Thirty-two years ago this month, I received a phone call from a nurse at my doctor’s office telling me that I had tested HIV positive. We didn’t schedule a follow-up visit or begin a treatment plan, because there wasn’t a single medication approved for the virus, which had only been identified the previous year. The [...]
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 [...]
Chris Glaser, author of The Final Deadline: What Death Has Taught Me About Life My memorial service will be fabulous, I can assure you of that. I first outlined it during the initial, deadly wave of AIDS in the 1980's, and have edited it here and there over the years, updating the songs I would [...]
In the towering new novel Christodora, author Tim Murphy harnesses decades of personal and professional experience as an HIV journalist into a story that sweeps back and forth between the last several decades and beyond. It has the scope of great literature, but Christodora is also a deeply personal chronicle from a man who knows [...]
Mark S. King on the blogging trail, here in Durban during AIDS2016. There’s no way of saying this without it sounding like a humble brag, at best, so I’m just going to come right out with it. My Fabulous Disease has won the prestigious “Excellence in Blogging” award from the National Lesbian and [...]
With my trusty videographer (right), Australian HIV advocate Theo Tsipiras. The people, the parties, the protests! AIDS2016, the international AIDS conference held in Durban, South Africa from July 16-22, had it all. And it was my privilege to bring you the stunning sights and sounds of the gathering, sponsored by The Global Forum [...]
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, [...]
Will Armstrong (here, in a 2015 photo) acknowledges his losses but has never been happier. So don’t mind if I fall apart There’s more room in a broken heart. -- Carly Simon, “Coming Around Again” When Will Armstrong emerges from heart surgery in just a few days, he will have weeks of hospitalization [...]
The young woman sitting across from me on the bus is in her mid-20s. She turns to her companion and her voice grows serious. “I know someone who died,” she says in the hushed tone reserved for tales of mortality. Her friend looks up from his phone. “He was a good friend of my brother,” [...]
Stigma is insidiously quiet. It is conjured in the mind, born of discomfort and fear, and then it is projected at “the other” among us. It judges them and isolates them. And it happens without a sound. Stigma lets us take comfort in seeing things in others about which, we believe, they must be ashamed. [...]
