A New Kind of Blackness: Remarks at Tufts University's Black Solidarity Day

This keynote was given today at Tuft's Pan African Alliance's annual Black Solidarity Day Rally. I was honored to be invited to keynote this amazing event.
 

Let me begin by thanking Tabias Wilson, Jameelah Morris and the rest of the Pan African Alliance and the Tufts community for inviting me to spend some time with you today. It's an honor and a pleasure.

I've spent a long time thinking about blackness. About, roughly, all of my 35 years walking around this planet. I guess that makes me some sort of an expert, but mostly it makes me confused, angry, celebratory, conflicted, colonized, dehumanized, aggrandized, powerful, vulnerable, righteous, and a whole host of other adjectives, some of which are pejoratives, most of which reflect the complex relationship to blackness that comes with living in this particular historical moment, in this particular body, at this particular arc in our development as black folks and as community. Let me not mince words, though, it is a beautiful day to be a person of African descent in this world.

Despite the struggles, despite Jim Crow being alive and well and feeding on our people, despite the KKKoch brothers, despite still pretending that military service is job training and a pathway to anything but more colonization of people that look like us, despite having lost enough collective monetary worth during the Recession that we now are looking at a community with the equivalent resources of our folks BEFORE the Civil Rights movement, it's a good damn day to be black.

Let me tell you why. And it has nothing to do with Barack Obama, though let my one overt partisan moment be to say this:

If you have the right to vote for President, unlike our immigrant brothers and sisters, folks living in our colonies, and the millions of mostly men of color that have lost the right due to felony convictions (Jim Crow is alive and happy as Hell)...and you do not vote because "voting doesn't matter," or "you are protesting the system," please take your selfish self-centered behind up and out of these here United States. Most likely someone died for you to have that right especially if you are a woman, person of color, non land owner. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE BLACK. Folks are still dying here and around the world because some folks decided to stay home in 2000 and 2004 and Bush got in the White House, lost his mind, and started two wars. Go vote. I hope you will vote for Obama, but not voting isn't a protest it is an abrogation of your most minimal democratic obligation.

I am proud of Barack Obama but that has nothing to do with why it is a good day to be black in America. It's a good day to be black in America because we are beautiful. Always have been. Always gonna be. But it's a good day to be black because we have a chance to grab ahold of our blackness and shake it out. It's time to pull it back out of the closet, air out the afro puffs and pin that blackness to a clothes line and take a good look at it.

You know it has some stains on it. You know there are some old patches and frayed edges. Well it's time to Shout it Out! The Tide I am here to talk about is a tidal wave of change that needs to start right here with each and every person of African descent, whether you were born in Africa and have decided to make the United States your home, a descendant of U.S. born slaves, a Black Latin@, or wherever that slave ship happened to land and drop off your ancestors. Bi-racial, or a racial smorgesbord that has the black experience in the mix. Blackness now, today, needs a radical redefinition.

Before I go into what needs to be done with that blackness on the clothesline, let me talk to the black men a little bit and about feminism. Feminism at its root means that both men and women get to express their full humanity without oppression, without prescribed ways of being that are rigidly policed and socially/politically/often physically punished when deviated from the norm, and allow both men and women the full range and expression of their vitality and spirit without taking away from the other. Indeed, feminism is, at its root, the negation of gender roles and the full expression of human experience as in a liberation framework---ie...you get to be all of you, and I get to be all of me, and together we are committed to building each other to our full potential.

For black men this becomes about survival. Black men are taught from the gate to be tough, hard, in control, "macho", independent, players, victims, and that our potential is circumscribed by history, circumstance, and ability--not to be punks, to be virile, the mandigo syndrome...and these ideals images and thoughts are reinforced through our own communities, often, media--too often--, and what we consume from mainstream dominant ideology. We resemble what we are presented by others as ourselves. We become charicatures because so many of those that would be our own role models are dead, absent, or in prison. We are socialized internally and externally, and unless someone or something intervenes to break the cycle of history, legacy, and socialization we often become what we were never born to be. We become angry, and turn that anger inwards and towards our own community. And as a wise woman once told me, there is a place for angry black men: jail.

The truth or untruth of these socializations are related to our relative position to power, history, presentation, and ability to conform or not (willingly or not, consciously or not) to a paradigm that requires us to set our skin aside and adopt a way of being that imitates the master consciousness. This too is an ultimate expression of sexism and must be rejected through conscious practice. Further, I would argue it is sexism and a lack of feminist ideals and thoughts that are at the root of the pandemic of the single parent home, which, in and of itself, keeps the community widely struggling with poverty and in cycles of poverty.

Black men. Your liberation is inimically tied to women. It is not an option for you to be feminist if you want to be free. It is for all of our survival that black men must move towards an articulated black feminism, accountable to black women, and responsible for ourselves.

Let me let you in on a wee little bitty secret. Whether you were born in the Motherland and recently moved here or grew up here anyway, the blackness you experience is only partially your own. You may feel empowered and a fully realized person of African descent, but I am here to tell you right now today that your blackness has been shaped, influenced, and molded by oppressive institutions that have anything but your best interest in mind. The media, education, prison industrial complex, the nonprofit industiral complex, and all the other systems that were, listen closely here, created and built to maintain hegemonic white power.

And do you know how whiteness was legally defined in this country, beginning in the late 17^th century and then systematically constructed through a series of colonial state and later federal laws? As the basic opposition of blackness. Or, to be more specific, who was white and who was black and what that meant, entailed, and carried was and has been a function of law in this nation for the better part of all of its existence as a free standing state and for a good 250 years before hand. From the first laws passed by the House of Burgesses in Virginia to establish race based slavery to anti-miscegenation and Jim Crow laws later, what it means to be black has been fundamentally been defined by the legal system for a good chunk of our history.

And the greatest victory of that legacy of racial legislation is that through the combination of the media, the police state, and our own complicitness, the legal apparatus of our blackness is largely no longer necessary. We no longer need laws to force us to segregate, we no longer need laws for us to adhere to an anti-intellecualism, we no longer need laws to tell us to stay in our place and keep our heads down or don't buck the system or divide ourselves from one another based on skin tone and class, we do all that by ourselves, most of the time without thinking about it. If a brother or sister's hair is natural or they spent a semester in Ghana or is taking West African dance or can whip up mean plate of collards and neckbones (which I can....my greens will change your life), or can recite Tupac's biography, or has been to prison, or is hood, or is hard, or is straight, ..then that brother or sister is downer, blacker than say a light skinned lesbian that graduated summa cum laude from Tufts.

Pardon me but I call bullshit. Don't get me wrong, we need to embrace with a fierceness our historical roots whether that be our immigrant selves from Nigeria or our slave ancestors from a mill in West Virginia, but the downer than thou, black than you mentality has done nothing but foment separation, pain, and kept our ability for revolution and liberation in shackles and chains. It's time to set our liberation free y'all and it starts with building with one another.

I am standing in front of you a black, white, Ojibwe, Afro-Boricua, HIV positive, queer man. And I am just as black as any of you. You are my community, you are my salvation. I am in community with my queer and trans black family and being queer or trans doesn't make you less black than anyone else. It's time for us to realize that HIV stopped being a white gay disease a long time ago, it's now a black and Latina straight women's disease (as the fastest growing populations of HIV infection) and it's time to hold up our positive brothers and sisters as our own. No more high yellow and midnight blue conversations when talking about skin unless its to talk about how that high yellow or midnight blue person rocked your socks last night after that party and you are about to take his or her last name. I could give a damn about the style you wearyour hair, fried died and laid to the side or afro-tastic, I am with Miss India.Arie, I am NOT my hair!

