A&U June 2018

JUNE 2018 • ISSUE 284 • AMERICA’S AIDS MAGAZINE

FRONT

RUNNERS

• Dawn Averitt • Dan Nicoletta • Luna Luis Ortiz • Tori Cooper • Leo Herrera & The Fathers Project • The Billys • Christopher Costas • Ron B.

*plus

• Dr. Evan Antin • Larry Buhl on Keeping Sex Workers Safe • Rose Auslander

Wilson Cruz

The Dedicated HIV Advocate Champions Youth Activism

What is BIKTARVY®?

BIKTARVY is a complete, 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults. It can either be used in people who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before, or people who are replacing their current HIV-1 medicines and whose healthcare provider determines they meet certain requirements.

BIKTARVY does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. HIV-1 is the virus that causes AIDS.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION What is the most important information I should know about BIKTARVY? BIKTARVY may cause serious side effects: � Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection.

If you have both HIV-1 and HBV and stop taking BIKTARVY, your HBV may suddenly get worse. Do not stop taking BIKTARVY without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

Who should not take BIKTARVY? Do not take BIKTARVY if you take: � dofetilide � rifampin � any other medicines to treat HIV-1

What are the other possible side effects of BIKTARVY? Serious side effects of BIKTARVY may also include: � Changes in your immune system. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking BIKTARVY. � Kidney problems, including kidney failure.

Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys.

If you develop new or worse kidney problems, they may tell you to stop taking BIKTARVY. � Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death.

Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat. � Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.

The most common side effects of BIKTARVY in clinical studies were diarrhea (6%), nausea (5%), and headache (5%). Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or don’t go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking BIKTARVY? � All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or have had any kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis virus infection. � All the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, antacids, laxatives, vitamins, and herbal supplements. BIKTARVY and other medicines may affect each other. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist, and ask if it is safe to take BIKTARVY with all of your other medicines. � If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if BIKTARVY can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking BIKTARVY. � If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Ask your healthcare provider if BIKTARVY is right for you.

Please see Important Facts about BIKTARVY, including important warnings, on the following page.

Get HIV support by downloading a free app at MyDailyCharge.com

KEEP SHINING. Because HIV doesn’t change who you are.

BIKTARVY is a 1-pill, once-a-day complete HIV-1 treatment for adults who are either new to treatment or whose healthcare provider determines they can replace their current HIV-1 medicines with BIKTARVY.

BIKTARVY does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

BIKTARVY.COM

IMPORTANT FACTS

This is only a brief summary of important information about BIKTARVY® and does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your condition and your treatment.

(bik-TAR-vee) MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT BIKTARVY BIKTARVY may cause serious side effects, including: • Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. If you have both HIV-1 and HBV, your HBV may suddenly get worse if you stop taking BIKTARVY. Do not stop taking BIKTARVY without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to check your health regularly for several months.

ABOUT BIKTARVY BIKTARVY is a complete, 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults.

It can either be used in people who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before, or people who are replacing their current HIV-1 medicines and whose healthcare provider determines they meet certain requirements.

BIKTARVY does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. HIV-1 is the virus that causes AIDS. Do NOT take BIKTARVY if you also take a medicine that contains: • dofetilide • rifampin • any other medicines to treat HIV-1

BEFORE TAKING BIKTARVY Tell your healthcare provider all your medical conditions, including if you: • Have or have had any kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis infection.

• Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant.

• Are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed if you have HIV-1 because of the risk of passing HIV-1 to your baby.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take: • Keep a list that includes all prescription and over-thecounter medicines, antacids, laxatives, vitamins, and herbal supplements, and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist.

• Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about medicines that interact with BIKTARVY.

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF BIKTARVY BIKTARVY can cause serious side effects, including: • Those in the “Most Important Information About BIKTARVY” section.

• Changes in your immune system.

• New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure.

• Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.

• Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.

• The most common side effects of BIKTARVY in clinical studies were diarrhea (6%), nausea (5%), and headache (5%).

These are not all the possible side effects of BIKTARVY. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any new symptoms while taking BIKTARVY. Your healthcare provider will need to do tests to monitor your health before and during treatment with BIKTARVY.

HOW TO TAKE BIKTARVY Take BIKTARVY 1 time each day with or without food.

GET MORE INFORMATION • This is only a brief summary of important information about BIKTARVY. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to learn more.

• Go to BIKTARVY.com or call 1-800-GILEAD-5.

• If you need help paying for your medicine, visit BIKTARVY.com for program information.

BIKTARVY, the BIKTARVY Logo, DAILY CHARGE, the DAILY CHARGE Logo, LOVE WHAT’S INSIDE, GILEAD, and the GILEAD Logo are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies.

Version date: February 2018 © 2018 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. GILC0396 04/18

c o n t e n t s June 2018

42 Cover Wilson Cruz Talks with A&U’s Dann Dulin About Sustaining His Fight for the Needs of People Living with HIV/AIDS for Over Two Decades & Why We Should Also Make Way for a New Generation of Activists

Departments

Features 10 Animal Magnetism Veterinarian Evan Antin Embraces the Pet-Human Healing Connection 32 Gallery Photog Dan Nicoletta Captures Life Through a Rainbow-Tinted Lens 36 Finding Common Ground The Billys Brings Together Queer Men, Positive & Negative 40 What If? With The Fathers Project, Leo Herrara Asks Us to Calcuate Our Loss to AIDS 48 Zoom!

Luna Luis Ortiz Creates a Portrait of An Artist Thriving with HIV 52 Breaking Boundaries Performer & TV Host Ron B. Shares Why AIDS Advocacy Is Personal 20 Poetry The Embrace by Rose Auslander cover photo by Sean Black

6

Frontdesk

8

Digital Footprints

12

NewsBreak

17

Ruby’s Rap Ruby raps with Dawn Averitt

viewfinder 22

Brave New World

23

Bright Lights, Small City

27

Second Acts

28

Our Story, Our Time

30

Just*in Time

lifeguide 56

Positive Justice

58

The Whole Perspective

60

The Culture of AIDS

61

Lifelines

64

Survival Guide

HIV

TREATMENT

WORKS

“You do not have me, HIV. I have you.”

Tommy

Living with HIV since 2010.

Yes, I am living with HIV, but it does not define me. I was able to move forward after my diagnosis with the support of my family and a great network of friends. They gave me the strength to start treatment right away and focus on my health. Taking those steps has made all the difference. Today, I’m living well with an undetectable viral load.

My continued success inspires me to give back to my community by helping break HIV stigma every chance I get.

Get in care. Stay in care. Live well. cdc.gov/HIVTreatmentWorks

A&U Frontdesk

Jump In!

J

ump! Jump—for my love! When I saw on social media that The Pointer Sisters performed at AIDS Walk New York last month, I was automatically transported back to the early eighties. The Grammy Award-winning singing group has changed some of its members over the years (though keeping it a family affair); however, the family’s commitment to supporting those in need has remained steadfast. And the songs remain the same—they performed the most upbeat ones [including “Jump (For My Love)”] at the post-Walk show, helping to celebrate the achievements of participants, volunteers, and staff. As we go to press, AIDS Walk New York has raised $4.4 million for vital services.

At any other concert, an act like The Pointer Sisters would elicit ’80s’ nostalgia in all of its pink-neon, highhair exuberance. For me and other long-term suvivors, that exuberance is tempered with loss. Joy is anchored by agony. Nostalgia is remixed with stranger things, for we may as well have been living in an upside-down reality where the scariest monster was not AIDS but rather a Frankenstein created out of a lack of compassion, government inaction, and stigmatizing dismissals of the most vulnerable in society.

In the early 1980s, you did not need to be in the thick of the crisis to realize its enormity. If not happening to yourself, everything that was happening was happening to people like you, your loved ones, your community, whether you lived in Burlington, Vermont, or Phoenix, Arizona. Even outside of the epicenters of the epidemic, we still heard the loud rumblings, nebulous yet ominous as any thunder clouds.

We still heard the screams that would pierce through the wall of American apathy, carried outward in a magazine article, a letter from a friend, a messenger who ran all the way from New York City. As the 1980s progressed, more and more of us joined the fight.

As we persisted as well as we could through the 1990s, we found new allies. Our June cover story subject,

AMERICA’S AIDS MAGAZINE issue 284 vol. 27 no. 6 June 2018 editorial offices: (518) 426-9010 fax: (518) 436-5354 Editor in Chief & Publisher David Waggoner

Wilson Cruz, who was featured in A&U’s June/July 1995’s issue, was only twenty-one yet already active in the fight to support the needs of individuals living with HIV/AIDS or at risk for acquiring HIV, as one of the hosts of an AIDS Project Los Angeles Dance-a-thon (and, before that, a stalwart participant for five to six years) and working with Advocates For Youth’s street outreach campaign for testing. Back then, he told interviewer Glenn Gaylord, “I hope that I’m putting a face to the young people out there who are at risk right now...people we could be losing.

We’re at a point now where we are losing a whole other generation. Hopefully, when people look at me, they will see a person they could lose if we don’t educate our youth.”

Twenty-three years later, Wilson still has faith in the power of youth to make a difference. About the new wave of gun control advocates, he shares with A&U Senior Editor Dann Dulin: “Some people say, ‘Oh, they’re just kids.’ But it’s kids who change the world! It was youth who helped to end the Vietnam War, it was youth who rose up for LGBT rights, it was youth who fought to give women a voice about abortion, and it’s youth who are going to resolve this gun issue.”

Youth activism should be championed, but I don’t want to forget long-time jump-starters like Wilson Cruz. Many in this month’s issue have dedicated themselves over decades to HIV advocacy, volunteering and/or fundraising—artists like Dan Nicoletta and Luna Luis Ortiz, organizations like The Billys, performers like Ron B., and HIV workers like Dawn Averitt and Tori Cooper. And new voices, like Leo Herrera of The Fathers Project, understand the momentum of the past to secure a better future. Staying involved with AIDS keeps the funding going and the progress to a cure in focus! Jump in!

DAVID WAGGONER

Managing Editor: Chael Needle Senior Editors: Dann Dulin, Sean Black Editors at Large: Chip Alfred, Hank Trout Special Projects Editor: Lester Strong Arts Editor: Alina Oswald Poetry Editor: Noah Stetzer Consulting Editor: Nick Steele Copy Editor: Maureen Hunter Contributing Editors: Sarah Churchill Downes, Reed Massengill, Kelly McQuain, Lesléa Newman, Robert E. Penn Contributing Writers: Noël Alumit, T.J. Banks, Larry Buhl, Ruby Comer, George M. Johnson, John Francis Leonard, Candace Y.A. Montague, Connie Rose, David Rosenberg, Corey Saucier, Stevie St. John, Justin B. Terry-Smith, Patricia Nell Warren, Jeannie Wraight, Rob Zukowski Art Director: Timothy J. Haines Contributing Photographers: Jordan Ancel, Davidd Batalon, Mark Bennington, Tom Bianchi, Sean Black, Adam Bouska, Brian Bowen Smith, Tim Courtney, Duane Cramer, Stephen Churchill Downes, Greg Gorman, Francis Hills, Renée Jacobs, Michael Kerner, Tara Lessard, Tom McGovern, Nancy Perry, Annie Tritt National Advertising Director: Harold Burdick, Jr. Sales & Marketing: David L. Bonitatibus Advertising Sales Office: (518) 426-9010 National Advertising Representative: Rivendell Media (212) 242-6863 Subscription Info: (518) 426-9010 Circulation Manager: Robert Schelepanow Bookkeeper: Richard Garcia Board of Directors President: David Waggoner Vice President: Harold Burdick, Jr. Secretary: Richard Garcia Founding Board Members: Mark S. Labrecque, 1961–1992, Christopher Hewitt, 1946–2004, Mark Galbraith, 1962–2011

In Memoriam: Bill Jacobson, 1939–2005 Rhomylly B. Forbes, 1963–2011 • Chris Companik, 1957–2012 Nancy Ellegate, 1959–2015 A&U (ISSN 1074-0872) is published by Art & Understanding, Inc., 25 Monroe St., Suite 205, Albany, NY 122102743, USA. For A&U advertising information please call 518-426-9010; for subscriptions and address changes please call 518-426-9010; for letters to the editor and unsolicited manuscripts write A&U Magazine, 25 Monroe Street, Albany, New York 12210; fax 518-436-5354; or e-mail: mailbox@aumag.org. All unsolicited manuscripts that do not have a S.A.S.E. cannot be returned and will not be acknowledged. ©2018 Art & Understanding, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. A&U may not be reproduced in any manner, either in whole or in part, without written permission of the publisher. A&U and the graphic representations thereof are the registered trademarks of Art & Understanding, Inc., a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization. Individual Subscription rates: $24.95 (12 issues). Institutional rates: $80.00 (12 issues). For subscriptions outside the USA and possessions, $30.95/Canada, $49.95/ international, payable in advance in U.S. currency. First North American serial rights revert to contributors upon publication. A&U retains the right to anthologize work in further issues, as well as in microform or reprinting on the Internet within the context of each issue. Statements of writers, artists and advertisers are not necessarily those of the publisher. Readers note: subjects and contributors to A&U are both HIV-positive and HIV-negative. In the absence of a specific statement herein concerning the serostatus of any individual mentioned in, or contributing material to, this publication, no inference is made with respect thereto and none should be implied. Letters written to A&U or its contributors are assumed intended for publication. Art & Understanding, Inc. assumes no responsibility or liability for unsolicited submissions and does not guarantee the return thereof.

PostMaster: Please send address corrections to A&U Magazine, 25 Monroe Street, Suite 205, Albany NY 122102743, USA

Printed in USA • Visit our Web site at www.aumag.org

Love is more than possible Let’s Grow Old Together Peter and Kathy didn’t let his HIV status get in the way of their love.

Hear their inspiring story at Walgreens.com/LetsGrowOldTogether.

©2018 Walgreen Co. All rights reserved.

699754-846

digital

s t n i r p t o fo on INSTAGRAM

A&U Senior Editor Dann Dulin interviewed writer, producer and entertainment correspondent Melissa Rivers [“Mighty Rivers,” May 2018] and the cover story went viral. “My parents were firm believers in taking care of those close to us and our communities—without question—supporting service organizations,” Melissa told A&U about the tireless work she does for organizations like God’s Love We Deliver. Her sweetness and kindness were captured lovingly by the lens of A&U Senior Editor Sean Black, too.

Penned by Allie Oakes and photographed by A&U Senior Editor Sean Black, our April article on Radiant Health Centers featured an interview with its executive director, Phil Yaeger. About its services, Yaeger says, “...we have tried to remove almost all barriers to accessing care, offering services already mentioned, plus counseling from our nutritionist and immediate access to tailored dietary needs at the food pantry where one can also leave with food for their pet.”

@AmericasAIDSMagazine 8

mostshared On social media, news of our annual Christopher Hewitt Awards has spread far and wide! We received the most entries we have ever received, thanks in part to the efforts of Noah Stetzer, A&U’s Poetry Editor, and fellow judges Bruce Ward and Joy Gaines-Friedler. Winners will be announced and featured in the August 2018 issue.

@au_magazine

Rivers, RHC photos by Sean Black;

mostloved

mosttweeted

@au_americas_aids_magazine A&U • JUNE 2018

NIMAL A MAGNETISM Dr. Evan Antin’s Love for Critters Extends to Their HIV-Positive Owners As Well

by Dann Dulin

G

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those who have a chronic disease or a terminal illness?

Dr. Evan Antin: Pets can’t cure anyone’s chronic disease. However, pets have been proven to substantially increase the quality of life for those suffering from chronic diseases. Pets can reduce depression along with other emotional benefits that make people happy and also help people’s drive to continue fighting whatever illness they’re suffering from. Pets also simply distract them from their illness.

For the past five years, Dr. Evan has practiced at the Conejo Valley Veterinary Hospital in Thousand Oaks, California.

At home, his housemates include two rescue cats, Willy and Blue, and a rescue dog, Henry, a snake and a tortoise. Evan maintains an active international travel itinerary, so tracking down the doctor is like trying to GPS the flight pattern of a bald eagle!

Dann Dulin: Dr. Evan, how do pets help

In your experience, have you witnessed an extraordinary situation where a pet has played a major role in a person’s life?

As a veterinarian, the most touching stories I see with pet owners and their furry companions are when both the person and the pet are suffering from the same or a similar disease process. One particularly touching story was of an owner and his dog who both had cancer and were both undergoing chemotherapy treatment together. Both parties benefited tremendously from sharing the human-animal bond they had through a mutual support they gave each other every day. I’ve also seen this with diseases such as metabolic failures, kidney failure, heart disease and even immune-mediated diseases. I also care for many pets that suffer from allergies, just like their owners.

Do dogs and cats have a consciousness?

Dogs and cats do have a self-awareness, as do many other mammals and birds.

Many reptiles, fish, and invertebrates almost certainly have a consciousness, but I A&U • JUNE 2018

photo by Keli Squires Taylor

rrr is a common sound to a veterinarian, especially one that has been in the jungles of Africa and the Australian Outback. But sometimes the Grrr’s that the handsome Dr. Evan Antin hears comes from a different species, since, in today’s pop culture, it denotes a revved attraction toward someone.

The former model and trainer, who credits Arnold Schwarzenegger for being his inspiration, was jettisoned into public consciousness by People magazine’s 2014 annual “Sexiest Man Alive” issue.

He was also “Sexiest Veterinarian Alive” in their 2016 and 2017 issues as well. Dr. Evan just shrugs off his newfound fame saying, “I’ve always strived to be the sexiest something, so I’m glad it could be a vet.”

