A&U March 2017

MARCH 2017 • ISSUE 269 • AMERICA’S AIDS MAGAZINE

LONG-TERM REVIVAL

•ADVOCATE PETER RODRIGUEZ •PLAYWRIGHT NORA BURNS •MICHAEL JOHNSTONE & DAVID FAULK EXPAND THE VERASPHERE

alexandra

BILLINGS

THE ACTRESS & ACTIVIST PROMOTES THE POWER OF THE TRIBE TO SURVIVE

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 12 [GCTU CPF QNFGT &'5%18; KU PQV HQT WUG VQ JGNR TGFWEG VJG TKUM QH IGVVKPI *+8 KPHGEVKQP &'5%18; EQODKPGU medicines into 1 pill taken once a day. Because DESCOVY D[ KVUGNH KU PQV C EQORNGVG VTGCVOGPV HQT *+8 KV OWUV DG used together with other HIV-1 medicines.

DESCOVY does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. 6Q EQPVTQN *+8 KPHGEVKQP CPF FGETGCUG *+8 TGNCVGF illnesses, you must keep taking DESCOVY. Ask your JGCNVJECTG RTQXKFGT KH [QW JCXG SWGUVKQPU CDQWV JQY VQ TGFWEG VJG TKUM QH RCUUKPI *+8 VQ QVJGTU #NYC[U RTCEVKEG UCHGT UGZ CPF WUG EQPFQOU VQ NQYGT VJG EJCPEG QH UGZWCN EQPVCEV YKVJ DQF[ ƃ WKFU 0GXGT TGWUG QT UJCTG PGGFNGU QT QVJGT KVGOU VJCV JCXG DQF[ ƃ WKFU QP VJGO

What are the other possible side effects of DESCOVY? Serious side effects of DESCOVY may also include: • •

•

•

Changes in body fat, which can happen in people taking HIV-1 medicines.

Changes in your immune system. Your immune system OC[ IGV UVTQPIGT CPF DGIKP VQ Æ‚ IJV KPHGEVKQPU 6GNN [QWT JGCNVJECTG RTQXKFGT KH [QW JCXG CP[ PGY U[ORVQOU CHVGT 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 VQ UVQR VCMKPI &'5%18; KH [QW FGXGNQR PGY QT YQTUG kidney problems.

Bone problems, UWEJ CU DQPG RCKP UQHVGPKPI QT VJKPPKPI YJKEJ OC[ NGCF VQ HTCEVWTGU ;QWT JGCNVJECTG provider may do tests to check your bones.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

The most common side effect QH &'5%18; KU PCWUGC 6GNN [QWT JGCNVJECTG RTQXKFGT KH [QW JCXG CP[ UKFG GHHGEVU that bother you or don’t go away.

DESCOVY may cause serious side effects:

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking DESCOVY?

What is the most important information I should know about DESCOVY? •

•

•

•

Buildup of an acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is C UGTKQWU OGFKECN GOGTIGPE[ 5[ORVQOU QH NCEVKE CEKFQUKU KPENWFG HGGNKPI XGT[ YGCM QT VKTGF WPWUWCN OWUENG RCKP trouble breathing, stomach pain with nausea or vomiting, HGGNKPI EQNF GURGEKCNN[ KP [QWT CTOU CPF NGIU HGGNKPI FK\\[ QT NKIJVJGCFGF CPF QT C HCUV QT KTTGIWNCT JGCTVDGCV

Serious liver problems. 6JG NKXGT OC[ DGEQOG NCTIG CPF HCVV[ 5[ORVQOU QH NKXGT RTQDNGOU KPENWFG [QWT UMKP QT VJG YJKVG RCTV QH [QWT G[GU VWTPKPI [GNNQY LCWPFKEG FCTM pVGC EQNQTGFq WTKPG NKIJV EQNQTGF DQYGN OQXGOGPVU

UVQQNU NQUU QH CRRGVKVG PCWUGC CPF QT RCKP CEJKPI QT VGPFGTPGUU QP VJG TKIJV UKFG QH [QWT UVQOCEJ CTGC You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or serious liver problems KH [QW CTG HGOCNG XGT[ QXGTYGKIJV QT JCXG DGGP VCMKPI &'5%18; HQT C NQPI time. In some cases, lactic acidosis and serious liver problems have led to death. Call your healthcare provider TKIJV CYC[ KH [QW JCXG CP[ U[ORVQOU QH VJGUG EQPFKVKQPU Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. DESCOVY KU PQV CRRTQXGF VQ VTGCV *$8 +H [QW JCXG DQVJ *+8 CPF HBV and stop taking DESCOVY, your HBV may suddenly IGV YQTUG &Q PQV UVQR VCMKPI &'5%18; YKVJQWV Æ‚ TUV talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

•

•

•

•

All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare RTQXKFGT KH [QW JCXG QT JCXG JCF CP[ MKFPG[ DQPG QT NKXGT RTQDNGOU KPENWFKPI JGRCVKVKU XKTWU KPHGEVKQP All the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal UWRRNGOGPVU 1VJGT OGFKEKPGU OC[ CHHGEV JQY &'5%18; YQTMU -GGR C NKUV QH CNN [QWT OGFKEKPGU CPF show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist. Ask [QWT JGCNVJECTG RTQXKFGT KH KV KU UCHG VQ VCMG &'5%18; YKVJ CNN QH [QWT QVJGT OGFKEKPGU If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is PQV MPQYP KH &'5%18; ECP JCTO [QWT WPDQTP DCD[ 6GNN [QWT JGCNVJECTG RTQXKFGT KH [QW DGEQOG RTGIPCPV while taking DESCOVY. If you are breastfeeding PWTUKPI QT RNCP VQ DTGCUVHGGF &Q PQV DTGCUVHGGF *+8 ECP DG RCUUGF VQ VJG DCD[ KP 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 (des-KOH-vee)

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.

MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT DESCOVY

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF DESCOVY

DESCOVY may cause serious side effects, including:

DESCOVY can cause serious side effects, including:

࠮ Buildup of lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious medical emergency that can lead to death. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any of these symptoms: feeling very weak or tired, unusual muscle pain, trouble breathing, stomach pain with nausea or vomiting, feeling cold (especially in your arms and legs), feeling dizzy or lightheaded, and/or a fast or irregular heartbeat.

࠮ Those in the “Most Important Information About DESCOVY” section. ࠮ Changes in body fat. ࠮ Changes in your immune system. ࠮ New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure. ࠮ Bone problems.

࠮ Severe liver problems, which in some cases can lead to death. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any of these symptoms: your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice); dark “tea-colored” urine; loss of appetite; light-colored bowel movements (stools); nausea; and/or pain, aching, or tenderness on the right side of your stomach area.

;OLZL HYL UV[ HSS [OL WVZZPISL ZPKL LɈ LJ[Z VM +,:*6=@ Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any new symptoms while taking DESCOVY.

࠮ 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 +,:*6=@ +V UV[ Z[VW [HRPUN +,:*6=@ ^P[OV\[ Ä YZ[ talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to check your health regularly for several months.

