophy (facial wasting) so apparent on my face.

Taking Care of Hal. (Originally appeared on TheBody.com on November 20, 2008.) I never dreamed I would be spending two months in Michigan helping my oldest brother through chemotherapy. But it got me outside of my head, beyond my own HIV diagnosis, and helped me focus on helping someone else. Sometimes, that’s the best medicine of all. (My brother, Harold R. King, Jr., passed away in the Fall of 2010.)

Oprah Comes Calling. (Originally appeared on TheBody.com on November 10, 2008.) In this, only the second episode of my ongoing video series, Oprah reaches out to touch… me! It leads to bittersweet memories of Louise Hay (the “Hayrides” of the 1980s in West Hollywood), and of my gay brother Dick and his partner’s struggle with AIDS. Also, I get an annual physical with Dr. David Morris. Interesting in that you can see me trying to find a balance between humor and helpfulness.

The PREMIERE of My Fabulous Disease! (Originally appeared on TheBody.com on September 24, 2008.) In September of 2008, my video series “My Fabulous Disease” debuted on the best HIV resource on the net, TheBody.com. Here is that episode, which introduces me as a gay man in recovery living with HIV/AIDS. Little did I know what video adventures would lie ahead!

Tags: acting, Aging, aids, barebacking, culture, drag, family, gay, gratitude, help others, hiv, lipo, Louise Hay, meth, Oprah, physical, physician, politics, Radiesse, recovery, Recreation, research, Sculptra, serosorting, Sexuality, testing
Posted in A LIST OF ALL "MFD" VIDEOS, My Fabulous Disease | 1 Comment »

Tabatha, take over my life!

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

(Note: Stay tuned for bonus postings at the end of this story!)

I don’t wish to hide the truth anymore. My blog is devoted to complete honesty about who I am, so brace yourself: I have a total gay guy crush on Tabatha Coffey.

The snow-haired vixen hosts Bravo’s “Tabatha’s Salon Takeover” with an icy stare and the confidence of stainless steel. Add an Australian accent and the woman has me thinking things that haven’t crossed my mind since college, when the very adult Amy Stubnick put my hand on her breast and whispered “ever been the boy toy for a real woman?” It was a compelling proposition, but I digress.

You get the Bravo channel, right? Home of Kathy Griffin and Chefs topping each other and Andy Cohen dishing with overwrought housewives? I do hope this post isn’t over your head.

On each episode of the series, Tabatha visits a salon on the very brink of disaster that’s in need of her management and artistic expertise. Or as she states during the opening in her strict, matter-of-fact manner, “I’m tough. I’m talented. I’m taking over.” To which I dutifully respond, trapped in her spell, “Daddy.”

The people behind the salon crisis typically fall within two categories: some poor sucker who’s sister or best friend has convinced the sucker to invest in the salon and now they’re at each others’ throats and in horrible debt, or a shrill, mythical beast who rules the salon with a clueless fist and needs to be humbled… and is also in horrible debt.

Enter Tabatha, who feigns interest in their pitiful lives just long enough to case the joint and then instruct them to “give me your keys. I’m taking over.” Okay, I have goosebumps right now. I’m just sayin’.

Then the Tabatha magic really begins, as she calls out the lazy staff for their wretched work ethic or sloppy artistry. No one talks back to Tabatha, ever. Time would cease.

There is sometimes a woeful salon stylist, manacled to a work station in the back and subsisting on drinks from the sink and thin mints, who has a genuine talent that only Tabatha can identify. Of course, the stylist touches the hem of Tabatha’s smock and becomes a star employee by the end of the episode.

At some point Tabatha will play counselor to the owner/sucker who is drowning in debt and the stylist/best friend who is bleeding them of cash, and may I say, if my therapist were more like Tabatha and would just tell me what the hell to do, I wouldn’t still be blathering on about becoming a realtor because “I hear there’s money in that.”

Oh, and the salon itself gets completely renovated shortly after Tabatha’s gorgeous, investigative fingers wipe up a mound of dust or produce a hair ball from behind a counter the size of a grapefruit. Is anyone as shocked as I am at how many salons – Salons! Where gay people work! – haven’t been redecorated since Olivia Newton John was dancing in leg warmers?

The episodes wrap up with a Grand Reopening, where the owners promise to mend their ways and Tabatha’s work is done and the rescued, transformed stylists all stand around her, heartsick, like the crowd waving goodbye to Dorothy as she floats off in a hot air balloon.

I need Tabatha so badly. She could do an entire season rebuilding my life. But that gig has been taken, it appears, by Tabatha Coffey’s longtime lesbian partner. And to further wreck my Bravo flights of fancy, it turns out Tabatha is a very nice professional who makes her share of Gay Pride appearances, took the stage in My Big Fat Gay Wedding (above), and has her own charity helping children with cancer.

