My Fabulous Disease

Posts Tagged ‘Aging’

Hitting the Gym with HIV Fitness Expert Nelson Vergel

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

I’m as vain as the next guy. And if the next guy happens to be modest, or straight, or comfortable in his own skin, then it’s really no contest. I’m way more vain. Describing my vanity requires making up new words. Vainer. The vainiest. Psychovain.

That must be the old Mark, because the new one is appearing in gym clothes standing next to HIV fitness and nutrition expert Nelson Vergel. There I am, all doughy and smiling, thirty pounds heavier after a year without a cigarette (how long do I get to legitimately use that reasoning?). But anything for you, my friends.

And besides, the meaning of fitness for me has changed, however slowly, from the size of my biceps to the overall health of my body. After a misguided youth devoted to “looking hot” and feeding my drug addiction (a period that stretched into my 40′s, who am I kidding?), standing around in a gym with my gut exposed is real progress for me.

In my first video blog with Nelson (“Fitness Stud Nelson Vergel Raids My Fridge”), he ransacked my kitchen and offered great tips on eating right. In this new video, we hit the gym for a lesson on aerobic activity and weight lifting. With issues like bone density more vital for people with HIV, weight training makes sense.

Still to come: Nelson takes me on an eye-opening tour of the grocery store – and cautions me about walking down the aisles. And for more great information from Nelson, his new book Testosterone: A Man’s Guide is now available through sellers like Amazon.

I’d like to extend a special thanks to The Poverello Center in Ft Lauderdale. Poverello not only provides food for people with AIDS, they created the Friends Fitness Center (photos above) and graciously allowed Nelson and I to film this video there. And speaking of filming, my friend Kai patiently worked the cameras for several hours and I appreciate it.

Thanks for watching, my friends, and please be well.

Mark

Tags: Aging, help others, hiv, lipo, physical
Posted in Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News | 7 Comments »

My Muscles, My Disease: Portrait of a Gay Drug Addict

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

There is a folder, tucked within a folder, buried deep in my computer files. I shouldn’t be looking at its contents, yet I can’t bring myself to delete it altogether. It is labeled MARCUS, and inside the folder is my disease.

During my years of crystal meth addiction I went by the name of Marcus, at least to dealers and tricks and fellow addicts. It helped me determine who was calling my cell phone – those calling for Mark or Marcus usually had very different agendas – and Marcus even became an alternate persona as my drug addiction progressed.

When partying as Marcus, I felt confident and aloof. I took awful chances. I never met a strobe light I didn’t like or a box on a dance floor I wouldn’t jump on. A steroid-crazed gym regimen and the dehydration of drug abuse transformed my body into the low fat, pumped up gay ideal.

Photographs of that body, in full, preening strut, are the contents of the MARCUS folder. The pictures were my calling card for online sex-and-drug pursuits. They suggest nudity but are cropped modestly – although God knows that much more damning images of me surely exist in the dark corners of cyberspace.

In one of the few pictures showing my face, I stand under a running shower – a pitiful Playgirl pose, spray nozzle in hand – with a blank face and shipwrecked eyes. The only emotion on display, just around the edges, is a dull fear.

My life was precisely as pictured. It wouldn’t be long before my drug use trumped my gym schedule, and my status in online chat rooms devolved from intriguing hottie to that crazy mess that doesn’t look like his pictures.

Since then, my recovery from drug addiction has helped me understand that the Gay Strut is key to my disease. It is a sly porthole back to raging insanity.

Explaining all this feels idiotic. What vanity I possess, asking you to gaze upon my former, overwrought beauty as I complain about the consequences. It feels like an invitation to tell me how much healthier I look now, or that recovery is “an inside job.” I know this. I’m just sharing the curious road that got me here.

My recovery depends on healing my mind, body and spirit. At the moment I’m two out of three.

My spirit is happy today. My smiles are joyful and plentiful. My mind is clear, although I don’t kid myself, there are remnants of a brain pickled in methamphetamine for many years. But healing is underway, and my mind and spirit are enjoying the process.