You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or severe liver problems if you are female, very overweight, or have been taking DESCOVY or a similar medicine for a long time.

ABOUT DESCOVY ࠮ DESCOVY is a prescription medicine that is used together with other HIV-1 medicines to treat HIV-1 in people 12 years of age and older. 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.

The most common side effect of DESCOVY is nausea.

Your healthcare provider will need to do tests to monitor your health before and during treatment with DESCOVY.

BEFORE TAKING DESCOVY Tell your healthcare provider if you: ࠮ Have or had any kidney, bone, 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-thecounter 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 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.

࠮ 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.

DESCOVY, the DESCOVY Logo, GILEAD, the GILEAD Logo, and LOVE WHAT’S INSIDE are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. © 2016 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. GILC0265 10/16

“

We need to throw away the stigma and fear about HIV testing.

It’s time we make HIV testing a part of our health routine.

— Jay Ellis, Actor

”

I’M

DOING IT Testing for HIV

#DoingIt Testing is Fast, Free, and Confidential cdc.gov/DoingIt

c o n t e n t s March 2017

38 Cover Actress & Activist Alexandra Billings Talks to A&U’s Chael Needle About the Roles of Kindness & Persistence in Her Life as a Teacher, Social Justice & Trans Rights Advocate, and HIV Long-Term Survivor

Features

Departments

34 Gallery With the Verasphere, David Faulk & Michael Johnstone Give the World a Breath of Fresh Air

6

Frontdesk

9

Mailbox

18

NewsBreak

24

Ruby’s Rap

13 Let’s Grow Old Together Walgreens Nurtures Dialogue Between Pharmacist & Patient Online

viewfinder

44 Phoenix Rising Peter Rodriguez Keeps the Fires Burning in a Southwest Community 48 Unfinished Friendship Playwright Nora Burns Pays Tribute to the Last Days of Disco 50 All the World’s a Stage Through Theater, ACCELERATE! Tell the Stories of Black Gay & Bi Men Impacted by HIV 54 #youth #HIV #awareness Benjamin Di’Costa Resizes the Digital Footprint of AIDS Outreach cover photo by Sean Black

16

For the Long Run

26

Brave New World

28

Our Story, Our Time

29

Second Acts

30

Bright Lights, Small City

32

Just*in Time

lifeguide 56

Access to Care

58

Destination: Cure

59

Positive Justice

60

The Whole Perspective

61

The Culture of AIDS

62

Lifelines

64

Survival Guide

A&U Frontdesk

star-spangled activism

M

ore of the same thing, you say.

Politics as usual, Congressional gridlock, looking backward, and less hope and more spin.

After the inauguration, when hundreds of thousands of women, children and men did demos—reminding me of the early days of AIDS die-ins, sitdowns, road closures, bridge takeovers, and everything else that HIV-positive Americans could think of doing to make a point about saving lives—the activism of every hue was resonating from sea to shining sea (a lot of places in-between that never participated before were now attempting to create change). In a town where corruption, nepotism, lethargy, and downright sleaze are flourishing more than ever before—things that were always part and parcel of the political soap opera that is Washington—one can say without a doubt that the draining of the swamp has become filled with more gators than a Mississippi bayou.

As we go to press, President Trump’s administration is beginning to implode: cabinet nominees and spokespeople alike are having a hard time of it. When our national elections are hacked by a foreign power, when hundreds of Planned Parenthood offices are facing foreclosure for providing women’s healthcare, when AIDS organizations across the board are having to get more creative in order to keep the doors open, then it’s time to realize that nonprofit activism is the closest thing we have to survival. What lies in the balance is that, after finally reducing the annual number of new infections, we are facing the horrifying reality that almost three decades of AIDS education are going the way of the public school. Less talk about safe sex, less distribution of condoms, and less availability of empowering knowledge for our youth on how to remain HIV-negative, are more reasons to cry foul.

Less is not more: Take for example, the cynical hijacking of the red carpet by Joy Villa, whose Trump dress (emblazoned with the president’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan) has propelled this fifteen-minutes-of-fame diva to the top position of the Amazon and Billboard music charts. Her star-bangled dress became more of a showstopper than the Grammys; she is of middling talent, and more glitter

AMERICA’S AIDS MAGAZINE issue 269 vol. 26 no. 3 March 2017 editorial offices: (518) 426-9010 fax: (518) 436-5354

than pop gold. But she did make a point. A point that any seasoned AIDS activist can recognize as relevant: that a moment in the spotlight will garner millions in sales.

If getting attention is the first step to making a worthwhile contribution to a cause, whatever the cause might be, then we need to up our game. In the case of bringing attention to the AIDS crisis (and the crisis of less funding for AIDS education and prevention services), the lesson to be learned is that we need more celebrities to bring back AIDS to activism. In this new era of draining away badly needed AIDS awareness, AIDS activists, educators, and advocates need to make sure we don’t forget that AIDS has always been a cause and not just a disease. If only we could get AIDS back in the spotlight, and put ribbons on every designer gown, then we might be able to afford to put rubbers back in every bar, coffeeshop, barbershop, and rave.

Prevention is the key to continuing to bring down the number of new infections.

As A&U’s Chael Needle finds out in this month’s cover story, Alexandra Billings does not shy away from complex, concrete solutions but she believes LGBTQ and AIDS activism starts with simplicity: “The most important thing that we can do for humanity, in this country but also around the world, is to spread who we are and our love and compassion, and kindness to the people who disagree with us the most.”

This issue embraces all types of activism.

Her notion of building community in the most expansive sense is shared by Phoenix-based advocate Peter Rodriguez, who works to strengthen nonprofit services.

And some activism makes good use of the arts. ACCELERATE! hopes to reach Black gay and bisexual men with an immersive theater experience that makes the audience part of the performance, and Nora Burns pays homage to her disco buddy, who died of AIDS-related causes in the nineties, in David’s Friend. Our March 2017 issue reminds us that taking action comes in many stripes, more even than on our flag.

DAVID WAGGONER

Editor in Chief & Publisher David Waggoner Managing Editor: Chael Needle Senior Editors: Dann Dulin, Sean Black Editor at Large: Chip Alfred Special Projects Editor: Lester Strong Literary Editor: Brent Calderwood Arts Editor: Alina Oswald Consulting Editor: Nick Steele Copy Editor: Maureen Hunter Contributing Editors: Sarah Churchill Downes, Reed Massengill, Kelly McQuain, Lesléa Newman, Robert E. Penn Contributing Writers: Tyeshia Alston, Noël Alumit, T.J. Banks, Larry Buhl, Ruby Comer, Diane Goettel, George M. Johnson, John Francis Leonard, Angela Leroux-Lindsey, Dale Reynolds, Connie Rose, David Rosenberg, Corey Saucier, Stevie St. John, Justin B. Terry-Smith, Hank Trout, 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. ©2017 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

x o b l i ma Rising to the Occasion

I must say that Cleve Jones is one of my gay heroes—if he had done nothing but the NAMES Project/AIDS Memorial Quilt, that would be enough for me to call

would like to sit down with and just talk.