I have a great-uncle that some of you may have heard about. His name is Carter G. Woodson. He wrote a book called the Miseducation of the Negro. It is time that we stop miseducating ourselves. Hear me now, and hear me clear, that blackness on the clothes line needs to be washed clean of the things that we have let divide ourselves from ourselves. It needs to be ironed and beaded and treated with loving care and expanded to include all shades of blaqness and all the power that holds while letting go of the powerlessness. Ain't nobody in this world going to give us our liberation. We need to break those chains ourselves, and we have to start by holding each other close in a way that says clearly that I am you. You are me. And I will do the work to undo the legacy of oppression, racism, sexism, heterosexism, abelism, classism, immigration status, and skin privilege that keeps me from you and you from me and us from the mountaintop because I am climbing y'all, and I mean to take every one of you with me, if you'll just hold my hand. I need you, and we need each other.

Thank you all for having me here today with you to talk just a little bit. Be blessed.

Why Voting Matters: Barack Obama...I got you.

I have written a number of blog posts about Barack Hussein Obama (30 mentions to be exact). Last May, I wrote a blog titled Why I Will Be Voting for Barack Obama, and I stand by all that I wrote in that blog as well.  If you want to know why I am voting to support our president, please check out one of those two links above.

I am writing today to talk about the practice of voting itself. Yesterday, I posted this status on Facebook:

 I know I should not have to say this, but I am. If you have the right to vote for President, unlike our immigrant brothers and sisters, folks living in our colonies, and the millions of mostly men of color that have lost the right due to felony convictions (Jim Crow is alive and happy as Hell)...and you do not vote because "voting doesn't matter," or "you are protesting the system," please take your selfish self-centered ass up and out of these here United States. Most likely someone died for you to have that right especially if you are a woman, person of color, non land owner. Folks are still dying because y'all decided to stay home in 2000 and 2004 here and around the world thanks to wars started by Bush. Go vote. I hope you will vote for Obama, but not voting isn't a protest it is an abrogation of your most minimal democratic obligation. Don't vote; relocate. Danke! Gracias! Merci! Obrigado! Salamat po! Grazie!

 I stand by this Facebook status emphatically, but I want to explain a bit more about why I believe voting to be important even within this broken system, particularly after receiving some well thought out and meaningful push back from a former colleague and someone that I adore as a human and as a thinker, Patrick Barret from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You can read Patrick's full discourse on my Facebook page by scrolling down a bit and clicking on the comment feed under the above status.  But one of his comments struck me in response to my statement that we have an obligation to participate [in democracy via the minimal act of voting]:

"Yes of course we do, but not blindly. We are plenty smart enough, and we're morally obligated, not to just participate aimlessly, with no analysis of what works and what doesn't. The system's broken, and in my opinion, that obligates us to avoid fulfilling Einstein's definition of insanity."

I agree with Patrick. The system is broken. Democracy is limited more now than at anytime since the official dismantling of Jim Crow era poll taxes/lit tests/etc. Using the vehicle of the prison industrial complex and restrictive ID laws and court room shenanigans, the vote is either directly or effectively stripped from millions upon millions of mostly people of color and poor voters. That, of course, is not coincidental since a working poor/oppressed class of folks that see themselves as having a legitimate opportunity to use the electoral system to effect change would buck the two party system and create a much fairer (as fair as can be possible while still operating under capitalism). It would be a democracy that was at least multi-party if not explicitly socialist in its leanings. That's my belief and the trends of the 60s of radical social groups that were broad based holds this up as do the union organizing of previous decades, etc. So it is in the interest of power to limit the franchise as much as possible and to those that have some particular interest and investment in the current system. It is easier for the working poor to see themselves in cahoots with a struggling and shrinking middle class which identifies with American dream aspirations rather than having the working poor and middle class seeing themselves as fundamentally the same as the working poor and having the middle class risk what small privileges still exist for a chance at a revolutionary democratic movement that would pay out real liberation dividends via a time of struggle. 

Yet even with that broken reality, I believe that our system is not yet so monolithic and gone that the two parties are one party from rhetoric to recent history WE KNOW THAT TO BE UNTRUE! 

The system is broken. It needs to be fixed. But the reality is that who sits in the White House DOES matter. It matters to those of us living with HIV if the president in the White House is going to fund Ryan White and at what level, Medicaid and other social programs. It matters to working class people of color and poor whites if the president in the White House is going to rush to or manufacture a war for political and financial gain. It matters who is the White House when it comes to basic human rights protections for queer and trans folks. It matters for many reasons who sits in the White House.

HEAR ME CLEARLY! No person in the White House is going to give us our liberation, But I do not ascribe to the notion that who you vote for in this corporate democracy doesn't matter. Eight years of Bush and the Great Recession that followed proved, unequivocally, that, in fact, it does matter. It matters in a cost of lives. Mayhaps I am not as "down," as those that are willing to suggest that voting doesn't matter because the system is inherently flawed. Voting doesn't matter in the way that it should. I spent years working with Patrick Barret, David Cobb and others on just these issues. And I continue to advocate for real and meaningful democratic practice. And if I need to do so, I will continue to repeat that voting is only your most minimal obligation to democracy. But I will vote tomorrow. I will vote for Barack Obama. And I encourage every one of you to vote, attempt to vote, or raise Hell in one way or another if you find your right to vote denied while at the polling station...and then...no matter what the outcome of the election tomorrow night, get ready for the real work of democracy that comes each and every day afterwards.

Clean; You be Too aka FUCK YOU BIYOTCH!

Pardon my French (I love saying that now that I have a Frenchy partner), but the next time you are posting an ad for a piece of ass or a dick for that ass and you post that you are clean and looking for clean, I sure hope you mean that you have washed your ass in bleach and are looking for someone that has done the same....because if you are using "clean" to refer to yourself as being HIV negative, then let me be so kind as to tell you that the connotative definition of your identity is that being HIV positive is dirty.

Considering that I take up to three showers a day, I dare you to prove that you are cleaner than I am. You are very likely to be much more ignorant (ignant in ghetto speak) than I am, but cleaner. I doubt it.

Confused? Every single motherfucker walking around this planet is carrying some sort of communicable virus. Nearly 20% of everyone walking around is positive for genital herpes and if you include canker sores and cold sores, which is the same herpes simplex (yes canker sores and the sore on your cock or anus are exactly the same virus)...then by your own definition you ain't clean. And, PS Chicken Pox is a form of herpes.

Need more clarity, 98% of humans have some type of herpes simplex one or two, 20% have genital herpes and 50-80% have oral herpes (chancer sores), which means, biyotch that you most likely do too.

But I digress.

Today, I reposted a great ad from Mr. Friendly, an amazing human being/ad campaign that is looking to fight HIV stigma. It was all about the word clean used to describe people that are HIV negative. I had a note in my phone to write a blog on the word clean, and I have for a month. That ad/meme today gave me the motivation I needed to do so.

I am clean. I am very damn clean. I just took a shower. And if my own God said that it isn't want you put IN your body that makes you unclean but what comes out of it (spiritually) then no virus can possibly make me unclean. But your willful, hurful and ugly ignorance sure can piss me off.

And don't get me started on this ads that are looking for bareback sex but only with "clean," individuals. Lord don't get me started. I have written extensively on the right of all people to engage in natural aka bareback sex...and I personally love it and have practiced it in an informed manner with harm reduction strategies, but HIV has nothing to do with whether or not a person is clean, nor does skin color, gender, religion or any other category that has been, over the ages, been described as or segregated as socially and culturally dirty.