Only my body lags behind, injured, resentful, and suspicious of the path to well being. I’m sedentary and stubborn. I relate being physically fit with something traumatic that once hounded and eventually ruined me.

I want to be healthier, and to control my weight and rising cholesterol. I need to fix this, I tell myself, but I’m afraid to fix this. There’s the potential that I’ll go back to a lifestyle more horrible than my expanding waistline.

It’s good to get in shape again, I tell myself with sincere intentions. The treadmill is really taking off the pounds and I should start weight lifting again and hot damn, that muscle recall really works just look at my arms and I should buy new tank tops and work out even harder and get steroids prescribed again and what’s wrong with hanging out at a bar shirtless and shooting pool and sure I’ll do one hit of that, thanks, and man this body of mine would look damn hot at a sex party right now and who’s your dealer and do you have needles…?

Getting back in shape is an easy call. Except my mind puts physical fitness on the same crazy train as my drug addiction.

There is a solution. There always is. And I’m working on it. The fact I acknowledge my insanity is a good start. Now I can begin the process of teaching my body new tricks.

There are traps on the road to recovery, as anyone getting clean and sober will tell you. I’m much better at seeing them clearly than I used to be. But the vigilance it requires is a full time job.

I get afraid that a dangerous choice might look perfectly innocent. Or be a reasonable part of life. It could be a healthy choice, even, at least for you.

But sometimes, my very reckoning can look as pretty as a picture.

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I felt obliged to show some of the Marcus photos, but have cropped and altered them into something less decadent. Any similarity to pictures you may have seen in online chat rooms is purely coincidental. This topic is also something I’ve done my best to separate from my series of fitness videos with expert Nelson Vergel. Why burden the guy with my insanity? Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll share this. — Mark

Tags: Aging, culture, gay, meth, physical, recovery
Posted in Books and Writings, Gay Life, Meth and Recovery, My Fabulous Disease | 17 Comments »

Fitness stud Nelson Vergel raids my fridge.

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

Nelson Vergel is not impressed with my refridgerator. Sure, it has double doors and a freezer drawer, but he’s criticizing almost every damn thing inside it. Most of the items say “low fat” or “sugar free,” but he claims it’s all a terrible lie.

Letting the HIV fitness and nutrition expert take over my kitchen seemed like a good idea at the time. I turned fifty over the holidays (after living with HIV for over half my life, I’m ancient in AIDS years), and my body is… changing.

I need to pull myself together. I did quit smoking a year ago – perhaps my greatest health achievement, aside from getting clean and sober – but while resting on my laurels, my laurels got hungry. Today, I’m hauling at least twenty extra pounds.

In this video episode of My Fabulous Disease, watch Nelson ransack my refrigerator and explain why my eating habits aren’t doing me much good. He offers some really simple tips for developing a healthy diet, and I’m putting them to use already.

In my upcoming video episode, Nelson and I hit the gym for a workout and then the grocery store for a lesson on shopping properly (did you know about “staying around the edges?”). I assure you, if I can try keeping up with this guy, so can you.

I was lucky to get some time with Nelson, considering he’s been busy with his own web site about fitness and supplements, as well as promoting his new book, Testosterone: A Man’s Guide. But after I cozied up to him during the recent HIV Cruise Retreat in the Caribbean (I was the MC and he was a guest lecturer), he promised to visit my kitchen and help jump-start my fitness overhaul.

Wish me luck! I promise to take Nelson’s advice to heart, by eating better and making my grand comeback to the gym – although this time, I’ll watch the weight lifters from afar and stick to the cardio machines.

And how are your resolutions coming? Do you diet to lose weight or take it off slowly through exercise? Isn’t it a gas (and a miracle) that people with HIV/AIDS like me are working to stay in shape for the long run? Irony is awfully popular these days.

