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BRIGHT LIGHTS, SMALL CITY by John Francis Leonard THOSE HAPPY GHOSTS OF LOVE

A Tribute to Two Individuals in My Life Who Taught Me Valuable Lessons

I’m shy by nature. Not many people that interact with me daily would believe that; they would be very surprised if I were to point it out. I learned the trick of faking it until I make it. One of the tricks I’ve learned is to ask a lot of questions about someone’s work, family and friends, education, when appropriate, and the old standby, what brings the pair, group of you into contact in the first place. When I win people over, I decide their tolerance for my stories.

They’re a great icebreaker. Many of them feature a petite redhead who left Ireland at the age of twelve with her mother,who had chased her abusive husband out of the house with an iron skillet that managed to clock him round the ear more than once. Kind relatives helped them book a ship and sail to the U.S. I bring her up often, my Irish gran, her colorful sayings, her curmudgeonly exterior which belied a woman of much sustenance and emotion. She was hell on wheels, as her family would often say.

I, however, saw much deeper. We had a close relationship. In many ways, she had helped raise me in her own home when she had adjusted to the idea of her single teenage daughter conceiving a child during a time and in a place where that just didn’t happen. We stayed close my entire life until my family lost her in 2003. I couldn’t believe I wouldn’t receive her letters, written at dawn in her kitchen and continued piecemeal when she found spare moments. They brought me much comfort, wherever in the world I found myself. I often repeat some of her off-color statements to friends and customers...’jumped up Josephine,' 'balls, said the queen, if I had two I’d be king,’ or the particularly vulgar...’looks like someone shot at it and missed then shit at it and hit!’ All in her unmistakable Irish brogue. It’s a brogue that I’ve never been able to master that sends it over the top. And let’s not forget taking the lord’s name in vain! No person can call up the blessed Virgin, God, and all the saints like an old, cranky Irish woman. I often wondered, but didn’t dare ask why it was always

‘Jaysus,’ not Jesus? Was it merely accent, or a ploy to not really call his name? In her final years, while I was living far away in

L.A., communication grew strained.She made less and less sense but always got me to send a check to smooth things over. We didn’t know it until the doctors informed us that she was a serious bulimic and that, not ulcers or cancer, was what had finally killed her.

But I choose the good memories, like the time when I was thirteen and she asked me if I needed to tell her something. I confessed that I was gay and found no judgment. Mostly I was sure that this revelation would not go anywhere. With secrets, she was as quiet as the grave.

So if you hear me quote my Irish gran often it’s because I love keeping and honoring her memory.

There’s another person that I met in college when working at The Bar at the corner of Third and Second Ave in the East Village. All the cool gay men packed the place during the weekends and I wanted to be a part of that. My best friend Nick had worked there but was leaving. He introduced me to David, the manager, and the rest is history. I showed up at a casual meeting of the staff in very abbreviated running shorts and a tight white tank top. David had been from a very WASP family in Santa Barbara but spoke like a Jewish matron from outer Queens; we all picked it up. He was short and skinny with stick-straight hair, which he wore in a crew top above the ears and a long straight piece down the middle of his back that was often braided and decorated with African beads supplied by a jewelry artist, who would get us coke, bounce the unruly, and keep a general eye on the place. David was one of a kind; they broke the mold. David proceeded with the meeting, but suddenly stopped his litany of complaints. He singled me out. ‘You! In the running drag. Do you have anything on under those shorts?’

Blushing, I’m certain I replied that a jock strap was firmly in place. By now there were vocal and very appreciative interest from the rest of the group, they being mostly older and used to David’s antics.

‘Give us a little peek then, go on, you’ll be showing more while you’re bar backing and working that floor.’ So, I stood up, turned around and showed them the strap, i.e., most of my ass. I got a round of applause, and we proceeded with the meeting. Not weeks later, at the tender age of eighteen, I was working the crowded floor for empties in a jock and engineer boots. Our bartenders were past the stage for such antics but were glad to see me keeping up the sides. Once, hanging out on a Saturday afternoon in the bar I held my best cruising pose. I leaned against the wall with a Rolling Rock cocked on my hip. David was behind the bar doing inventory but keeping one eye on me. I was soon approached by a dreamboat a head taller than me. We quickly got down to business. He was all top and I was all bottom and a pro at head; all was going well. He leaned even closer to my ear and told me that he’d had a lot of beer and would love piss it all over me in his tub. At that age there were still things that shocked me. I got nervous and demurred. Evidently this was a deal breaker for him and he promptly departed. Before I could think, David was in my face, ‘What happened! That gorgeous man obviously wanted you!’ I told him what he expected but found no sympathy. He stomped his foot and pointed a bony finger at the door. ‘You march, young lady, and find him! I’d die for that man to piss on me!’