You want an end to HIV, that starts with an end to stigma, and the smallest way you can do your part besides staying negative is by being an ally to folks living with HIV and eliminating word choices that reinforce ugly and hateful paradigms that scream OTHER, OUTCAST, UNCLEAN.

Seen those words before? Yeah, they have been used to refer to everyone from lepers to members of the Untouchable caste. Every person, from cradle to grave is clean and worthy of love and no one enjoys a monopoly on being pure or pristine. Your actions determine your spiritual health, not your HIV status and surely not any other diagnosis that carries stigma.

Clean? Yeah I am clean. Now if you want to talk about my bedroom or the mutant dust bunnies under my bed, then we can have a conversation.

Check yourself...or I promise you...I will.

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.

Moving Forward?

Yesterday, I resigned from QEJ. QEJ is a vital part of the queer movement, and I know that it will continue to do great work as it struggles through this particular moment. I believe that the leadership of the board is strong and holds a strong vision and is comprised of some truly amazing people. Much love and luck to you. The choice was best for me and for QEJ, and I am looking forward to figuring out the next steps in my life path including reconstituting my life to focus on maintaining a healthy mind, healthy body, healthy spirit and healthy heart.

After this Summer and all that it has conjured, good and ill, my coping mechanisms are frayed, and it is time to seriously refocus on what is really important and to put my feet to walking towards, and quickly, the things that will help me hold in place the lessons from the last few months while not allowing them to be greater or smaller than they need to be.

It's time to get off the roller coaster.

There are the personal issues that I need to address and keep under control. I won't rehash them all here, as I have done so in numerous blogs over the last several years.

But here are the broad outlines:

1) Recommit to doing something every day related to self-esteem, addiction, and other mental health factors that have a nasty way of finding new ways of popping up when you least want them.  Even if it is pulling a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Phoning a Friend.

2) Gym. Enough said.

3) Meditation. With ADHD, this is going to be a slow development.

4) My relationship. Nico is coming home in a couple of weeks, and a lot has happened since he left, on both of our sides, reconnecting will be important, and I am deeply looking forward to that. Two months is a hell of a damn long time to be away from your boyfriend. With time differences, two different schedules, life moments, developing world technology reliability, and no ability to interact besides sound and occasionally sight, and the distance starts to feel like it is across the galaxy instead of across an ocean.

5) Maintain physical health, particularly related to HIV medication and mental health medication. As this transition unfolds, it will be important to make sure that these things are not casualties of finances or lack of structure. Time to revisit the good folks at ADAP.

6) Last but so not least, visioning clearly the work that I want to be doing as my job and the work I want to be doing as a volunteer or engaged in another way. It's time to do good work AND have financial stability.  And centering my writing as core component of my daily work.

I am reaching out and asking folks for support in each of these areas. I want to make the best possible choices and that means tapping the brilliance (and straightforwardness) of my community.


There are no coincidences in life. None at all.

What A F!cking Summer...

As we approach the official final day of Summer and the weather is starting to cool towards Fall, and the days are getting to be shorter even as the temperatures dip into a range when I don't feel like I would like to strip off the top layer of my skin to try and get just a little cooler (and on the best of days I look like Miss Whitney Houston on a crack binge when it the Sun starts to grill us Earthlings...anything above 73 degrees, and my head breaks into a full on deluge, and don't let me get started on the subway funk oven from June-September....walking down into the L train on 14th and 1st is like taking a flying leap into the Bog of Eternal Stench).

This Summer has been a whirlwind of life experiences, some of which have been amazing, and some of which have been entirely new and difficult, and, I discovered, that the lie I tell myself of being strong enough to handle whatever comes my way is a tall tell that I won't be telling myself anymore. From now on that statement will read: When something new and difficult or old and no longer serves comes along, first I have to not pretend, especially with myself, that I have the capacity to deal with it on my own---in the end I am the only person that CAN deal with the things that impact my life--but it no longer serves to say that something is going to be just fine and dandy when everything inside of me is screaming/crying/cussing/raging whilst also, at the same time, throwing a giant pity party...all wrapped up in some messed up male socialization crossed with a Minnesota upbringing where saying I love you is reserved for special holidays, everyone is expected to perfect or at least pretend to be in public, and anything spicier than ketchup is a sin.

There are many situations in my life that I can and do handle extremely well, and because I have intensely been working on my shit related to living with HIV (lord knows I have a long way to go still), when my doctor recommended that I start taking meds, I knew that it wasn't going to be easy and that I would probably have to deal with some emotionally hard days, but I also thought gosh golly, I it's been ten years, it's just a single pill a day, and you are as healthy as a horse, YOU GOT THIS! What I got was a month of ferocious side effects, spontaneous emotional and alcohol fueled break downs at the most awkward and unexpected times (a shout out to Natasha Johnson for being with me on one of those occasions), and finally having to face the final reality of what it means for most people that live with HIV to actually live with it, but it took me that many weeks to come to the realization that I was, indeed, falling apart on the inside, drinking way too much, and doing just about anything to actually face on this new part of my reality. I am still dealing with it, and some days I deal much better than others, but all those feelings of shame, issues with self-worth, and self-esteem came roaring back so fiercely that it has taken me months to beat those bitches back down. They still jump up and snap now and again, but at least now I am able to beat them back down in a few days instead of three months.  And, by writing and sharing about my experience, I have had other folks starting their journey reach out and share with me a piece of their lives and their strength, Each one has been welcome and a reminder that no one walks any road completely alone.

One of the most spectacular and unexpected events of this Summer happened on June 23rd when I showed up to eat cheesecake and celebrate the birthday of one Nico Le Chou along with his parents and our mutual friend JT.  I should have known that the night would be unexpected when upon meeting his mother and saying to her in French that I understand French and do not speak it well her response was, "It's because you are lazy, no?"

Now if I had been quicker on my feet that evening I would have said, "No, madame it's LACY not lazy." Instead, I shoved a piece of cheesecake in my mouth and thought of completely inappropriate Polish jokes in her direction.  After finishing the cheeesecake and my evil thoughts (and I have to admit that any maman that is that sassy upon meeting wins my instant lifetime devotion), I ranged out into the night with JT and Nico. My intention was only to go out for a drink or two and then head back home, but Nico and JT both used friend guilt to maximum effect,  and Nico got plenty of mileage out of the line: But it's my birthday! Well for anyone that is a Facebook friend, you know that night I gave Nico an innocent birthday kiss with lots of tongue and that turned out to be the beginning of something that has become something that I am willing to fight for tooth, nail, to hold on to....and anyone that gets in the way is going to make me take out my Vaseline and pass my hoops to one of my girls to hold while I prepare to put someone in the ground.

Nico is, very simply, a catalyst for my best self. When he is nearby, the gremlins that sometimes scream from inside my head or claw at my stomach, that read from a Satanic Gospel that was written for me based on lies this world told me when I was too young to not believe them and sometimes that I still hold on to even though I am no longer a child and the time for childish things has passed away, are quieted. They still speak, but when they do they no longer sound like the Metatron; they sound exactly like what they are: cold dead echoes of malevolent spirits most of which have haunted generations of my family because of race and poverty, abuse and struggle, colonization, capitalism, gender and sexual orientation--powerful spirits that are the source of the spiritual and often times mental and physical wounds that are manifested by the way this world treats those that are not the powerful of their generation.

