Volttage: A Dating and Hook Up Site for POZitively Sexy People

Back in late April-ish, my Facebook wall was bombarded by several of my loved ones that posted a call for HIV positive models to participate in a new project that Jack Mackenroth, the HIV positive gay man of Project Runway fame and with a boogina that makes me think of sin and putting on a bib. FIRE IN THE HOLE!

Oops sorry...that was my outside voice.

Anywho, several of my friends encouraged me to send Jack some of my pictures for this project. He was looking for HIV positive models, and my first response to my friends was....ummm 1) I am not a model, 2) You are asking me to send half naked pictures, sober, not on a sex site, with the possibility that I could end up half naked on a website for the entire world to see, 3) do you EVEN know me.

I love rejection just about as much as I love failure. Rejection, which is a main component of the impact of stigma on people living with HIV, becomes more than just a "shitty" moment for those of us living with the red rider. Rejection becomes the default for many of our interactions with folks in the community in whom we may have interest. Show me a poz man that hasn't experienced at at least half a dozen instances of shocking and hurtful ignorance when disclosing his status, and I will show you the magical leprechaun that I keep chained in my pantry making Lucky Charms whenever I have a hankering.

So, imagine, then submitting your pictures to a famous stud with no body fat and asking him to MAKE A judgment on your attractiveness.

Yeah...ummm...while I have a healthy and sometimes overly healthy ego, the one place that breaks down is around my body, but...BUT....I thought what the Hell, and I sent the pictures along. Nothing special, just some shots I took with Photo Booth on my Mac.

I don't think it even took five minutes for Jack to respond booking me for the shoot.

Besides my ego there was a very specific reason that I made the choice to submit my photos. The project Jack was working on was a well developed, sexy, fun dating and hook up site and app for HIV positive queer men. In the light of my personal and political work over the last year or so, and recalling the times when I failed to disclose and the shame, guilt, and holy Hell that created, I decided to put my own body image shit aside to be a part of this project.

A hook up site with financial backing that is aimed at eliminating stigma and supporting the HIV positive community...AND...here is the critical piece...holding up and recognizing that HIV positive people GET to be sexual beings, GET to be human, GET to be loved, GET to objects of desire, and GET to look in the mirror and feel wanted.

You see, it's a rare HIV positive person that doesn't get their diagnosis and spend a little time or the rest of their lives reduced to their disease. And...AND...unlike any other communicable and potential life threatening disease (HPV, Hepatitis C, and so many others) HIV is the ONLY one that is criminalized, and it is the only one where all of the public health strategies are aimed at one thing: stopping HIV positive people from having sex or putting so much fear and shame into positive folks that they have sex rarely and furtively. Well, we all know just how much that has worked out. All the scientific data has shown that FEAR is never an effective tool for prevention. And criminalizing a virus  aka a basic identity of a person living with the virus is exactly the same as criminalizing religion, race, creed, etc. And before anyone out there opens their mouth to say, "HEY...but you can't infect someone with "blackness." Well, guess what...until 30 odd years ago, miscegenation laws existed EXACTLY because white folks viewed the mixing of the races as "infecting" white folks with blackness.

Yes, there is an obligation to disclose your HIV status. But an obligation to disclose does NOT absolve YOU from making a sexual choice that you later regret. Except the cases of rape or incest or maybe an intentionally needle stick, the transmission of HIV should play absolutely no factor in the criminal legal system. In fact, it is has been shown to keep people from getting tested.

Smooth move straight folks. Bigotry wins again.

But, again, I digress.

So, about a month later, I showed up to an apartment in Brooklyn where Jack asked me to strip down to my underwear (I wasn't wearing any), and then he said, "No problem," and pulled out a stack of maybe 60 pairs.

Fashion gays are out of control.

In the end, the photos turned out ABSOLUTELY amazing. And two days ago the site went live. On the first day 500 people signed up for it. This really will be a game changer. The first step to building power in any community is first claiming your own empowered space. Thank you to Jack for helping the community take it first steps at reclaiming our pozitively sexiness!

Much love. Check it out: www.vol++age.com.

POZitively Struggling with Sex

Living with HIV is a constant fucking struggle. It's a struggle against yourself and the internal tapes associated with being positive. It is a struggle to deal with stigma perceived or otherwise. It is a struggle to master fear and fear of rejection. It is a struggle to just live your life like any other human being does or gets to do.

