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...
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,...
Matt Nadel has quite a connection with the viatical settlement industry - the cottage industry created to purchase life insurance policies from largely gay men dying of AIDS. Based on their life expectancy, policies were purchased and a settlement offered the client,...
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...
The abrupt closing of aidsmap.com, the stalwart HIV/AIDS information and resource site in the United Kingdom, has sent a mortal shudder through the ranks of those with a history in the HIV arena. The loss is incalculable. It is also a very personal milestone for...
Honestly, I was flattered to see a photo of me on Jennifer Vaughan’s social media feed. She posted it a few weeks ago, during the first days of Pride Month, and it showed me at the 2013 Atlanta Pride parade. I was a Grand Marshal that year, and in the picture...
This is a story about how the staff at the very first HIV/AIDS agency in Los Angeles managed to handle the stress of that time without falling apart - and a random, whimsical twist of fate that followed many years later. My first job in the AIDS arena was at the Los...
(This interview between myself and Kerry Thomas appears in the April/May 2024 issue of POZ Magazine.) When Kerry Thomas began serving a 30-year sentence in Idaho for nondisclosure of his HIV-positive status in 2008, becoming a prominent voice for people living with...
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...
If there is anything I love sharing, it’s my opinion. I just love taking surveys. And talking to therapists. And writing blogs about myself. I think you see the pattern here. But my favorite kind of opinion-sharing is when it helps my community in a really tangible...
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