These gremlins are the internal overseers that maintain the slavery that is at the core of how power and wealth are maintained and transferred from generation to generation. The enslaved can only be slaves if they agree to their bondage. Once, to enforce servitude, the enslaved needed the whip, the noose, and the burning cross, medical control over a woman's body, miscegenation laws and sodomy statutes enforced by daily violence in the lives of the controlled by those that felt entitled to own them. But the greatest triumph of slavery is that the external trappings of slavery are no longer necessary. We now are taught from the time we are born to enslave ourselves. We are taught that our lives and labor are not really our own despite what we believe, and so we know, without having to be taught by the daily presence of state sponsored fear and violence, to whom we owe our service, and for the 99% of us, even those that have inherited a history of struggle against slavery--whether it comes from a legacy of civil rights agitation or simply from having a single white mother that gave birth to mixed race children and without any language of justice but an understanding that she wanted more and better for her own children and  fought to give them the tools and opportunities with the scarce working poor resources she had to do so. My Mother did so and all the while, for most of my childhood and into my early teen years, still suffering physical violence from many of the men she had chosen to offer her servitude, and though she also passed on to my brother and I some of the wounds that were her legacy, for those wounds that she was conscious of as being passed down because her Mother was never given the opportunity to know better or make deeper cracks in the cycle, she was vehement in the battle she did against those things she never wanted her children to suffer only because she did so.

This Summer, as I began my HIV medicine and started my relationship with Nico, I came to a new appreciation and understanding of my Mom and a deeper gratefulness for the sacrifices she made out of instinct and a simple desire to lessen the suffering of her children in the ways that she knew that she could. I remember her telling me once upon a time that she would never be able to tell me how to survive being a black man in this world, but she could give me other strengths. The greatest gifts that she gave to me were that I never doubted that she loved me even when our lives were harshest in so many ways. And she truly believed that I could do absolutely anything that I wanted in this life--she believed it when I didn't because despite what my Mother said the rest of the world from TV to my fourth grade teacher told me otherwise...taught me that I would most likely be dead by 25 at the hands of another man of color or if I managed to graduate from high school and even more unlikely college, my opportunities were limited not by my desire and imagination but what the world and power would allow. And though I was blessed to have other folks in my world that also believed in what they saw in me, and held up a mirror to help me see past the shame, fear, anger, hurt, loneliness to catch a glimpse of a human being that was intelligent, caring, and worthy of being loved, it was and is my Mother that still, despite the HIV, despite the addiction issues, despite the poor choices that I have made in my life, has never once done anything but love me fiercely, shed some tears because of some of the roads that I have to walk, and keep on believing that I could break free of my chains---that I could find a way to freedom. Her sometimes quiet and most of the times loud and insistent assertion that I can do anything and am worthy of love has been reflected back to me by so many others as well that on most days, I actually believe it.

But I digress, I was writing about Nico. There is something about him and about how we are when we are together that calms my natural drama, pulls a Tangina on the internal poltergeists, and leaves me feeling held up in a way that is steadying, confident and calm. I am the raging storm in our relationship, the lightning and the random tornadoes and water spouts, when his exact and rational nature leads him to doubt himself or what he can achieve in a given situation, I am the creative force that cajoles and pushes him to step a bit into my rainbow world of so many more hues and shades than grey, black and white, and he is the one that when the storm threatens to break free and hurls me into its wildness and chaos is my standing stone. He is the first man that I have ever dated that shuts me down when I need to be shut down, lets me rage when it is best for me to rage, knows when I need his arms around me and knows when to let me walk away just a little bit to be me in the world.

Plus he is French, sexy, a gold metal Olympiad in the boudoir and well...he does arms reduction policy for the United Nations. Brilliant and saves the world from itself every day. Basically a walking aphrodisiac.  One day, when I write my tell all memoir, there will be at least one chapter in there about my French Diplomat when he sets the UN Declaration aside and takes off his suit and tie. Our children won't be allowed to read that chapter until they are in their late 40s. And the full color illustrations with bonus DVD will be missing from their copies.

And so I started dating this amazing human being and then a few weeks later, the Undersecretary General of the United Nations asked him to return to Togo, where he previously held a post for two years as Deputy Director of the Centre that is responsible for UN arms reduction work across the continent as the Interim Director of the Centre. When he called to tell me, I had just received my first hate mail in response to my writing, had just received some tough news at work, and was having some tough side effects from my meds. The news that he would be leaving three weeks from that day for two months in West Africa was exactly the last news that I wanted to hear. So, even though I wanted to kick and scream and throw a temper tantrum, and before the tears could escape my eyeballs, at which point if I try to talk I sound like a tranny Muppet on helium with a bad case of gonorrhea of the throat, I told him that it was out of the question for him not to take this opportunity and then I hung up the phone. As the day of his departure got closer, I began telling myself and him that it would be no problem, two months would be easy peasy, that I would miss him, but we would talk every day and thanks to Skype I would be able to see him and then he would be back home with me.

All that is great except for a few things: 1) Going from spending part of most of your days with the man you love and then have him leave and be absolutely unreachable for two months is not just tough it's evil...like locking a big girl that is trying desperately to lose weight in a room full of thin mints and putting them in a bullet proof glass box and making her stare at it while eating saltines. Every. Single. Day.  Now for those wild and crazy UN folks that are used to spending months on end away from their partners and spouses, they have the skill set and experience to handle the absence. I had Pinot Grigio. Tasty but it was the saltine to my thin mint. Unfortunately, the storm started raging and the gremlins showed up riding a cadre of Jabberwocky's, and it took me several weeks and some difficult moments to realize that Nico isn't my Dad, he is going to come back when he says he is going to come back, and that just because he isn't physically present he isn't absent. Can you say Daddy and Abandonment issues? (Did I mention I am starting therapy this week?).

2) It hasn't been easy peasy but I think it has been very good for us. I am now very clear about why I want to be with Nico and what value he adds to my life. It isn't a relationship of convenience or proximity (clearly not proximity), and it has demonstrated that we can get through hard moments together. Now most couples have a honeymoon period of six months before they really have to dig into the baggage...we had to start unpacking right after buying a lovely matching set of Samsonite. Didn't get to break it in even. And lemme tell you, if you can worth through some shit when you are 6,000 miles apart and can only interact through Skype, then that is something real.

3) Speaking of Skype....Togolese Internet fucking sucks. That's all I have to say about that.

In the end, Nico's pragmatism and my optimism seem to have formed an unholy union that, against the odds, is beautiful. I would not have chosen to start out our relationship with an immediate two month absence, but the Universe has a nasty habit of not going along with my plans.

I have not by any means dealt with these hard moments well at all times. There have been times when I let the gremlins run the show. There have been times when I should have realized that putting on a Sambo face and doing the shuck and jive only to lose it much more spectacularly later is counterproductive. This Summer has taught me that you can still be strong AND let folks know that you are going to need to lean on them and that if you pretend that all is well that they have full permission to respond with "Girl, please."

Caveat to that statement: There are times that folks have offered me fierce support that I needed whether I really wanted it or not at the moment, and I have appreciated that.There has been more than one loved one in my life come to me and call bullshit and have done so in a way that was both direct but also about growth and building.  Having said that, I have also had folks that don't know me but think that they do try to come at me and do it like they are Jesus himself. You come at me like you are Jesus, and there is a crucifixion on the horizon. I am all about accountability, though the Lord knows that its never fun when it comes around, but also if you aren't living my life but you think you can sit in judgment of it, and you haven't done the work to speak to me, then you need to take a look at some things about yourself. As someone wise told me once upon a time, ifin' you have a problem with me, you bring it to me with respect, if you don't, then it's not really my problem. I don't throw stones because I know my house is made out of glass. I built that mother and I have the nicks and cuts to prove it. You can keep your shaming, I have quite enough of my own. But if you show up with love and respect, then you will have my full attention. In this world, one of the ways folks love to exorcise and offload their own hurt is to focus on someone elses, I know, I've done it. But I have also survived it and I won't tolerate it from anyone ever again.