His love of animals began at an early age while growing up in Kansas City, Kansas. He also had a keen interest in medicine, as well, so being a vet was a perfect fit.

Evan graduated in 2013 from Colorado State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, where surgery was one of his favorite classes. During his training and education, he spent semesters in Australia and Tanzania, among other places, where he could learn about wildlife ecosystems and fauna.

Evan has volunteered his services on six continents, working with local chapters of wildlife organizations. He uses his notoriety to help promote animal welfare causes and local wildlife rehab sanctuaries.

would have to further research that. In my experience, the more I work with animals the more I realize just how intelligent they are. If we can behaviorally train honeybees then the cognitive potential of our pet dogs and cats is unimaginable!

porcupine photo by Keli Squires Taylor; all other photos courtesy E. Antin

What is the range and depth of emotions of a dog and a cat?

Like people, dogs and cats can experience a wide array of emotions including, but not limited to: joy, depression, mourning, guilt, jealousy, anger, playfulness, affection, love, confusion, and many more. Most people don’t give dogs and cats the credit they deserve for their intellectual and emotional capabilities.

What risks are there if you have a pet and you are living with HIV? Mental and emotional health is crucial for anyone suffering any chronic disease and pets can help. However, HIV-positive individuals need to be extremely cautious when caring for pets. Having a compromised immune system can be life threatening. An accidental cat scratch or bite can have health consequences, as cats have several strains of bacteria that could lead to severe infection in relatively healthy people, let alone those with immunological deficits. As a veterinarian I can’t make medical recommendations for HIV-positive pet owners and I would imagine the scale of their disease is a factor. My best advice is to consult with their human medical doctors on what would be appropriate.

Is feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) related to HIV, and is it transmittable?

FIV is a very similar virus and disease process to HIV but is not transmittable to people or vice versa.

Are there any exotic pets that an HIV-positive person should avoid?

I’m not in authority to say what pets should be avoided by those with HIV but I can tell you I would be very hesitant with most reptiles, fish, birds, and probably JUNE 2018 • A&U

most exotic or less conventional pets for that matter. Even our domesticated cats and dogs can pose significant risk to individuals living with HIV.

travels?

The most unusual pet name I’ve ever come across was “Ballsack.” Ballsack is a very sweet dog and deserves a better name

Can a dog be trained to remind their owners to take their meds?

Dogs can be trained to do just about any simple task. I’m not aware of a dog that reminds it’s pet parent to take their medications but I don’t see why this couldn’t be possible with basic training.

Can a shedding dog or cat adversely affect their HIV-positive owners?

Most dogs and cats shed. The fur they shed does carry bacterial and fungal organisms on a microscopic level even if it doesn’t appear to be dirty or contaminated. Therefore, free fur could pose a risk to those with HIV. Do you work with any animal organizations?

I’ve worked with pet rescues, humane societies, wildlife sanctuaries, wildlife associations, and many veterinary associations, as well. When I travel overseas, I try to volunteer my expertise with native wildlife.

It’s my favorite means of giving back.

On a lighter note, what is the most unusual pet name you’ve come across in your

in my opinion. Fortunately, Ballsack does not know the meaning of his name—and is a very happy pup!

Cuddle up with Dr. Evan and his furry friends 0n Facebook: www.facebook.com/evan.antin and Instagram @dr.evanantin, and keep abreast of his journeys on his YouTube page: www.youtube. com/user/EvanAntinWildVet. Dann Dulin is a Senior Editor of A&U.

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NNewsBreak EWSBREAK Last Men Standing Streaming Free Last Men Standing [A&U, May 2016] the heart-wrenching documentary film by Erin Brethauer and Tim Hussin at the San Francisco Chronicle, premiered on April 8, 2016, to a sold-out crowd at the legendary Castro Theatre in San Francisco. After making the rounds of the film festival circuit, the film is now available, and free, online for personal viewing.

Last Men Standing explores the everyday difficulties faced by eight long-term HIV/AIDS survivors in San Francisco.

All eight of these men are part of the AIDS Generation, diagnosed in the pre-cocktail days when a positive HIV test was tantamount to be a death sentence. No one ever imagined the difficulties and issues of aging with HIV, because no one imagined “aging with HIV.” Constant neurological pain, substance abuse, economic hardship, housing instability, costly bogus medical Ralph Thurlow kisses his husband, David Spiher, on the treatments, stigma, toxic side back during a visit to Spiher’s artist studio in Oakland, Calif. effects of medicines, and the on September 10, 2015. Both men are HIV-positive and Thurnever-ending grief and PTSD low has AIDS-related dementia. over the loss of friends and lovers during the height of the epidemic have all taken their toll.

Chronicle reporter Erin Allday, who wrote the original article on which the documentary Jesus Guillen, a long-term AIDS suris based, interviewed more than fifty men who have lived with HIV/AIDS for half of their vivor, has breakfast in his apartment lives, as well as doctors, activists, San Francisco city officials, and LGBTQ allies. Even after in San Francisco, Calif. on Wednesday, August 12, 2015. Due to his neuropathy, she narrowed her focus to just eight men, the story grew into a twenty-page supplement to the Sunday, March 26, 2016 edition of the paper.

Guillen has to take painkillers in the “We want the film to be experienced all over the country,” Erin Brethauer has said. To morning to help his pain. that end, the Chronicle has made the film available online, free, for personal viewing. “We hope this film can reach especially those survivors living in isolation who don’t yet know about this loving community. We want them to know that they are not alone. We hope it sparks a conversation and brings some measure of healing to the community.”

To view Last Men Standing, log on to http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/living-with-aids/documentary.

For “her commitment to ensuring a comprehensive response and playing a central role in implementing the plan to end AIDS in New York State by 2020,” the Latino Commission on AIDS will honor Johanne Morne, Director of the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) AIDS Institute. Ms. Morne was honored at the Commission’s annual Cielo Gala on Friday, June 1, 2018 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York.

Ms. Morne had already worked with the NYSDOH for ten years when she was appointed its director in 2016. In that role, she has worked closely with community activists and others, developing and implementing policies that impact HIV, STD, viral hepatitis, LGBT health, and drug user health. “Morne’s leadership is a beacon of hope and she is a trusted partner to protect our most vulnerable communities,” the Commission stated in a press release on May 14, 2018.

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A&U • JUNE 2018

photos by Erin Brethauer

Latino Commission on AIDS Honors Johanne Morne

newsbreak “I am extremely grateful and honored to be selected to receive the Compañera Award from the Latino Commission on AIDS,” said Johanne Morne. “The Commission is a key partner for the New York State Department of Health in Ending the AIDS Epidemic in New York,” Ms Morne said.

This year’s Cielo Gala highlighted the work of the Commission’s Latinos in the Deep South program. The project, begun in 2006 as a regional assessment to learn about the realities and needs of growing Hispanic/Latino communities in the southern United States, particularly Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee where new HIV infection rates have been the highest in the nation. The program seeks to build local leadership to design and implement actions to advocate for emerging Latinx LGBTQ communities around HIV prevention, access to health care and support, and community initiatives. Recently, the program has also given support to the displaced people from Puerto Rico who have relocated to the South after Hurricane Maria.

The Latino Commission on AIDS is a nonprofit organization founded in 1990 to address the impact of HIV/AIDS, viral Hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the Latino community. The Commission is the leading organization coordinating National Hispanic Hepatitis Awareness Day (May 15), National Latino AIDS Awareness Day (October 15), Latinos in the Deep South, and other prevention, research, and advocacy programs across the United States and its territories.

For more information, log onto www.latinoaids.org.

FDA Approves Truvada as PrEP for Adolescents On May 18, 2018, Gilead Sciences, Inc., announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved once-daily oral Truvada for use as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to reduce the risk of sexually acquired HIV in at-risk adolescents. Truvada has been used for HIV prevention in uninfected adults since 2012.

The approval for use by adolescents is based on a clinical trial conducted by the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS, a research network funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). In the study, sixty-seven HIV-negative men ages fifteen to seventeen received Truvada once daily for PrEP. In the United States, young adults age thirteen to twenty-four accounted for twenty-one percent of new infections in 2016, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; eighty-one percent of those new infections were among young men who have sex with men (YMSM).

Truvada for PrEP, in combination with safer sex practices such as condom use, reduces the risk of sexually acquired HIV in at-risk adults and adolescents weighing at least 35 kg (approximately 77 pounds). Individuals must have a negative HIV test immediately prior to initiating Truvada for PrEP. “We must make use of all available options when considering HIV prevention strategies, and we welcome the development that Truvada for PrEP is now available for younger people who are at risk of HIV,” said Matthew Rose, Policy and Advocacy Manager at NMAC, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization. “We will continue to build awareness and understanding of the role of Truvada for PrEP as part of a comprehensive HIV prevention plan for all who may benefit from it, particularly among communities disproportionately impacted by the disease, including young Black and Latino men in the United States.”

photo courtesy U. of Waterloo

University of Waterloo’s New Fight Scientists at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, have developed a new vaginal implant to protect women from HIV infection. The implant, which takes advantage of some people’s natural immunity to HIV, decreases the number of cells that HIV can target in a woman’s genital tract.

Inspired by previous research involving sex workers in Kenya, Emmanuel Ho, a professor in the School of Pharmacy at Waterloo, and research partner Keith Fowke of the University of Manitoba, observed that many of these women had sex with HIV positive clients but did not contract the virus. They later found the women possessed T cells that were naturally immune quiescent, meaning that their T cells were not attempting to fight the virus and thus are not infected with it.

“Observing this, we asked ourselves if it was possible to pharmacoProfessor Emmanuel Ho logically induce immune quiescence with medication that was better of the School of Pharassured of reaching the point of infection,” said Ho. “By delivering the macy at University of medication exactly where it’s needed, we hoped to increase the chances Waterloo, displaying the of inducing immune quiescence.”

HIV prevention implant The implant contains hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) which is disseminated slowly through the porous material of the tube and absorbed by the walls of the vaginal tract. The implants were tested in an animal model and the team observed a significant reduction in T cell activation, meaning that the vaginal tract was demonstrating an immune quiescent state.

“What we don’t know yet,” Ho continued,” is if this can be a stand-alone option for preventing HIV transmission or if it might be best used in conjunction with other prevention strategies. We aim to answer these questions with future research.”

For more information, contact Ryon Jones at www.uwaterloo.ca/news.

—Reporting by Hank Trout JUNE 2018 • A&U

13

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by Ruby Comer

Dawn Averitt

Ruby illustration by Davidd Batalon; photo by Stephanie Gross

M

y dear precious poodles— Did you see the film Wild, with Reese Witherspoon, a few years back?! It’s a biopic about a young girl hiking the Pacific Crest Trail for healing and self discovery.

Well, in 2000, my friend Dawn Averitt hiked over 2,000 miles along the Appalachian Trail through fourteen states to raise HIV awareness. She called it Trekking with AIDS. Land of Goshen, this girl has zeal!

What motivated Dawn? Let’s back up a few years. In 1988, at nineteen, the former model was in Madrid, Spain, where she was raped a week after her arrival. She kept the attack a secret. Within seven weeks, however, she developed swollen neck lymph nodes and a high fever. The acute illness passed, but the swelling persisted.

Months later, when she returned to America, Dawn underwent a battery of tests.

After a presumptive diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, she asked her doctor to test her for HIV. Dawn noted that she wanted to be the first girl on the block with an “HIV-negative card”—remember, it was 1988! She didn’t get the card.

Instead, Dawn became a one-woman powerhouse for the HIV community.

In 2002, she and her brother, Richard, co-founded The Well Project, a nonprofit whose mission is to improve the lives of women living with HIV and AIDS focusing on treatment and prevention. The following year, she launched a think tank, Women’s Research Initiative on HIV/AIDS (WRI). In 2013, Dawn did a TedX Talk, speaking about an initiative to end AIDS in America. This activist also serves on numerous boards and panels, including two terms on the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) from 2010–2015.

She’s also president of a consulting firm in Strafford, Vermont, where she resides with her wife, Rosi, and their three daughters.

Since I am speaking at a college located in New Hampshire tomorrow afternoon, I

JUNE 2018 • A&U

text Dawn. I knew she lived in a state border town, but didn’t know where. Fortunately, it’s not a big schlep. Dawn suggests we rally at Market Table.

After we each order salads, I am taken by the village-y ambiance of this restaurant and town.

Ruby Comer: It’s been eons since I’ve been to New England.

I’ve forgotten how quaint and charming these villages are.

Last time I visited I skied at the Trapp Family Lodge [in Stowe, Vermont]. You know me…I still have such a crush on Captain Von Trapp [the father in the bio-musical flick The Sound of Music]!

[Taking a beat, I back away from the table, and inhale deeply.] My gawd it is so good to see you, Dawn! [We pause to enjoy the moment.] Tell me about your life here in little ol’ Vermont.

Dawn Averitt: I live life fully, Ruby. I am a middle-aged, mini-van-driving soccer mom.

I eat pretty healthy, hike as often as I can, laugh a lot, love fiercely, and benefit enormously from the love and support of my amazing family and friends. I try hard to live every day like I have six months to live and live every day like I’m going to live forever. Try it. It’s not easy. [She forks a few bites of her entrée.] And late last year we moved into an old farmhouse.

Holy jumpin’ catfish! This is kinda Hallmark Channel-ish—so romantic and wholesome.

[She chuckles.] We have a few horses and mini-donkeys, along with chickens, dogs, barn cars, and bunnies.

My gosh sister, you are a serious famer!

It has been a family dream and since our oldest daughter is nearly half way through high school, it was time.

Catch me up on your family….

Well, Rosi and I have three daughters.

The first two I gave birth to in 2002 and 2004. Their names are Maddy and Sophie.

[They are negative.] The youngest one my partner gave birth to in 2016. Her name is Roo. Aw….Ya know, I’m curious, when did you first hear about the epidemic?

In 1986 while I was a student at New York University. A student in my dorm

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was rumored to have AIDS. I would take him soup.

Workwise, what are you currently concentrating on?

On our Women’s Research Initiative on HIV/AIDS (WRI) annual convention, tackling the opioid crisis, and [she pauses and shakes her head] focusing energy on the 2018 elections. We have to turn this ship around! [Dawn rolls her eyes and smirks.] I can’t watch network or cable news anymore, Ruby, so I tune in Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Steven Colbert, and Trevor Noah.

I get it. Believe me. I’m with you all the way.

After you were diagnosed, Dawn, how did you handle the news?

I thought I had six months to live. I was told not to return to NYU because I couldn’t handle the harsh winters, and so I stayed in Atlanta with my family. I was terrified that I could infect someone else, especially someone I cared for. I was told not to read anything, because it was

18

How was your health through these years?

I progressed quickly and received my “AIDS diagnosis” in 1994. I had 74 T-cells. I wasn’t responding to the meds at the time and my t-cell count was plummeting. I was working for a grassroots AIDS service organization called The AIDS Survival Project in Atlanta, where I found out about a promising treatment in clinical trials happening in Albany, New York. This was the dose-escalating study of the protease inhibitor, Crixivan. I made my way to Albany and after my initial rejection by the researchers, I inquired about how many women they had for the study and if they would screen me again.

I was admitted. Now I’m a long-term survivor thanks to protease inhibitors!

[From 2006–2009 Dawn was a force behind the GRACE Study, the first U.S. HIV treatment study to successfully enroll a majority of women. The study proved

that HIV-positive women and people of color who participate in clinical studies experience different barriers to treatment than men.]

You glow my dear. [She smiles brightly and I think, what ivories!] How are you today?

I am healthy today! 2018 is the thirtieth anniversary of my diagnosis—and at the end of this year, I turn fifty! These milestones seemed impossible in 1988….

Oh, wow. How does that compute?

I’m ecstatic! I...worked.. hard…for… this. [Grinning, she cocks her head and tosses her silky Vogue-like hair, as if to mock putting on airs.)

Yes, 1988 was such a different state of mind, wasn’t it?! What one thing stands out that you’ve learned from being HIV-positive?

Humanity is both vulnerable and resilient. By embracing my vulnerability, I discovered strength, joy, and love. I didn’t know it was possible.

You have empowered many people. How did the roots of your activism develop?

My parents always told me I could do anything, well…[she hesitates, giggles then continues] except go to the midnight movie, use illicit drugs, skip school, and so forth. They deserve so much credit. I would not be alive if they had not been there every step of the way. Honestly, I never set out to be an activist, per se. I knew from my earliest days that I wanted to contribute something to the world. I just didn’t know how that would manifest itself. Then HIV appeared. It’s always been easier to fight for others. I think many women feel that way.

What road our high heels click down sometimes can be such a mystery. Lordy Mary! Hopefully we encounter a Glenda the Good Witch who can tap us with her magic wand and take us home. [We both nod and take a deep breath.] What’s your best advice to women to avoid HIV? Know your worth. Believe in yourself. Fight like hell [she states with fervor, staccato]. Protect yourself however and whenever you can. Arm yourself with information. It’s free. Use the tools—condoms, PrEP, PEP, negotiation, safe havens, advocates, organizations, and hopefully, microbicides on the horizon. [She gazes out onto the town clock on Main Street and sums up.] These tools are there…for you!

For more information about The Well Project, log on to: www.thewellproject.org.

Ruby Comer is an independent journalist from the Midwest who is happy to call Hollywood her home away from home. Reach her by e-mail at MsRubyComer@aol.com.

