by Mark S. King | Sep 8, 2025 | Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy, Trump
My speech at NLGJA’s closing reception where I was inducted into their LGBTQ Journalist Hall of Fame, addressing HIV/AIDS activism, trans erasure, LGBTQ unity, and the fascist regime that is “picking the flesh from our democracy every single day.”... 
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... 
by Mark S. King | Feb 27, 2024 | Family and Friends, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, Meth and Recovery, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy, Trump
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... 
by Mark S. King | Jan 15, 2024 | Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, Meth and Recovery, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy
The students who hang out in the Dr. Jesse R. Peel LGBTQ Center of East Carolina University (ECU) are welcome guests in a dynamic, welcoming space. Among them are all manner of gender expression and burgeoning sexualities. You’ll find them lazing on couches or typing... 
by Mark S. King | Nov 30, 2023 | Family and Friends, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, Meth and Recovery, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy
(I will never explain the early days of AIDS better then this, so I post this essay to commemorate World AIDS Day every year. This essay, written in 2007 for Southern Voice newspaper, won “Outstanding Opinion Piece” from NLGJA, the national LGBTQ...