As always, my friends, please be well. xo

Mark
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Can you read the weight scale at the beginning of the video? It reads “216.4″ Ouch. But I want this documented, because I hope to change, if not my weight, then my shape. Stay tuned. And I hope you’ll “share” this post using my nifty new feature below! — Mark

Tags: Aging, hiv, lipo, physical, physician
Posted in Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News | 15 Comments »

Carlton’s glorious, dangerous denial.

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

My friend Carlton is a chain smoker, even if all his cigarettes are imaginary.

His standard pose consists of one hand resting on his hip — elbow jutting out as if in the midst of a runway strut — while the other arm is forever in motion, his hand swiveling constantly around his face and shoulders.

All that’s missing is the cigarette, which you would swear you witnessed him smoking after having met him. Carlton even punctuates wry remarks by tapping his index fingers soundly on some phantom, extended filter. If his remark is particularly withering or at least gets a laugh, he’ll bring two fingers to his lips and add “puff puff, darling…”

Carlton’s age lies somewhere on the distant side of sixty. He was raised after Stonewall but on a far more moneyed block of New York City, where discussion of queers was verboten. Even today, Carlton insists that coming out to his wealthy mother would be quite disastrous and a completely surprising bit of news to her.

“I lived in Dallas, dear, years ago” Carlton is saying during our lunch. We had just switched tables twice, trying to escape the draft that’s been stalking my friend since Reagan was ignoring AIDS. “And let me tell you something darling. The ranch hands one would meet out in the bars had terrible personal hygiene. And I had a few, trust me. Just wretched.”

I wasn’t sure what line of questioning to pursue. What might constitute an authentic ranch hand, I wondered, or why one of them might wander into the kind of bars Carlton favored. But I was in no hurry to expose his curious thinking. Multiple opportunities would typically present themselves.

“Really?” I asked politely.

“Oh let me tell you! That Brokeback movie? There was a real lack of cleanliness, didn’t you see that? Those straight boys… maybe they were adorable, but my God! I was holding my nose just watching that movie.”

“Carlton, the guys weren’t straight. They were gay and living a lie. That was the whole point of the film.”

“Oh they were straight,” he reiterated, despite all evidence, cinematic and otherwise, to the contrary, “believe you me.”

Carlton insists that his conquests be straight, or at least a reasonable facsimile. A simple claim of heterosexuality will do. As he funds drink orders from male strippers at his local club, slipping bills personalized with his cell number into their posing straps, he is most likely to pause for any utterance that includes the words “my girlfriend,” “kind of hard up,” or “bus station.”

He keeps attachments at a proper distance, which also helps avoid bothersome questions from Mother. Romance, alas, is simply a matter of commerce.

“I had a fabulous date this week,” Carlton is saying. “Square jawed. Handsome. And everything just where it should be, darling. Puff puff!”

“You can’t call them a date if you pay them, Carl.” I liked injecting the proceedings with jolts of sanity, like a random slice of sunlight piercing a forgotten attic.

“Don’t say that! You’re terrible,” he cries, waving me away, his fingers gripping his phantom Benson & Hedges Menthol 100.

“This is reality checking in, Carlton. They’re called prostitutes. Street hustlers, knowing you.”

“Stop!” He protested, and then feigned resignation. “He was straight, believe you me. And I think he really likes me.”

I was tempted to respond, knowing the remark would lead down an entertaining rabbit hole of delusion and denial, but it felt like poking an animal with a stick. I let it pass.

“Carlton,” I scolded, “you should watch yourself.” I was truly concerned for his safety. His friends have all made it clear that he isn’t allowed to live in a building without security cameras and a doorman. We want footage to broadcast on America’s Most Wanted when the time comes.

“Oh please. I know, I know…” he relented, in an apparent moment of self realization. “I couldn’t possibly take time for a relationship right now, you are completely correct.” The moment had passed. “Besides, my phone is ringing off the hook this week.” He giggled and sipped his wine. “My dance card is filled, darling.”

“Oh Carl…” I sighed. “It’s the first of the month.”

“And so?”

“Rent is due, sweetie.” My eyes met a blank stare. “And so… your friends are calling for dates.”