A&U • JUNE 2018

photo by Stephanie Gross

too confusing, and not to tell anyone, because it could ruin my family’s life and jeopardize jobs, insurance, school, and so on. So, I decided to return to college and transferred to Georgia State University.

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Poetry

y r t

e S o P

The Embrace

o pale, he’s almost green, a bit yellow,

slightly iridescent— in that second before

torn down, arch of back to arch of feet, limb to limb, to

he touches you, you wish you could make him

hospital bed, the unnamed breeding wildly

pretty again. Even through his overcoat

in the blood.

—Rose Auslander

you’ll feel his bones.

He mentions he’s been ill.

No details. But you don’t shrink because you think he has a cold. You flinch, then make yourself wrap your arms around him yes, wrap your arms around him, because years ago you saw beautiful young men die, men who looked like he does now— you know no one gets it like this, breathing evaporated cries trickling from bathhouses long since

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Rose Auslander recently wrote “The Embrace” in remembrance of close friends lost to AIDS in the 1980s, when she was a modern dancer in New York City. Her book Wild Water Child won the 2016 Bass River Press Poetry Contest; her chapbooks include Folding Water, Hints, and The Dolphin in the Gowanus; and look for her poems in Tupelo Quarterly (TQ9) and the Berkeley Poetry Review (# 48). Rose has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has read her poems on NPR. She is Poetry Editor of Folded Word Press, and earned her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson.

A&U • JUNE 2018

Bringing hearts together since 1998

HIV+ Owned Since 1998

Time Loops

I

f there were another you, in another universe, on a different planet, in a separate timeline, with a multiverse of separate experiences that are infinitely varied from your own, and they are standing in a field with a different colored sky—but still unquestionably you, what would that look like? Who would “you” be?

And would the difference matter? Or would you, he, her, and them still ALL be the same?

And what letter would they have taped across their chest?

I have tried to write this article three times before, and each try has been just a fraction of a decimal point different enough to change the trajectory of my train of thought. This is attempt number four....

Attempt number ONE was about “words on a page,” and how those words could be rearranged into many different sentences that could be interpreted to have a million different meanings. But that if “you pulled the camera back” they were all just dots on a page: Fundamentally small (whatever that means) but full of potential. It was very grandiose, abstract, and metaphysical—but a little vague...and it kind of fizzled out pretty quickly.

Something that can happen if you start with a gimmick. Not that I would ever use a gimmick to get a piece of writing done. *Stares directly into the camera and winks.* The SECOND time I began to write, I thought I would ground the essay in some sort of “time and place” as writers are taught to do. So I opened the story with me sitting in my living room half-naked drinking lemonade and eating gummy bears, while Drag Queens (our modern day superheroes) performed ridiculously terrible music through the speakers of my computer, and I pretended to be a six-foot-six German alien supermodel with a thirty-two inch blond silk weave; whipping it back and forth like the world’s best hair-ography for a music video as I screamed: “This is my hair. I don’t wear

22

wigs! THIS IS MY HAIR!” *I promise you I’ve been absolutely sober for two months.* I think I was trying to say something about “joy and reimagining yourself” but sometimes I get carried away with my metaphors.... The next day I took my laptop to the cemetery and continued to write...I was

inspired. But because I was no longer in my apartment, and the piece was written in present tense, and I try to always tell the truth, I rewrote the intro and incorporated the light scent of rose, lavender, and fresh-cut grass. I wrote little cute vignettes that followed the free-range peacocks: with their iridescent emerald green feathers preening as they paraded themselves gracefully over graves. And I followed suspiciously aggressive swans as they glided across a manmade lake in the spring sunlight, like living gondolas ferrying love stories a hundred years old. And with a kiss of wind against my skin—and all that life flourishing around Hollywood Forever cemetery, I started thinking of the dead.

And the thousand untold stories interred in stone and marble. All the flapper girls in beaded dresses, and jazz musicians with hand-rolled cigars, and World War II vets with their heroism and tragedy, and the stunning Rudolph Valentino lying just a few feet away, with his sultry eyes and olive skin, and lips as delicious as strawberries... and all the men and women who died of AIDS and other things who were buried

quietly under my feet. And because I am currently writing a novel about magic, and queerness, and the incarnations of spirit— like the beautiful death goddess Oya—and how death and rebirth are inextricably linked, I was on a roll...and that’s when my computer shut off and I lost everything!

OH HELL NO! *Nope.* No more writing in cemeteries.

So this is the FOURTH and last version of the same story. And this go-around the story is about “timelines and trajectories,” about multiple universes abiding in similar transparent dimensions— and how every version of life, though different in a million-billion ways, is still EXACTLY the same. Because the Universe is infinite, and time is relative, and it unravels in many, many lines. And because the person I was ten yeas ago, and ten stories ago, and ten minutes ago are both different AND the same, there is always opportunity to begin again. To be ME again. But differently.

Because time loops.

This, you can learn by picking up any comic book: There are at least two versions of you, each wearing a different costume, with a different backstory, standing in a field under a different color sky.

Who would you be if you could bend time and space and rewrite yourself from scratch? Because you can, you know? Nothing changes that—not even having HIV. Superman always saves the world! Even in the timeline when he has no powers....

So who will you be this time?

Love and Light Corey Saucier is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles. He is a Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction and Non-Fiction and is currently penning his first novel. His musings and wanderings on Love, Life, and Nonsense can be found at www. justwords.tumblr.com.

A&U • MAY 2018

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

who would you be if you could bend time and space & rewrite yourself from scratch.

Someday He’ll Come Along

S

o much can limit us, hold us back from true happiness—our own and other people’s doubts, people’s mistrust, our shame, people’s fear, and people’s ignorance. When you’re HIV-positive, the sword of judgment is particularly sharp and often cuts deep—it goes with the territory. You can grow very sensitive, develop a real chip on your shoulder, or you can find yourself more and more immune. None of the options is ideal and you find yourself longing for someone who understands, who gets it. You’ll meet a guy who rejects you out of hand or even worse, he says he’s fine with your status, but gradually loses touch. He stops calling, stops texting, and makes nothing but excuses. That fear, that ignorance, slowly overwhelms him and it’s on to the next one. You doubt you’ll have the strength again. You’re down for the count, dead in the water.

Recently I met a special guy online.

He was in another state, of course, but there was something different about him.

Handsome, a bit older than I am, but I like that. We began chatting and really seemed to hit it off. We had so much in common, but were different enough to make it interesting. Roger ticked a lot of boxes; he was accomplished, creative, engaging. We began to chat daily. Soon, I knew that I had better fill him in on my status. I typed the words and anxiously awaited his reply. To my relief he told me that he was positive, too, a long-term survivor in fact. While not happy about someone going through what I’d been through myself, I was thrilled nonetheless. It’s the gold standard for many of us who are positive. Suddenly, there’s no need to explain, no reason to placate, no one to reassure. Someone you hope to care about understands; they get it.

There’s no fear of rejection, at least not for that reason.

Roger and I talked every day. We would text in the morning before he went to work, often text or email during the day when not busy, and talk for hours at night.

Conversations were hard to end; one of us would think of just one more thing to say. We’d often talk by phone, as well.

What I liked most about him was the way he would always make me laugh with his JUNE 2018 • A&U

silly, yet sharp, sense of humor. When it came to talking about sex, we were manly and masculine but, when we weren’t, we weren’t afraid to camp it up and laugh uproariously. It was natural and organic; it was easy. Nothing felt forced or artificial.

There have been a lot of false starts over the last eight years I’ve been single, but this just felt right. Could I finally have met the one? Like I said, I’ve been through this before, gotten my hopes up only to have them dashed. Something bothered me though, gave me pause. At sixty years of age, he had never had a relationship. It set off some alarms for me, but I ignored them—brushed them aside. I’ve had three serious relationships myself, two of whom I’ve lived with, but they were hardly a success. Who was I to judge? I told myself that I would bring my concern up, and I did, but details were vague on his end. But, more than anything, I want a relationship and I’m cognizant of the fact that no one’s perfect. I carried on regardless.

After a few weeks of communication, wonderful weeks of discovering each other as thoroughly as we could while at such a physical distance, he brought up the idea of coming to my town and meeting. We were both enthralled with the idea and a positive outcome seemed certain. We already were in deep, perhaps too deep, given the circumstances; this step seemed as organic as the rest, however. What did I have to lose, I thought, this could really be the one. It was all or nothing at this point.

He booked his flight and sent me his itinerary. I must have looked at that saved email a hundred times. I’d been through this before—remember that guy in Canada? He had promised he was coming to spend the weekend countless times; it was a two-hour drive but he never showed. He strung me along for more than a year. This was different, I told myself. But that man was HIV-positive too; all the pieces seemed to fit, but it only ended in disappointment.

Well, Roger showed, and we had a wonderful four-day weekend together. I cooked up some beautiful dinners and a brunch, wanting to show off my domestic skills. We saw much of my city that I don’t usually see; I tend to discount it and

assume there’s nothing to do. We had a beautiful, romantic evening out at a terrific restaurant downtown and also ate out with both my parents and my brother and his new girlfriend. Everyone loved him. His job requires a large amount of people skills and he can engage and charm anyone.

Everything was fine until the morning before his departure when I sensed a change. The change continued after his arrival home. Communication that was once natural and filled with affectionate words and sentiment became forced and stilted. When I inquired what was wrong in an email, he told me that he had had second thoughts and had decided not to pursue things further. I was back where I started, alone.

I beat myself up for a few days wondering if something was wrong with me. Had I done something amiss? Would I always be alone? Then, I stopped that nonsense. I’ve come too far in my life and overcome too much to doubt myself now. Are there some things that still need work? Yes, but I’m happy for the first time in years. I won’t lose sight of that now. Maybe it’s he who has the issues. Come on, at sixty he’s never had a relationship? That should have given me more pause, made me ask more questions.

Me? I’ll be fine. There’s a lot ahead for me and maybe, just maybe, there will be a relationship with the right guy, positive or not.

John Francis Leonard is an advocate and writer, as well as a voracious reader of literature, which helps to feed his love of the English language. He has been living with HIV for thirteen years and he is currently at work on his first novel, Fools Rush In. His fiction has been published in the ImageOutWrite literary journal and he writes reviews for Lambda Literary.

Follow him on Twitter @JohnFrancisleo2.

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illustration by Timothy J. Haines

love, if it happens, would be the cherry on the cake; if not, i still have cake!

YOU MATTER AND SO DOES YOUR HEALTH

That’s why starting and staying on HIV-1 treatment is so important.

WHAT IS DESCOVY®?

DESCOVY is a prescription medicine that is used together with other HIV-1 medicines to treat HIV-1 in people who weigh at least 77 lbs (35kg). DESCOVY is not for use to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 infection. DESCOVY combines 2 medicines into 1 pill taken once a day. Because DESCOVY by itself is not a complete treatment for HIV-1, it must be used together with other HIV-1 medicines.

DESCOVY does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses, you must keep taking DESCOVY. Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance of sexual contact with body fluids. Never reuse or share needles or other items that have body fluids on them.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

What is the most important information I should know about DESCOVY? DESCOVY may cause serious side effects: • Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. DESCOVY is not approved to treat HBV. If you have both HIV-1 and HBV and stop taking DESCOVY, your HBV may suddenly get worse. Do not stop taking DESCOVY without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

What are the other possible side effects of DESCOVY? Serious side effects of DESCOVY may also include: • Changes in your immune system. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections.

Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking DESCOVY. • Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys. Your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking DESCOVY if you develop new or worse kidney problems.

• Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that

can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.

• Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.

The most common side effect of DESCOVY is nausea.

Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or don’t go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking DESCOVY? • All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or have had any kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis virus infection.

• All the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Other medicines may affect how DESCOVY works. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist.

Ask your healthcare provider if it is safe to take DESCOVY with all of your other medicines.

• If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant.

It is not known if DESCOVY can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking DESCOVY. • If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Please see Important Facts about DESCOVY, including important warnings, on the following page.

Ask your healthcare provider if an HIV-1 treatment that contains DESCOVY® is right for you.

IMPORTANT FACTS

This is only a brief summary of important information about DESCOVY and does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your condition and your treatment. ®

(des-KOH-vee) MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT DESCOVY

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF DESCOVY

DESCOVY may cause serious side effects, including: • Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. DESCOVY is not approved to treat HBV. If you have both HIV-1 and HBV, your HBV may suddenly get worse if you stop taking DESCOVY. Do not stop taking DESCOVY without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to check your health regularly for several months.

DESCOVY can cause serious side effects, including: • Those in the “Most Important Information About DESCOVY” section.

• Changes in your immune system.

• New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure.

• Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.

• Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.

The most common side effect of DESCOVY is nausea.

These are not all the possible side effects of DESCOVY. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any new symptoms while taking DESCOVY. Your healthcare provider will need to do tests to monitor your health before and during treatment with DESCOVY.

ABOUT DESCOVY • DESCOVY is a prescription medicine that is used together with other HIV-1 medicines to treat HIV-1 in people who weigh at least 77 lbs (35kg). DESCOVY is not for use to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 infection.

• DESCOVY does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. Ask your healthcare provider about how to prevent passing HIV-1 to others.

BEFORE TAKING DESCOVY Tell your healthcare provider if you: • Have or had any kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis infection.

• Have any other medical condition.

• Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant.

• Are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed.

Do not breastfeed if you have HIV-1 because of the risk of passing HIV-1 to your baby.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take: • Keep a list that includes all prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements, and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist.

• Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about medicines that should not be taken with DESCOVY.

GET MORE INFORMATION • This is only a brief summary of important information about DESCOVY. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to learn more.

• Go to DESCOVY.com or call 1-800-GILEAD-5 • If you need help paying for your medicine, visit DESCOVY.com for program information.

HOW TO TAKE DESCOVY • DESCOVY is a one pill, once a day HIV-1 medicine that is taken with other HIV-1 medicines.

• Take DESCOVY with or without food.

DESCOVY, the DESCOVY Logo, LOVE WHAT’S INSIDE, GILEAD, and the GILEAD Logo are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. Version date: September 2017 © 2017 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. DVYC0085 11/17

by

My Fight with HIV

Christopher Costas survival depends on interior design

photo by C. Costas

M

y fight with HIV began before 1981. I was the third person diagnosed with GRID, at Georgetown University Hospital just before my fifteenth birthday. With tear-filled eyes Dr. Joseph Bellanti, head of Pediatrics, told me and my parents I had six to eight months to live. My future was bleak. That day I became a soldier in a war that has taken over 35 million lives. I became a statistic in this war where a staggering 36.7 million individuals are living with HIV/AIDS. I was offered no medication with which to go to battle. No protocol to follow. Nothing. It was too shocking, too devastating for me to wrap my arms around something I couldn’t understand. But this was how I responded to the news that my life would be cut short. I hope it will encourage you to never give up.

That day I had a conversation with God, who offerrd me hope that “all things are possible.” I had no other option except to trust and believe there was a different plan for me. So, God and Hope were the only medications until I turned seventeen.

Finally, drugs “in study form,” advanced for distribution to the bravest. It seemed that every drug was “served” with handfuls of nausea. Frequently, I flushed the meds down the toilet. I lived recklessly that summer. It became my everyday goal to accomplish everything that this virus threatened to steal from me. At first it was hard to put shape and form to do this.

Fear, anger, and grief were the emotions that motivated many of my decisions then. I sowed a lot of wild oats. It wasn’t until I understood that life is a gift, that I began the search to make every minute count and to figure out the reason I am still here forty years later. Encouraging others helped me survive some pretty horrific things and brought me greater peace.

It seemed reasonable to add supplements to my healthy living plan. I eliminated as much stress as possible and surrounded myself with supportive friends who encouraged me to be my best. Survival was the top of my list. Often I would draw on the flow of creativity to take my mind off symptoms. In my teens I desired to be a published interior designer. The beginning of my legacy was at twenty-one

JUNE 2018 • A&U

years old. The first few articles printed were in the Washington Post “Home” section and the Arlington News Journal.

Without formal training, I was published in Southern Accents magazine with a cover story and a twelve-page article on an eighteenth-century farmhouse that I restored with a friend in Oakton, Virginia in 1994.

The virus kept at bay pretty much for ten years. Then, what began with a severe headache led to surgery to remove several feet of my small intestine. I had frequent grand mal seizures and toxoplasmosis-related lesions, thirty-eight in all, like a bathing cap wrapped around my brain. No medicine would fix it. I was in intensive care for three weeks. The doctor told my family, “We have done everything we could. I am sorry, so sorry.” Even though I was ill for a very long time, I am grateful to say that I lived. I was told my family and friends prayed a lot.

HIV has delivered powerful blows to my body; however, since the “cocktail” was introduced, I have had no detectible viral load.

The far greatest test of my faith came in 2013. A side effect of Truvada became toxic for me. My kidneys failed overnight.

I went into end stage kidney failure, stage 6. The treatments were no picnic. I began dialysis for six hours a day, three times a week. Dialysis is not a cure; it’s a treatment to rid a patient’s blood of toxins. To

deal with the difficult side effects, I turned to marijuana for relief, lots of it. I told the nurses, “I won’t be in dialysis long.” A loud voice in my gut impressed me to believe that life hooked to a dialysis machine and the eventuality of a transplant was not God’s best for me. I couldn’t explain the deep expectation that change was in store for me. I grabbed onto the hope that I needed a miracle. I had no idea how that would take place. Then after exactly two years, to the dismay of the medical staff (every doctor said that I could die if I did not receive the dialysis treatment within forty eight hours), I left dialysis. It wasn’t the chipped beef on toast for breakfast nor green tea I consumed by the gallon that made the crucial difference. I believe that prayer and marijuana, working together, started my kidneys after both had not been working for two years.

