During the 2025 United States Conference on HIV/AIDS (USCHA), I watched a speech that may rank as the most beautiful speech I have seen in thirty years of attending this conference. Louie Ortiz-Fonseca, Director of LGBTQ Health and Rights at Advocates for Youth,...
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...
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,...
Honestly, my meth addiction still haunts me. It intrudes on my waking hours and sneaks seductively into my sexual fantasies. The wounds are deep, even after so many years of my recovery process. Dr. Dallas Bragg isn’t coy when it comes to addressing these issues. As a...
After ten cities, dozens of organizational sponsors and thousands of attendees, my book tour for My Fabulous Disease: Chronicles of a Gay Survivor will end the evening of August 8th in Atlanta. It feels wonderful to be ending the tour in my hometown, where much of the...
As Chuck Parker stood over his room-mate’s dead body trying to process what he was seeing, a 911 operator on the phone urged him to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Parker would have done it, if he had thought there were any chance he might revive his...
A retreat being held this summer, known as SoberPoz, will welcome anyone living with HIV who identifies as participating in a program of recovery of some kind. This kind of safe space is terribly important and I want to explain why - and then encourage you to share...
When an audience member gives a dollar bill to a drag performer in Oklahoma City, they bow ever so slightly in a kind of reverent curtsy when handing it over. Here at the County Line nightclub on a recent Saturday night, I watch it happen again and again. Maybe it's...
The students who hang out in the Dr. Jesse R. Peel LGBTQ Center of East Carolina University (ECU) are welcome guests in a dynamic, welcoming space. Among them are all manner of gender expression and burgeoning sexualities. You’ll find them lazing on couches or typing...
As I say in my recent interview for Dennis Hensley’s podcast (“Dennis, Anyone?”), it’s hard to talk about this without sounding like a total dick. But really, when has that ever stopped me before? Dennis has a way of entertaining his audience with zippy one-liners...
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