by Mark S. King | Jan 10, 2025 | Family and Friends, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News, Prevention and Policy
When Jeremiah Johnson was perusing the Gilead Sciences website last November, as one does when tracking one of the most insidious assaults in history against people living with HIV, an item he found buried deep in Gilead’s pulldown menus literally took his breath... 
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 | Sep 26, 2024 | Film Review, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News
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... 
by Mark S. King | May 29, 2024 | Family and Friends, Film Review, Gay Life, Living with HIV/AIDS, My Fabulous Disease, News
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... 
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...