Even when kidneys fail or a doctor finds a huge tumor wrapped into the lining of your stomach, or you find yourself strapped to a cot because of transient global amnesia, never give up. I had Hope in my heart. I pressed in. I pressed in really hard.

All the time. From the beginning, my life has been an adventure, and my aim has been to share something you can grasp to give you hope at a time when challenges may seem impossible to overcome. You’re not alone in the fight, whatever the diagnosis.

We cannot always influence what tomorrow brings our way, but I learned that I always have the “right” to choose how to respond.

YOU CAN MAKE IT. Allow your reach to exceed your grasp.

You too can become a long-term survivor and choose to take back the life that was stolen from you.

Christopher Costas, raised in Potomac, Maryland, a D.C. suburb, now lives in Lewes, Delaware. His work in interior design, and fitness and portrait photography has been featured in publications such as Southern Accents, Country Home, and the Washington Post, among others. Christopher is the founder of World Survivor Day, held every August 1. Christopher advocates for the recognition of the history of those that survived the virus, and also shares his own story of hope as a public speaker. To contact Christopher Costas, send him an email to ChristopherCostasPhotography@gmail.com or find him on Facebook and Twitter.

27

The Second Adolescence

A

t the age of thirty-two I’m now only starting to feel like I am making the best decisions of my life as an adult. I’ve made some poor choices in the past and that is something I can’t just deny. I made bad choices with my finances, with my sex life, with my spirituality—but not without reason. I was always seemingly chasing something that I never had—the freedom to be myself.

I suppressed most of who I was up until about twenty-one when I first started exploring. Unfortunately, much of what I missed during my adolescent years I was playing out up into my thirties, a struggle many black queer people share with me.

My adolescent years were pretty much lived in my head. My head was the only place that I could be myself, or for that matter imagine the person I wanted to be. I was too afraid to fully embrace who I was and live in that truth publicly. I felt that there weren’t other people like me in school, and even if there were, they weren’t ready to be out either. So, I faked it until I made it, pretty poorly in hindsight, but I did the best I could. For me it was about safety and just making it to a place where I could be myself freely. I thought it would come when I first got to college and away from home for the first time, but it didn’t.

I transitioned from a Catholic school to an HBCU. At the HBCU, there were a few people who were out, but it still didn’t feel like a space where I could exist as I knew myself to be. So, I suppressed and even doubled-down by joining a fraternity.

I’ve always struggled to make genuine friendships because I wasn’t being my full self. But I did make friends and that worked until it didn’t. Looking for a brotherhood and some type of way to “heighten my masculinity” I became a member of a Black Greek Letter organization. Funny enough the opposite happened and I actually for the first time found people like myself. I started to grow into who I truly was.

I went to my first gay club when I was twenty. That was my first taste of the life I always wanted. And I went all in. I danced, I drank, I flirted, I got phone numbers, and I finally felt free for the first time.

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However, I was still not “out” so I did all this in secrecy. Only hanging out with a certain group of gay guys so that none of our secrets would get out.

This led to me moving in a way that wasn’t safe though. I put myself in some pretty interesting situations that I know wouldn’t have happened had I been more confident in who I was, and willing to live my life as I was.

I was involved in high-risk sex with little education on my community and my risks. It took me years to be accountable for the fact that my HIV diagnosis was on me. I didn’t ask questions before engaging in hook-ups and after the club meet-ups. I didn’t know the statistics; I really didn’t know what it meant to have HIV and why I should be concerned about it. I drank a lot and got behind the wheel. Folks thought I was a pro at it, I had gotten so good. It was not smart. I made some very poor financial decisions because everything I did was based on impulse. I was in the mindset of living fast and dying young because I was operating like a sixteen-year-old in a twenty-five-year-old body.

It happened because I lost so many years. So many years of not having sex, not having friends, not dating, basically not doing much of anything but just trying to fit in as best I could. So, when I got the opportunity, I relived all the years that I felt I had missed. I was responsible, yes, and I paid my bills as best I could and went to college and did all the right things, but I was still operating from the space of a child. A child that so longed to be who he wanted to be but didn’t have the courage to do so.

Black queer folks miss out on a lot of years being unable to live as queer people when we know that we are. I knew since I was young that I was different. I also knew that it would not be accepted. This is something that must change in our society if we

hope to stop repeating the cycles of trauma many of us experience from suppression of identity. The loss of adolescent years means we lose out on dating. We lose out on experiencing how to grow friendships and relationships and build bonds with family. We lose out on proper integration into society and fall into many of the statistics that continue to hurt our people.

At thirty-two, I’ve for the first time in my life started to make some really adult decisions and my life is better for it. It is my hope that in the future we don’t have any more children like me. Children who are unable to be themselves, stifling their growth until much later in life. Queer people have adolescent years, too. We should be able to live them during that time.

George M. Johnson is a journalist and activist.

He has written for Entertainment Tonight, Ebony, TheGrio, TeenVogue, NBC News, and several other major publications. He writes the Our Story, Our Time column for A&U. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @iamgmjohnson.

A&U • JUNE 2018

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

black queer youth should not have to wait years to be who they are

SOMETIMES, OUR HIGHEST HEIGHTS HAPPEN

LONG BEFORE TAKEOFF. Proud Partner of the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.

I

find that a lot of newly diagnosed people living with HIV believe that their life is over. I said it before that, when I found out that I was positive, I first thought: What are my parents going to think? My second thought was: What am I to do now I can’t have any biological children of my own? My third thought was that I am going to die. Then I thought: What was the point of even going back to school?

Looking back at all of these statements and questions, I think to myself that all of them have either been misinformed or have been answered favorably. Presently, my parents are very proud of me and love the work that I do; HIV-positive persons can have children without the child acquiring HIV or they can adopt as well. And I don’t plan on dying anytime soon. The education piece was much harder to think about.

Thinking about how education has fulfilled my life thus far it only felt natural to go back to school, until I became HIV-positive. I had fulfilled at least one year of college education before I became positive. It took a while to get back to school, but I did.

I went back, and I went back on a mission.

I earned my associate’s in Communications from Axia College and, in 2009, I went on to earn my bachelor’s in Political Science. I didn’t want to stop because, as I excelled in my education, my job prospects went up and I was able to earn more money. This allowed me to eventu-

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ally get off of Maryland AIDS Drug Assistance Program (MADAP). Just in case you didn’t know, MADAP ensures that people living with HIV/ AIDS in Maryland have access to the medication they need to stay healthy and is a statewide program and is funded primarily through the Ryan White CARE Act. MADAP pays for medications for eligible clients with no insurance and helps clients with insurance by paying for eligible copay and deductible costs so they can get their medication.

In 2015 I received my Master’s degree in Public Health (MPH), a field that I’m passionate about. A month after I received my MPH, I was interviewed and hired in the public health arena for my 9-to-5 job; my activism has been in HIV since 2003. In my heart I knew I was a public health advocate and that education would further solidify my expertise in the field. This year I was awarded my Doctorate in Public Health and now I feel more fulfilled than ever. How I am going to use my doctorate? I do not know yet, but what I do know is that I shall use it wisely. I’m not telling you to go out and get a doctorate, but what I’m saying is that all ambitions and dreams do not end with HIV. People often forget their dreams or put them on the back burner because of HIV, but this cannot be.

Fulfill your potential; use this experience to help others going through the same thing to fulfill their own potential. Use opportunities like

this one to further educating others on HIV. What some people do not understand is that sometimes life is not straightforward for some of us. As the road curves, we then use our life experiences to dictate what we will do professionally in life or what we feel passionate about. I know for my life it’s both—straight lines and curves.Before I became HIV-positive, for example, I already knew and had dated people who were positive. I actually started working at an HIV non-profit in 2003. I watched friends die and suffer because of HIV and I knew I had to do something. I knew that I could not turn my head or idly watch as my friends became affected by being infected with HIV. A lot of my friends became complacent with being positive; they died either because they were not educated enough to get resources, or they thought because they were HIV-positive they could just easily take pills at any time and be okay and they would often die because of not taking their meds until it was too late. I knew I needed to make resources available to my community so that another friend did not die in vain. So, I fulfilled one of my dreams of having an education. I know they are proud of what I’ve accomplished and I will continue to make them proud by fulfilling more of my dreams.

Sleep well and have pleasant dreams, everyone!

—Dr. Justin B Terry-Smith ◊ A&U • JUNE 2018

photo by Don Harris © Don Harris Photographics, LLC. all rights reserved

Justin B. Terry-Smith, MPH, PhD, has been fighting the good fight since 1999. He’s garnered recognition and awards for his work, but he’s more concerned about looking for new ways to transform society for the better than resting on his laurels. He started up in gay rights and HIV activism in 2005, published an HIV-themed children’s book, I Have A Secret (Creative House Press) in 2011, and created his own award-winning video blog called, “Justin’s HIV Journal”: justinshivjournal.blogspot.com. Visit his main Web site at www.justinbsmith.com. He welcomes your questions at justinterrysmith@gmail.com.

Storyteller W

hen Dan Nicoletta moved to San Francisco in 1974, it’s unlikely that he realized that he would become one of the preeminent photographic storytellers of the next five decades. But that is only one of the remarkable stories of Dan’s life.

He has documented San Francisco’s queer culture from the mid-1970s into the 2000s, from the heady anything-goes days of the 1970s when San Francisco was Mecca to the LGBTQ community, through the political turbulence at the end of that decade, the ravages of the AIDS crisis, and all the struggles and triumphs since then.

Born in 1954 in New York City, Dan moved to San Francisco at age nineteen to attend San Francisco State University. He began his photographic career in 1975 as an intern to Crawford Barton, a staff photographer for The Advocate. He first met Harvey Milk and Scott Smith at Castro Camera, their camera store on Castro Street where they hired him to work. Dan also worked with Milk on his campaigns for San Francisco city supervisor and took many now well-known photographs of Milk.

In some ways, Dan’s story always comes back to Harvey Milk. For starters, there’s that iconic photograph Dan took of Milk outside his camera shop, Harvey’s infectious smile stretching from ear to ear, eyes laughing, tie fluttering in the wind. “Harvey’s campaign didn’t want to use this photograph at first; they didn’t like the fluttering tie,” Dan recently told A&U. “When I look at that photograph now, the wind lifting Harvey’s tie indicates for me the passing of time, the way those years have fluttered away.” Since its initial publication, that image of Milk has been reproduced in countless ways, including the U.S. postage stamp issued on May 22, 2014 and the sculpture by the Daub Firmin Hendrickson sculpture group that has graced City Hall since 2008.

In 1977, while still working for Milk at the camera shop, Nicoletta somehow found time, along with David Waggoner (no relation to A&U’s editor in chief and publisher) and Mark Huestis, to found the San Francisco International LGBT Film Opposite: Jason Bishop at the protest Festival (now the Frameline during the 6th International AIDS Film Festival). They and others began conference, June 22, 1990, from screening their 8mm films in the back Dan Nicoletta’s LGBT San Francisco of Harvey’s shop and called the events (pictured above) the Gay Film Festival of Super 8 Films, which evolved into the yearly internationally acclaimed festival.

Nicoletta’s photographs have been widely reproduced in periodicals, including The Advocate, the Bay Area Reporter, The Guardian (UK), the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Village Voice, as well as in numerous books, including Randy Shilts’ The Mayor Of Castro Street (1982); Jim Van Buskirk and Susan Stryker’s Gay by the Bay: A Pictorial History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area (1996);

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A&U • JUNE 2018

A&U Gallery

LGBT San Francisco by Dan Nicoletta Chronicles More than Four Decades of Queer Joy, Tragedy

by Hank Trout

JUNE 2018 • A&U

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Cleve Jones, Director of The Names Quilt AIDS Memorial, 1987 and Milk: A Pictorial History of Harvey Milk (2009), with an introduction by Dustin Lance Black [A&U, August 2017] and a foreword by Armistead Maupin [A&U, June 1998]. In addition to his historic images of Harvey Milk, his subjects have included the White Night Riots, the Castro Street Fair, and the San Francisco Pride Parade, as well as personalities such as Justin Vivian Bond, Divine, Allen Ginsberg, Harry Hay, and Sylvester. His photographs have also appeared in several documentary films, including Rob Epstein’s Academy Award-winning The Times of Harvey Milk.

And now, much of Dan’s archive of photographs has been collected into LGBT San Francisco: The Daniel Nicoletta Photographs, a large-format 306-page tome bursting with stirring images of love and loss, of inspiration and heartbreak, of protests and celebrations that have marked his adopted City by the Bay over the past forty-plus years. It is a remarkable record of a very specific time, place, and tribe.

In keeping with his successful efforts to preserve Milk’s legacy, Dan served as a special consultant and still photographer on Gus Van Sant’s 2008 Oscar-winning film Milk.

From that gig came one of the most haunting photographs in LGBT San Francisco—a

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photograph of Josh Brolin as Dan White, behind the Imperial Court System, now a Milk’s and Moscone’s assassin, standing fundraising juggernaut in LGBTQ commustraight and stiff in a darkened hallway, light nities around the world (“Jose changed the barely creeping in through disheveled blinds rules for drag. The Imperial Court was a at the windows, an communal effort, open door at the but it was really back of the hallway Jose’s brainchild. ominously suggestLater in life, his ing the door through drag became more which White entered subdued, what he City Hall that ugly referred to as ‘male day. “We had been drag.’”); of drag filming all day,” superstar FauxDan said. “When I nique, resting after saw this hallway, it a Mr. David fashion haunted me. There show at the Castro was something dark Theatre in 2013; and sinister about it of a young Cleve that I knew would be Jones [A&U, January perfect for capturing 2017] inspecting what we all felt about the 1987 display of Dan White. And the Names Project Brolin was terrific— AIDS Quilt at he understood exactMoscone Center—it ly what I wanted to is Dan’s photocapture.” graphs of everyday Perhaps even moments in San more than his Francisco that so exquisite portraiture precisely document Danny Celeri, June 26, 1983 of San Francisco “legthe joy and exuberance ends”—e.g., Jose Julio of the community here.

Sarria, Absolute Empress I de San Francisco, Look, for instance, at his photo from aka the Widow Norton, the mastermind the Castro Street fair of August 1976. In A&U • JUNE 2018

A&U Gallery

a sea of young, healthy, muscled and mustachioed men floats Dan’s friend, Enchantra. “I took this photo because Enchantra looked like she stepped out of a Fellini film and onto Castro Street! She was an important part of a fabulous culture here in the seventies. They didn’t all make art—but they were art! I loved the communal aspect of that culture.”

Looking at this photo now, I cannot help wondering how many of those young men are no longer with us.

For an only-in-San-Francisco moment, check out the photo of Sister Boom Boom (Jack Fertig), one of the original Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, riding in the 1982 SF LGBT Pride Parade in a yellow Beetle with a sign on the side reading, “Boom-Boom for Soup.” The Sister ran for a seat on the city’s Board of Supervisors (her occupation listed on the ballot was “Nun of the Above”) and nearly won! “I knew Jack really well,” Dan said. “I loved the way the Sisters brought levity to the city’s politics. The Sisters could have been just a brief moment of performance art, but they have grown into a worldwide movement raising much-needed funds for the JUNE 2018 • A&U

Top: Scarlet Harlot at the Demonstration for Women’s AIDS issues at the 6th International AIDS Conference, 1990 Left: Rebecca Hensler, Ingrid Nelson, Sarah Beth Harris, Adriane Carrier, Cindy Cruz (second from far right) at the demonstrations on women’s AIDS issues at the national Conference on AIDS in SF, June 1990

community. The fact that they are stronger now than ever speaks to their resilience.”

Of course, no chronicle of the LGBT community in San Francisco could ignore the horrible decimation of the community from the early 1980s through the late 1990s. In a selfless act of generosity, Dan’s friend Danny Celeri, who had been diagnosed with AIDS, permitted Dan to document his experience of the disease. In The Hospital Zone, October 28, 1997, Danny Celeri—an extremely haunting image of Celeri with his back to the camera, walking alone down a long too-brightly-lit hallway at St. Mary’s Hospital toward an EXIT, carrying a large sad-faced teddy bear by the ear— Dan captured the chilling terror we all felt, the overwhelming frustration and looming sense of doom, the many heart-wrenching hospital visits we all made, the cold harsh sterility of those visits. For me, with its stark glaring no-mercy lighting, this photo will

always be one of the most gut-wrenching reminders of all that we San Franciscans have lost. And yet, every time I look at this photo, it also reminds me of the redemptive power of storytelling.

When I chatted with Dan recently, I passed along to him a friend’s assessment of his photos as “artful without being pretentious,” an assessment I certainly share. Dan shyly chuckled at the compliment. “That’s nice! If I’ve avoided pretentiousness in my career, I can die a happy artist!” With LGBT San Francisco, I’m sure that Dan’s reputation as a “happy artist” will remain intact for generations to come. He has guaranteed that the story of this tribe, at this specific time and place, will not be forgotten.

Our thanks to Reel Art Press, publishers of LGBT San Francisco: The Daniel Nicoletta Photographs.

Find more information at www.reelartpress.com.

Hank Trout is an A&U Editor At Large.

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Finding Common Ground I t’s a hot July afternoon at a Billy Gathering 150 miles north of San Francisco.

