(I will never explain the early days of AIDS better then this, so I post this essay to commemorate World AIDS Day every year.) My brother Richard smiles a lot. He has an easy laugh. But there was a time, years ago, when he held a poisonous drink in his hands and...
After scrapping the in-person USCHA conference for two years due to COVID, and efforts to locate the event in San Juan, Puerto Rico being threatened by two hurricanes – including Ian only weeks ago – it would seem the industrious folks at NMAC (which produces USCHA)...
Damon Jacobs is moving around his hotel room, setting up a tripod and attaching his camera, all the while chatting away enthusiastically about nothing in particular. His sunny attitude is disarming given the circumstances, and maybe that’s the point, because I’m...
The server is dressed in a black bolero jacket, the kind of thing waiters in a fine restaurant might wear, and he is carrying a tray of juices to restock the food table. Clearly, he is conscientious about his work, because the table is a pristine assortment of baked...
The poutine covering the fries in Brady’s bowl is suspicious. “It’s cheese curd,” Randy offers, and as the lone Canadian among us we figure he should know, but his explanation isn’t reassuring. The four of us, white gay men all, pick through the soggy mixture with our...
No sooner had POZ Magazine editor Oriol Gutierrez accepted my pitch to do a feature story about meth, gay men and HIV than a stunning Facebook post came across my feed. Someone I knew, Mark Wingo, had died of a meth overdose, and his roommate, Chuck Parker, posted the...
Among the glittering nominees of Hollywood films, television and music honored at the annual GLAAD Awards, one category celebrates grassroots queer media like no other. The “Outstanding Blog” award honors ongoing blogs, typically written and curated by a single...
In the early 1980s, I was a gay man living in West Hollywood, California, and the AIDS crisis was barely on the horizon. I remember hearing about people dying, maybe a friend of a friend, and thinking to myself, “oh, I think it must happen to really sleazy people....
The Reckoning, a blog site devoted to Black LGBTQ+ voices, has been producing kick-ass content for the last few years. It is also riding high these days, with the recent announcement of its second consecutive GLAAD Media Award nomination, joining previous winners Holy...
I grew up on Air Force bases. My father was an officer, Colonel Harol R. King, which was a handy thing to mention if the base police caught you lighting firecrackers in the street or running around the golf course like an idiot. Mostly, though, growing up meant...
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