I have been trying to do some serious work integrating HIV and acceptance of it into who I am. Yesterday, I taped a video interview talking about that process for TheBody.com. Since May, I have been writing for TheBody.com, and I have received some really amazing support and love from other poz folks in the world struggling with the same shit that I am attempting to deal with, and that has been truly a wonderful experience.

But, translating these thoughts, experiences, and feelings into daily actions is sometimes very hard to do.

All of this is complicated by semi-attempts to try and venture back out into the world and enjoy the benefit of being in an open relationship, to make connections with people (sexual and otherwise), to enjoy those possibilities, and to navigate what it means to be a positive individual while doing so.

The paranoia and fear around situations, even ones in which there has been no responsibility to disclose, has me at a spiritual and mental tipping point.

Then, on top of all that, add to the mix that I am a recovering meth addict. One of the loveliest and most fun long term impacts of meth use is a syndrome called PAWS (Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome), which is basically the fun experience of having, from time to time, bouts of mild paranoia that can come on suddenly. This lovely by product of meth use can last for up to three years after use has stopped.

Hands down the only times that I have experienced PAWS has been when I have been worried about a failure to disclose (whether or not it was necessary to disclose) or some other circumstance where, to use a recent example, where I connected with someone, there wasn't a need to disclose, but he chose not to continue in communication.

Now, for most people, someone not calling you back after having a minor hook up with some heavy petting, would simply mean that it was a one night stand or dude decided after all that he wasn't interested. For me, my mind and spirit immediately jump to a place where he Googled my name, found my blogs, and is now waging a silent war against me for being HIV positive and not telling him. Even knowing when there has been absolutely no risk of transmission, I still end up in this place.

That is some fucked up shit.

And it really doesn't matter. I could hook up with a dude that never asks about my status, doesn't care, and has an entire collection of photos and video tapes of all the men that he has hooked up with and practiced unsafe sex, and I will still feel the responsibility of the world coming down on my shoulders for his choices and mine. I repeat HIS choices and mine.

I need to have my own conspiracy theory show. Because, really, this shit is better than anything on the Spike Channel or Lifetime.

So, being a Virgo and thinking logically, and also never wanting to go through another PAWS experience in my life (I can avoid PAWS experiences...for the most part....I will never be able to avoid poz experiences...that's just my reality), and knowing that most often my PAWS experiences are triggered by hook up situations or even just plain old dating situations where no one has lied to anyone about anything, but I don't know the other person's status, and they don't know mine...I have come to the conclusion that the only way to avoid PAWS situations caused by a poz situation is to make a commitment to only date and/or hook up with other HIV positive guys from now on.

At this point in my journey into integrating my identity as an HIV positive man, I haven't found a way, yet, to bring up casually while negotiating a blow job from a hot guy at a party that I am HIV positive. And since not having found the strength or whatever it takes to disclose in a situation like that or any other random hook up moment, the best thing I can do is avoid them altogether until I can find a way to do so without having a complete and total breakdown.

And walking down the street sober and believing that there is a queer mafia out there watching your every move and judging you or somehow monitoring your computer usage or cloning your cell phone to read your text messages is not worth it. It just really isn't worth it. And, truly, I don't want to end up pushing a cart full of old cat bones up and down 10th Avenue talking to my invisible friend Buttons and singing the Star Spangled Banner every time a car alarm goes off.

Yes people, I am on medication. Zoloft is my bestest friend ever.

It doesn't really matter that this moments are rare. It doesn't matter that 99.8% of the time, I go about my life, eating, shitting, talking, praying, laughing, and loving. One single evening, like tonight, where the issues converge by a chance moment and grow into something so unwieldy, uncomfortable, and avoidable, is so not worth it.

Maybe six months or a year from now, I will have done enough internal work that I can once again open myself up to deeper physical connections with negative folks. Perhaps I will get over whatever it is in my life that will not allow me to see, own, and be responsible for just my actions and not the actions of folks with whom I have connected, but that day is not today.

But I also refuse to walk away from being a sexual being. That is what so many would have us do, stripping an integral part of our humanity away from ourselves or boxing in our choices for us. Also, it is what so many of us living with HIV do to ourselves, denying that we are inherently sexual beings and that having a sex life is critical to being a healthy person.

Dealing with the mental health impacts of meth use is no joke people. Struggling with addiction is no joke people. And living with HIV isn't either.