More than 100 gay men—most in their fifties and sixties, some in their twenties, thirties, and forties, several in their seventies—are spending a long weekend at a peaceful mountain retreat center. Some are in workshops, while others have quiet conversations on shady porches. The pool area is packed and almost everyone is naked. You see bellies, butts, and chests, several with top-surgery scars. You see different skin shades and body types. You see who’s cut or uncut. What you don’t see is

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Among Its Many Heart-Centered Aims, The Billys Embraces Unity Across Serostatus

by Lewis Nightingale Photos by Dave Hall Photography

who’s negative or positive.

For decades, HIV status has been central to the identity of most gay men. Yet on this afternoon, we are one community, all significantly impacted by HIV/AIDS but not defined or divided by it.

Here in Northern California—long a birthplace of innovation—a new understanding is emerging of what it means to be a long-term survivor, one that is inclusive of all gay men over fifty. Whether negative or positive, we have all survived, and now we are growing older together.

For the past three years, The Billys,

a gay men’s social group, has partnered with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF), through its Elizabeth Taylor 50Plus Network, a wellness and social activity group for gay, bisexual, and transgender men over fifty, regardless of HIV status.

This collaboration has shown great benefits for both groups. Dusty Araujo, a Billy and a health educator at SFAF, explains: “We both serve a community of older positive and negative guys, and this has helped many men to view each other as one community, not separate communities.”

The Billys is not an AIDS service organization (ASO), but many Billys are HIV-positive. The Billys is not a group exclusively for older gay men, yet more than eighty percent of Billys are over fifty.

“One of the things that I think our community needs to unlearn,” says Vince Crisostomo, program manager of the Elizabeth Taylor 50-Plus Network, “is that not

A&U • JUNE 2018

everything revolves around HIV. We are in the process of defining what it means to live, what it means to thrive. HIV is just a part of it. It’s really the aging process that we are looking at because this is where we find common ground.”

Paul Mueller, The Billys’ Board President, shares this view: “The Billys has a thirty-year history of breaking through isolation by providing connection. It’s a model of healing and support that is perhaps the most effective and caring.”

The Billys, a group of around 1,200 gay, queer, bisexual, and gay-trans men, defines itself in its mission statement as “a heart-centered community woven together by shared values” such as compassion, generosity, authenticity, and respect. Billys blend ritual and ceremony with fun and frolic. Diversity by age, ethnicity, and income is actively encouraged. Most Billys live in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties, north of the city, but some men travel from many other states and even a few other countries to attend Billy Gatherings.

Gatherings take place in rural settings, six times a year. Most gatherings run from Wednesday through Sunday, and attendance ranges from fifty to 150 men. Gatherings include workshops and evening activities like dances and talent shows, as well as time for relaxing, socializing, JUNEL 2018 • A&U

sharing meals, and volunteering to make Gatherings run smoothly. Women are sometimes welcome, but Gatherings are predominantly comprised of gay men. In addition, fifty to 100 men attend monthly Potlucks in San Francisco, Santa Rosa, and Sacramento.

The Billys is distinct from the Radical Faeries, founded in 1979 by Harry Hay and others who wanted to create an alternative to what they saw as the assimilationist attitude of the mainstream gay community. Billys are often called “faeries with watches,” due to their preference for structure and schedule. Heart Circles, a tradition borrowed from the Radical Faeries, are a core ritual at all Billy Gatherings and Potlucks. Men sit in a circle and, over the course of several hours, speak and listen openly, honestly, and lovingly. As described on the website of The Radical Faeries of Albion, “Heart Circle is a place where you witness and are witnessed just as you are—your authentic self, speaking from the heart rather than the head and expressing all and any emotions that are present for you.”

Michael Hampton, a retired paralegal, has lived in San Francisco for almost forty years. He has attended Billy Gatherings since 2013 and has been an active participant in 50-Plus for the past four years. “I feel welcome there. It’s

Opposite page: Grant and Ed Craig Above: The Billys at a Gathering

the same feeling I have about The Billys.

They invited me in and accepted me just the way I was. I just love being around The Billys,” Michael says. “We have fun together. I think they know my spirit and my heart. And I get fulfilled every time I go to a Gathering. I feel safe and I feel welcomed. I should have joined The Billys twenty years ago. Luckily I lived long enough to be a part of it now. When I got there, I knew I had arrived at the right place, among my own tribe.”

The Billy Club, as it was first called, began in the summer of 1988 when a group of rural gay men living in the hills of Northern California came together to support each other in dealing with HIV/ AIDS. “Billy” was a term of endearment between lovers, as pastoral as the men who used it.

Thirty years later, The Billys is one of the oldest gay men’s social organizations in California.

Although The Billys was born out of a need for connection around HIV/AIDS, its roots go back to the 1960s, when hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in San Fran-

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cisco with flowers in their hair. In 1967, the Summer of Love captured the world’s attention. That fall, Hair opened in New York, celebrating the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution.

In the new gay neighborhoods of San Francisco and New York, clone culture emerged as the dominant style. But not all gay men embraced this hyper-masculine, sexualized image of tight 501s, boots, tank tops, hoodies, and bomber jackets. Along with many of the hippies of the Haight, these free spirits rejected urban life and, gripped by a “back to the land” imperative and utopian ideals, headed north to Humboldt, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties.

Land was cheap and restrictions were few. Communes flowered on the coast

Heart Circle talismen

and in the hills. In the early 1970s, more than a hundred gay men settled in the rugged mountains of Mendocino County.

They built houses, dug wells, planted gardens, lived off the grid, and reveled in their seclusion and freedom.

But San Francisco was only a threehour drive south. Horny country boys could play in the city by day and make it home that night, if they didn’t find a bed to share. By the mid-1980s, HIV and AIDS had infected paradise.

The gay men of Mendocino County were frightened by the illness and death that engulfed their friends and neighbors

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like wildfire. Ron Van Love, an original member of the Billy Club, recalls, “Having an isolated lifestyle made living with AIDS much more challenging, and made it more important to find other gay men who lived rurally so we could support one another. I loved living the homesteading back-to-the-land lifestyle, yet I longed for contact with other gay men.” Lives born of joy and independence were now lives of fear and isolation.

Board President Paul Mueller, himself a longtime rural resident, continues the story. “In the late 1980s, HIV/AIDS service dollars were becoming available to Mendocino County from the federal government, but local health department staff did not know how to identify and/or support

rurally living gay men in need of help. Several women working in the county health department talked with a gay couple who had attended a few Radical Faerie gatherings in Oregon. They wondered if that sort of event would work in Mendocino County.

A crude mailing list was compiled from tattered address books, an invitation was sent out, and in the summer of 1988, over 100 gay men attended the first gathering of the Billy Club. It was immediately perceived that there was a hunger or need for ‘community’ that transcended the immediate issue of HIV/AIDS.” Division by HIV status continued to dominate gay life, especially in cities. But even at the height of the epidemic, the idea began to slowly percolate that AIDS

impacts all of us. As positive men began to live longer, some negative men saw the loss of friends and lovers as shared trauma. Survival might not just mean not dying; survival could define and unify a generation of gay men who lived through AIDS together.

ASOs have long provided services to HIV-negative people, mostly around prevention. In 2014, SFAF received a grant from The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation to establish a wellness network and social activity group for gay, bisexual, and transgender men over the age of fifty, regardless of HIV status. As stated on the website of the Elizabeth Taylor 50+ Network, “Those of us coming out as gay, bisexual, or trans men were often shunned by family and society.

We came to San Francisco for community. We have survived the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Many of us have experienced the stigmatization of being gay/bi/ trans, and are still being traumatized by the HIV epidemic.”

Most members of 50-Plus live in San Francisco, but some come from Oakland and Bay Area counties. Harry Breaux, an actor and long-time San Franciscan, has been a Billy for eight years. Like Michael Hampton, Harry has attended 50-Plus meetings since their inception. Three years ago, Harry was a board member of the Billy Foundation. He approached Vince Crisostomo about a collaboration with The Billys. “I believed in both groups,” Harry says. “What I saw was that the 50-Plus guys needed to get out of the city every now and then. I thought, if anyone should be at a Billy Gathering for a weekend and have their souls lifted, it’s these people.”

Crisostomo has worked closely with The Billys to ensure that the greatest number of 50-Plus members can attend Billy Gatherings. This year, between ten and twenty members of 50Plus will go to each Billy Gathering, and many more will join the monthly potlucks in San Francisco. He has seen mutual benefits for both 50-Plus and The Billys: “After every Gathering, at our Wednesday dinners, we just have people share their experiences. It’s always really positive, and that motivates other members to go. It’s also inspired Billys to attend our Wednesday dinners.”

The relationship between The Billys and 50-Plus is productive in others ways as well. “Many of the 50-Plus guys were Billys at some point,” Crisostomo explains, “so there’s a shared history. Being able to reconnect with that part of their lives, and A&U • JUNE 2018

sometimes with old friends, makes them realize that this community is still there.”

Dusty Araujo, liaison between The Billys and 50-Plus, notices the positive results in 50-Plus members: “We’ve seen guys who attend a Billy Gathering for the first time and they’re unsure and think maybe they should go home, and then after one day, they turn around and blossom, they’ve found community. It’s made a change in how they perceive themselves and how they connect with other people.”

Diversity and inclusion are other benefits.

50-Plus members vary in race, ethnicity, and income. Billys Board President Mueller notes, “Another gift to The Billys is that through the 50-Plus program, we have been able to welcome more men of color, which increases the richness and relevance of our gatherings.”

A primary objective of both The Billys and 50-Plus is to reduce isolation and loneliness.

Real-life engagement, at places like 50-Plus Wednesday dinners and Billy Gatherings, is crucial to creating connection and community.

While many older gay men, both negative and positive, now see themselves as “longterm survivors,” Crisotomo prefers the term “The AIDS Generation.” “If we are in the process of rebuilding the community,” he argues, “why would we not want to include everybody who wants to show up?”

Many of us are reaching and passing seventy. Most of us didn’t plan for retirement.

Few of us have children. Some have loving and supportive siblings, nieces, and nephews.

Not all of us will succumb to “early death,” despite the dire predictions. We will continue to lose friends and lovers. Some of us will be old! Will we care for each other, as we did for our peers in the early days of the epidemic?

Will younger gay men help care for us? They JUNE 2018 • A&U

Left: Paul Mueller, The Billys’ Board President Right: Harry Breaux often talk of losing a generation of mentors and role models, but we didn’t all die. Will we become the “forgotten generation”?

The Billys and the Elizabeth Taylor 50-Plus Network are addressing these concerns. Vince Crisotomo is also a Billy. “It doesn’t matter why we come together,” he declares. “It’s the fact that we do come together, finding that common ground and working toward a future where everyone is thriving.”

Ron Van Love, an original member of the Billy Club back in 1988, still regularly attends Billy Gatherings, with his husband Scott, whom he met fifteen years ago at a Gathering.

“So many of my friendships and connections who I made through The Billys are part of my life now,” he says, “and new friendships are being formed. Living in the hills of Mendocino County, my lifeline to the gay community is through these relationships.”

The Billys, formed by independent but isolated rural gay men struggling with HIV/ AIDS, is now a vibrant community of heart-centered gay men, young and old, negative and positive. Connection has remained the core value of The Billys for thirty years, and it will continue to sustain us as we move forward into an old age that many of us never expected.

For more information about The Billys, log on to: www.thebillys.org. For more information about the Elizabeth Taylor 50-Plus Network, visit: http://sfaf.org/client-services/50-plus. For more information about the photographer, log on to: davehallphotography.com.

Lewis Nightingale is a Billy and long-term survivor in San Francisco. Contact him via e-mail at: lewgo@sbcglobal.net.

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What If? The Fathers Project, Created by Leo Herrera, Imagines a Queer World Without AIDS

by Hank Trout Photographed Exclusively for A&U by Alex Ray

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magine a world where AIDS never happened and our heroes lived. Who would they be? Who would we be?”

With that simple premise—“What if?...”—Mexican artist and filmmaker Leo Herrera hopes to explore the full extent of what the world lost to the AIDS epidemic, beyond the loss of individual lives, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s, the worst of the Plague Years. The losses are, of course, incalculable—how to measure the losses to the worlds of the arts and sciences, politics and literature?

Or the loss of the opportunity to pass from one generation to the next our specific queer cultural inheritance? The loss of guidance?

These questions have haunted thirty-something Leo Herrera since the early days of his coming out in San Francisco, California. “I grew up an illegal Mexican immigrant in Phoenix, Arizona,” Leo told A&U. “It was a very difficult upbringing because that state is so repressive and conservative. I have a gay brother who is two years younger than me. We had incredibly supportive and open parents who welcomed us with open arms and sent us to San Francisco so we could live a fuller queer life. We found many role models in San Francisco in the older men we interacted with through all our artistic work.”

Hank Trout: What was the initial impetus

for the Fathers Project? When did you first become aware of the whole issue of “what we’ve lost to AIDS”? Was it contact with longterm survivors, or conversations with newly infected folks, or what? What specifically got you to thinking about “what we’ve lost”?

Leo Herrera: I’ve always been interested in queer history, since I was a baby gay in Arizona, which didn’t offer me much as a teen except the two gay bookstores which had a treasure trove of queer biographies.

After I moved to San Francisco, I worked at a video store in the Castro and met so many survivors as well and worked with the GLBT Historical Society. All of this taught me that we were on such a trajectory as a culture, and while we did have problems that all young cultures have, AIDS was such a huge loss that really set us back. As I got older and into my thirties, there are so many questions I have about being a queer man, and being in queer relationships, that I realized I had very few people to ask certain questions and the Fathers Project was born out of all of this.

How would you describe the film you plan to release? Is it a documentary? A what if fantasy? A reconstruction of our history and the way it affects the present and future? What final form will it take?

I describe it as a “sci-fi documentary.” It

Stills from Fathers (left to right): Drag Queen, Provincetown; “Wink” at Northern California Retreat; Brandon Lee Brown in New Orleans takes real life events, such as Pride gatherings, and turns them into something else, such as a rally for a gay president. It also takes larger themes, like sex, homelessness, the arts, and attempts to show what these would look like [without AIDS]. It has faux news segments, commercials, as well as oral histories. It’s sort of a like a surrealist fever dream. It can only be described as Cruising meets Black Mirror meets Beyonce’s “Lemonade.”

It will be released in online episodes of roughly eight minutes each, with the first

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I think the most surprising thing to me, as someone who has revered and sometimes canonized these men, is how human and flawed they could be, how much they also disagreed with one another about what queer society could be and how we could reach our potential. It’s also interesting to hear from survivors the two schools of thought—that AIDS galvanized us into what we are today, or that it set us back and we would have had so much more politically and artistically by now.

You have said elsewhere, “…history has proven that [queer people have] always existed as parade and funeral, of finding joy and sexuality in the darkest of situations.”

Can you elaborate on this? Also, you refer to queer people “carving utopias” out of society—elaborate please?

I meant that we are taught early on through the trauma of repression and that it’s up to us to reach out of the oppressive circles of our teens, our small towns, sometimes even our families, and find one another. I found my first queer utopia, for example, at an all-ages gay club in Phoenix, Arizona, where all of these different queer folks were finally finding one another. We always find these little nooks and crannies to spend time with one another in mostly joyful ways.

On a personal level, what have you learned from these “Fathers”? For instance, what are you doing to take care of your health?

I’m negative, on PrEP. [The Fathers Project] was actually born out of the initial reaction to PrEP, when it seemed we were having our own cultural civil war with so many varying opinions. I was dating a positive man at the time and was very confused. I think PrEP liberated us and changed us in a way that we’ll be processing for a very long time.

slated for release in June 2018. It all depends on funding, as this is a community-driven effort in collaboration with the GLBT Historical Society (donate at www.iftheylived.org!).

We raised nearly $25,000 last year and fundraising is ongoing through the GLBT Historical Society as our fiscal sponsor, so donations are tax-deductible and benefit the museum as well. I’m currently trying to raise more money to release the remaining episodes by the end of this year.

Is this project primarily a solo outing or more of a collaborative effort? If collaborative, can you tell us about some of the other people working on the film? What specifically JUNE 2018 • A&U

do they bring to the project?

For now the production is a solo effort, but the community is involved because I’m documenting real-life situations. I also receive letters daily with histories, stories and opinions about the project so there’s always someone adding something to the mix. And I have collaborated with other queer artists, musicians and performers.

As you’ve talked with long-term survivors, those “Fathers” who did indeed survive, what has been the most important or most surprising thing you’ve learned from them? What do you think is the most important or most surprising thing that they can teach us now?

What is the ultimate goal for the Fathers Project? Film festivals? Online streaming?

Whom do you see as the “target audience” for the Project?

The main goal is for the most people to see it in any way shape or form!

For more information on The Fathers Project, log on to www.iftheylived.org; to donate to the Project and to the GLBT Historical Society, please go to www.glbthistory.org. KQED’s “Behind the Lens” program profiled Leo and The Fathers Project earlier this year: http://bit. ly/2rtOcdY. And finally, for more information on Leo’s other work, check out: www.leoherrera.com.

For more information about photographer Alex Ray, follow him on Instagram @alexray.

Hank Trout interviewed Will St. Leger and Hazel Coonagh about their “All Together Human” photo exhibit for the May issue.

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REMEMBERING OUR FUTURE Wilson Cruz Advocates Keeping the Past Alive to Make a Positive Impact Tomorrow

by Dann Dulin

Photographed Exclusively for A&U by Sean Black

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round noon, Wilson Cruz unceremoniously enters the Café. He embraces one of the servers. A popular neighborhood restaurant, it’s located just a few steps from his home, here in West Hollywood.

Wilson’s ease, charm, and friendliness exemplify my afternoon with the actor-activist.

