All of the six video blogs produced by “My Fabulous Disease” during AIDS2012 (the international AIDS conference) in Washington, DC, July 21-27, 2012.
I am the man my father built.
“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.”
Coming Out with Donna Summer
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...
Divorce, Stress, HIV… and no jokes.
This is a rather personal blog video, there's no doubt about that. I'm even a little apprehensive because it doesn't offer the usual helpful tips or the "entertainment value" of my other videos. But one of my problems has always been trying to be the life of the party...
The Twilight of the Redhead
According to family lore, my arrival at birth with a full head of orange hair was met with shock and awe. My five older siblings ran the gamut from blond to dark brown, but they otherwise lacked my peculiar genetic mutation. Although the hospital nursery staff was...
Facebook Put My Life Together Again
Today I accepted the Facebook friend request of someone I knew in high school. We haven't spoken in more than thirty years. She is married with a load of kids, and God knows why she wants to befriend the scandalous queer who wore knee-high platform boots to the junior...
Why Are We Still Haunted by the Boys in the Band?
When I was 15 years old, I couldn't wait to attend a local community theater production of The Boys in the Band. I was intrigued by the play's dark and mysterious reputation, and had heard that it included a lot of homosexuality (funny how that word isn't used much...
My Surprising Lack of Gay Pride
For most of my life I've been judgmental and a little impatient with gay people who didn't just come out. Are the risks really that dire? I suspected they were just chicken shit, or unwilling to stand up to their family or to whatever screwed up religious upbringing...
Trying to put away childish, damaging things.
When I became a man, I put away childish things. -- 1 Corinthians 13:11 We're on a dirt road in the cotton fields, sitting in the back of his Plymouth. It had been my idea to stop and look at the sky, and it doesn't come off like a sneaky move now, because the moon is...
The Hard Facts on Erectile Dysfunction: Pills, Pumps and Prosthetics
I suppose it was only a matter of time before HIV fitness guru and hottie Nelson Vergel and I ended up in bed together. After rummaging through my kitchen in a video blog about healthy eating, and then flexing his biceps at the gym when he instructed me on weight...