He wrinkled his nose, considering whether one fact had anything to do with the other. He was unconvinced.

“Be that as it may,” he said finally, returning to his wine. “But please, darling, don’t try to take away from my funsy-poo.”

“Funsy-poo?” I responded. He smiled sweetly. Whatever bottle of lube rests on Carlton’s nightstand, you can bet it sits on an embroidered doily. From Mother.

Further discussion of his dating risks was a fool’s errand, and that went double for anything related to HIV, about which he spoke in faraway terms, like a Daughter of the Confederacy discussing the recent unpleasantness.

“I’m speaking at an AIDS conference next week,” I said suddenly, to test my own theory. Carlton glanced from his wine glass with a pitiful smile and then wiped it away with his napkin.

“Good for you, my dear. I would do more charity work myself but with my travel schedule…” He managed to find something fascinating in the bottom of his wine glass and his voice trailed off.

I have made remarks about HIV testing to Carlton but he waves them away, often with a joke about his pitiful sex life, despite what he may say about his dance card. He knows I write a blog about living with HIV but he certainly has never visited it. He is a generous patron of other sites, however. Sites with secure transactions that help him populate date nights with young men who, if you believe them as fervently as Carlton does, are just a little hard up or without a girlfriend or need a bus ticket back home.

We strolled out of the restaurant and I madly craved a cigarette after all that Carlton had seemingly consumed. He lightly brushed me with a kiss and promised to call in a few days if he could possibly find the time. He slowly sauntered away, taking in window displays and the busboy at a sidewalk eatery with equal interest. He was without care.

Never have I known anyone who so charmingly operates only within acceptable truths. For Carlton, self preservation long ago vanquished self discovery.

It’s a delicate balance, believe you me.

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I wondered, while writing this, if people like Carlton are specific to Ft Lauderdale — all that gay retired money crossing paths with desperate youths (or sly hustlers) and runaways and other unfortunates. When do our fantasies — romantic, sexual and otherwise — trump our better judgment, our need for safety, or even reality? I look forward to your responses, and please try my new “share” feature below. — Mark

Tags: Aging, gay, hiv, Sexuality, testing
Posted in Books and Writings, Family and Friends, Gay Life, My Fabulous Disease | 3 Comments »

(Not exactly) Like a Prayer

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

Soon, as many families take a seat at their Thanksgiving table, after the food is set but just before the feasting begins, a paralyzing moment will occur. What now? They’ll wonder, glancing left and right. Should we pray? Uncomfortable seconds will tick by. Finally, someone will ask to be passed something and people will dig in, grateful to get on with it.

We used to pray, when I was little, when the family was young and the occasion was important and we were forced into this odd intimacy, with the mystical tones of something like church but at home. As a child the ritual was like a magic show, waiting spellbound as the secretive words were spoken.

My oldest brother Hal would pray at the dinner table with his head weighed heavily in his hands, as if he had a massive migraine or was avoiding the paparazzi. Maybe he was just embarrassed, since the act seemed so foreign and mortifying, like peeing in front of one another.

Once, Mom asked Dad to recite the Lord’s Prayer at the Thanksgiving table. He started strong and then the words came more slowly, until his memory of the prayer – recited every Sunday in church services he wouldn’t attend – failed him. Everyone just sat there in awkward silence, staring at our dad the heathen, until my mother finally prompted him, utilizing a Nancy Reagan whisper into his shirtsleeve.

It was about that time that prayer was discontinued at our dinner table. For a few Thanksgivings someone would suggest we all say what we were thankful for, but the practice faded. It seemed like some sort of consolation anyway. All the magic had long since been revealed.

Today, my recovery from being a drug addict includes many suggestions about prayer. It’s encouraged, primarily for me to exercise enough humility to acknowledge there are powers greater than myself. After years of selfish using and living on my wits alone, it’s an important reminder. But that doesn’t mean I do it. Pray, that is.