The solidly built actor is clad in a tight V-neck T-shirt, dark Jeans that are rolled up at the bottom, and black patent leather bucks. Sporting stylish short-short cropped hair, several days worth of trimmed salt and pepper stubble, and with his glowing complexion, he could have just stepped off the pages of GQ magazine. It’s obvious that he takes care of himself.

He greets me and then snuggles into

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my corner booth. The server sweeps by, inquiring about drinks. He orders café latte.

Wilson was fifteen when his life was powerfully impacted and radically changed. His artist uncle, Luis Angel Cruz, who lived with his family, died of AIDS-related complications caused by intravenous drug use. “It…was…shocking,” laments Wilson, “and it affected my whole life. I’ve never recovered….” This is evident as his sparkling eyes moisten. A year later, Luis’ wife died of the virus as well.

His uncle was thirty-three and was more like an older brother to Wilson, who’s the eldest of three kids. As fate would have it, two characters Wilson portrayed were named “Angel”—in the bio-pic Party Monster, on Broadway in the HIV-themed musical Rent; and, in the

television show My So-Called Life, an angel follows his character Ricky around in the Christmas episode. “I wouldn’t be shocked that my uncle was a part of all that,” he admits, lifting a worldly brow. “We were extremely close.”

The tragic and complex situation was intertwined with Wilson’s own sexual identity. Sex and death were forever enmeshed. “You couldn’t have sex,” he says, “without having death, if not at the forefront of your mind, at the very least at the back of your mind.” The server returns to take our order and then dashes. “Back then we had to have the conversation, but we were kids—and we were horny. We didn’t want to talk!” He winces and flips a quick, bracing smirk.

Wilson first went for an HIV test at sixA&U • JUNE 2018

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teen. “I began to have sex around that age, maybe a bit earlier. I was fast.” From then on he’d say a prayer every time he tested.

Back then there was a two-week waiting period for the results. “During that time we would all be making these contracts with God,” he hiccups, wobbling his head, taking a sip of Joe. “It was crazy.” Today Wilson gets tested regularly.

“Guys my age were dying!” he passionately screams about the era, then begrudgingly ticks off, “They looked like me. They were young like me. I couldn’t sit still. I felt a responsibility to lend a voice about this disease, to protect my peers.” Wilson kept that commitment. For more than half his life, he’s been on the frontlines, combating this epidemic. Indeed, Wilson was featured in A&U in June/July 1995. He’s also a militant advocate for human rights.

“In the mid to late eighties, we were living the biggest battle of the war,” he says, bridling, placing a firm hand on his heart. “Literally, our lives depended on being involved, acting up, being loud, and lying [down] in the streets. We were a part of a generation who said, ‘Enough!’”

Wilson stops. “Now we’re seeing it being played out again with gun violence. We’re reliving those days. Some people say, ‘Oh, they’re just kids.’ But it’s kids who change the world! It was youth who helped to end the Vietnam War, it was youth who rose up for LGBT rights, it was youth who fought to give women a voice about abortion, and it’s youth who are going to resolve this gun issue.”

He forks a portion of his spinach, mushroom, and tomato omelet into his mouth. Wilson looks up. “We live in revolutionary times. We need to support these kids the way we were supported when we were fighting in the early days of the LGBT movement and the war on AIDS. This is an important opportunity.”

Wilson’s involvement has been extensive. He’s made PSAs, has sung at the ending festivities of the annual AIDS Life/ Cycle, performed many times in David Galligan’s [A&U, December 1999] S.T.A.G.E. and Sheryl Lee Ralph’s Divas Simply Singing! [A&U, August 2015], among others He even has peeled onions at Project Angel Food. “My favorite has been the AIDS Danceathons!” he concedes, with gusto, waving his arms. “Rosie Perez and I would do them together, or sometimes she would be at New York’s Javits Center and I’d be at the Universal backlot in L.A., and we’d talk to each other during it!” Wilson is totally jazzed as he recalls those events. “Believe me, I do it as much for myself as I do for anybody else,” he confesses. “Volunteering JUNE 2018 • A&U

gives me great pleasure.”

On the other end of the spectrum, exhaustion currently besets Wilson as he navigates in the icy waters of the dating pool. Announcement: Mr. Cruz is available and looking for a husband. There are requirements.

Marriage seems to run in his family.

Not long ago, Wilson, an ordained minister (an accreditation which he obtained online), officiated at the wedding of his younger brother, Josh, and his boyfriend.

“That was one of my life’s joyous moments,” he boasts with pride, his glistening peepers softening. “It was magical.”

Living in West Hollywood, with its predominant LGBT community, can be challenging. “I don’t think my husband is in L.A., but who knows, maybe it’s me,” he reasons with a resigned tone, noting that he’s considering moving back to New York.

Wilson uses dating apps, but gets frustrated with them, and warns, “Don’t say hello with one of your body parts [pics], otherwise I will literally block you.” The server comes by to check on us and then leaves.

“Look,” he declares, “I’m straightforward: I’m dating. I’m not here for a hook-up.

Those days are behind me….”

He attributes not finding love to the demands of his career.

Last year he was working simultaneously on Star Trek: Discovery (a groundbreaking TV series where he and Anthony Rapp play boyfriends) and 13 Reasons Why (Netflix’s gritty drama). One was filmed in Toronto and the other in San Francisco’s Bay Area. Wilson would spend two days in one city and five days in the other. “It was like that for months—and it was the most incredible experience I ever had!” genuinely raves Wilson, who then chuckles and adds, with a slight agitation in his voice: “Who the hell is going to put up with that?!”

Wilson has dated a variety of men, including guys living with HIV. “It’s always challenging

when one person is and the other isn’t.” In a role reversal, Wilson played Dr. Junito Vargas on television’s Noah’s Arc, where he portrayed a doctor who worked in HIV medicine and was positive, and was in a serodifferent relationship. “He was one of my favorite characters! It was so exciting to be a part of this series,” he says.

Dating for someone living with HIV can be excruciatingly anxiety-producing. Wilson believes honesty is the key. “Be upfront and have a conversation. The negative person must create a safe space, so that the positive person can share their status ahead of time.”

He fiddles with his big-faced classy watch and states, “It’s smart to get this out of the way before one becomes too attached and feelings are hurt. It’s one of the first things you talk about…your birthday, your favorite food, and your status.”

Unfortunately, prejudice abounds and lying on the Internet is effortless. “You have to take your well being into your own hands,” he emphasizes, punching his fist on the table, “Take every precaution.” He repeats deliberately, enunciating each syllable, “Take ev-er-y pre-cau-tion!”

AIDS has been around for nearly forty years—most of Wilson’s life—but it’s much

"Those of us who lived through the AIDS crisis need to keep that history alivE"

different nowadays. “I’m forty-four; I can’t believe I’m that old!,” he hoots and hollers, “and to think I was once a part of the younger generation.”

He munches on some juicy green melon. “Today there is less urgency, because it is not a death sentence. Some seem to think that if they become infected, it’s no big deal. The medication is not a silver bullet,” he proclaims forcefully.

“We don’t know the long term effects.”

(When the topic of PrEP comes up, Wilson wishes not to reveal if he’s on it, but feels it’s an important advancement in medicine and one should consider it.)

Concerned that

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the youth continue to acquire HIV, Wilson reaches out to them by sharing his history.

“We don’t talk about our history enough,” he beseeches. “There are valuable lessons to be learned.” He scratches his head. “What’s that famous quote?” We both toss about some words and he finally utters, “‘Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’”

He eats more melon, wiping a bit of juice from his lips. “Those of us who lived through the AIDS crisis need to keep that history alive—along with the Civil Rights and women’s movement. “Some believe that Stonewall [New York, 1969] was the beginning of gay rights. But there were protests all over the country, including here in Los Angeles [before that],” he points out, touching my knee to make a point. “The first riot in L.A. was at the Black Cat bar in Silver Lake. I think it was 1967.” He repositions himself, putting one knee up on the seat, as his foot dangles over the edge. “This is important history! If people knew more of what happened, they’d work harder to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Wilson is on a riff, adamant, and revved. “It’s our job to see that we keep our experiences alive.”

Regarding his Latino roots, Wilson thinks prevention campaigns should be specific for each community. “The key is found in the way we talk about HIV within the community and to that community,” he advises. “Are we using the language they understand? Are we dealing with their poverty rate, homelessness, education, employment, and healthcare access?” As to that stereotypical Latin machismo, he doesn’t believe the masculinity issue is any greater in the Latin community than in the general population. “I think others tend to make it a bigger deal,” he says. “The real issue is the socio-economic for Latinos, African-Americans, and people of color. That’s the real issue.”

His smart phone goes off, screen brightly flashing, as it has several times before. Faintly annoyed, he promptly turns it off.

Of Puetro Rican heritage, Cruz was born in New York City and raised in San Bernardino, California. He’s been delivering memorable award-winning performances for more than two decades. His first professional gig was traveling the country using his gifted singing voice in the group, The Young Americans. He then became a leading man in My So-Called Life playing Rickie Vasquez, a pioneering role in 1994 as being gay was not completely central to the storyline. Rickie wore eyeliner and preferred using the women’s WC as well. All of this was uncommon at the time—very uncommon. The role rocketed Wilson to fame. (His TV debut was in 1991 on the series, Great Scott!, playing a choirboy, JUNE 2018 • A&U

alongside Tobey Maguire.)

Cruz has co-starred in such films as Nixon, Johns, Beat the Bash, Joyride and After Louie, and other television appearances, NCIS, Party of Five, The West Wing, Pushing Daisies, and Grey’s Anatomy. There were times, though, when he weathered depression, due to no employment.

In the early 2000s, it got bleak. “Nobody wanted to have anything to do with me,” he recounts. “I wasn’t working and lived on friends’ couches and made it work. It got to the point where I almost started looking for something else to do besides being an actor.”

What kept Wilson sane during those fraught times was support of family and friends. He also exercised and meditated daily, read books, and watched I Love Lucy. “I have ‘CBS All Access’ and can call up those episodes right at my fingertips,” says Wilson, exhilirated. “Anytime I’m in a bad mood, when I feel like the world is unsafe, or I’m troubled by some shit that’s gone down in the Trump administration, I can rely on I Love Lucy to bring me back. It was also my safe space as a kid.”

As thorny as times got, he never gave up hope. “I always, always thought that I just needed to dig in and work a little harder,” Wilson says. “I believed that [more acting jobs] were going to happen. It was important to keep busy. I would try to sing somewhere, or get cast in a play. Getting through down times taught me that I was mining my path and getting better at it. I knew that the hard times would pass.” He cracks a Pepsodent smile (boy, his teeth are white!) and darts a deliberate look my way. “If you don’t know in your bones that opportunities will eventually present themselves—get the fuck out [of this business]!” He takes a breath. “If you don’t believe it, no one is going to believe it.”

One of those down times was when Wilson came out. His dad, whom he’s named after, asked him to leave the house and Wilson lived in his car for months. It wasn’t until this identical story was written into an episode of My So-Called Life, and his dad was secretly watching, that healing took place between father and son. Today he considers his father a hero, and Wilson made television history as the first openly gay teen actor to play an openly gay teen character!

When Wilson came out in 1993, he looked to Harvey Fierstein [A&U, June 1996] for inspiration. “Harvey was the only professional person I knew that was not only successful as an actor and openly gay, but using his art to tell the story of LBGT people.” When Wilson later introduced himself at an event, Wilson was shocked to learn that Harvey knew who he was! “He said some really beautiful things to me that day,” remarks Wilson, his voice

cracking and tears blurring his vision. “I’ll never forget that. I think about him often.

He’s been wonderful to me.”

What keeps Cruz on an even keel is honoring his mind and body each day, starting off with exercise and meditation, which he does for about twenty minutes. “I say ‘thank you’ that I have another day to try and get it right.” He ponders, looking out the restaurant windows onto Santa Monica Boulevard and WeHo’s City Hall. “I guess every day we all are just trying to figure it out and do the best we can!” He giggles, wittingly. “For me, this is a healthy way to start each day. It’s important to take care of me before I can take on the rest of the day.”

About ten months ago Wilson figured out that alcohol was not serving him, so he quit.

“It didn’t bring out the best in me. I realized I was doing it for all the wrong reasons,” he confesses, offering that he drank all kinds of liquor. “I don’t miss it, and I’m leaner and my skin is much better.” To relax now, he uses cannabis, which “chills me out.”

Wilson’s face becomes reflective as if looking through into an alternate dimension.

He’s interrupted by a busboy removing empty plates off the table. “I spent so much of my youth trying to become this idea of what I thought I should be that it’s nice to reach an age where I can appreciate exactly who I am right now. I earned this happiness,” says Wilson, as if quoting a Sanskrit from a Buddhist’s teachings. “I am a survivor.”

The latte steamer, emanating a shrill, irritating sound, forces Wilson to raise the volume of his voice.

“A light went off for me after I lost my step-aunt in the Pulse night club shooting,” reveals Wilson. “Soon after, I spoke at the National Council of La Raza’s [now called UnidosUS] national conference in Orlando.

As I wrote that speech, I realized I had spent most of my life asking for permission to be in whatever space I was. If I were in an LGBT space, I would ask permission to be there because I am Latino. If I was in a Latino space, I would ask for permission to be there because I am gay.” He takes a beat. “To honor the memory of those Latino people who died in that shooting, I would no longer ask for permission to be anywhere. No more excuses.”

Wilson’s drive comes from his keen interest in personal growth and education, not only for himself but for others as well. “I get involved because I don’t want the moment to pass. This. Is. My. Moment,” Wilson says, firmly anchoring his voice. “There were people who fought in World War II. Well…I fought in the LGBT and the AIDS war. I am a soldier and I’m in the fight.”

Dann Dulin is a Senior Editor of A&U.

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ZOOM! ZOOM!

ZOOM!

Luna Luis Ortiz Turned His Personal Life Into Images that Created a History Marker for the Epidemic

by Dann Dulin

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t’s opening night. I stand there. Dazzled. Captivated.

I’m transfixed by this photograph that’s hanging on a gallery wall. It’s printed in Sepia tone and a young guy peering out a dirty double-hung anodized window, with a small clean round makeup mirror sitting on the window frame. In the mirror is a huge close-up of his face that dominates the photo.

The piece, Moon in the Mirror (Self Portrait, 1995) by Luna Luis Ortiz, was part of the exhibit, ART & AIDS, that was held at New York’s Leslie-Lohman Museum in December last year. (Luna is currently in a show at the Eternal Gallery in Paris.)

Luna began his career as a teenager taking self-portraits, living in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. (He was inspired by his father’s affection for photography and his father gave Luna his first camera.) Later, these imag-

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Photos by Luna Luis Ortiz es, and others, would document AIDS in the eighties and nineties, serving as part of Luna’s personal journal of acquiring HIV from his first sexual experience at age fourteen. Now, at forty-six, he has gathered an extensive CV, dedicating his life to AIDS awareness.

Working alongside such artists as David LaChapelle and Nan Goldin, Luna’s work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The London Observer, and Huffington Post. As an eighties club kid his work flourished in that genre. He taught photography classes at The Hetrick-Martin Institute (location of the Harvey Milk School, from which Luna graduated in 1992), and co-founded the House of Frame by Frame Fierce that teaches animation filmmaking to high-risk youth.

For over a decade, Luna has been a youth educator at GMHC, creating social marketing campaigns and hosting workshops, conferences, and health fairs. He also shares his life story speaking at colleges that have included New York University, Penn State, and Yale. In 2009 he was a spokesperson for the campaign, “HIV Stops With Me.” For entertainment, he likes reading history books, strolling in Central Park, and watching classic films like All About Eve and Mame.

Luna also owns seven lovebirds.

Yes, seven! “And they love to love,” chuckles Luna.

Dann Dulin: How did you become “Luna?”

Luna Luis Ortiz: I was born to be Luna Luis Ortiz. The name comes from being born under the zodiac sign of Cancer and the moon is our ruler. I…am…Luna!

You’ve appeared on PBS, MTV, and MSNBC. It seems your mission is to educate HIV awareness and empower youth of color….

I was inspired by the work of Stand Up Harlem, GMHC, and ACT UP. Back in the early nineties, I saw groups like ACT UP on the evening news demonstrating on the White House lawn and at City Hall to advocate for AIDS research and awareness.

Quite a few years back, I remember you were profiled on Peter Jennings’ special, Living in the Age of AIDS. Yes, it was that Peter Jennings’ special in 1992 where I saw how effective sharing stories and simply talking about AIDS could help the masses. My journey in activism and prevention began then.

How did you begin?

I researched whatever I could find about AIDS and I began to get upset. AIDS is a stigmatizing disease. I discovered that I was living with something that I would forever be either judged for having or known as the “AIDS guy.” I needed to do something.

AIDS brought out the worst and the best in people. There was a lot of hate, stigma, and homophobia but there was also love, support, and sympathy for people living with AIDS. I discovered that art was a form of activism. I loved what Keith Haring was painting and the writings of Assotto Saint and Essex Hemphill. I loved that Madonna was talking about AIDS at her concerts. I grew up listening to these people and learning from them. I also learned to use my voice with Ann Northrop, Joyce Hunter, and Andy Humm. I listened to them before I A&U • JUNE 2018

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later I sat alone on that same bench, surrounded by tall trees, with painfully swollen glands. I felt as though I had a cold. I was tired, my body ached, and I was nauseous. I was also carrying a fever, which gave me night sweats.

What did your family think?

My mother wondered what was going on with me. Eventually we went to the hospital.