There have been some really amazing moments this Summer: Fire Island Black Out with my girls, time with Nico, invitations to speak at several universities this Fall, my work being turned into parts of two plays, one in West Virginia that premiers on World AIDS Day and another by a storyteller from the Midlands in Great Britain.  There have been some really tough moments that still need some resolution

The summer is not over and there is plenty of more work to do. I am grateful for all that has taken place. This Summer has been about learning to hurt without taking on the mantle of victim, to fight as a warrior and not a soldier, to cry without thinking you are weak, to fuck up and take it for what it is and not validation of gremlinspeak, to appreciate the truly tremendous community that I have, and to know that despite what I've inherited, despite what I had no choice but to suffer and accept as a child, that I am not a child any longer, the people and things and situations that hurt me then do not have the same power over me now unless I let them. Then I couldn't choose. I can choose now. I am choosing. I am 35, and it's time to continue growing up--and accepting the love that I also deserve and sharing it back out.

Thank God we never stop growing up.

Late Night Sex Talk

Last night, I was hanging out with my old friend Insomnia,  and I gave a shout out to Facebook and found that I was in abundant good company. A friend of mine popped up on my chat and asked me if he could ask a question. This young man is a HIV negative but an HIV scholar and knows his stuff. But as have almost all of us, positive and negative, he made a choice recently to have unprotected sex with a twink that said he was HIV negative. My friend topped him bareback, and decided that he was going to go in and get an HIV test. But he had a question about risk if, in fact, the individual turned out to have been HIV positive.

It's not an uncommon question though it is one that folks rarely ask. In fact, I know many men that always top without a condom whether or not their sex partner is negative or positive. Their is a misconception that tops can't get HIV by topping. And, unfortunately, the model for prevention in this country would have you believe that topping without a condom will not only instantly give you AIDS but your right nut will fall off. The answer to that particular question is that yes there is a risk. Period---but you won't get the dropsies just because you stuck it in without a rubber. But the level of risk involved depends on numerous factors. The internal health of the bottom, lube usage, the health of the penis of the top, the size of the top's urethra, the viral load of the bottom, and I am sure there are other variables that a doctor would be able to add into the mix.

 I shared with my friend that in my adult relationships, I have mostly dated men that are negative and for those that were tops they rarely used a condom. This was an informed decision based on medical facts, and if, for example, one of the variables mentioned above happened to be off for a time, then we wrapped it up. The point was that based on the available scientific/medical data, personal preference and risk tolerance, the particular men I am talking about made a choice around the risk they wanted to take. And I kept them informed of any issue that would impact that risk choice. I have also, with one negative boyfriend in particular, topped without a condom with his consent, considering all the risk factors, eliminating internal ejaculation (and I am not a pre-cummer but if it happened to be one of those rare times when I was...then it was condom time), and again that was a mutual decision based on medical information.

And remember this number: 96%. A person with an undetectable viral load has less than a 4% chance of transmitting HIV. There have been NO DOCUMENTED CASES of a person with an undetectable viral load transmitting HIV. The fact is that there is a risk to a negative bottom, but again the science and medical data is way ahead of a prevention messaging that still puts the onus on poz folks and shames consensual sexual choices regarding condom usage between consenting adults.

But the part of the conversation that was most important was that my friend was taking responsibility for his own sexual health. Yes the twink said he was negative. Yes he could have lied. Yes that would have been wrong (and any poz person that has been living with HIV for any significant amount of time and says that they have a 100% disclosure rating is either a leprechaun or lying). But in the end, my friend realized that he made the ultimate choice for himself to top this kid without a condom.

The analogy that I used was that he could tell me that Jesus himself was slinging beers down at the local Irish Pub, but if I hauled my ass down to the pub and it turned out that Jesus wasn't there, my friend may have told me a story that got me to jump in my car....but I am in fact that one that climbed in, turned the key, and headed down to get some water-to-wine action. That does not absolve anyone from knowing their status and disclosing it when necessary, but HIV positive people are not responsible for anyone else's sex choices.

I commended my friend on doing what was best for him and taking care of his health. Based on actual facts and data, I was able to suggest that his risk factor in this situation was low. The more we can all engage with our sex choices, understand we are going to make mistakes, and try and remove the HIV related stigma from sex, we will move a long way forward into the fight to eliminate HIV.

Forgotten Lesson: A Young Person’s Experience at the AIDS Memorial Quilt

This is a guest blog written by my friend Daniel Pino, a sweetheart and a staff member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. This blog originally appeared on the Task Force's blog at http://thetaskforceblog.org/2012/07/25/forgotten-lesson-a-young-persons-experience-at-the-aids-memorial-quilt/

Typically when escaping the dim-light of the Smithsonian metro station in Washington, D.C., in the middle of the sweltering summer humidity that D.C. is known so well for, you’re hit with sensory overload: groups of school children gleefully crowd museum entrances, tourist families stop every 10 feet to take group photos in their patriotic T-shirts, and locals play games of Ultimate Frisbee or soccer in between water breaks. All activities fearlessly displayed with little regard for on-looking stares and high enthusiasm for living in the moment. It’s a prime spot for people-watching and one of the special things about the District. But this past Monday morning, as I exited the cavernous station, I was taken aback to see a different site: almost nothing.

Rather than seeing a gaggle of laughing kids on a field trip or athletic bodies warding off the efforts of their opponents, the Mall was empty except for small pods of fabric strategically placed in four rows in the center of the greenery and suited crowds jostling to their office buildings. Realizing I was in the right place, I made my way toward the Capitol building where other volunteers for the display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt were preparing for the day’s events.

Up until this point, I had never seen the AIDS Memorial Quilt in its entirety. Sure, I had seen individual panels at various conferences and events and seen dozens of photographs in history books and queer-themed scholarly articles — but never in person. When the Quilt was first displayed on the National Mall in 1987, I was three months away from entering the world, whereas the second time it came to D.C. in 1996 I was learning long division. For me, the Quilt was never so much a real-time phenomenon as it was something that just had always been — like the Washington Monument or Niagara Falls. It possessed an almost “tourist-esque newness” but not a personal connection.

As I talked with friends about my eventual volunteering for the Quilt display over drinks the days beforehand, I encountered polite comments of “That’s gotta be so hard” and “Get a picture of _______ celebrity’s panel.” For my generation, that sense of the Quilt being less of a revolutionary memorial to a commodified attraction wasn’t just personalized to my own experience. Which had me reflecting during the walk on the gravel path of the National Mall: Why is that?
Thinking on this question I realized that I (and my generation) occupy a very privileged historical position. Privileged in that I was born into a world where AIDS was no longer known as GRID, where condoms were not just the expectation but the norm, and where fears of infection did not debilitate my conviction to come out of the closet. I could freely adopt lovers in self-protective and self-ecstatic means, I could march on the very same National Mall for marriage equality and military service while reading about ACT UP as a long-gone “historical development,” and I could maintain friendships with positive-bodied friends for months and years on end due to breakthroughs in medical technology.

AIDS never felt like an eventual monster so much as it did an invisible boogeyman that my elders used to keep me in line, and, in turn, the Quilt was just that: a quilt.

Something changed this week.

As fellow volunteers and I carefully unfolded the seemingly dull patches of fabric into a beautiful cacophony of colors, memories and emotions standing out vividly against the muddy green of the Mall’s landscape, each panel of a long past person made me feel something. I laughed at reminiscent quotes on panels of drag queens, I welled up at a panel with nothing more than a baby rattle and the text “her favorite thing” and I was overwhelmed by the ages, faces and names of thousands of people lost to something I’ve only really grown up dismissively acknowledging.