I’ve been getting by with the claim that I meditate. Just the word “meditation” has less of the religious baggage than “prayer.” It feels less embarrassing, more reasonable. Maybe I’m remembering Hal, with his head buried in his hands.

I do believe that an awesome power, a god out there somewhere, is responsible for my existence and good fortune. I’m just not in the habit of chatting him up to express my appreciation or even for a passing hello. Which means, if I believe something created me, I must be one ungrateful son of a bitch.

Interesting. I’ll have to meditate about this.
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My week as a guest host for The Bilerico Project is ending. Here’s a wrap-up of my posts on current events and pop culture:

In The Beginning, there was Sam Elliott. Long before Tom Selleck and before the Baldwin brothers, there was only Sam. Here’s my appreciation for a man who not only set the gold standard, but had class. And I offer proof, in relating the story of the night the lights went out at an AIDS Quilt event in Los Angeles years ago, and his graceful response.

Is William the next King of England? Can’t we skip Charles and make this graceful young man King? I just can’t bear the thought of Camilla sleeping anywhere near Buckingham Palace. Meanwhile, young Kate Middleton has been screaming “crazy like a fox, bitches!” into her cell phone for the last three days.

Every girl in the UK is singing this song! If you don’t know who Alice Ghostley or Kaye Ballard is, please turn in your gay card, if you carry one. As the stepsisters in the original production of Roger & Hammerstein’s “Cinderella,” they stole our hearts (and twisted our arms) with the hilarious “Why Would a Fellow Want a Girl Like Her?” Here’s a look at their magical, snarky rendition.

Curses! Hollywood Meddles with the Magic of ‘Oz.’ Some day I’ll wish upon a star and ask that they never, ever try to remake The Wizard of Oz. Or, for that matter, any one of the truly awful sounding projects currently underway with ridiculous storylines like the early days of the wizard or Dorothy’s great-great-granddaughter. Wasn’t The Wiz bad enough?

The Great Chinese State Circus. Ballet isn’t my thing, but this is beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Is it gymnastics? Cirque du Soleil? Whatever it is, your jaw will drop… and stay there for three minutes. (Now I’m even more excited about the soon-to-be-released The Black Swan, featuring a total freakout performance by Natalie Portman. Director Darren Aronofsky hasn’t been this twisted since Requiem for a Dream.)

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May I invite you to join my mail list (upper right) or become a Facebook Fan (upper left)? I won’t stalk you, I promise. This is my own, private (advertisement-free) web site and I’d like to keep you up on the latest. If you’re already a fan, thanks my friend! — Mark

Tags: Aging, culture, family, gratitude, help others, politics, recovery
Posted in Books and Writings, Family and Friends, Gay Life, Meth and Recovery, My Fabulous Disease, News | 9 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 »

My t-cells could use a facelift.

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

Can I still complain about getting older if I was supposed to be dead twenty years ago? That’s the dilemma of aging HIV positive guys like me. Feeling victorious over AIDS only takes your self esteem so far; there’s no HIV medication to fight wrinkles.

Oh wait, there is. I had facial injections last year (and showed you the process) to alleviate moderate facial wasting, and it fixed me right up. Then I got padded butt shorts for those occasions I wear my beloved 501′s and I want to feel more confident. And let’s not forget the testosterone my doctor prescribed years ago that has kept a youthful bounce in my step ever since. If this is all strictly for HIV treatment, Joan Rivers is a long term AIDS survivor.

Last year I created a video posting about the battle between my gratitude for aging and my vanity, and I’ll admit it might be the funniest five minutes on my site. As my 50th birthday draws nearer, it’s a good time to give it another look. I discuss bars, boys, butt pads and Donny Osmond — something for everyone! Consider it the re-edited, younger looking Director’s Cut of a golden oldie.

Meantime, “Aging and HIV” appears to be the hot topic of the day. Conferences and workshops of the topic abound, and as the patient population considers their unexpected Golden Years, concerns about the long term effects of HIV infection and the impact of decades of medications are increasing. And then there’s the emotional implications.