I also remember David teaching me how to tend bar. He filled an old liquor bottle with water, connected a pour top and slammed the bottle on the bar in front of me. ‘Now, when you hold it, you hold it like a cock! God knows you’ve had enough practice.’ He also taught me to make my first meal, saying that someday I’d want one of the parade of men in my life to stick around and that it would behoove me to feed him so he’d stay. I still make that spaghetti carbonara to this day.

Severe bulimia took my grandmother at the age of seventy. AIDS took David, along with the rest of the bar’s staff, years earlier. I continue to honor their memory with tales of their escapades to this day as often as I can. It blesses their memory and keeps them alive in my heart.

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 fifteen years. His fiction has been published in the ImageOutWrite literary journal and he is a literary critic for Lambda Literary. Follow him on Twitter @JohnFrancisleo2.

national HIV testing day: "my test, my way"

June 27, 2021, is National HIV Testing Day (NHTD), designed to emphasize and encourage HIV testing as a means of preventing new HIV transmissions.

The theme for this year’s NHTD is “My Test, My Way,” chosen to emphasize not only the importance of getting tested for the virus, but also the ease of locating and taking easy, fast, confidential, and safe HIV tests. The theme hopes to provide opportunities to talk about the testing options available and to empower people to choose where and when to get tested based on their needs and convenience. There are different ways and places to get tested for HIV, including at home with a self-test. Many local health departments and community-based organizations, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), distribute free HIV self-testing kits, a program funded in part by the Minority HIV/AIDS Initiative.

In a May 3, 2021 press release on the website, HIV.gov, Harold J. Phillips, MRP, and Jonathan Mermin, MD, of the CDC noted that this year’s observation of NHTD comes as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge LGBTQ people and communities of color, public health departments, and healthcare facilities. “As we approach NHTD,” they wrote, “we also recognize June as Pride month, and on June 5th, we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first MMWR report on what would come to be known as AIDS. Highlighting these significant events, even as the response to COVID-19 continues, is important as we work toward our goal to end the HIV epidemic in the U.S.”

As part of promoting the 2021 NHTD, organizers urge community members to use the hashtag #HIVTestingDay on their social media channels and to communicate to their followers that there are many options they can use to get tested for HIV. They also encourage community members to add a tagline to their posts, such as “My Test, My Way—Take Pride by Taking the Test” or “My Test, My Way—We Can Be the Generation to End the HIV Epidemic.”

For more information, log on to https://www.hiv.gov/blog.

USCHA 2021 plans a live "homecoming"

In a bold move, after morphing into a virtual event in 2020, organizers at NMAC are planning a live, in-person gathering for the U.S. Conference on HIV/AIDS (USCHA) for October 28 to 31, 2021, in

Washington, D.C. This year’s conference theme is “Homecoming”. The USCHA website states, “Homecoming invokes feelings of remembrance, reconnection and celebration. Let’s come together to honor those we lost and strengthen the bonds created that allow us to continue with our goal of ending the epidemics.” “Some of you may think we are overly optimistic to think USCHA can happen in person this October,” said NMAC’s Paul Kawata in a press release. “We know that circumstances may force us to change to a virtual meeting if things get worse anew, but right now we’re hopeful and need to start now to make the late October date. Like everyone, we will closely monitor the situation, and follow all hotel, CDC, and D.C. rules for large gatherings.”

NMAC’s plans for USCHA 2021 emphasize workshops that address the current state of the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 epidemics and how NMAC and others all pivoted to new methods in serving HIV/AIDS communities. 2021 tracks include: Racism and Race, Best Practices in Telehealth, Biomedical HIV Prevention, Addressing Issues Around COVID, Ending the Epidemic—Next Steps, Prioritizing People Living with HIV, Public Policy, Trauma-Informed Care/ Mental Health, and Track en Español.

New programming this year includes Constituents Day on Thursday, Oct 28. Instead of the usual opening, the first day of the conference will provide an opportunity for constituents to hold satellite meetings. NMAC will provide the space for free on a first-come first-served basis. The goal is to give colleagues free space to have Homecomings with their constituents. NMAC will disseminate information on these meetings via their listservs, website, and social media.

Kawata concluded, “Since USCHA 2021 is Halloween weekend, remember to bring your costumes. There will be a ball, and we want everyone to walk! After the year we’ve had, we deserve fun. We deserve to laugh and remember the joy of being with friends.”