All morning long, we unfurled the panels. All morning long we were met with more panels that needed to be exposed. All morning long.

The tourist-ness of this old cloth attraction began fading and the true meaning of the Quilt began breathing life. It became something more than a patch of fabric. I saw each panel as a person, as a family, a lover and a friend celebrating and mourning a memory — each one beautiful and cherished in its own right. And that boogeyman that I only tipped my hat to scared the hell out of me.

Daniel Pino reading names at the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

After moving from nearly one end of the Mall to the next with a wake of swatches behind us and ahead of us, the team and I chose to participate in the reading of the names of those lost to AIDS. After a long, thoughtful walk I was standing on the main stage shoulder to shoulder with strong queer women, many of whom not only lost their loved ones to the disease but had constructed their own panels. They forged the families of necessity I’ve only read about and literally moved the movement. Hearing them read the names of friends with conviction and tears, I wondered how I could, in any way, contribute or stand on the same platform, honoring the same dead they had known and loved.
I tried, timidly and as reverently as I could, to speak each name aloud with clarity and respect. By doing so, I hoped that by pronouncing each name correctly and over enunciating each syllable precisely I could achieve some semblance of understanding. I made it through the first of two pages I was given to read. Until I finally reaching the third to last name: “Died Alone…But Not Forgotten.”
I paused, awash with the phrasing until unexpectedly tears started welling up larger and larger until I had to stop midway through the next name. I tried choking back the tears, hoping to regain my rhythm but I kept crying. I read the last three names through those tears, until I finished and turned to be hugged by those amazing women who were standing behind me. And it made sense. It all made sense.

I had started crying not just from being overwhelmed or because the experience was “so heavy,” but because I had forgotten…in fact, I had never known the reality of what AIDS had done to my community. Reading about it in scholarly articles and history books wasn’t enough. My friendships with HIV-positive people weren’t enough to inform my own privilege. All the book-smart and street-smart experiences in the world could not have prepared me for that realization that I had forgotten. It wasn’t just enough to know of my history, I needed to engage with it.

I needed to touch the memories, read the names and feel a fraction of the emotion of those who forged the panels and then placed them so willingly in my generations care.

So as I left the National Mall, now fuller with tourists on the carousel outside the Smithsonian Castle and the sun piercing through the city smog, I left with an appreciation and an unforgettable lesson, which I think the poet Robert Penn Warren sums up the best, “History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.” Here’s hoping more of my generation learns that lesson and there won’t be another forgotten person.

The Brandon Work Out Plan

So, many of you have asked me about my diet and work out plan that helped me get to the point I have reached physically. So here it is.

First, I need you to open Spotify and turn on Kanye West's New Work Out Plan. This is essential. Everyone needs a soundtrack; begin.

So here's the scoop. There is no magical mystical way for you to build the body you want. There are various programs that can teach you how to adjust your portion size and manage the calories you intake, but here is the basic, bottom line: I eat what I want to eat but I eat it in small portions. In general, I have a smoothie for breakfast, I eat a decent lunch (even with take out, which I eat almost every day during the work week, I opt for non-fried options on the Chinese menu but then make sure that I am only eating enough to satiate my hunger and not overeat). For dinner, I try and cook for myself, and, again, eat decent food, not deep fried, but it is the food I want to eat. Rice-a-roni and steak is one of my favorite meals, the key is don't eat everything in the pot or pan.

The basis for my workout is very simple.  It is the 5x5 Strong Lifts philosophy, which you can find laid out on their website. But the basics are these:

1) Until you can squat one and a half times your body weight, you should do full body work outs and not exercises that focus only on one muscle area (for example, you wouldn't do bicep curls but would focus on exercises that work total muscle groups and areas). This is critical as it builds up your complete body strength, develops your muscles naturally and in tandem to one another, and does not lead to overdevelopment.

2) Your lower body is ESSENTIAL. All of your largest muscles are in your lower body. Your glutes being the biggest muscle group. The core of the 5x5 are squats, which if done correctly and with a bar and free weights works ALL OF YOUR MUSCLE GROUPS! This is truly key. You should, as much as possible, avoid using machines to do your exercises....using free weights requires you to keep your body in balance and strengthens muscle groups that are not engaged if you use a machine to balance for you.

3) Five by five is just what it means. You do five sets of five reps each at the highest weight that you can handle. This allows for maximum growth AND also keeps you from plateauing.  There are ten basic exercises that you do split between alternating work outs. Again you can find these on the Strong Lifts website.

4) Once you have built your basic strength, then it becomes essential to mix up your exercises and do a combination of machines, free weights, and cables in order to keep things popping and mixing.  I do the same basic exercises but I do them using different types of weight equipment and this keeps your body guessing and growing.

5) There is only really one ab exercise that you need to do to get decent abs...REVERSE CRUNCHES! Here is a video link to what they look like.

6) Consistency is key. If you really want to transform your body, then commit to the gym five days a week for at least an hour to and hour and half. Thirty minutes should be cardio (of your choice) and the other hour weights. YOU MUST DO CARDIO AND LIFT WEIGHTS! Your body shape won't change just by doing one or the other, in tandem they cut, slim and build. Your heart health is critical and cardio is how you strengthen that muscle.

7) There are natural supplements you can take...and if you are in New York, I would highly suggest taking a trip down to Eva's Natural Foods on 8th street and have a chat with the folks in the supplement section about your weight training goals and they will provide you with the supplies that will help keep your liver and body healthy as well as maximize your work outs.

8) For people living long term with HIV. Go to your doctor and have your testosterone levels checked. HIV inhibits testosterone production and often we have less than necessary. Your doctor can prescribe for you the best way to increase your levels, which could be a gel, patch or, in some cases, injections. It is critical for people living with HIV to increase your lean muscle mass. It helps with white blood cell production and in keeping you healthy.  And exercise also helps control depression and anxiety.

9) Be gentle with yourself and patient. Ignore the mirror and STAY OFF OF THE SCALE! Especially if you are trying to lose weight, your enemy, especially in the first month to six weeks is the scale. It takes at least 30 days of regular exercise to see a change. You will feel a change well before that, but the number on the scale often puts people off...remember muscle weighs more than fat and burns more calories...your body will shift but give it time and know that you are doing right and best by yourself by building muscle. The more you build the more accelerated the weight loss.

10) Do all of this for yourself and for reasons that apply to your life and not what the world and the media will tell you. Love yourself and do this for the right reasons and it will become a lifestyle change that you will enjoy.


That's all I got.

Sexy Positive Body: The Beach Reveal

While I was unable to organize myself to actually compete in the Mr. Fire Island pageant this summer, which was one of the goals of my Sexy Positive Bodies photo journaling project, I did decided that I would, instead, reveal the work that I have done on my body and body image on the Fourth of July while at the beach with some good friends.

The two pictures I allowed to be taken are included here.

So, roughly a year after starting my Sexy Positive Bodies photo project, yesterday's beach adventure brings the project to a close. I will be putting together a poetry, essay, and photo display/exhibit that talks about the process, the intention, the feedback (including the recent anonymous digs), and discussions about the politic and ethic behind it. Look forward to future workshops (offline) about this topic, but you will notice that most of the shirtless pictures have been removed my FB profile, if you happen to be one of my Facebook friends.