He says in part, “So when AIDS happened, it forced a lot of us out of the closet, it forced families to deal with us, it forced Congregations to deal with us. And yes, it changed some hearts and minds.” Thanks, Cleve, for accomplishing so much.

—Brian Muldowen Corpus Christi, Texas

JANUARY 2017 • ISSUE 267 • AMERICA’S AIDS MAGAZINE

Memory & Persistence Daniel Garza • New Film, EKAJ • Rob Ordonez • Artist Kelly L. Taylor

Old Souls Looking at the work of artist Kelly L. Taylor just seemed to remind me of some art out of the nineteenth century [Gallery, January 2017]. The whole thing of the dolls and the tone and color just moved me to try to remember some of that old art. I just love the still lifes with cherubs, dolls, stuffed animals.

There is something very sweet about her art.

She says that she scoured antique shops and

“How can anyone thank Cleve Jones enough for what he did with the AIDS Quilt? I don’t think that we can thank him enough....” garage sales looking for old-fashioned things.

I am the same way. I am always looking for the old over the new.

—Marge Bilmore Sioux City, Iowa

It Takes Courage

cleve

JONES

photo by Sean Black

WITH HIS NEW MEMOIR, WHEN WE RISE, THE ADVOCATE REINVIGORATES THE AIDS ACTIVISM HE HELPED INVENT

him a hero [cover story, “Living History,”

by Hank Trout, January 2017]. Coming up with such a great idea as the Quilt to remember all the people that died from AIDS was just amazing. We must all thank him for that as part of gay history and AIDS history. But it looks like Cleve is also a historian; the interview is like reading a book. He just knows and has experienced so much of our history over the past forty years or more. I plan to buy his new book, When We Rise. He is the kind of person I MARCH 2017 • A&U

How can anyone thank Cleve Jones enough for what he did with the AIDS Quilt?

I don’t think that we can thank him enough for the brilliant idea he came up. I know quite enough people who had a loved one added to the quilt, including me. The thing that amazes me is that the Quilt keeps growing and growing. It’s like a living thing; it’s-self perpetuating, and it just keeps growing in our hearts and souls.

—Saul Invictus Grand Rapids, Michigan

What a courageous man is Daniel Garza and what a story he had to tell us [“Daniel in the Lion’s Den,” by John Francis Leonard, January 2017]. It always amazes me how a person with all kinds of horrible events and conditions affecting him can still have the courage to overcome them. He could do nothing and just sit home all day, but not him: he goes out there to help other people impacted by AIDS and other conditions.

He dealt with addiction but that was not the only thing. Now he is dealing with colorectal cancer related to HIV. The man looks like the picture of health! God bless him and preserve him from the worst.

—Cynthia Allbridge Fall River, Massachusetts Send e-mail to: mailbox@aumag.org Send letters to: Mailbox, A&U, 25 Monroe Street, Suite 205, Albany, NY 12210 Or click on “Mailbox” on our Web site’s home page: www.aumag.org Tweet Us @au_magazine Facebook: http://on.fb.me/AUFANPAGE All correspondence requires name, address, and daytime phone number for confirmation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

9

WHAT IS GENVOYA®?

GENVOYA is a 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in people 12 years and older and weigh at least 77 lbs. It can either be used in people who are starting HIV-1 treatment and 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. These include having an undetectable viral load (less than 50 copies/mL) for 6 months or more on their current HIV-1 treatment. GENVOYA combines 4 medicines into 1 pill taken once a day with food. GENVOYA is a complete HIV-1 treatment and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines.

GENVOYA does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses, you must keep taking GENVOYA. 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 EJCPEG QH UGZWCN EQPVCEV YKVJ DQF[ ƃ WKFU 0GXGT TGWUG QT UJCTG PGGFNGU QT QVJGT KVGOU VJCV JCXG DQF[ ƃ WKFU QP VJGO

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

medicines that should not be taken with GENVOYA. Do not start a new medicine without telling your healthcare provider.

• The herbal supplement St. John’s wort.

• Any other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection.

What are the other possible side effects of GENVOYA? Serious side effects of GENVOYA may also include: • Changes in body fat, which can happen in people taking HIV-1 medicines.

• Changes in your immune system. Your immune system may IGV UVTQPIGT CPF DGIKP VQ Ƃ IJV KPHGEVKQPU 6GNN [QWT JGCNVJECTG provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking GENVOYA. • 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 GENVOYA. The most common side effect of GENVOYA is nausea. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or don’t go away.

What is the most important information I should know about GENVOYA?

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking GENVOYA?

GENVOYA may cause serious side effects:

• 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.

• Build-up of an acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious medical emergency. Symptoms of lactic acidosis include feeling very weak or tired, unusual muscle pain, trouble breathing, stomach pain with nausea or vomiting, feeling cold (especially in your arms and legs), feeling dizzy or lightheaded, and/or a fast or irregular heartbeat.

• Serious liver problems. The liver may become large and fatty. Symptoms of liver problems include your skin or the white part of your eyes turning yellow (jaundice); dark “tea-colored” urine; light-colored bowel movements (stools); loss of appetite; nausea; and/or pain, aching, or tenderness in the right side of your stomach area.

• You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or serious liver problems if you are female, very overweight, or have been taking GENVOYA for a long time. In some cases, lactic acidosis and serious liver problems have led to death. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any symptoms of these conditions.

• Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. GENVOYA is not approved to treat HBV. If you have both HIV-1 and HBV and stop taking GENVOYA, your HBV may suddenly get worse. &Q PQV UVQR VCMKPI )'081;# YKVJQWV Ƃ TUV VCNMKPI VQ [QWT healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

Who should not take GENVOYA? Do not take GENVOYA if you take:

• All the medicines you take, including prescription and overthe-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements.

Other medicines may affect how GENVOYA 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 GENVOYA with all of your other medicines.

• If you take antacids. Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take GENVOYA. • If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if GENVOYA can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking GENVOYA. • 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 GENVOYA including Important Warnings on the following page.

• Certain prescription medicines for other conditions. It is important to ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about

Ask your healthcare provider if GENVOYA is right for you, and visit GENVOYA.com to learn more.

GENVOYA does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

SHOW YOUR

POWER

Take care of what matters most—you. GENVOYA is a 1-pill, once-a-day complete HIV-1 treatment for people who are either new to treatment or people whose healthcare provider determines they can replace their current HIV-1 medicines with GENVOYA.

IMPORTANT FACTS (jen-VOY-uh)

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

MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT GENVOYA

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF GENVOYA

GENVOYA® may cause serious side effects, including:

GENVOYA can cause serious side effects, including:

• Build-up of lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious medical emergency that can lead to death. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any of these symptoms: feeling very weak or tired, unusual muscle pain, trouble breathing, stomach pain with nausea or vomiting, feeling cold (especially in your arms and legs), feeling dizzy or lightheaded, and/or a fast or irregular heartbeat.

࠮ Those in the “Most Important Information About GENVOYA” section.