The four-day conference will open on Thursday, October 28, 2021, at the Marriott Marquis at 901 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D.C. For more information and to register for USCHA 2021, visit https://uscha.life/.

philanthropic hiv funding 2019: $706 million

On May 6, 2021, Funders Concerned About AIDS (FCAA) released its 18th annual Philanthropic Support

to Address HIV/AIDS report for

calendar year 2019, showing an increase of $49 million (seven percent) from 2018, for a total of nearly $706 million. This is the highest level of private philanthropic giving since FCAA began tracking HIV-related philanthropy almost 20 years ago.

However, FCAA noted that the rise was driven almost entirely by a single, $100 million investment in HIV research from the Phillip T. and Susan M. Ragon Foundation and thus skews what would have otherwise been an overall decrease in HIV-related philanthropy.

The annual report analyzes data on more than 5,000 grants, awarded by 264 foundations in fifteen countries, and identifies gaps, trends, and opportunities in HIV-related philanthropy. The study enables philanthropic donors to make informed decisions about where their resources are most needed.

Some 264 funders were analyzed in the report on 2019. The top funders accounted for 92% of the year’s total. Just five years ago, the top twenty funders accounted for only 80% of total giving. Furthermore, the top two funders——The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gilead Sciences, Inc.——represent over 50% of grantmaking each year. The report also notes that the vast majority of people living with HIV/AIDS reside in low- and middle-income countries, yet HIV-related philanthropy aimed at those countries decreased by 32% from 2018 to 2019. Further, while key populations and their sexual partners account for most new global HIV infections, HIV-related philanthropy for key populations decreased 12% in 2019 from 2018.

“As we’ve seen in the past several reports, philanthropic resources for HIV/AIDS have remained relatively flat at a time when we can ill-afford stagnation,” said Channing Wickham, FCAA’s Board Chair, in a prepared statement. “What’s more, the number of funders is shrinking, with the majority of grants given by just a few grant-makers. This puts us in a very vulnerable position should the priorities of an ever-smaller number of investors shift.”

Funders Concerned About AIDS is a philanthropy-serving organization founded in 1987 to push philanthropy to respond to HIV/AIDS. FCAA informs, connects, and supports philanthropy to end the global HIV pandemic and build the social, political and economic commitments necessary to attain health, human rights, and justice.

in memoriam: patrick o'connell, 1953–2021

Patrick O’Connell, founding director of Visual AIDS and creator of the red ribbon symbol of AIDS advocacy, died from AIDS-related causes on March 23, 2021 at a hospital in New York City. He was sixty-seven years old. A native New Yorker, O’Connell was born on April 12, 1953, in Manhattan. He attended

Fordham Preparatory School in the Bronx and graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1975 with a bachelor’s degree in history. He began his art career in his early twenties, becoming director of Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in

Buffalo; a year later, he returned to New York City and worked for Artists Space. After his diagnosis with AIDS in the mid-1980s,

O’Connell first became involved with Visual AIDS, an advocacy group that supports artists living with the disease, in 1989. He helped to create Visual

AIDS’ Day Without Art, in which galleries and museums shrouded their artworks to represent human loss. Hundreds of institutions participated, including the Brooklyn Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The initiative has continued every year since, changing into Day With(out) Art..

In 1991, Visual AIDS began the Ribbon Project, whose red ribbon would become an international symbol of AIDS advocacy. Its color represented blood, and its sparse design reflected the silence surrounding the disease. O’Connell helped organize “ribbon bees,” in which thousands of ribbons were cut, folded, and distributed around the city. After their initial appearance at the Tony Awards in 1992, the ribbons soon started appearing on shirts and jackets and gowns in cities across the country.

Some AIDS activists damned the red ribbon as a hollow trend that had lost its significance. But for O’Connell, the results were what mattered. “People want to say something” about AIDS, he told The New York Times in 1992, “not necessarily with anger and confrontation all the time. This allows them. And even if it is only an easy first step, that’s great with me. It won’t be their last.” “Patrick’s mission in life was rooted in a moment of crisis, but that sense of urgency eventually ended,” O’Connell’s friend Peter Hay Halpert told the Times. “So many people involved in that fight alongside him died, and he was left to deal with living with the illness alone. He became one of the last survivors from that time still left.”

O’Connell told POZ magazine, “I am almost stripped and bereft of contemporaries who remember me as young and cute and vibrant. Part of our definition is the reflection we get from our friends. It’s painful that that is all gone.” —Reporting by Hank Trout 11