The next phase is choosing the photos that I am going to use for the display, writing poetry that goes with some of them, figuring out how to integrate some of the blog postings that I have done on various subjects related to HIV and desire over the last year, incorporate both the negative and positive feedback about the project (ranging from the hundreds of poz people that have contacted me to thank me for doing this work to the half a dozen that said it was nothing but narcissism and immature....I heard both with equal respect...though not agreement)...and meeting with a couple of multi-media artists to talk about how to best design the production, and then launching the production. The LGBT Center in the Hudson Valley has offered to host a showing of the project, which is very generous. So now that I have most of the raw material, I need to figure out what to do with it all.

The public shirtless pictures will be very few and far between if they happen, as opposed to the systemic process I went through over the last year. But the gym and I are friends and will continue to be. A part of this process was also fighting my own body dysmorphia, and proving that it can be done on your own terms and that you can finally tell the mirror to fuck off. Yesterday I proved to myself that I had done enough work on my process that I can now go back and look at what it took and all the incumbent issues (internal and external) that have come with it. Including becoming an Executive Director towards the end of the process and how that has impacted what I was attempting to do and how it has been seen. I am hoping to have this all rolled out by October.

So stay tuned. Sexy Positive Bodies will continue in a new and exciting format.Thank you to the literally thousands of you that cheered me on in this 15 month process of personal, spiritual, physical and mental transformation. Thank you to all of the folks from the poz community that shouted out their love and support, came out to me during this process, or let me know how much it meant to them to see someone claim sexual space for poz folks. This process, project, and new way of being wouldn't have been possible by myself. One love folks.

Anonymous Responses and Blogging: Stop the Shade

So, today I received a very vehement anonymous response to my recent blog posting Sex, Shirtless Pics, Desire, HIV and Leadership. It was an anonymous response, which I always find amusing, but I have a strict ethic around my blog that unless I find something to be overtly intentionally hurtful, I will post any response to my blog that is not spam. I have, even, in the past offered to allow folks that have had a significant reaction to my blogs to provide space for them, right here, where I would post any thoughtful response to something that I've written.

Now let me be clear about one thing. I always read and take to heart what folks say when offering friendly critique or offering up reflections on what they perceive about my work, myself, etc. My beloved Kamal Fizazi as often as necessary gives me hard and tight love when he observes I am walking down a road that will eventually lead to my own destructive behaviors.

Having said that, just because you offer me your opinion does not mean that I have to accept it or change my own.  Period.

My best friend RJ Thompson is a brilliant and caring man. He is also passionate about veganism for all kinds of good reasons. I have made an intentional choice about eating meat that is connected to celebrating my history, particularly as a person of African descent. My intentionality means that while I love and respect RJ's passion for veganism and his desire to see the world go more that way, I do not agree with his choice for my life and though he's shared his opinion, I continue to eat hamburgers.

I was accused of a simplistic and knee-jerk response in writing my blog. I quite beg to differ, I have developed, over a year, with ample evidence here on this blog, my ethic and ethos around why I am doing what I am doing with regards to my body and its public transformation. I gave a workshop at Creating Change in January called Sexy Positive Bodies, and I have been asked to re-create that workshop again this year, and I will be joined by an amazing comrade when doing that.

My response was not knee jerk. It just didn't give a real damn about altering why I do what I do when I have intentionally crafted my views around body, HIV, leadership, and desire.

No shade. No shame. But if I don't agree with you, it doesn't mean that your opinion is validated, it simply means that I do not agree with you. I support you, your opinion, thoughts and feelings. But I am living this life, and you aren't. It's that simple.

But the one thing that I don't do and have never done is make my remarks anonymously. It's cowardly, actually, and I feel that way distinctly. You don't have to agree. There is a reason why there is an anonymous option. I will always engage in forthright dialogue, and I have stood by statements that were hard and unpopular. But I do not have respect for those that attack from behind closed doors and do so with a level of laughable self-righteousness. This is a queer blog. Please come out.

Nigel Singer, an organizer in England and the father of the sweet Maya Singer Hobbs wrote in his comment on that same blog:

Brandon, I love this writing. In amongst other stuff I do work on leadership and a book that influences me is called A Failure of Nerve. The writer talks about 'self differentiated leaders', peope who know what they stand for and who are prepared to hold the line. He recognises that some people may be hurt by this clarity and he sees hurt as an inevitable consequence of living our lives. He is clear about not intentionally damaging others but that hurt happens.
He also says that a leader who holds to their truth and stands for it has huge impact and creates change - and some of this impact will be negative reaction - which goes with the territory.
I want to appreciate and enjoy you for your clarity around your expression of your identity.

I stand by who I am, and if, somehow, my doing so has caused hurt to someone else or triggered something from their lives, then I apologize for the hurt but not for my clarity. My intention is mine and it works for what I do and how I do it. Live your life the way you would. Its your freedom to do so. I take mine and do so with integrity. That's all I expect from others. 

Everyday Heroes: David Berube

When I tell folks that a year after we ended our relationship, I still live with my ex-boyfriend, almost to a person their mouths fall open and they ask, "Ummm how does THAT work."

I explain that our relationship didn't end because we didn't love each other or because there was some giant meltdown, it ended because it had changed into a deep and meaningful kinship that was no longer best suited by being boyfriends. We made a choice to continue living together and to be family to one another, and while, in the first few months, things were sometimes rocky, it is a loving home that we share, with Mimzy, and it works for us.

I done told y'all before I am a quarter lesbian on my Mom's side.

The fact is that David is permanently and forever a part of my life. He has seen and supported and loved me through some intensely hard times in my life, some created by me, others that the Universe brought along. And while it hasn't always been pretty, it has always been loving, and I have been able, I think, to give back that love and support in equal measure.

Most recently, though, when starting my HIV medications, David was, in fact, amazing....supporting me through some really rough patches when I was angry and sad and hurting. He supported me through the side effects and gentle and caring on the mornings when I just couldn't sleep because of my medication.

We bicker like little old ladies in a nursing home. His trumpet farts in the morning work my last nerve, and I think his recipe for cooking salmon is just plain wrong, but he is one of my Everyday Heroes. I love him. I value him. And I thank him for being a part of my life for the last four years and letting me be a part of his.

Love you, Fool.

 

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.

Breaking Down and Lifting Up

The last week has been no damn joke.  Last weekend, I started my HIV medication, Complera. I was surrounded all weekend by some really amazing human beings, old friends and new possibilities (thanks Pete), and all week long I have received texts, emails, real life, and telephonic love from, literally, all over the world. My blog about starting meds was reposted on TheBody.com, and I have literally received notes from North Carolina to rural Africa. How much amazing love is that?

Part of my legacy of how I grew up is that you deal with the crisis by smacking it down and then you bully ahead. I had a calendar full of things that had to be done this week. I have remarked to some friends that being an executive director, even a co-executive director, is like ascending to the throne. Your body now belongs to the state, or in my case, Queers for Economic Justice. It's pride and there is just a lot of must do shit that...welll.....I must do. And the fact that this medicine makes my body vibrate and bounce like I've had a Tigger shoved up my ass, well, as I said....bully through and have at it.

Yesterday though, I just couldn't do it. I needed to break the fuck down and feel some shit and let it out. I was supposed to meet my girl Tasha and my boy Von for drinks. Walking to the bar, I realized exactly how exhausted I was. Two of the side effects of my medication are....get this...fatigue AND insomnia. What kind of shit is that? Imma make you reallllly tired but then make it so you can't sleep.  This is some Abu Ghraib shit. Anyway, I got to the bar, and Von walked in (I so apologize Von), but I realized I could not do it. He'd hauled his ass up from Chelsea, and I sent him right on back out the door.  I went home and Tasha came and met me.