They tested me for a ton of teen ailments, including the “kissing disease,” mononucleosis. All tests came back negative. I was in the hospital for three weeks. My mother and sister visited me every day. They would make me laugh to make me feel better. Mom would bring me homecooked Puerto Rican meals, which were so delicious! When it was their time to leave I would get emotional. I would watch them out the window after their visits and wave while they walked to the bus stop, tears falling out of my eyes.

Awwww…..On the medical side, what happened?

The doctors continued their tests. On my third spinal tap the doctor noticed I was penetrated anally. She gave me the fish eye and began to ask me questions: “Are you homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual?” I told her I didn’t even know what those words meant.

She went to my parents. She told them she believed that I had homosexual sex and asked for their permission to do an HIV test.

would speak to media. Great preparation!

Tell me how you acquired HIV at fourteen.

It was 1986. I had just turned fourteen.

I met thirty-year-old Lee from Atlanta while we were walking our dogs along a path through the City College campus in Harlem.

We started off talking about simple things like the weather, the birds, and movies over the course of weeks. Every now and then he would give me a compliment, “You’re going to be very handsome, I can tell.”

I would shyly accept his compliments with a smile and that would lead to more compliments. I was always glad to see him because he was the only person who understood my being gay. I had too many

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different feelings happening all at once and I had nobody else to share it. He told me that I was perfectly normal, “It’s OK to like boys, you know?”

One day we sat together on a park bench and he touched my body. He spoke softly, almost in a whisper. His touches were respectful and gentle. He talked his way into fucking me. I did not even know two men could do this. I was so inexperienced I didn’t even know how to begin. I felt butterflies. He thrust his manly body against my little body. I closed my eyes tight and imagined lovemaking in old movies, when it was all left to the audience’s imagination.

What followed?

Well, I never saw him again. Two weeks

What happened next?

The test came back. We returned to the hospital. Acting a bit strange, the doctor simply said, “You have HIV. You may develop AIDS, you may not.” She asked if we had any questions. My mom, in shock, asked, “What does all this mean?” The doctor explained bluntly, “You’re son eventually is going to get AIDS and die of complications.” She made it very clear that I was going to die by the time I was sixteen.

What was your instant reaction?

I was devastated. The doctor sent me home never informing my parents that I needed to be monitored and seen by a doctor on a regular basis. She didn’t even bother to give us information about HIV. We went home and my mom fed me home remedies throughout the first year. The future seemed dark and confusing. Things were not friendly at home. The first year living with HIV was scary. I had no manual. I would walk over to the Hudson River and look at the water and cry. I was lost and confused. I thought only about death.

What kept you going, Luna?

Maintaining health was very important to me. I researched a ton of information about A&U • JUNE 2018

HIV. I was determined to beat AIDS. It was while researching HIV that I discovered a book about Marlene Dietrich.

I instantly fell in love.

I loved how Josef von Sternberg and George Hurrell photographed her. This discovery would later influence my photography. Photography saved my life.

You turned acquiring HIV into a positive way of life.

Having HIV made me think about how I wanted to be remembered and so I turned to photography. It was important for me to let people know that I existed and art was a way to express what I was going through.

As you know, my father handed me a camera when I was about twelve. I never really took any pictures with that camera; I was too busy drawing. At first I toyed with the camera. I wasn’t totally convinced that photography was for me.

Becoming infected sort of created this new possibility for me.

I started taking self-portraits with black and white film. I would pose like a dreamer, looking away from the camera, telling the story of my short life. In a way, photography became my voice at a time when I didn’t have a voice. The photos were amazing! They were very dramatic. I was trying to pose like old movie stars that I had seen in library books.

My mother liked my photographs. I remember her smiling at them.

Explain your connection with the ballroom scene. [The ballroom community, an underground LGBT subculture, provides alternative families for many Black and Latino youth.

Competition and trophies are a commonality.]

It was November 16, 1988—a date I cannot forget. It changed my life. My friend Wade took me to [Greenwich] Village, and this was my first time as a gay boy. He took me to The Institute for the Protection of Gay and Lesbian Youth, for short we called it IPGLY, and it was an afterschool program that was created for gay young adults so that we had a space where we could be ourselves without getting beaten up. Later it was renamed the Hetrick-Martin Institute. Walking through their doors was like Dorothy landing in Munchkinland. Her JUNE 2018 • A&U

front door opened and she went from black and white to full-on glorious color! The room was filled with gay boys and lesbian girls and drag queens from wall to wall. Everyone was friendly and the staff was so inviting. It felt like a little gay family. I then saw people doing these strange moves to some strange music.

I asked Wade what they were doing. He answered, “The sistas are voguing!” “Come on Luna, VOGUE!” You were home!

Afterwards, we all crossed the highway towards the water and to these old piers that appear as if they were going to fall into the river. I saw a man dressed in black leather getting his dick sucked and we all stood there looking at them as if this was the norm. It was. At one point, we stopped to talk to some older white man named Miss Lipstick, who was a crossdresser. At the pier there were a lot of people doing the vogue dance. It was completely mesmerizing and I felt like I was in a dream. The whole world all of a sudden seemed to be gay and proud. I discovered myself on the Village streets and started to create a family of friends that would become special.

I found a community.

Working at GMHC, you help orchestrate the annual Latex Ball. [The Latex Ball began in 1990 as an outreach tool of raising AIDS awareness and it was also a tip-of-the-hat to celebrate the ballroom community.] You’re in the field every day. What is the best way to reach the younger

generation to keep them safe?

Though the numbers of HIV infections are still high, these young people are smart and resilient and they know their protection options, including PrEP. What we need to focus on are the factors that contribute to HIV, like homelessness, unemployment, dating, violence, sexual assaults, substance use and alcohol abuse.

I try to meet the young people where they are at and I go from there. They don’t like preaching or people being judgmental.

Sometimes it just starts with, “How are you today?” and they’ll open up once they know they can trust you.

Reveal something someone told you that has stayed with you.

When I was attending the Harvey Milk School, Damien Martin (one of the founders of Hetrick-Martin Institute) told me that he was proud of me for being so open about my HIV status. He had been watching me educate others about AIDS. He said, “You are a brave young man, Luna. Continue to empower the world.”

Read the full interview at www.aumag.org.

Visit Luna at: www.facebook.com/PhotographyByLuna and www.visualaids.org/artists/detail/ luna-luis-ortiz.

Dann Dulin interviewed Wilson Cruz for this month’s cover story.

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g n i k a e r B

s e i r a und

Bo

Actor and celebrity host Ron B. talks about her show, No Boundaries–Up Close and Personal, and becoming an LGBTQ and HIV advocate Text & Photos by Alina Oswald

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here are no boundaries to what you can achieve in life!” celebrity host Ron B. says, looking into the main camera, at the end of each taping of her show, No Boundaries–Up Close and Personal. Ron B. is a trans actor who has appeared in shows like Law & Order and Shaft. A Tina Turner impersonator, she’s also the executive producer and celebrity host of No Boundaries, as well as a lifelong LGBTQ and HIV advocate.

Although No Boundaries has been running for over ten years, the concept for the show can be traced back to 1996, in New York City, at Manhattan Neighborhood Network [MNN] studios, where the show is still being taped today. “The purpose of the show is to be a vehicle for well-known, as well as everyday people [whose journeys and contributions to the community] should be acknowledged and recognized,” Ron B. explains, when I recently catch up with her at MNN. As we chat, No Boundaries (technical) director, Gloria Messer, shows up. She’s also director and producer of other shows, like the MNN series, Access for All. The two have been friends since 1996, when they met right there, at MNN. They

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both recall that day, just like it was yesterday, and they laugh and joke about it, finishing each other’s thoughts, as lifelong, good friends do.

“I was here, in the studio, doing Tina,” Ron B. says, recalling how she met Messer.

“At the time, I had two Chippendale guys as background dancers,” she laughs, “and I’ll never forget that distinctive voice [coming from] the control room.” Then she adds, in a slightly higher pitch voice, trying to imitate Messer’s voice, “‘I’m trying to do the lighting,’” and then to me, “she was speaking to the producer, not to me, but that voice resonated in my ear.”

Over the past twenty years, Ron B. and Gloria Messer have become best friends.

Messer says, “Directing Ron B.’s TV show, No Boundaries–Up Close and Personal, at Manhattan Neighborhood Network TV station, has been an ultimate pleasure and exhilarating experience for me. I love watching [her] perform, impersonating Tina Turner. Ron [B.] is a fabulous performer.

She has worked with Gale Brewer, 27th Manhattan Borough President, with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio [and many others], helping to educate the public and advocating for the LGBTQ community.”

Over the years, Ron B. has become a mother figure for many who’re underprivileged as well as for up-and-coming artists and performers. A very young performing and recording artist, himself an LGBTQ ally and HIV advocate, Cody Bondra (of Cody Bondra and the Contraband) describes Ron B. as “one of the most honest and caring people I have ever met. Without her guidance I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Ron B. has been an advocate for most of her life. Her “activism awakening” happened in 2004, after she was attacked, while working in a casting office. When she wanted to go to the police and report the attack, “people looked at me like I had three heads,” she says, because she was one of the first trans individuals to take that kind of action. She still remembers every detail of the attack—being knocked down from behind, threatened, the police arriving, the ambulance taking her to the hospital…. “I was fighting for my life,” Ron B. recalls.

“And when you’re in such a situation, you can either freeze out of fear or try to fight back.” And she decided to fight back—for herself, and afterwards, for others. “And so from there, my anger and frustration fueled my activism,” she says, reminding A&U • JUNE 2018

“You never know how long a person has here [on Earth,] so love them as long as they are here....” that not long after her attack, fashion designer and nightclub personality Kevin Aviance was attacked and that made the headlines.

The 2004 experience has also changed the dimension of her show. No Boundaries–Up Close and Personal is not about the glitz and glamour, but about being human, and understanding one another.

Sometimes sharing one’s story doesn’t come easy, especially when surrounded

by TV cameras. And yet, as the host, Ron B. makes it easy. Through her candor and laughter, talking about her own experiences, she makes her guests feel at home while on the set and comfortable enough to share their own stories. (I myself have been a guest on the show, speaking about my journey as an AIDS advocate and editor for A&U.) Through No Boundaries, Ron B. has started much-needed conversations surrounding LGBTQ rights, women empowerment or HIV awareness, to mention only a few. Over the years, she has also helped raise HIV awareness through her performances and appearances.

In 2003 she was asked to do an event at a camp for children living with HIV. “I went to this camp and I performed,” she says. “These were

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children, most of them born with HIV, two- and three-year-old and up to fourteen-year-old [children.] One was sixteen months old. That affected me.”

The 2003 and 2004 experiences brought Ron B. closer to her niece, who was in her late thirties and was living with HIV. “She was a strong person,” Ron B. recalls. “She had a son. Seeing her in the hospital [brought me even] closer to her, because I thought, here’s another person who needs help.”

It was not the eighties, it was just over a decade ago, but getting closer to her niece offered Ron B. an up close and personal look at what it really meant to live with the virus. Having that one-on-one contact was a game changer in her own understanding of HIV, as well as in her efforts to raise HIV awareness.

“I remember [my niece] saying, ‘if

anything happens to me, would you look after my son,’” Ron B. recalls. Then, one day, “her son, who was a teenager at the time, called me and said, ‘something is wrong with my mother.’ And I rushed to her house.”

Her niece had a heart attack and she died. It was Labor Day, 2006. “You never know how long a person has here [on Earth,] so love them as long as they are here,” Ron B. advises.

After her niece’s passing, Ron B. decided to devote a lot of herself to raising HIV awareness. She began to get more involved, more “up close and personal,” with people living with HIV. She started doing a lot of appearances at places like Hearts & Voices and Rivington House, and got to meet “a circumference of people, from eighteen-year-old people to those who could have been my grandmother, and who were living with HIV.” She distinctly remembers individuals who had to be tied to their wheelchairs, so that they would not fall.

Some had chalkboards to write on, to be able to communicate. “I remember one woman who had a portable oxygen tank on her, and she also had a chalkboard,” Ron B. recalls, getting emotional.

“And I wrote on her chalkboard ‘I love you.’”

Listening to Ron B. sharing her own encounter with the AIDS epidemic through her niece’s Ron B. and Cody Bondra on the set of No Boundaries

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“I think we need to step up the HIV education and also talk about PrEP...You have to educate yourself.” story and through her advocacy work, I remember that she has also appeared in HBO’s Angels in America. With the Broadway revival of Angels in mind, I have to know more about her own experience being part of one of my favorite movies.

“Mike Nichols was the director,” Ron B. reminds. “The casting people said [to me], ‘we saw your picture and you’re coming in for an audition,’” she recalls. She had to go all the way to Kaufman Astoria Studios. “We were all in one room, and then they asked me to get dressed. So I got dressed and I guess my look was what they wanted.” And so, she was cast in Angels in America.

At the time, Ron B. wasn’t too familiar with the success of the play that was being brought to film. Also, it was only when they started shooting that she found out about the all-star cast—Al Pacino portraying Roy Cohn, Jeffrey Wright (with whom she had worked in Shaft) portraying the nurse, as well as Emma Thomson and Meryl Streep, among others.

Ron B. ended up appearing in several scenes in Angels in America. “There was a funeral scene,” she recalls. “I got my high heels stuck in the mud,” she adds, laughing. “Then we got to shoot the church scene. In the movie, there was a drag queen that had died. You never saw JUNE 2018 • A&U

her, but the casket was there. And that’s when I came together with all of the top female impersonators—of Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross” and “one with short white hair” that appeared in The Birdcage with Robin Williams.

To this day, Ron B. doesn’t miss a chance to talk about HIV, to raise awareness. It’s important to keep having that conversation, because, she comments, many people still think that HIV cannot happen to them or that if it does, it’s no big deal because they “can just take a pill and everything will be ok.”

She shakes her head, almost in disbelief. “No, that’s not so!” She goes on, “I have seen the other side of [the epidemic]. I’ve seen a lot of people who had AIDS, and it was very scary, because they were walking around like human skeletons. [We don’t want to go back there,] and that’s another reason why I bring [HIV] up in the community.”

Her show, No Boundaries–Up Close and Personal, is a “catalyst” that brings people together and allows them to have honest, open-minded conversations, including conversations about HIV and AIDS, oftentimes touching on related stigma, alienation, depression, and also PrEP, prevention and much more.

“It has kept me very weary and educated,” Ron B. says, commenting on her ongoing conversation about HIV and AIDS. She makes a point to mention HIV in the transgender community. “Because they can’t get jobs, many people in the transgender community, as well as in the gay community, put themselves in risky situations having [unprotected] sex [for money] with people who might have HIV.” She also emphasizes the importance of addressing HIV among seniors. “I think the most important part is trying to help those seniors,” Ron B. comments. They are more likely to go back into the closet when they lose a partner, and even more if they happen to test positive for HIV. And that kind of HIV test result is possible among seniors, now more than ever. “There is a point where seniors just want to be loved, and forget all the cautionary lessons that they’ve learned,” Ron B. explains. “I think that we need to step up the HIV education, and also talk about PrEP [among the elderly as well as the youth].” Because young or old, “You have to educate yourself!”

Ron B.’s show No Boundaries–Up Close and Personal is taped once a month in studio at Manhattan Neighborhood Network (www.mnn.org).

It is available online, on Vimeo and YouTube, as well as on local Verizon Spectrum TV. Connect with the show on Facebook at www.facebook. com/ronbnoboundaries.

Learn more about Gloria Messer’s work at http://bit.ly/2IzsiMX. Learn more about Cody Bondra’s music by visiting online at https:// www.contrabandct.com/the-contraband.

Alina Oswald, Arts Editor, is a writer, photographer and the author of Journeys Through Darkness: A Biography. Visit her online at alinaoswald.com.

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by

Collateral Damage

Larry Buhl new legislation may put sex workers

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s a variety of laws at the local, state and federal level are being passed, ostensibly to crack down on sex trafficking, sex worker advocates and allies are sounding the alarm, saying sex workers will be the collateral damage.

In early April, President Trump signed a bill combining the Senate’s Stop Enabling Sex-Trafficking Act (SESTA) and the House’s Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA)—which makes online platforms liable for content uploaded by their users.

Both bills passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority.

Even before the president signed it, online platforms that sex workers used to advertise their services voluntarily blocked access from the United States or shut down completely.

In April, feds seized website Backpage.com and charged its founders with ninety-three counts of money laundering and facilitating prostitution. TNA and MyRedBook, both sites where sex workers advertised for clients, were also shut down.

Craigslist took its personals section offline, saying it could not prevent postings of sex workers or possible sex traffickers on the site. So far, nobody was charged with human trafficking.

Sex worker advocates say that these laws are vague and conflate, either intentionally or unintentionally, sex trafficking with sex for pay with both adults agreeing to the terms—in other words, simple prostitution. SESTA criminalizes “promoting” and “facilitating” prostitution without clearly defining those terms, advocates say.

Advocates also say the crackdown on online sites will lead to collateral damage by increasing the risk of bodily harm and disease transmission. These sites were not only used for advertising and procuring sex services, they were a barrier between sex workers and clients and a way to negotiate safer sex practices.

Sex work and trafficking policy researcher Kate D’Adamo explained how taking negotiations for consensual sex for pay offline can put sex workers’ safety at risk.

“You have to use vague language and hope things go well when you go into a private space. That negotiation time goes

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down fast. Before maybe you negotiated for condom use, and now you can’t.

“Then you have to go to a remote and isolated place not knowing whether they’ll use a condom, not knowing if you’ll make your money or even if that person is safe or not.”

