Sex, Shirtless Pictures, Desire, HIV, and Leadership

Today, I changed my profile picture on Facebook. Like most of my pictures, it is one of me throwing a little bit of attitude at the camera, unlike several recent pictures, I happen to have my shirt on. Shortly after changing my profile picture, I received a very respectful email from someone that is not one of my FB friends but must follow me in some way, and he wrote:

Thank god your new profile photo finally has a shirt on. The ED of an amazing nonprofilt should not be shirtless.

I say this not because I am not sex positive (I am, and I am glad QEJ is too), but because shirtless photos look narcassistic. Which is fine for an individual, but not when that individual is suddenly the public face of the greatest queer organization around. ( I mean, there's lots of narcissism to be found on my profile, but i am not representing an organization ...)

Good luck in the newish position, sexy.

I wrote back to him this:

Thank you, [name deleted] for your note. I will take that into consideration in the context of my work.

Chances are though the pictures will continue to pop up. In the context of living loud and proud, reclaiming sex and sensuality for HIV positive bodies, challenging assumptions of leadership, redefining desire in the work and resexualizing the movement...with intention, integrity and joy, I will, without a doubt continue to do my work in the framework in which I presented my bid for leadership. Yes, narcissism exists but do not mistake me, my choices, especially when it comes to social networking sites are always and very intentional.

And ps I investigated your pictures, and I share back the sexy . Best to you.

That was the sum of the conversation, but, as many conversations do, it inspired me to write out my thoughts a little bit further, since if one person has had this thought, others must have as well. Let me begin by saying I am dedicated wholly to my job. From the time I get up until the time I go to bed, chances are I am spending at least part of every waking hour dealing with something related to QEJ, that's how you roll in a small radical nonprofit. Yes, I work on the weekends. Yes, I will be working this weekend. But, as much time as I spend working at QEJ, QEJ is my job it is not my work.

(In fact...it's 7pm, and I just got off a conference call....talk to me about office hours...shoot).

Let me explain. I do my work at my job but my job is not my work and not all of my work is done at my job. My work, in this world, is to be writer. It is to talk about the things that others sometimes can't. It is to bring desire and sex and joy back into movement building. It is to celebrate bodies in all their shapes and sizes and encourage folks to love themselves where they are and move themselves to where they want to be and be PROUD and share that work as they move along. It's why I stated my Sexy Positive Bodies photo project, to document the intentional change in my body

My work is also to hurt, love, fuck, cry, ask for help, give strength, accept strength given, sing, dance, and love some more. Because as a man I've been taught not to do those things, and if I do, not to do them openly...as I fuck up sexism by being an openly butch bodied femme boy that is afraid to be vulnerable and powerful and does it any damn way.

But most of all lately is that I have found my work falling in two places: desiring, sexualizing, and making folks hot as fuck for an HIV positive body, and bringing to light, space, and center other poz folks that are also fly as fuck (in all their shapes, sizes, colors, and abilities).  And opening space through my own process and being PUBLIC about being POSITIVE and through an clear, intentional sensualization and sometimes sexualization of my work and leadership (not lewdness but an intentional desiring of work and community and leadership). And the other space, that goes hand in hand with that, is intentionally putting sex BACK into sexual orientation and our movement for SEXUAL LIBERATION. Get in it folks.

I know how to play the game. I have been engaged in politics longer than folks twice my age from straight up electoral politics (and being recruited to be staff on campaigns) to at 28 being named a Young Wonk to Watch by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, I know my work. As my beloved Amber Hollibaugh, the woman who literally wrote the book on desire (My Dangerous Desires) once said, "Brandon has been groomed to be an executive director." And that shit is true. But groomed and guided as I have been, and loved and supported in this trajectory, I made my own decision that if I were going to do this work and do this work well, I was going to do it as me. Could I, if I put my shirt on and learned how to tie a tie position myself to be Executive Director of the Task Force and follow in the footsteps of friends and mentors Russell Roybal and Rea Carey...absolutely. But their work is different than mine. My work isn't at the Task Force. It's not at GLSEN. It's not at the helm of GLAAD. Where I go next after QEJ is anyone's guess, but I do know that when I move forward, it will be with a clear identity as a movement "leader," that expresses a particular politic that includes a sexual politic and ethic.