And this is why I love Tasha, and I love Tasha for many and plentiful reasons, but at one point, I just laid my head down on the bed and said Tasha, I am so tired. And she looked at me and said....then boo, go to sleep.

We were waiting for food (and Tasha had the bad luck to be on a wine run when the food arrived....and I ate every damn piece of calamari before she got back.....ooopsy!), but my girl said....just go to sleep.

I didn't. I stayed awake, because Tasha is good medicine. Complera is the medicine keeping my body alive, but it's been Tasha, JT, Peter, Amber, Lily, Hallie, Jay, David, Brad, Sohail and so many others that have been the medicine keeping my spirit alive. 

Sometimes it is good and necessary to break down, fall apart, and feel what needs to be felt. Then you can let it go, get back up, and build yourself into something more powerful.  That's what good medicine does.

Call My Ass Tigger!

Last night, after spending a couple of hours listening to the local comedian superstar Brad Loekle heckle the Tony's at Therapy Bar in Hell's Kitchen, I said goodbye to JT and his friend Josue and Roger and his friend Jeremy, and I headed home.

I was in bed and asleep by 9:30pm. Praise Jesus.

I was determined to get a full nights sleep, something that has eluded me for more than a week. So, last night I took a couple of over-the-counter sleeping meds, and I slam dunked into the land of Morpheus.

That is until about 1:30am when I woke up, made my way to the bathroom, and regretted all of the thai peppers and fish sauce I'd put on my lunch earlier in the day. Two words for you: Ass Lava. 

Funnily enough, I almost didn't make it to the bathroom because when I stood up the world was doing its own damn dance. Shadows were throwing down a mean samba, and I felt like a motherfucker that had never drank a V-8. I walked crooked all the way to the bathroom.

Welcome to the world of HIV medication.

My entire body, from my spirit to my ankles were vibrating like the Mississippi Mass Choir. I mean, it was what I call double O C (OUT OF CONTROL!).

It was so extra that I ended up taking two more sleeping pills to get back to sleep.

I woke up this morning doing what I call the Tigger...I basically bounced all the way to the bathroom. I was doing the huckabuck in the shower, and I swear I did the Roll Bounce all the way to work. It was too damn much.

Now I've been told this will die down in time, but I sincerely am not a friend of not being able to control my extremities.

Folks have been amazing, and I've received lots of love and advice. But no one's advice could prepare me for the after affects of a nuclear bomb being let off inside your skin. It's no joke people. And not the most fun ride I've had. It's like coming down from a great high without experiencing the actual euphoria. All the drama with none of the pleasure.

I am so happy that ACT-UP kicked ass for years to make sure that meds like these exist. And I am glad that it guarantees me a long ass life unless I do something really dumb or get hit by an alien death beam from planet Tiggerroo.....but there is a cost to these meds...I am happy to pay it...but I ain't so happy to feel it.

Meds Today

Today is the day. I pick up my prescription for HIV meds. And tonight at dinner, I will take my first pill.

I have a great day planned. Brunch with Sohail, and then the Metro North to Yonkers to hang out with Peter.

With dinner, because Complera requires a meal of at least 400 calories, I will take my first pill.

This week, I received much love and support from folks I know and peeps I don't. I received an email to which I still need to respond from someone named Patrick. Patrick said, truthfully, the gift of a non-progressor is really that sometimes we can go for a week or two and not really think about being positive. For ten years, I got to do that. It was a gift....even if it was, sometimes, a lie. (Thank you, Patrick, for your sweet note.)

Until today, Patrick was right. After today. Each night at dinner time, there will be a tiny reminder of the disease with which I live. A little squatter that keeps ignoring my eviction notices.

I am gonna be alright. Actually, I am alright. Actually my life is pretty damn amazing. But I get to be a little bit sad today.

I'm not going to lie. Even when I lie to myself, I try to never lie to you all, my readers. Today, is a day I will never forget. Some people that live with HIV can tell you the day, time, and location that they received their diagnosis. I know where. I know the year, and I have a vague recollection of the month.

I will never forgot today. June 9, 2012.



 

Starting Meds or HIV Sucks

Let's start this way: I have an amazing job with amazing people, especially my co-director Amber Hollibaugh and my Shelter Program Director Jay Toole. I've known them both for years and years before working with them and I love them both dearly.

Though I live with HIV, I am healthy. I am fed. My bills (except my student loans) are paid. I have an awesome roommate and a beautiful dog. My family loves the Hell out of me, and I have seven siblings that hold up their big brother always. I have friends/family/complicated definition folks in my life such as JT Mikulka, Bebe Zahara Benet, RJ Thompson, Roojie, Kamal Fizazi, Sam Matin, Di Sands, Jennifer Molina Balbuena de Hannon, Jason Ruiz, Coya Hope Artichoker, Anh Thu Pham, Betty Tisel and Sarah Farley, Susan Raffo and Rocki Simoes, Rigo and Nubia, my beautiful nieces and nephews, my godson Santiago aka Baby Rufus, Troll Baby and Rebs, Gracie, crazy ass and brilliant Ebony, my brother from another mother and father Carlitos Blanquitos, and so so so many others. I am so blessed and full up on love, and I KNOW that so many folks walking around this earth experience or believe that they have a love deficit. I don't. I NEVER have had. I have ALWAYS in every moment, in my deepest poverty, during the greatest violence, and in my fiercest hurt, and during my most self induced crazy, been held by so many with such compassion that if any one of them walked down to Hudson River park and commanded the River to split open, I wouldn't have been the least surprised. It would be nice though, if they do, if I could at least grab my good chancletas first.

We might be going to Jersey, but we don't have to LOOK like we live in Jersey.

My life changed this week. Only slightly. Only nominally. But it changed.  After ten years of being so very blessed.  After ten years of having my body, and all I've put it through, kick HIV's ass (I am one of those super rare and magical creatures called a nonprogressor......not a super nonprogressor...but a nonprogressor....there is an important distinction that I am about to talk about), my amazing doctor, Steve Dillon at Gotham Medical, recommended that I start HAART treatment.

Nonprogressors go years, in my case a decade, without needing HIV meds. Supernonprogressors never need them. My body just got a little tired. It fought so hard for so so so long. From 25 to 35 it fought a war that it will win but now it needs just a little help. Just a bit. 

PS Dr. Dillon and the practitioners are Gotham Medical, formerly the Chelsea Doctors.

Lets be real. For ten years my body kept my HIV viral loads at or near undetectable ON ITS OWN. My Tcells, are at "normie" levels. Near a thousand (and usually over....most normies aren't even that high).

And, to quote my girl, Lezbehonest....the news that I have to start HAART treatment kicked my motherfuckingass.

I ain't dying. So far from it. I ain't sick. So far from it. I get to start a new state of the art med (Complera) particularly designed for folks like me that have a natural resistance to HIV. The side effects are almost non existent besides some initial fatigue and headaches. I AM SO FUCKING BLESSED.

And today, I broke the fuck down.

My walk with HIV is MY walk. And if I stop to compare it to other folks journey, I have nothing to complain about. But my feelings are real. My experience is real. My sadness and hurt is REAL It's not cute. It's not easy. It's not a tragedy. It's not a crisis. But it is hard. It does hurt. And this transition and its incumbent feelings are all valid.

Thank you everyone who picked up the phone or sent a text today. I needed it. I needed you. I still need you. Thank you. I love you. And anyone else that walks this walk...know that it's gonna be alright but its gonna hurt when you take those first few steps...whether it's a week after your diagnosis or after a decade.

Imma love and live well. So will you.