“Aging is a challenge for all of us. But, for gay men living with HIV it is even more complex,” says Dr. James Masten, author of the upcoming book Aging with HIV: A Gay Man’s Guide. “This war has utilized all their emotional resources and few have had the time to consider the challenge of aging.”

Well, not so fast. I make time to obsess about aging. But please continue, doctor.

“Research has found higher rates of depression, lack of social support, and reduced quality of life among middle aged and older people living with HIV. Adapting to aging with HIV can become complicated when emotional issues such as HIV-stigma, internalized ageism, unresolved grief, or survivor guilt impact one’s ability to care for oneself fully in the present.”

So I suppose I should live in the present and stop posting videos I made over a year ago. Seriously, these issues have the ring of the same emotional minefields I’ve been navigating for the last twenty years. But I’ll check out his book for any tips he might have on advanced age. And avoiding jowls.

Meanwhile, research on HIV and aging is being released left and right. The sum of this research seems to suggest that we’ll be more frail in our older age, have a tendency for more loss of bone density than the average person, and about twice as likely to have cognitive issues.

You can check the links yourself, but the news is a lot better than I would have guessed. I had expected people with HIV/AIDS to be waiting en masse for liver transplants by now. Remember, too, that people with HIV/AIDS are more likely to smoke, to have a drug abuse history, multiple sexual partners and other STD’s… basically, as a group we’re Heavy Metal Bad. The fact research suggests we’re more likely to be frail or forget our own phone number makes perfect sense to me.

So, take your vitamins, stay active and get a bone density check. Then kick back and listen to some vintage Donny Osmond or watch the old man win the mirrored ball on Dancing with the Stars!

Tags: Aging, culture, gay, hiv, lipo, Radiesse, Sculptra
Posted in Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease | 8 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 »

Does the Gay Men’s Health Summit make me look fat?

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

I took more time than usual choosing an outfit this morning, because of two terribly conflicting forces. First, I was on my way to the first day of the National Gay Men’s Health Summit and, diametrically opposed to this fact, I went shopping for pants yesterday and discovered I now measure a 36 waist.

Believe me, I know I have my priorities screwed up. And I should celebrate the fact that I have now been smoke-free for seven months, and clean and sober for 21 months. Funny how quitting cigarettes and crystal meth can wreak havoc with your waistline.

But I’ve bought into gay cultural norms all my life. The hair, the body, the gym membership, the dance floor, you name it. My recovery process has rid me of a lot of my old ideas, but standing in a Niemann Marcus dressing room trying to squeeze into a size 36 definitely tests everything I’ve learned about loving myself and accepting my aging process.

Fate laughed at me in that dressing room, and kept right on cracking up when I arrived at the conference today and saw the first scheduled workshop: Body Image and Weight Issues Among Gay Men. Hilarious.

The video blog will introduce you to some of the fine people at this conference, and a discussion with the facilitator and another participant after the Body Image workshop (sorry for the intermittent audio track problems). You’ll notice I layered my outfit, to little avail. Tomorrow, I’m considering a caftan. Or I’ll realize what a silly old fool I can be, and return to the comfort zone of my worn 501′s.

I’ll be at the Summit all week and hope to report back with another video blog. Meanwhile, please be well.

Mark

Tags: Aging, culture, gay, hiv, lipo, physical, recovery
Posted in Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease | 3 Comments »

My 2010 Gay Pride PSA (that will never air!).

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

What would I talk about if I had my very own public service announcement?

I’d probably waste the whole thing telling some embarrassing story about growing up gay. Or how much I hate being a queer man pushing 50. What if, though, I really allowed myself to cut the crap and get real?

The result, as it turns out, would be something like this: a little humor, a pinch of honesty, and a punch in the gut. Happy Gay Pride Month!

Tags: acting, Aging, aids, culture, gay, help others, hiv, meth, recovery, Sexuality
Posted in All Other Video Postings, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, Meth and Recovery, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy | 21 Comments »

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