• Severe liver problems, which in some cases can lead to death. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any of these symptoms: your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice); dark “tea-colored” urine; light-colored bowel movements (stools); loss of appetite; nausea; and/or pain, aching, or tenderness in the right side of your stomach area.

࠮ Changes in body fat. ࠮ Changes in your immune system. ࠮ New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure.

The most common side effect of GENVOYA is nausea. ;OLZL HYL UV[ HSS [OL WVZZPISL ZPKL LɈLJ[Z VM .,5=6@( ;LSS `V\Y OLHS[OJHYL provider right away if you have any new symptoms while taking GENVOYA. Your healthcare provider will need to do tests to monitor your health before and during treatment with GENVOYA.

࠮ Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. GENVOYA is not approved to treat HBV. If you have both HIV-1 and HBV, your HBV may suddenly get worse if you stop taking GENVOYA. Do not stop taking GENVOYA ^P[OV\[ ÄYZ[ [HSRPUN [V `V\Y OLHS[OJHYL WYV]PKLY HZ [OL` ^PSS ULLK [V check your health regularly for several months.

BEFORE TAKING GENVOYA

You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or severe liver problems if you are female, very overweight, or have been taking GENVOYA for a long time.

࠮ Have or have had any kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis infection.

Tell your healthcare provider if you:

࠮ 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.

ABOUT GENVOYA

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take: ࠮ GENVOYA is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in people 12 years of age and older and weigh at least 77 lbs who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. GENVOYA can also be used to replace current HIV-1 medicines for some people who have an undetectable viral load (less than 50 copies/mL of virus in their blood), and have been on the same HIV-1 medicines for at least 6 months and have never failed HIV-1 treatment, and whose healthcare provider determines that they meet certain other requirements.

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

Do NOT take GENVOYA if you: ࠮ Take a medicine that contains: alfuzosin (Uroxatral®), carbamazepine (Carbatrol®, Epitol®, Equetro®, Tegretol®, Tegretol-XR®, Teril®), cisapride (Propulsid®, Propulsid Quicksolv®), dihydroergotamine (D.H.E. 45®, Migranal®), ergotamine (Cafergot®, Migergot®, Ergostat®, Medihaler Ergotamine®, Wigraine ®, Wigrettes®), lovastatin (Advicor ®, Altoprev®, Mevacor ®), lurasidone (Latuda®), methylergonovine (Ergotrate ®, Methergine®), midazolam (when taken by mouth), phenobarbital (Luminal®), phenytoin (Dilantin®, Phenytek®), pimozide (Orap®), rifampin (Rifadin®, Rifamate®, Rifater ®, Rimactane ® ZPSKLUHÄS ^OLU \ZLK MVY lung problems (Revatio®), simvastatin (Simcor ®, Vytorin®, Zocor ®), or triazolam (Halcion®). ࠮ Take the herbal supplement St. John’s wort. ࠮ Take any other HIV-1 medicines at the same time.

࠮ 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 GENVOYA.

HOW TO TAKE GENVOYA ࠮ GENVOYA is a complete one pill, once a day HIV-1 medicine. ࠮ Take GENVOYA with food.

GET MORE INFORMATION ࠮ This is only a brief summary of important information about GENVOYA. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to learn more. ࠮ Go to GENVOYA.com or call 1-800-GILEAD-5 ࠮ If you need help paying for your medicine, visit GENVOYA.com for program information.

GENVOYA, the GENVOYA Logo, GILEAD, the GILEAD Logo, and LOVE WHAT’S INSIDE are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. Version date: December 2016 © 2017 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. GENC0126 01/17

Let’s Grow Old Together A New Online Resource Nurtures Self-Empowerment, a Supportive Community & the Pharmacist-Patient Dialogue

by Chael Needle

photos courtesy Walgreens

T

urn up the volume on your device.

As you meet each person face to face, you’ll want to hear what each expresses loud and clear, especially if you are newly diagnosed or living with HIV and still feel that you are not supported.

Nancy, thirty-two, shares advice on beginning treatment: “I have an alarm on my phone. And the reminder that I have on there, rather than, you know, ‘Take your meds,’ it actually says, ‘Choose life.’’’

On having people in your corner, Jack, twenty-seven, notes, “Your support system emotionally for me, I think, is even more important than your medication. When you have that, it just makes the entire process so much easier....”

Handwritten words unfurl above still photos of Kecia, thirty-two, to convey what has changed and what hasn’t as HIV-positive: “I had to accept being a woman with AIDS. That’s my medical record, but it doesn’t have to be my blueprint.”

The video/audio testimonials are found on “Let’s Grow Old Together,” a new, interactive HIV online community launched

by Walgreens. “Let’s Grow Old Together” assures people living with HIV that living well is possible, and that, with added tools in your toolkit, such as support in your personal life and support from your pharmacist, your life’s dreams do not end with diagnosis. In all, seven Walgreens customers (and one pharmacist) share their experiences and advice across ten milestones that anticipate the physical, emotional, and social needs of people living with HIV: (1) Diagnosis; (2) Sharing Your Status; (3) Building Your Support Team; (4) Beginning Treatment; (5) Finding a Pharmacist; (6) Staying Healthy; (7) Relationships After Diagnosis; (8) Changing Treatment Plans; (9) Life Changes; and (10) Looking to the Future.

Visitors are encouraged to log on to the free-to-the-public site for information and inspiration. No one needs to register or reveal personal information to participate, so visitors can experience “Let’s Grow Old Together” in privacy, whether they wish to explore the resources, find an HIV-specialized pharmacy near them, or chat with a pharmacist in real time.

The online community extends MARCH 2017 • A&U

Walgreens’ longstanding commitment to ensuring that its customers living with HIV have access to safe, compassionate care. The company takes pride in having been able to lend its expertise and support to the AIDS community from the very start of the epidemic, says Glen Pietrandoni, Senior Director of Virology, Walgreens, who joined the company in the 1970s. Around 1995, as protease inhibitors were on the verge of hitting the market and revolutionizing the health of people with HIV and AIDS, Walgreens took its efforts a step further by tailoring the pharmacy experience to the unique needs of people living with HIV/AIDS. Says Pietrandoni: “It’s actually at the local level where our pharmacists are involved with patients, with community groups, with the actual communities that are highly impacted, and that’s what’s most rewarding.”

Across the country, Walgreens operates hundreds of HIV-specialized locations, whose pharmacists have gone through rigorous educational training, including courses in cultural competency and stigma awareness. A couple of years ago, Walgreens began a new educational training program through the American Academy of HIV Medicine, an organization that certifies HIV healthcare specialists, and

Andrew and Gregg the AIDS Training and Education Centers.

The company also partners with AIDS organizations on the local and national level, including Greater Than AIDS and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Several years ago, Walgreens launched a photo-based campaign titled, “Well Beyond HIV,” to raise awareness about aging with HIV. Focused on patient-centered care and always on the look-out to improve health outcomes, Walgreens reached out to people living with HIV, newly diagnosed and longterm survivors, young and old, to see what their needs were and how their needs have evolved, notes Karyn Lee, Marketing Manager, Walgreens, about the brainstorming that evolved into “Let’s Grow Old Together.” The need for support along every step of the HIV journey emerged as a key insight, and shar-

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ing personal stories proved to be a highly engaging medium.

