My most courageous self, the best man that I’ll ever be, lived more than two decades ago during the first years of a horrific plague.


My most courageous self, the best man that I’ll ever be, lived more than two decades ago during the first years of a horrific plague.

These guys must be getting the hang of this, because we discussed and revealed things like never before. From crystal meth addiction to our mothers, nothing was off limits.

I knew about assisted suicide but had never heard of the mechanics of it firsthand… or had witnessed the haunted result like the one that now sat chain smoking across my living room.

My dismay over my facial wasting pitted two strong emotions against one another: my pride in being a longtime HIV/AIDS survivor, and my shame for looking like one.

My conundrum: exploring the pleasures of my tush while fighting the terror that something stinky might be going on down there. I suspect I am not alone in this anxiety.

There is so much distance in my mother’s eyes that I fear she may never come close to me again. Circling her stare are wrinkles of pain, betrayal even, and in her hand she holds the watch.

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

All of the six video blogs produced by “My Fabulous Disease” during AIDS2012 (the international AIDS conference) in Washington, DC, July 21-27, 2012.

“Never worry about making a fool of yourself,” he would say, “if it means taking a risk, Mark.” He would recognize my adolescent need to simply fit in with everyone else and he would deny me of it, locking his eyes onto mine. “You gotta take the risk.”

The music my friends liked when I was a teenager intimidated me. It was the head-banging rock of the early seventies, and it felt alien and unappetizing. Most of all, it just felt… straight, in a way I knew I could never be. Alone in my room, I listened to my beloved...

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