I will hear no more of this. I prefer my delirious daydream every week in front of the television, when it is just me, a few hair balls, and Tabatha, taking over.

————————————————————-

Last week I had the pleasure of contributing to The Bilerico Project as a guest host, and it gave me a chance to wander away from my HIV themes and have some fun. Here are some of my Bilerico postings you might enjoy:

The Miami Fashion Week Kickoff Event. Know nothing about fashion? Same here. So when blogger Tony Adams and I invade the swanky kickoff event of Miami Fashion week, we take no prisoners in this fun video blog of our haute evening. Watch us tell models they looked exhausted, raid the Tiffany swag bags, and generally make gay fools of ourselves. Silly fun.

Why Annette Bening will take home the Oscar. I’m an Oscar psychic. I always win the Oscar pool. Let me be your guide. Here, I explain why Annette Bening has nothing to fear from all the hoopla over Natalie Portman. Hint: the secret lies with Oscar royalty, and who has a stinker of a movie ruining their chances. Stay tuned for my complete Oscar guide if you want to win the Oscar pool yourself!

Buy Two Wigs and Call Me in the Morning. There’s a bizarre story out of France about a man suing a drug company because his medication made him suddenly compulsive, getting into porn, drugs, and cross dressing. But really, the posting is nothing more than a cheap way to show off my favorite Anita Mann moment — a clip of my alter ego’s classic “TV Set” number.

Hold on to your keyboards, because the ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of My Fabulous Disease is coming next month, and I have surprises and the “Top Ten Posts” to share.

Meanwhile, my friends, please be well. And thanks for re-posting and sharing my stuff — you’re fantastic.

Tags: acting, drag, gay
Posted in Books and Writings, Family and Friends, Gay Life, My Fabulous Disease | No Comments »

The Price is Right, 30 years after coming on down

Monday, October 18th, 2010

When I was nineteen years old, I vacationed to Los Angeles and won a car on “The Price is Right.”

In the following years, if I really liked you and wanted to impress you — or give you a small, wacky glimpse of my life — then at some juncture I’d say “So hey, have you ever been to Los Angeles?” Or, “Did I ever tell you about the car?”

It was a long time ago. Thirty years. I have a videotape of the entire episode and it gets trotted out and viewed from time to time. Well, maybe not as much anymore.

Year after year I’ve seen that video and find myself pulling farther away from the image on my television screen — the oldest tape I have of myself on TV, although, make no mistake about it, I have many.

On the tape I’m impossibly cute, with a tall lean body and a freckled face straight out of Howdy Doody’s Peanut Gallery. There is bright orange hair on my head, blown dry to late-70’s perfection and parted in the middle between two feathered, astoundingly symmetrical sides.

Anyway, here’s the “Price is Right” story.

It’s Spring 1980. My lover Charley and I are visiting my old college friend Charles, who lives in Los Angeles. Charles takes us to CBS studios for a tour, but once there we find out they don’t give them anymore. But we can go wait in line for “The Price is Right” if we want to, the lady says. Why not? A live game show taping. Cool.

We stand in line and this producer comes by with an assistant in tow, and he’s chatting with everybody in the line. One by one. And the assistant is taking careful notes. Get it? They’re picking contestants. So the producer gets to me and whereas everybody’s been kind of shy and polite and maybe a little perky, I grab his hand and shake as hard as I can and just about bust a gut beaming, saying “Hi there, I’m Mark King and I drove all the way from New Orleans Louisiana just to be on this show!”

I watch TV. Everybody knows what they’re looking for.

Portions of The Price is Right Story are deeply ingrained, as frozen in my delivery as they are on that old Betamax video tape. Hearing Johnny Olsen shouting “Mark King! Come on down!” and galloping down the ramp to bidding stations in front of the stage, jumping up and down, my sprayed hair jolted above me in two feathered clumps, lazily floating back down to my head like snapping an orange sheet over a bed and watching it descend.

Or when I won the very first prize that came up for bids—an Amana Range. “And to the winner of that range goes,” I can hear Johnny Olsen saying, “Kentucky Fried Chicken in an insulated tote bag. It’s so nice to feel so good about a meal!”

“And the original retail price of that range is … six hundred and eighty nine dollars and Mark, you’ve won it! Come on up here!” Bob Barker declares, and I scramble up for a chat with Bob that holds no memory or recollection, just what I’ve seen on the tape, because I truly had no idea what the man was saying, such was my shock. But I nod and grin in the right places.

Bob asks me where I’m from and I tell him I’m a student at the University of New Orleans. Really? What year? he asks. I say I’m a senior — a lie, I was a sophomore, but couldn’t have told you my middle name at that point — and say that I’ll go “right on to graduate school to get a masters in Arts Management.”