The idea of pharmacist-as-ally, someone who could provide a consistent level of support over time, also came to the fore.

It articulated, more formally, what Walgreens has been doing all along—nurturing pharmacists to be actively engaged in the healthcare journeys of individuals, no matter their disease condition, and inviting individuals to be actively engaged in their health and empowered to start dialogues with their pharmacist.

This relationship is especially important when living with HIV. From resisting stig-

Kathleen and Peter ma, combatting isolation, and feeling a range of emotions, to oft-changed treatment plans, comorbidities, and adherence challenges, there’s a lot to navigate.

Pharmacists do more than dispense medications, reminds Pietrandoni. “They’re sometimes overlooked as a resource for support,” he adds, mentioning that they are often better positioned than healthcare providers to know individuals on a more holistic level. Speaking from past experience as a trained pharmacist, Pietrandoni mentions that of course one is laser-focused on dis-

14

pensing the medications accurately, but the personal engagement with customers allows questions to be asked more openly and the ensuing dialogue to be more free-flowing.

Support works. Pietrandoni notes an increase in pharmacist engagement, thanks in part to HIV-specific training, which has included about ten percent of all Walgreens pharmacists, and also an increase in patient engagement. “We see persistence,” he shares. “Folks stay on the regimens longer... and obviously, especially in the earlier days, in particular, with the regimen, you didn’t want to have patients switching regimens too often because they wouldn’t have that many regimen options open.”

Individuals are also staying with their Walgreens pharmacists longer, he adds. “[Overall] we see those regimens succeeding with people because of the relationships that they’ve built with pharmacists,” he offers, “and [also because] they don’t have to run to the doctor with every question.... the pharmacist might be that person that might be able to help.”

At Walgreens, the dedicated pharmacists also assist individuals with figuring out copays and coverages, as well as prescription delivery if needed. “All those little things that actually do contribute to those adherence numbers, right?” Pietrandoni points out. “We’re doing some things that don’t really show up on any reports or any type of clinical data, [things] that the pharmacists do from day to day to make sure that the patient has their meds without any gaps.”

Keeping individuals on HIV treatment engaged along the continuum of care is of utmost importance. Pietrandoni explains: ‘So, if you’re on an asthma drug, and you’re going to go to the pharmacy to get an inhaler, you go and you get it and go home. Well,

nobody knows when you’re coming back because let’s say you may be adherent or you may be not, or whatever it might be. But, with our programs, we’re actually proactively watching for patients. So, we know, if you come on the first of the month and you’re getting a thirty-day supply, we know the day you’re going to need your refill. So, we’re ahead of that by a few days, and we’re actually looking for you; and we’re preparing a prescription and we’re calling a doctor, whatever we have to do to get the refill, [converse with] the insurance company, whatever it might be. We’re doing all that ahead of time so that, when you do come back, hopefully on the first or the next day, that it’ll all be prepared for you. And that, again, is that security net we give to the patients—we’ve got their back, we’re really trying to look out for them.”

But first and foremost, in order to engage and stay in care, individuals living with HIV need to believe that there is hope, that they will find a treatment regimen that works for them, that there’s a good chance that their health will be stabilized, that life can be normalized.

“Let’s Grow Old Together” counteracts the narrative that living with HIV is hopeless—it redirects visitors toward the future, toward better health outcomes, and a greater sense of self-empowerment. Even today, people living with HIV have been acculturated to believe that AIDS equals a death sentence or that living with HIV automatically means you’re going to be isolated, or that life is just going to be unrecognizably different.

Notes Lee, the creative forces behind the Walgreens online community were attuned to the fact that sometimes individuals living with HIV, particularly those who are newly diagnosed, may toggle back and forth between certainty and doubt. For example, individuals are aware that treament can confer better health outcomes and they can live longer, says Lee, “but still, at that moment of diagnosis, it still felt like, ‘Well, what is my life going to look like?’

“So, having that conversation, I think even in your mind, a lot of folks that we talked to were still kind of processing what that future looks like. So, that was one of the reasons that we did want to tap into that hope and that forward-looking perspective.”

Says Lee, in closing, a hopeful and healthful future is what Walgreens is all about. In the right dosage, of course.

For more information, log on to: www.Walgreens.com/LetsGrowOldTogether.

Chael Needle interviewed artist Kelly L. Taylor for the January Gallery.

A&U • MARCH 2017

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Surviving Survivor’s Guilt

Hank Trout should i feel guilty about not feel-

ing guilty

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

O

ver the years, I’ve chatted with many other HIV/AIDS longterm survivors about the myriad complications of being among the “AIDS Generation,” those of us diagnosed prior to 1996, whose diagnosis was presumed, with good cause, to be an inescapable death sentence. In those discussions, we’ve touched upon all the usual complaints—nausea and other side effects of the toxic medications we’ve ingested for twenty years or more; debilitating neuropathy; disfiguring lipodystrophy; the devastation of ill-advised financial decisions; the indignity of growing older in a culture that fails to respect its elders; the unrelieved grief of having lost so many friends and lovers. Every long-term survivor I know has experienced some form of each of those complaints, myself included.

But there is one complaint common among these survivors that is utterly alien to me: survivor’s guilt. Intellectually, I understand the concept of survivor’s guilt, I understand its roots and its manifestations—but to be honest, I have never felt it on a personal gut level.

Not once, not for a moment. Thus, I am forced to ask myself, Should I feel guilty for not feeling guilty?

The research I’ve done shows that the concept of survivor’s guilt first arose after World War II among psychologists who treated survivors of the Holocaust.

Since then, the term has broadened to include a wide range of individuals who have survived events in which they watched, helplessly, as large numbers of others perished—soldiers on the frontlines of battle; airline crash survivors; survivors of natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes); and of course us gay men who survived the AIDS crisis.

The symptoms of survivor’s guilt include deep depression, ADHD-like agitation and difficulty concentrating, reduced interest in activities that once brought pleasure (including sex), difficulty maintaining relationships, sleep difficulties, lack of appetite, and feelings of worthlessness that can lead to contemplation of or even actual suicide attempts. I have seen these symptoms in many of my LTS friends; I know

16

they are real.

Perhaps most damaging of all, though, is the paralyzing sense of guilt for surviving when so many simply didn’t.

This form of survivor’s guilt, researchers say, stems from the survivor’s belief that he continues to live at the expense of those who did not survive—he imagines that his survival is an offense against those who fell.

Many long-term survivors live with the constant gnawing question, “Why am I still here when so many are gone?” This can cause the survivor to feel unworthy, undeserving of life itself, and can lead to self-punishing behaviors (isolating oneself from friends and family, etc.).

Surviving is, indeed, a mixed blessing.

Again, I understand the roots and manifestations of survivor’s guilt. So why do I not feel even the slightest bit of guilt for surviving? Like many of us long-term survivors, I lived through death sentence after death sentence while watching my friends die from the same diagnosis; I know the nausea, the neuropathy, the lipodystrophy, the sleep difficulty, and the feeling of worthlessness as intimately as anyone. But guilt?