And, just to answer a question that has been asked by more than one person, "Why/How do you write about some of the things you write about so openly," and the answer is so simple: I am not the only person that is going through this in the world.

We hide anything to do with mental health. We pretend it doesn't exist. We judge and look down on anyone that openly acknowledges that they are living with a mental health diagnosis. I don't have to tell you that addicts are dehumanized (and we won't talk about the fact that 75% of all queer people are either active or recovering addicts or alcoholics). We do the same thing to people living with HIV.

And, because of the work I have done or the way people perceive me or the way I project myself or the education I have or the opportunities I have had, when I talk about my struggles as openly and candidly as I can, it puts a different mental image in peoples heads about who it is that lives and works and even thrives living with addiction, HIV, and mental health diagnosis (temporary or otherwise). It also lets people know that living is work and growing is work and sometimes it is hard work.

So I try to struggle openly. I try to share what I've attempted and how it turned out...whether it is a recipe gone wrong or a date gone wrong. Just like with queer folks, the more of us that are living with HIV, addiction, and mental health diagnosis come out of our closest, the easier it will be for those that come after us to live better, healthier, and less stigmatized lives.

Who We Date: Queer Men of Color and Race

A blessing that I have found as a writer and particularly through my blogging is that more often than I ever imagined, folks that read my writing come to me with questions wondering if I've ever written on the topic or wondering if I would share my thoughts on a subject.

With total and complete humility, I am really and truly honored when that happens. And sometimes, I don't have much to offer but I always try to share my thoughts honestly, including owning when I just don't know.

But now and again someone asks a question that I have not only thought about but also lived in a really personal way. Recently, a long time acquaintance of mine from Minnesota sent me a really honest and searching email. In some real ways he and I have had parallel journeys. We are both mixed race queer kids from Minneapolis. In fact, we both grew up in the same neighborhood. We are about the same age, and, in fact, though I didn't know him growing up, we have many friends in common. I met this gentleman almost as soon as I started going out to 18+ night at the bars in Minneapolis.

Unsurprisingly, in the mid-90s, he and I were two of a very very very small handful of queer men of color in the bars at the time.

When he wrote to me, he was asking if I had ever had the experience of having a black gay man ask me if I have ever dated a black man. Or, even more directly, accused me of being only into "hot white boys." He also asked if I have had the experience upon meeting someone in person or online and politely declining their interest if I have been accused, immediately, of my declination being about the color of the person asking, specifically, black skin. He also talked about the frustration of being in those moments and feeling that based on the place the conversation had gone that he was unable to answer honestly. For him, the honest answer is that he hasn't dated a black man. In my case the answer is yes.

But the distance between his no and my yes is not all that great.

Like my friend, I grew up in what is still the third whitest state in the country. In the last 15 years, Minneapolis as a city has diversified in leaps and bounds. The city that is now is not the city, demographically, that it was in 1995. There were no queer Latin nights at the bar. The black queer community was deep underground and it organized itself through a series of house parties. The queer Latino community also eschewed the gay bars for house parties and straight Latin clubs. Indeed, we knew who each other were at the salsa bars but it was a community in the closet--a really big closet. The Asian/Pacific Islander queer community at the time would throw late night BBQs in order to get together, and they would, from time to time, go out en masse and dance all together in the same corner of the bars. The gay bars were dominated by white gay men who felt absolutely no restraint in saying clearly and to your face, "I don't date black men." And, frankly, it didn't matter how light skinned a black man was...if the skin wasn't pearly white, then you weren't on the menu. There were the exceptions, most often white men that fetishized men of color, but, overwhelmingly, the message was quite clear: Black ain't beautiful in the queer community in Minneapolis.

Add to that the conundrum of the mixed race family. I have no idea the details of my friend's family, but I was raised by my white Mother and her family. And, although my Mom is now married to her fourth husband of color, I was deeply aware of how my own family struggled with race, and I knew some of our family history around race. In particular, I knew that my Mother's relationships with men of color had caused deep divisions in the family.

Throw on top of that all of the media messages we get about what constitutes beauty...and you have a trifecta of factors, particularly in a city with almost no visible queer community of color or examples of brown and black men loving each other openly, which has lead to many a person of color in Minneapolis that, indeed, is only into "hot white boys."

Further, my friend went on to discuss the fact that sometimes people are just attracted to a certain type of person, look, etc. And that there are folks that won't date someone because of their skin color, but he had a hard time wrapping his head around why folks would go into the world and start from a place of assuming that if they are turned down for a date/hook up by another man of color that the reason must be about race.