Today when I see the tape, I want to wipe the idyllic grin off that skinny boy’s face and correct the error I made years ago. I had it all wrong. “Well Bob,” I would say instead, “I’ll finish college through the mail after I move here to Los Angeles and work for a heroin-addicted mail order sleaze bag. Then I hope to make it big as a sexual entrepreneur.” “That’s marvelous!” Bob would then reply, “A prostitute perhaps?”

The cameras would turn to the audience, all of them glued to the monitors and nodding expectantly. “Aw, you flatter me, Bob. Seriously, I was thinking I’d be good at getting people off over the phone.” Bob’s most winning game show host smile would appear. “What a talented young man!” he would say with fatherly pride. The APPLAUSE light would flash again and again. The audience would react like stadium fans witnessing a touchdown. “There’s even more, Bob. I’ll go on to watch some friends die horribly of a disease we haven’t even heard of yet, fight my drug addiction, and then spend years searching for life’s greater meaning. You have anything up for bids that might help me with that?”

But back to reality — or, at least, “The Price is Right.”

Bob stops talking for a second and Johnny Olsen announces what I just might win—a shiny new Pontiac Coupe! The audience absolutely screeches, and the camera flashes to my lover Charley whistling with his fingers in his mouth, wearing exactly the same jeans and red t-shirt as myself. We were in that early, wearing-matching-outfits stage of our relationship.

On stage, Bob inspected the car with me before the game began. “Just look at these wire wheel covers here, Mark. Say tell me,” he questioned as he put the microphone to my lips, “do you have a girlfriend back home?” No, Bob. But your camera man must adore my homosexual lover because he’s given him every reaction shot since I stepped up here.

“Aw, several!” I offered with a laugh and an adorable but practiced shrug. “Well, you’ll have several more if you win this one!” Bob said. The game was something called “Lucky Seven” and Charley screamed out every last thing for me to say and do, which was a great help since I didn’t understand what the hell was going on. After going step by step through the game, with tension building and Bob reminding me how close I was to winning every three seconds, I get to the last question. After Charley’s prompting I give the winning answer, the audience goes nuts, and the camera man goes to Charley for even more shots as he explodes from his chair and waves his hands and dances about. “You’ve won that car!” Bob shouts. If I had won a fur coat Charley would’ve jumped to the stage and thrown it on, so help me.

I furiously shake Bob Barker’s hand and notice how much make-up he has on. Thick, like a paste. And his hair dye has left a brown stain across his hairline. He introduces the first sponsor while the camera returns to me, beaming, all shocked and happy. I pick my teeth with my tongue and they break to a commercial. The show went on to other contestants of course, but I’ve never watched the tape that far. The beginning of the show has been played ragged, however. About six minutes of my life, run countless times on the TV in my living room, after some dinner with friends and maybe coffee and dessert.

I sold the car to my sister Nancy for what the income taxes cost me — I was in college and didn’t need one anyway. The Amana Range went to my brother David as a wedding present. I kept the insulated Kentucky Fried Chicken tote bag — my lone trophy from the event — and store it in the laundry room. It’s nearby if there’s a showing of the video and it makes a great prop during the viewing.

Within a few years of Coming On Down, there would be enormous differences between that video boy and myself, shaped by life events that would throw a wet blanket on my aw shucks optimism. I’ve tried to recover from them, to regain the hopeful, expectant glimmer found in the eyes of the kid from “The Price is Right,” with mixed success.

He was fearless, I have reservations. He believed, I suspect. A few years in the life of a gay man living at the dusk of the sexual revolution and during the dawn of a terrible disease does manage to bring about some striking changes.

I have a few stories about those times, too. Some of them aren’t very attractive, and I definitely haven’t shared them at parties. I wonder if they have any value, if they define something more than myself, if they sound familiar. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to decide if what I’ve been through has helped me, if it “made me a better person,” if it was, in fact, a gift.

And wondering, of course, if the price was right.

Just like the old video tape trotted out for the occasional viewing, I like sharing this (slightly revised) prologue from my book A Place Like This. It may have been thirty years ago, but winning the car remains one of my life’s milestones. Can I still approximate that young man’s happiness today, or reconcile him with the man I have become…? — Mark

Tags: A Place Like This, acting, Aging, culture, family, Recreation
Posted in All Other Video Postings, Books and Writings, Family and Friends, Gay Life, My Fabulous Disease | 9 Comments »

My Forbidden Love for Gay Monsters

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Zombies are deeply misunderstood, in my mind. They’re outcasts, picked on, and are the perfect stand-ins for things we fear or don’t understand. Things like death. Or gay people. Or disease. Or getting a disease from gay people that could lead to death. Work with me here.