No, no guilt.

For me, the word “guilt” carries a verdict of responsibility for an event.

There are indeed things I’ve done in my life for which I harbor deep feelings of guilt—I have not always been as kind or as forgiving as I might have been. But I cannot feel guilty for outliving those dozens of friends and lovers whom I’ve lost. I mourn them, of course—hell, I have cried for them every damned day for the last thirty-five years! And I miss them, heart-achingly, constantly.

But it is not my fault that they are gone and I am not. If I had done something to cause their demise—or if there were something that I could have done to prevent their deaths, but didn’t do it—then I would feel “guilty,” I would deserve to feel guilty about their deaths. But I am not responsible for their deaths. There was no 1984 “Do it to Julia!” moment. My surviving the virus that took their lives is, so far as I can tell, utter and complete happenstance. As an atheist, I find the notion of “there but for the grace of...” to be utter nonsense—but whatever the reason for so many others’ perishing while I survived, I know that it was not my doing. I cannot feel guilty about it.

Still, I cannot help wondering…. Am I somehow psychologically incomplete or inadequate because I do not feel guilty for surviving when others I loved didn’t? Is my lack of guilt just an iron-clad defense mechanism that I have constructed, a fort I’ve built up to protect myself? I don’t know.

But I’ve decided that—to quote Bruce Springsteen—“it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.”

And I am indeed very glad to be alive.

Hank Trout edited Drummer, Malebox, and Folsom magazines in the early 1980s. A longterm survivor of HIV/AIDS (diagnosed in 1989), he is a thirty-six-year resident of San Francisco, where he lives with his fiancé Rick.

Follow him on Twitter @HankTroutWriter.

A&U • MARCH 2017

SOMETIMES, OUR HIGHEST HEIGHTS HAPPEN

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

NEWSBREAK Thailand Eliminates Mother-To-Child Transmission Thailand has become the first Asian country to eliminate mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV, thanks to a strong political commitment and heavy government investment, reports a study by Professor Usa Thisyakorn of Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, published in Pediatrics and International Child Health by the Taylor & Francis Group.

A voluntary HIV test of pregnant women with same-day results is offered at the first clinic visit, followed by re-testing later in pregnancy for those who test negative. For HIV-infected pregnant women, antiretroviral therapy (ART) is provided as soon as possible. Such treatment is now available at much lower cost, thanks to legislative changes which have allowed the non-commercial production of generic ART in Thailand. Counselling services at antenatal clinics also promote the use of dual methods of contraception to prevent unintended pregnancy in women with HIV. An initiative to increase condom use among male patrons of commercial sex workers as a prevention tool has also helped decrease HIV infection in women of childbearing age.

The study’s author, Professor Usa Thisyakorn said: “Thailand has achieved WHO elimination of mother-to-child HIV transmission targets with early and concerted efforts of all sectors of Thai society. This provided numerous lessons learned in working together to safeguard children. Since children are the country’s future, how the country responds to the problems created for them indicates how highly the country values its future.”

Read the full article online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20469047.2017.1281873

The good news is we are living longer. However, good news usually comes with a price or a but…so, we are living longer but this reality does not negate the necessity for rigorous self-care, especially for those of us aging with HIV and approaching our senior years with the potential of basking in retirement and enjoying our golden years. Estimates point to the reality that we have entered an era where half of all Americans with HIV are fifty or older.

In response, SunServe, a model nonprofit social services agency serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) community in South Florida and offering “high quality, culturally relevant care for all with an emphasis on those in financial need, minorities, youth, seniors, HIV-positive persons, and those with life-challenging physical or emotional conditions,” has put together a conference focused on seniors.

Whether recently infected, sero-converted post-1996 when protease inhibitors and drug-cocktail treatments put a halt to the horrific ravages of AIDS, or are among the echelon of remarkable long-term survivors, you are invited to a one-day conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on March 31 organized by SunServe, funded AIDS United’s The Positive Organizing Project Grant. SunServe’s HIV/AIDS Seniors Conference 2017: We Know You’re Still In The Game will cover the unique nutritional, medical, mental health, substance recovery, and social needs of individuals aging with HIV. Keynote speakers include Dr. David Fawcett, author of Lust, Men, and Meth, and blogger and activist Mark S. King.

For more information about and to register for the conference, log on to: at Dr. David Fawcett will be one of the keynote www.sunserve.org/hivseniors. speakers at the SunServe conference

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A&U • MARCH 2017

photo by Howard Zucker

We Know You’re Still In The Game

newsbreak Condom Carnival DKT Brazil, maker of the country’s leading brand of condoms, has launched a campaign to promote safe sex leading up to and during Carnival celebrations. DKT will be distributing 100,000 of their condoms, Prudence, in taxis, restrooms and steam rooms in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Florianópolis.

Brazilians who order a taxi through the “Vá de taxi” app will receive a free condom when they arrive at their destinations.

Steam rooms in the cities of Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador will be stocked with Prudence condoms. Prudence Neon, a fan favorite variety of Prudence, will be advertised on nineteen skinned street cars from Carnival through March.

DKT Brazil supports nongovernmental organizations in Brazil by providing condoms, financial aid, and informational materials about HIV prevention and other sexual health topics.

HIV prevention and treatment efforts in the U.S. are paying off, but not all communities are seeing the same progress.

The number of annual HIV infections in the U.S. fell eighteen percent between 2008 and 2014—from an estimated 45,700 to 37,600—according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Seattle in February. Progress, however, was not the same among all populations or areas of the country.

“The nation’s new high-impact approach to HIV prevention is working. We have the tools, and we are using them to bring us closer to a future free of HIV,” said Jonathan Mermin, MD, director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention.

The CDC examined trends from 2008 to 2014 and found annual HIV infections dropped: fifty-six percent among people who inject drugs; thirty-six percent among heterosexuals; eighteen percent among gay and bisexual males ages thirteen to twenty-four; and eighteen percent among white gays and bisexuals. Substantial decreases occurred in Washington, D.C. (ten percent); Maryland (eight percent); Pennsylvania (seven percent); Georgia (six percent); New York and North Carolina (both five percent); Illinois (four percent); and Texas (two percent). Further, CDC researchers found no overall increases in new infections in the thirty-five states where they could be estimated.

Researchers attributed these declines to the increase in the number of people who know their HIV status and are virally suppressed through effective treatment and to increases in the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

“Unfortunately, progress remains uneven across communities and populations,” said Dr. Eugene McCray. Reductions in infection among younger white gays and bisexuals were offset by increases in other groups: a thirty-five percent increase among twenty-five- to thirty-four-year-old white gays and bisexuals, and a twenty percent increase among Latino gays and bisexuals. Infections among Black gays and bisexuals remained steady at 10,000 infections per year, a cautiously hopeful sign after more than a decade of increases.

Sadly, Southern states accounted for thirty-seven percent of the U.S. population but fifty percent of new infections in 2014.

