by Mark S. King | Jul 9, 2025 | Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, Meth and Recovery, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy
Todd Heywood, known by his friends as simply “Heywood,” has been an outspoken HIV survivor, renowned investigative journalist, and queer advocate for most of his life. So it should come as no surprise that when Heywood got a cancer diagnosis last year, he has used it... 
by Mark S. King | May 19, 2025 | Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy
Craig Washington could be forgiven if he has a certain strut in his step these days. His lifetime of community service, building one program after another that lifts up, supports and celebrates SGL (Same Gender Loving) Black men, is written across the history of... 
by Mark S. King | Apr 5, 2025 | Family and Friends, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Trump
More than ten years ago, when pop icon Donna Summer died, I wrote a tribute to the impact her music had made on me as a young gay man growing up in Louisiana in 1977. A few weeks ago, producer Becky Ripley at BBC Radio 4 in Bristol, UK somehow ran across that essay... 
by Mark S. King | Mar 14, 2025 | Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy, Trump
“If this article doesn’t scare the shit out of you, we’re in real trouble… Our continued existence depends on just how angry you can get.” – Larry Kramer, “1,112 and Counting,” The New York Native, 1983 Forty years ago, on March 15th, 1985, I received my... 
by Mark S. King | Nov 25, 2024 | Family and Friends, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy
The casket of my friend Jesse Peel, an elderly longtime HIV survivor who died in 2023, was crafted of gorgeous wood—oak, I think. As I stood admiring it in the alcove of the church prior to his memorial, a powerful sense of déjà vu brought suppressed emotions rushing... 
by Mark S. King | Oct 14, 2024 | Book Review, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, Meth and Recovery, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy
At Out Front Theater on August 8, 2024, seven Atlanta community members performed essays from my new collection, My Fabulous Disease: Chronicles of a Gay Survivor. It was the last stop of a national tour that included events in Palm Springs, Ft. Lauderdale,...