When “Night of the Living Dead” opened in 1968 as a cheap matinee feature in movie theaters, it wasn’t what the teenage crowd expected. It didn’t have guys in rubber monster costumes or gigantic spiders. Audiences simply watched a group of terrified people in a farmhouse being attacked by flesh-eating dead people. Hungry, ordinary dead people. We met the ghouls, and they were us. The critics that bothered considering its meaning drew comparisons to the horrors of Vietnam coming home to roost.

The film had a fatalism that was hard to believe for its time. Everyone dies. Everyone is shot or eaten. Even the casting of the heroic lead as a black man was something provocative, and when he is the only survivor of the farmhouse, he is arbitrarily shot by rednecks who mistake him for a zombie. The End.

When Day of the Dead opened in 1985, zombies and their deadly contagion were forever associated with the growing horror of AIDS. It was a connection that took me many years to shake.

I just finished creating video segments (still, left) for a stage production for Halloween in Shreveport, Louisiana of “Night of the Living Dead.” The show, directed by my brother Dick King, takes place in the farmhouse, and the action outside their close quarters — the graveyard, the scenes in the basement — is shown as video projections onto the set. It’s a cool concept, actually, and allowed me to pay homage to the film by recreating its scenes as best I could.

Dick is remounting the production after a smashing run last year, during which my brother and I appeared on the local morning news — I played straight man while Dick hammed it up as a hungry zombie gnawing body parts. It was hilarious but perhaps a bit gruesome for the breakfast hour. (Check the highlighted links to watch the interview or view my video handiwork.)

I totally loved this project, because I have been attracted to all manner of monsters as long as I can remember. But to recreate the scene in which the dead little girl comes back to life and stabs her mother to death with a trowel? Priceless. But again, it’s the outcasts, even the murderous ones, that always get my attention.

For your guilty pleasure, here’s a :55 second promo I produced for the production at East Bank Theater. If you’ve ever dreamed of visiting beautiful downtown Bossier City, home of the Horse Shoe Casino and plenty of Narcotics Anonymous meetings, there are zombies (live?) onstage calling your name…

My first boyhood crush was on a dead man. He was a zombie named Quentin Collins, with eyes that pierced my gay soul and sideburns the size of the Florida peninsula. He stalked across my TV screen on weekday afternoons at precisely 3:30, when the series “Dark Shadows” introduced me to all manner of vampires, werewolves and ghouls.

Quentin was dreamy (literally, since he spent a lot of time staring into space in a zombie trance), and had a lonesome, lost quality I recognized but couldn’t yet identify. I saved allowance money for the album (“Quentin’s Theme” should be played at my wedding, or my memorial, whichever comes first), and replaced the Bobby Sherman poster in my bedroom for one of Barnabas Collins, the series’ vampire star.

But I set aside boyish things — and graduated to horror films. Slashers did the trick for a while because I delighted in those oversexed straight couples getting whacked. If my love dared not speak its name, I found it satisfying that straight love was so damn hazardous.

But it was never the killing that attracted me. It was the mysterious, gruesome, self-loathing monster. Here I was, in the midst of full pubescent hormonal freak out, with a body revolting against me and villainous carnal desires. I didn’t just sympathize with the Alien and Pinhead and Freddy, I wanted to take them to lunch and find out how they managed to make it through the day.

My taste for cinematic horror took a break in the mid 1980′s, during the worst of the AIDS crisis. Something about watching “Re-Animator” on VHS while my friend Lesley lay dying in the guest room, well, let’s say it severely reduced the fun factor. AIDS had become the monster, and my sympathy was spent. For at least ten dreary years I stuck to lame romantic comedies.

So if the state of my personal AIDS crisis can be measured in movie genres, my trauma must have subsided because movie monsters are back with a vengeance. I’ve been popcorn-munching to zombies, saw killers and Halloween remakes and having a ball. Critics be damned, the recent remake of Clash of the Titans delivered the monsters (look! killer scorpions the size of Winnebagos!) and had its share of thrilling moments.

Consider Liam Neeson as Zeus, growling with magnificence as he commands “Release the Kraken!” No three cinematic words since “you complete me” have so enraptured my senses, and they are worth the wait. The Kraken gets unleashed and all manner of body parts start flying.

I stand by my gay monster metaphors, because the Kraken is just a lonely gay kid, too. You should have seen the stir I created at the 1977 Junior Homecoming when I arrived, the school’s weird gay creature, wearing platform boots with tight khakis tucked into them at the knee. I relished in unsettling the crowd and seeing the jaws drop and the fingers pointing at the beast. No Kraken could have cleared the dance floor as fast as my solo disco moment, just before being chased to my car.

It’s hard running in platform boots. I could have used some monster scorpions for backup.

(This is a revised posting from early in my blog history, with the addition of the stage production project. I thought I’d bring the posting “back from the dead.” — Mark)

Tags: acting, culture, family
Posted in All Other Video Postings, Anita Mann and Acting Gigs, Family and Friends, Gay Life, My Fabulous Disease | 4 Comments »

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