D’Adamo also pointed out that trans people of color are the most at risk.

“They are most policed for prostitution-related crimes; they would refuse to take condoms because they didn’t want to get arrested, and that was true if they were working or not working. You have to hope there’s a 24-hour CVS or that the clients have condoms on them.”

Johanna Breyer, the co-founder of St. James Infirmary, a San Francisco peerbased occupational outreach service run by sex workers, confirmed that she’s being inundated with calls from people who are “in a frenzy” about the implications of FOSTA/SESTA. “In the first weekend after the law passed, we saw a threefold increase in sex worker outreach in the districts we serve,” Breyer said. “And lately we’ve noticed a significant increase in police presence.”

She said she didn’t know whether that police presence was directly attributable to FOSTA/SESTA or not.

Fortunately, San Francisco just passed immunity from prosecution for sex workers who report violence to the police. But Breyer and others worry that not only will more sex workers be coerced into not using condoms, but also outreach organizations that provide condoms, like St. James Infirmary does, could eventually be prosecuted for promoting or encouraging prostitution.

Kristin DiAngelo, a trafficking survivor and Executive Director of the Sacramento chapter of the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), was alarmed about a recently failed California state bill, SB 1204, intended to expand the definition of “pandering,” but would have left it up to cops to deter-

mine what ‘inducing’ prostitution means.

“Our group distributes condoms, lube, and lists of potential predators with the knowledge that sex workers will use them,” DiAngelo said. “But [SB 1204] would say we are encouraging and inducing prostitution. It would make what we do illegal.”

In late April SB 1204 failed in committee due to lack of support, but sex worker advocates say that if such a bill could pass in supposedly liberal California, restrictions on their industry could happen anywhere.

Tara Coccinelle, a trans woman and inactive sex worker said that cops in Sacramento, where she lives, and in many other cities, can stop a person for simply leaning on a parked car and check to see how many condoms they have. “And they use that as justification for arresting you and charging you with manifesting prostitution,” Coccinelle said. “The law punishes people for preventing transmission of STDs and HIV.” D’Adamo said that there has been one upside of FOSTA/SESTA: community organizing. “Across the country we are seeing sex workers and (advocates) connecting and getting fired up.”

Larry Buhl is a multimedia journalist, screenwriter, and novelist living in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter @LarryBuhl.

A&U • JUNE 2018

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

at risk

What Massage Is Best for Me? swedish? sports? read on & find out!

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tive tissue and break up deep, underlying knots, and adhesions.

This modality is best for people who have long-term, deep chronic, muscle tension, and pain and a restriction to range of motion.

Medical massage is a very broad term, and while there is certification in medical massage, most therapists will have specialties. For example, one of my specialties includes multi-therapeutic approaches to massage for oncology patients.

Medical massage can be a helpful therapeutic option for issues including arthritis, neuropathies, digestive disorders, fibromyalgia, headaches, insomnia, myofascial pain syndrome, paresthesia, and nerve pain, soft tissue strains or injuries, recovery from assorted traumatic injuries, temporomandibular joint pain, and an assortment of other illnesses and injuries.

Be sure to talk to you practitioner about your specific medical conditions before having a session and scrutinize their experience and education.

Sports massage is another broad term used to describe services that focus on the individual therapeutic needs and goals of an athlete. The muscle groups targeted in sports massage will vary based on the sport or the ongoing physical activity.

There are three areas of sports massage: Maintenance (Inter-event) Massage, Pre-Event Massage, and PostEvent Massage.

Maintenance (Inter-event) Massage: Whether you are training for a specific event or participate in some form of athletics or repetitive activity on a regular basis, maintenance massage is designed to focus on the specific muscle groups being targeted along your athletic journey. Targeting specific muscles and/or specific muscle groups frequently in use as a part of your training regimen helps to decrease pain, improve performance and lessen the likelihood of training related injuries—helping you to perform at your best. Studies have

shown that massage therapy within ninety minutes of an intense workout or training can reduce residual muscle stiffness and pain by fifty percent.

Pre-Event Massage: Pre-event massage typically occurs within ninety minutes of the start of an event. Prior to any athletic undertaking, it is important for the athlete to be in peak form. Pre-event massage is a series of strokes performed at an upbeat tempo to increase circulation, range of motion and flexibility, decrease pain, stiffness and nervous tension and allow the athlete to focus on the event with an enhanced sense of physical wellbeing.

Post-Event Massage: Post-event massage focuses on bringing the athlete back to neutral and dealing with aftercare.

The pace of this massage is slower and calming and includes dealing with pain and cramping.

While massage in general is important to your wellbeing, it is equally important to ensure the type of massage you are getting is right for you.

Rob Zukowski is a New York State licensed Massage Therapist, a Certified Medical Massage Therapist and is certified by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork. In addition, he has advanced training in Sports Massage and sports-related injuries, various relaxation therapies, and massage for oncology. His experience includes working in medical facilities, corporate health environments, wellness centers, and spas. In addition to his hands-on work, he is a writer, manages a wellness center, arranges corporate wellness events, works in private practice and lectures in the field of therapeutic massage therapy. You can contact him directly at robzlmt@gmail.com.

A&U • JUNE 2018

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

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ver time we have talked about the different kinds of massage and the assorted benefits of massage. It’s all well and good to know that massage is good for you, but one of the most frequent questions that I get is: “What type of massage is best for me?” We need to address that.

There are a lot of different massage modalities available to you. Each will have its own set of benefits depending on your specific needs. I would like to address the four most common types of massage.

Swedish massage is typically known for its relaxation benefits, but we should not forget the proven physiological benefits of this modality. A combination of massage strokes, alternating pressure and passive muscle stretches are used to ease tension, relieve moderate pain, and improve overall mobility. But another benefit of this type of session is to affect the autonomic nervous system and bring the client into a parasympathetic state (better known as “rest and digest”) where the body can heal itself and move towards homeostatic balance. Seek out this modality for moderate muscle pain and tension, anxiety, stress and a need for rest, improved sleep and overall relaxation.

Deep tissue work is best suited for chronic, long-standing muscle tension, pain and limits to range of motion. The pressure and techniques used to reach your goals will vary according to the client, but, by and large, this is much deeper and firmer work, often using elbows, forearms and a soft fist to manipulate deep muscle and connective tissue. Deep tissue work is a matter of moving through upper level, superficial tissue with greater pressure in order to access muscle tissues and fibers living deeper within the body.

Typically, the tissue is warmed and prepared with a variety of moderate strokes before beginning deeper work. Depending upon your needs and preferences, techniques such as deep compression, friction, muscle stripping and myofascial release can be used throughout the entire treatment, and more precise work can be performed on specific muscle groups or individual muscles.

The overall goal of deep tissue work is to access and reform muscle and connec-

E R U CULT S THE

AID OF

BOOKS

The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America

by Isaac Butler and Dan Kois Bloomsbury

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n this stunning and engaging oral history, authors Isaac Butler and Dan Kois accomplish several important feats. The book’s primary function, as an oral history of one of the late twentieth century’s most significant cultural contributions, is adeptly and thoroughly realized. The work it documents is none other than Tony Kushner’s theatrical masterpiece, Angels in America, a work that will provoke thought, bear witness, and entertain for generations to come. It is a play that not only captures the carnage of the AIDS crisis in our country, but provides a cultural history of its time. This text does much the same, placing the play and the storied career of its author into cultural context. The World Only Spins Forward reminds us that the damage conservatism is wreaking today really had its beginnings with the onerous political career of Reagan and the rise of the religious right—much as Kushner’s play did and continues to do in its current revivals.

On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the play’s production, the authors bring us leading figures in the arts, politics, and advocacy speaking tellingly of the play’s inception and the cultural context that gave birth to Kushner’s genius. It’s a brilliant history of theater from the seventies to today, from avant-garde to the Broadway stage to television. Documented are the rave reviews and the awards from multiple Tonys to a sweep of the Emmys with HBO’s production of the play for television early in this century.

The insight and history provided by the varied group of interviewees is priceless from a cultural standpoint—both in context of the play and in context of the arts and our society

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at large. It grippingly documents the history of AIDS in our country and its effects on our various communities and cultures. If you love the play, this well thought out and meticulously compiled volume is a read that you won’t soon forget as well, a history that will inspire and bear witness for years to come.

—John Francis Leonard

pandemic in Africa. And they are only a few of the millions of grandmothers—gogos—who speak to us in Powered by Love: A Grandmothers’ Movement to End AIDS in Africa. Many frequently lost the family breadwinners or were often forced to give up their own paying jobs in order to care for sick and dying loved ones.

“Our systems of support have always been the family—they have always been our safety net—but what do we do when our family of twenty-five becomes two?” one African grandmother demanded.

In 2006, that picture began to change.

Through the Stephen Lewis Foundation (SLF), Ilana Landsberg-Lewis put together the “Grandmothers’ Gathering” in Toronto that grew into the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign. The movement essentially brought together African and Canadian grandmothers in an electrifying bond. The Canadian women got their consciousness raised and in turn raised funds to help; the African women received the emotional support they’d been starv-

Powered by Love: A Grandmothers’ Movement to End AIDS in Africa

by Joanna Henry, with Ilana Landsberg-Lewis; edited by Michele Landsberg, with photos

by Alexis MacDonald Goose Lane

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snakech, an Ethiopian woman, is living with HIV. So is her twelve-year-old grandson. “My family disowned me when my status became public,” she explains, “but I am not so much worried about me. My grandson cannot play outside—the neighbourhood children will taunt him and torment him.” Nya Nya in Kenya is also living with HIV. Every adult member of her family died from AIDS: She was shunned instead of sympathized with, as though the losses and her own illness were somehow her fault. “It was painful,” she recalls now. “I cried and I mourned. And I remained alone.” Isabella, who lives in Zimbabwe, lost her home and the custody of all but one of her grandchildren; for a time, she was actually living in a tree until the local church gave her a room.

Each of these women is raising grandchildren who have lost their parents to the AIDS

ing for. The gogos then were, as Joanna Henry observes, able to “mov[e] from securing their most basic needs to educating themselves, taking on leadership roles in the community, and starting their own programs for orphan care.”

Powered by Love is a book that will both break your heart wide open and inspire you. The strength of these women is phenomenally moving; so is the way that women from two different countries came together. “The grandmothers,” says Sarah Obama, the grandmother of former President Barack Obama and a tireless advocate of the orphans, “have empowered each other.”

—T.J. Banks John Francis Leonard writes the Bright Lights, Small City column for A&U. T.J. Banks is the author of Sketch People, A Time for Shadows, Catsong, Houdini, and other books. Catsong was the winner of the 2007 Merial Human-Animal Bond Award.

A&U • JUNE 2018

A Calendar of Events

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he fifth annual HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day (HLTSAD) is June 5, 2018. The fifth of June is an important date in the history of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It was on that date that the CDC reported on the first cases of a rare pneumonia affecting young gay men living in New York and California.

The theme of HLTSAD 2018 is HIV: It Is (Still) Not Over. As health departments, ASOs, and the community at large focus on “ending AIDS” and “getting to zero”—goals that are indeed lofty and worthy of our enthusiastic support—many of those who have lived longest with HIV continue to feel isolated and left behind. Twenty-six percent of the 1.3-million Americans living with HIV—The AIDS Generation— were diagnosed in the pre-HAART days, before 1996; many others have lived with the virus for over fifteen years. In addition to feeling isolated, ignored, many long-term survivors live in poverty and

JUNE 2018 • A&U

cope with AIDS Survivors Syndrome (ASS) which includes depression, anxiety, and a host of other social and mental factors impacting treatment adherence, quality of life, and well-being.

“Before we ‘End AIDS,’ let’s take care of on the needs and issues of long-term survivors, people who have lived with HIV for twenty-five and thirty-five-plus years,” says Tez Anderson, founder of Let’s Kick ASS—AIDS Survivor Syndrome, “they are frightened about the prospects of aging with HIV, a virus that killed decimated o.

“Our lives were dramatically changed by the epidemic, and it feels like the community has moved on. The meme ‘we lost an entire generation to AIDS’ is wrong. We lost much of a generation, but there are many of us still here, surviving against the odds.”

For more information regarding HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day 2018, log on to www.HLTSAD.org; also look for HIVLongTermSurvivorsAwarenessDay on Facebook. On Twitter, use and watch for hashtags #ItIsStillNotOver, #HIV #LongTermSurvivors, and #HLTAD2018.

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Survival Guide

[a portrait by sean black]

“My first experiences with HIV falsely led me to believe that it was impossible to live healthily and happily after diagnosis. People found out they had HIV, and then died soon after. Fortunately, life taught me otherwise and gave me new hope. It is much better to know one’s status than not know. You have to know what the enemy is in order to defeat it. More targeted testing and even greater access to comprehensive healthcare, including gender-specific care, will help. Also, medical advances allow people living with HIV who are engaged in care to have the same life expectancy as people without HIV. And, if someone is virally suppressed for a period of time, it is virtually impossible to pass HIV on to their sexual partners. How amazing is that?”

—Tori Cooper A proud Black transgender woman, Tori Cooper currently serves as a Prevention Specialist at Positive Impact Health Centers in metro Atlanta. She is also the founder of Advocates for Better Care Atlanta, LLC, which provides education and support services to the transgender and HIV communities across the country, as well as the founder and facilitator of HOP, Hour of Power, an empowerment group for the transgender community and allies. In addition, she serves on many boards, volunteers and speaks extensively about health disparities and marginalized people; she is also a Gilead Advisor and fierce advocate for her people.

Sean Black is a Senior Editor of A&U. 64

A&U • JUNE 2018

HOW DO WE HELP STOP HIV? A. PREVENT IT. B. TEST FOR IT. C. TREAT IT. D. ALL OF THE ABOVE. Learn how it all works together at HelpStopTheVirus.com © 2015 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. UNBC1856 03/15

In adults with HIV on ART who have diarrhea not caused by an infection

IMPORTANT PATIENT INFORMATION This is only a summary. See complete Prescribing Information at Mytesi.com or by calling 1-844-722-8256. This does not take the place of talking with your doctor about your medical condition or treatment.

What Is Mytesi?

Mytesi is a prescription medicine used to improve symptoms of noninfectious diarrhea (diarrhea not caused by a bacterial, viral, or parasitic infection) in adults living with HIV/AIDS on ART. Do Not Take Mytesi if you have diarrhea caused by an infection. Before you start Mytesi, your doctor and you should make sure your diarrhea is not caused by an infection (such as bacteria, virus, or parasite).

Possible Side Effects of Mytesi Include:

Tired of planning your life around diarrhea?

Enough is Enough Get relief. Pure and simple. Ask your doctor about Mytesi.

Mytesi (crofelemer): • Is the only medicine FDA-approved to relieve diarrhea in people with HIV • Treats diarrhea differently by normalizing the flow of water in the GI tract • Has the same or fewer side effects as placebo in clinical studies • Comes from a tree sustainably harvested in the Amazon Rainforest What is Mytesi?

Mytesi is a prescription medicine that helps relieve symptoms of diarrhea not caused by an infection (noninfectious) in adults living with HIV/AIDS on antiretroviral therapy (ART).

Important Safety Information Mytesi is not approved to treat infectious diarrhea (diarrhea caused by bacteria, a virus, or a parasite). Before starting you on Mytesi, your healthcare provider will first be sure that you do not have infectious diarrhea. Otherwise, there is a risk you would not receive the right medicine and your infection could get worse. In clinical studies, the most common side effects that occurred more often than with placebo were upper respiratory tract (sinus, nose, and throat) infection (5.7%), bronchitis (3.9%), cough (3.5%), flatulence (3.1%), and increased bilirubin (3.1%).

For Copay Savings Card and Patient Assistance, see Mytesi.com

Please see complete Prescribing Information at Mytesi.com.

NP-390-9

RELIEF, PURE AND SIMPLE

• Upper respiratory tract infection (sinus, nose, and throat infection) • Bronchitis (swelling in the tubes that carry air to and from your lungs) • Cough • Flatulence (gas) • Increased bilirubin (a waste product when red blood cells break down) For a full list of side effects, please talk to your doctor.

Tell your doctor if you have any side effect that bothers you or does not go away.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Should I Take Mytesi If I Am:

Pregnant or Planning to Become Pregnant?

• Studies in animals show that Mytesi could harm an unborn baby or affect the ability to become pregnant • There are no studies in pregnant women taking Mytesi • This drug should only be used during pregnancy if clearly needed A Nursing Mother?

• It is not known whether Mytesi is passed through human breast milk • If you are nursing, you should tell your doctor before starting Mytesi • Your doctor will help you to decide whether to stop nursing or to stop taking Mytesi Under 18 or Over 65 Years of Age? • Mytesi has not been studied in children under 18 years of age • Mytesi studies did not include many people over the age of 65. So it is not clear if this age group will respond differently. Talk to your doctor to find out if Mytesi is right for you

What Should I Know About Taking Mytesi With Other Medicines?

If you are taking any prescription or over-the-counter medicine, herbal supplements, or vitamins, tell your doctor before starting Mytesi.

What If I Have More Questions About Mytesi?

For more information, please see the full Prescribing Information at Mytesi.com or speak to your doctor or pharmacist.

To report side effects or make a product complaint or for additional information, call 1-844-722-8256.

Rx Only Manufactured by Patheon, Inc. for Napo Pharmaceuticals, Inc. San Francisco, CA 94105 Copyright © Napo Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Mytesi comes from the Croton lechleri tree harvested in South America.