Don't get me wrong, I slap on a suit and tie and look really pretty when I need to do so. I am, mostly, clothed in the office (sometimes I do go barefooted), and my colleagues, interns, and community respect me....shirtless pictures and all. I am intentional in how I am building my leadership. I fully understand that there are those that may not agree with it. But I came to my position transparently and with plenty-o-shirtless pictures (along with a narrative of why they exist) to my interviews and right up to my hiring. Do I love this fabulous new body of mine, yes, but I love my work more, and I will do anything for my work and for QEJ...but the gift of leadership is that you get to define what that means and have a platform to uplift other ways of being, living, and loving that have just as much integrity as a corporate, suit and tie aesthetic...which I will not and have never desired to have.

And it's all about desire.

The Being of Facebook

There was a time when I felt that I was surrounded by brilliant individuals, and I wondered how it was that they came up with the ideas, thoughts, and reflections that I heard them speaking. I was once a member of a group called Visions Collective, which was a multi-racial/multi-gender/age diverse/sexuality diverse cohort of organizers/artists/academics. Some of the most brilliant people from the Twin Cities made up this group, and for almost four years we met on a regular basis, struggling together on a range of issues that began with the Israel/Palestine conflict and covered everything from war to sexuality. One of the most beautiful things about that group was that we permissioned ourselves to let the journey and the discussion be the outcome without requiring any tangible product. Growth, challenge, synthesis, confrontation, and conflict were the products and they were valued. But, even as a core member of that group, I felt like a fraud. The rest of the folks in the group seemed as if they thought deep thoughts and spent their waking hours dreaming up a better world. It seemed that their brains were always at work behind their eyelids.

I have never been a great thinker. I have always been a feeler and have let my emotions guide my tongue. Often I didn't know what I believed until I heard others espouse their beliefs. I would let their statements feed my emotions and based on my reactions to what others were saying, I came to an understanding of whether or not I agreed or disagreed. And my thought process started when I opened my mouth. And though others found value in what I was saying, I always felt like a charlatan. I didn't sit at home and think about the issues of the day. I didn't and rarely do now, ponder anything. But I am always feeling, there are always shifting morphing tides inside of me that, from time to time, erupt into a thought or idea that I spill out onto this blog, into an editorial, an article or in some other written format. Now and again I find myself in spaces that I once thrived in, those groups of great thinkers that are still trying to figure this world out and make it a better place, and in those places I am given the gift of being able to think out loud.

I have come to understand, though, that now adays my regular engagement with thinkers and philosophers, artists and academics is through the medium of Facebook. Folks like Staceyann Chin often pose questions that provoke long "conversations," artist like Isauro Cairo post photographs that stimulate everything from inquiry to outrage to lust and force me to rethink myself as a man, as queer, as an artist and my relationship to my body, masculinity, and desire.

And I don't feel as if I am a charlatan anymore.

I feel as if I am constantly surrounded by people that think deep thoughts and feel deep feelings, and I have come to understand that I think through feelings. Like an ant, which uses a complicated set of scents to communicate information and ideas, my body mass produces layers and layers of feelings that, in my own internal language, translate themselves into ideas and positions on myself and the world around me. And the world around me and myself seem to become more and more connected.

I find myself drawn, without judgment or expectation, to amazing new and exciting people from my partner David to my colleague Bill Martin, and all through a medium that allows me to engage with the little cues and stories that they tell, sometimes with intention and other times subconsciously, through the things that they post and the glimpses that they share into their lives, likes, dislikes, pains, discomforts, art, and celebrations. And I find myself, on a daily basis, falling in desire, lust, intellectual rapport, extreme distaste, hate, and downright rejection with people that I often do not know or only know through a small picture through a tiny window made up of fancy coding and ones and zeros on a commercial networking site.

But I know that so often the connections I have made in the real world are deepened through the online interactions, and I have made significant and meaningful connections that began as online admiration (or down right flirting) and transformed into real life friends and lovers. And throughout it all I have come to learn more about myself as a thinker and feeler, more about myself as an artist, and more about the world in which we live and the people that are also out there trying to make sense of it all.