The CDC is taking action to ensure that: HIV testing is simple, available and routine; the newly infected get treatment as soon as diagnosed; and people who are HIV-negative have prevention information and tools, including syringe services and PrEP. MARCH 2017 • A&U

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graphic courtesy CDC

New HIV Infections Drop

by Ruby Comer

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Shriver [A&U, March 2007] to provide help for those who suffer with AIDS in Africa.

Not just a thespian, Zack started several clothing companies employing his marketing, advertising, and web design skills.

On this snowy Big Apple afternoon, I bundle up in my faux fur, hop Amtrack, and speed out to Zack’s home in Princetown, NJ. I catch up on my reading, In Such Good Company by Carol Burnett.

Ruby Comer: What a lovely area you live in, Zack. [As we settle into his cozy living room, he offers me hot tea.]

Tell me more about your involvement in HiTops. I must be honest, I had never heard of this project.

Zack Ryan: We pretty much educated underclassmen about HIV, STDs, homophobia, and date rape through workshops and skits. We made sure that everyone knew the facts. I guess you can say that was my first acting job, Ruby!

I guess...[he cuts in].

No [he announces with gusto]. My first actual performance was when I was eight when my mom cast me in her blind date scene as her ailing child.

She needed an escape in case the blind date went south. When she scratched her nose, that was my cue. So I chugged my soda and pretended like I had a terrible stomachache. I slowly built it up to a terrible aching pain, even getting myself to the point of tears. When we got back to the car,

my mom asked if I was okay. I responded with a smile on my face, “How did I do?”

You are funny! Did your New Jersey high school provide HIV prevention education?

Yes! I first learned about it as a freshman, when I took health class. Once you were in HiTOPS we had class almost every day, including tests and quizzes to make sure we knew all the material before presenting.

What a grand school! How did you hear about the epidemic?

I’m pretty sure it was my mom who explained it to me. She also told me to wear a condom. HIV was a great reason to wear one, as I remember having that fear instilled in me.

Kudos to your mom! How do you practice safer sex?

Condoms. I’ve always worn protection.

A&U • MARCH 2017

Ruby illustration by Davidd Batalon; photo courtesy Zack Ryan

I

met Zack Ryan in New York last year at a screening of Beautiful Something.

“A compassionate, romantic drama,” the Village Voice aptly described it.

In his screen début, Zack plays Jim, who’s in a torrid relationship with Drew, who is a famous sculptor. Jim is his muse, but seeks more attention, so he takes it to the streets. Rough and tumble, one scene finds Zack completely naked, sporting a solid build—I might add!

Zack gives a polished performance as the broken Jim. Seeing his name on the marquée that night, I asked if this was his real name, as it seemed like a typical choice for an actor’s name. He replied, “My birth name is Zachary…Thomas…

Ryan—three first names!”

He told me he graduated from Rutgers with a degree in mechanical engineering because he wanted to be Iron Man. Okay. With a sense of humor like that, I was enthralled.

I was also captivated by his humanitarianism. This twenty-six year old began his charitable work as a senior in his New Jersey high school. He was part of a program called HiTops, Health Interested Teens Own Program on Sexuality. Their byline is: healthy communities begin with healthy young people. The organization addresses risky sexual behavior and violence.

They focus on prevention, providing education and support.

In college, Zack and his frat brothers fundraised for St. Jude’s. He also worked with (Product) RED, which was established in 2006 by Bono and Bobby

Zack Ryan

Ryan photo courtesy Z. Ryan; Beautiful photo courtesy Arizitical Entertainment

You’re smart, Mr. Ryan, for advocating safer sex. Because you played gay so well in Beautiful Something, I thought you were.

Thanks for the compliment. That’s what I was going for.

let us fly. It’s not such a far-fetched idea.

It’s actually possible. I always wanted to be at the forefront of technology and building and coming up with crazy ideas—and I’m good at it!

You have been dating Samantha for three years. When you first met, how did you guys bring up the topic of STD testing?

I’m pretty sure we asked each other, “So... you don’t... have anything right?” We pretty much took each other’s word for it and we always practiced safe sex. I’m not ready to be a father yet. [He chuckles.]

I guess you now apply these ideas to your acting! What scene were you not looking forward to shooting in Beautiful Something?

Honestly, I was not looking forward to all of the hot-manon-man action scenes. But once I stepped into character, I lost my anxiety and just went for it. Joe Graham [the director and writer] made sure we were actually huffing and puffing and sweating! We definitely gave it our all. [With a tender nod, Zack beams.]

I have to know more about this Iron Man fixation.

I loved the idea of building a mechanical suit that would give us super strength and MARCH 2017 • A&U

I like how AIDS is mentioned in the film.

Beautiful Something, starring Colman Domingo and Zack Ryan Yes, AIDS comes up when Jim, my character and, Bob, the older gentleman, were back at Bob’s home after dining out.

Bob tells Jim that his lover died and Jim automatically asks, “From AIDS?” Joe wanted to point out that in Jim’s [young] mind, the only way older gay men die is from AIDS. Turns out that Bob’s lover died in the Vietnam war.

I see. Any more thoughts about the disease….

Fortunately, I don’t have anyone close to me who is HIV-infected. I believe where technology is going HIV doesn’t have to be [potentially fatal]. Hopefully within the next ten to twenty years it’ll be as rare as polio. My cousin is studying medicine and has some very cool ideas to help reprogram the virus to attack itself.

How stunning. Keep me posted, Zack. [I look out the window at the accumulating snowstorm. Zack catches my distress. He invites me to stay for dinner.] If you could have dinner with anyone famous, who would you choose?

Robert Downey Jr. He’s Iron Man. [I purse my lips and give a knowing nod.]

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.

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Trigger Warning

B

uses are disgusting. They are full of poor people and pedophiles.”

This is the first sentence that popped into my head at 8:40 a.m. on a bright beautiful golden-blue morning when sitting down to write about the cough that has kept me up all night.

It is and accurate sentence in that I probably caught this constant hacking red, raw thing from sitting too close to someone who also had a constant hacking red, raw thing in their throat and was unable to take a sick day; and they probably caught their thing from sitting too close to someone who had a constant hacking red raw thing hiding in their body too. Because bad things hide in the mouths—and like I said, “buses are disgusting and full of poor people and pedophiles.”

You must admit that that is a pretty amazing sentence. It is arresting and catches your attention immediately; because you know, who doesn’t love a pedophile! This is a joke.

It’s funny obviously (or trying to be funny maybe)….But it’s still a fairly terrible thing to say. It’s a terrible thing to pop into my head first thing in the morning. And it is completely inappropriate to print. And this is my problem.

I am what you call an over-sharer.

I saw exactly what pops into my head, as soon as it pops into my head, and, if it’s true, I do not filter or apologize for it. Because this country has a thing called: “Free Speech.”

But still it’s a terrible thing to say.

And saying terrible things is starting to make me nervous.

I wonder sometimes if it is possible to say too much. To push too far, to hold too much danger in your tongue.

In my tongue.