I really have no problem understanding that.

I have heard too many times and been told to my face or via chat on a hook up site that, "I am cute but I don't do XYZ," that I am suspicious, particularly with white men, when it comes to that. I don't assume the rejection is based on race unless they admit that it is, but when they do, I about lose my mind.

And, when a man of color asks me or accuses me of not being interested because he is black, I general have a very compassionate reaction and understand where that question originates. It originates in the very real racism, and in the case of queer men of color, internalized racism that exists overtly in the queer community. Unless said person that I've rejected is being a straight up biznatch, I generally am really clear about why it is that I am not interested...usually its because the man has a butter face, but, instead of saying that, I simply outline, nicely, that this or that isn't working for me. And, if necessary, I can always pull out my slut book and list off the 100 or so black men that I have quite happily dated and or rode like a mechanical bull at a country bar in Texas. Ahem.

That's Brandon now...Brandon in 1995 wouldn't have dated a black man to save his life. And that shit was all about me.

I grew up with a Step-Dad that beat my ass so badly that I still take anti-PTSD medication to this day. I grew up in a family where I received, never ever consciously, indirect messages that black was somehow bad--as I knew that my family had been angry with my Mother for dating black men....so....in a child's mind....logically....dating black men must be a bad thing. Being mixed race and one of the "smart kids," I had been given shit by other black kids in my neighborhood and all throughout school, so by the time I left for college, except for the black kids in my magnet program in high school, I didn't want anything to do with the community--and I had never experienced the very real and beautiful educated and loving black community that exists nor did I understand the roots of the anger of those beautiful black men that ridiculed me in school....I had been the target of anger from black men that were justifiably pissed off at white folks but since they couldn't attack them, I was the next best thing. And then coming out when and where I did and being told clearly that black wasn't beautiful was the final nail in my self-hating coffin. I then ran off to a school with exactly 9 U.S. born students of color about half of which were black. So, you know, not a lot of unlearning negative messages about blackness and beauty coming from that quarter (though there were a lot of white fake hippy children playing djembe and taking African dance...GOD HELP ME!)

I didn't think about any of that nor did I engage with any of that when looking at the men that I was dating, I just told myself that I just wasn't attracted to black men and that, you know, people are attracted to different people, so what's the big deal.

The big deal was all that shit beneath the surface that was the real reason why I wasn't attracted to black men...and it had nothing to do with black men, everything to do with me, but...and this is the part that is about community...by not engaging with the truth behind why I wouldn't date black men...and by turning a number of black men down...I was replicating the exact cycle of hurt that was dividing black and brown men from each other and made me unable to find my own people beautiful.

I was lucky. I transferred from my first college to the University of Minnesota, and Minneapolis had started undergoing a radical demographic shift and queer people of color were asserting themselves into the community. Folks were also pushing back against the racism found there. I started doing national work with other queer people of color and was given the opportunity to work in close community with loving people that knew EXACTLY the reason why it is so hard for brown men to love each other, and, through their gentle love, I was able to start seeing that my lack of attraction wasn't really just a "preference," but a result of a series of personal historical and community history events that decided for me what constituted beauty and attractiveness. I worked at a queer youth organization that was mostly queer youth of color organizing with other queer youth of color. And we all struggled around these issues together.

Finally, I made a decision that I was only going to date men of color and for almost four years that is exactly what I did. I had the blessing and the privilege to look into my own past, see my wounds, and work to heal them with other people that had experienced the same thing.

And because of that, to this day, when I am confronted by anger from men of color that immediately believe that I am not interested in them because of race...I understand. For me, now, it isn't true. And I am able to share clearly why it is that I am not interested in a particular person with the complete and secure knowledge that it isn't about race. (And I am fairly certain that the parade of nations that has made it way through my bed including some lesser known island nations in Micronesia is a certain indicator that the days of only white men in my bedroom are long gone). But I understand the anger. I appreciate the anger. And I hope that the reasons for the anger will one day no longer be there.

But that is going to take more intentional work on the part of brown and black men to examine the decisions we make, understand the decision we make, heal from any wounds that we have taken, and then look again at who we love and who we fuck. And, if at that point you still have a preference for this or that type of person that includes a particular shade of skin, you at least know that it is actually a preference and not a choice that was made for you by history, racism, and a standard of beauty that most often doesn't include men with skin like ours.