THE LAST TIME I went to the gay baths, some years ago, I stepped in poop. Actually, more like a pile of poop, because it crept up between my toes for a horrific second before I realized what my bare feet had stumbled across. I made the grim discovery while standing in...
Mr. Atlanta Eagle talks leather, crystal meth and HIV.
Chandler Bearden's smile is creeping through the phone during our call. I've just suggested that his winning the impressively sexy title of Mr. Atlanta Eagle 2010 might be a boon to his sex life, but he's laughing it off. "Just because I won a title doesn't mean I'll...
Has my AIDS crisis ended?
A few weeks ago I spent the day at the Florida AIDS Walk, and it was striking how different it was from the Walks I attended years ago. Smiling faces, racial and ethnic diversity, baby strollers, and most of all a feeling of happiness and celebration. That's progress,...
Choose one: always “safer sex” or always tell your HIV status?
Once again, the HIV disclosure debate has heated up among prevention advocates, the media, and front-line sexually active men and women just trying to get laid. It all boils down to this: should sharing your status be morally mandatory, or does having protected sex...
Dixie Carter’s death leaves historic AIDS legacy.
In 1987, when nurses would still flip coins to see which would enter the room of an AIDS patient and politicians debated sending those with HIV to an isolated island, something truly remarkable happened. And the passing Friday of the great Dixie Carter, 70, is a fine...
Did the Bareback Time Machine kill Chad Noel?
Among the many online condolences to the family of Chad Noel ("Jim and Bonnie, so sorry to hear of the loss of your son...") are glimpses of the boy this young man was, while growing up in the ironic hometown of Laramie, Wyoming (where Matthew Shepard lived and...
Tracking the elusive “bug chasers” of HIV
"I (have) always hated any suggestion that AIDS was a gift. A Mercedes is a gift." -- Mark S. King, "A Place Like This," pg. 180 I must admit my belief that bug-chasers are an extremely elusive and exotic form of pervert that aren't as much seen as talked about. For...
Win a car, bed a star in “a place like this…”
When I was nineteen years old, I vacationed to Los Angeles and won a car on "The Price is Right." And so begins my first book, "A Place Like This," about my years in 1980's Los Angeles. The book has been on my mind lately because of my work preparing a new one. Since...
We’re AIDS walking “post-crisis.”
While attending the South Florida AIDS Walk yesterday I was struck with the obvious. These walks just aren't what they used to be, and neither is the HIV/AIDS crisis. In fact, "crisis" is hardly a word to describe it anymore. This isn't simply about the fact that, for...
In My Humble, Closeted Opinion
This is the story of how one AIDS activist sold his soul for sixty bucks. Being queer can be expensive -- you never know when you may need to dash to The Gap for some damn thing. Or renew Vanity Fair. So I was happy to get on a list for a marketing company that would...
