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 | 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 | Feb 19, 2025 | Family and Friends, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy, Trump
The phrase sat there on my Facebook feed, staring back at me like an accusation. “If you aren’t resisting, you are assisting,” the post read. I felt flush with self-conscious guilt. It wasn’t a familiar feeling, not after nearly forty years of speaking up and... 
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...