I’m forty years old now. I’ve been an HIV educator and safe sex advocate now for more than half of my life, and, when I was twenty-five and cute and blond, and the youngest person in the room, it was completely excusable to be radical, and controversial, and boundary pushing because no one really listened to the pretty young thing with limp wrists anyway.

But now that I’m older and bearded and grey; for some reason the things I say now

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have provenance; and I wonder if perhaps I’m leading some wide-eyed young girl in the middle of the country astray.

Maybe they don’t quite get the joke, maybe they don’t really understand the “new science,” and maybe when I say that ,“Condoms were the safe sex of the eightiess (that didn’t really work anyway) and that Undetectable is the new safe...,” they really don’t get the caveats...

“Because caveats are for losers!” This is a joke. (Another awful thing I want to say.)

A few years ago there was the thing called: “Trigger Warnings.” All the cool blogs were doing it. If you said anything that was the least bit confrontational, or dark, or emotionally stirring, you had to preface it with: “Trigger Warning” so that no one was overly affected by the things you were printing.

For example: The sentence “Buses are disgusting. They are full of poor people and pedophiles” would have needed a Trigger Warning in case a person had been molested and bringing up the subject caused them a micro trauma.

I found it exhausting... and more than that, a little condescending... As if I could ever know what was too much for someone else to bear. The human capacity to turn pain and trauma into beauty and grace is constantly awe-inspiring. Why would I ever think to mute that?

But I also don’t want to cause unnecessary harm…because you know I’m liberal, and progressive, and blah blah blah….We are all our brother’s keeper after all. Especially now, as I grow into my old age (and try very hard to earn my way into heaven).

I don’t want to be responsible for anyone catching HIV because they heard one of my trite little tales about a twenty-four-hour hour love affair with a boy I met on PreP. Even if the science is sound.

The first article I ever wrote about HIV was to replace a columnist who chose to not take his HIV meds. He made a specific

decision for specific reasons; and wrote and documented his journey along the way. His writings were brilliant and noble and beautiful and maddening and eventually silent. And we were all witness to his dying. (Because that’s what happens if you don’t take your pills.) It was powerful. And sad. And I am so proud of the editors who allowed those words to go to print. His name was LeRoy Whitfield and his voice was a force. And though a person stating reasons why not to take HIV meds could be considered dangerous…I do not believe he ever wanted anyone to follow in his choice. He did not want anyone else to die. (In fact his articles are why I take my pill every night before I go to bed.) He was simply a man telling his story the way he knew how… because that’s what writers do.

So I guess this is my: “Get Out Of Jail Free Card,” “Sign Here To Release Me From All Legal Liability,” “Enter At Your Own Risk.”

Everything I will ever tell you about infection and protection and risk and my own journey is true. But truth is a glass room with many entrances. Do your own research. Make your own choices. Mitigate your own risk. Think for yourself! Because “Trigger Warning”: I am just one person.

And sometimes I just write pretty words.

Do not open your legs to a stranger because of a few words someone wrote on a page.

Unless the stranger is really, really cute.

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 • MARCH 2017

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

because writers are people too

Bringing hearts together since 1998

P zMatch.c m

viewfinder

Stigmatizing Sex

there is nothing “dirtier” than referring to yourself as “clean”

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ing that they will only mess with others who are also “clean.” This false notion that one is “clean” is problematic for several reasons, especially when we talk about testing, status, and how truthful that statement could ever be.

1. You are only as “clean” as your last sexual encounter.

You go and get tested. Your results come back negative across the full panel

of syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, hep C and HIV. That night you go out and party and then have a hook-up with someone that you met at the club. You go home you have sex and you part ways. Guess what? You can now no longer claim that you are “clean.” The truth is, you are only as negative as your last sexual encounter. So, the belief that, because you tested three months ago, and had eight sexual partners, you can still say you are “clean” is misleading and dangerous to your health and the health of others.

2. The term “clean” is shaming to those who live with the virus, or any affliction for that matter.

People who live with HIV are not

dirty. They are productive members of society who work, party, travel, and sleep in many of the same circles that you sleep in. More likely than not, you have slept with someone who is HIV-positive, either knowingly or unknowingly.

People who contract an STI are not dirty.

Contracting an STI is an unfortunate part of having an active or mild sex life.

A person can contract an STI or HIV during their first-ever sexual encounter.

It truly has nothing to do with whether a person was “clean” and practiced safer sex during the encounter.

3. Language matters.

Finally, society needs to do a much better job at using appropriate language when we are discussing sex and the way we stigmatize those who participate in sexual activity in the manner they best see fit.

You can use the term that you are negative in a way that is not stigmatizing to those who are not. You can say the last time you were tested and what those results were in a way that does not make others feel like they should live in shame. What you can’t do is run around with the privilege of saying that you are “clean,” as a replacement for the former, knowing that the opposite of clean is dirty which would then equal “positive.”

There is a nation full of people who refuse to get tested because of the language and imagery that we as a society project as normal. The reason people won’t and don’t get tested regularly is because there is a fear of having to live with that type of stigma placed upon them. The reason that more people don’t live publicly with their status is because of the fear of rejection and being known as dirty. We are not dirty people. We are just trying to live our lives the best way that we know how. So please, stop with the language.

George M. Johnson is an HIV advocate who works for Us Helping Us, People into Living.

Inc., located in Washington, D.C. He has written for Pride.com, Musedmagonline.com, Blavity.com, Rolereboot.org, and Ebony.com.

Follow him on Twitter @IamGMJohnson.

A&U • MARCH 2017

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

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hile watching an episode of 2 Broke Girls the other day, the topic of sexually transmitted infections came up as the focal point of the storyline. One of girls got a rash in her private area, and, assuming the worst, thought that she may have had herpes. They went the whole episode of course making jokes about the situation, with cheesy punchlines and poorly timed jokes, at which I frowned with delight.

When it was all said and done, the girl had gotten the rash because she had changed her laundry detergent, but in discriminatory fashion there was still one more scene left.

They saved the worst for last.

The roommate who hadn’t had a rash, but had a sexual history longer than the Alaskan pipeline decided to go get tested as well. That was when the show called for the final scene, where the roommate busts through the door and yells in excitement “I’m Clean.”

I immediately got hot, as the trigger word for so many in the HIV community was used yet again to insist that those dealing with sexually transmitted diseases are somehow “dirty.” If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times—the language in our community must change from this stigmatizing separatist narrative if we are ever going to change the views of those who contract HIV or any other STI, for that matter. People living with HIV have, for the past thirty-five years, dealt with the pressure of being labeled the “dirty” people in society. This country, through its sex work laws and lack of a progressive view, has supported the notion that those who contract viruses from sex are irresponsible and risky, which unfairly gets the labeling of being unclean.

I often see these terms used on gay dating apps Jack’d, Grindr, and Scruff.

Within people’s profiles, they are defining themselves as “clean” while also say-

by

photo by Antonio Feo/photofeo.com/courtesy R. Toth

S

et asides: units of affordable housing required developers to set aside twenty-five percent of all new housing for low to moderate income families. When a private entity receives Federal funding for housing, it is mandated to “set aside” a certain percentage of the units for low-income residents. Set asides.

Like many other long-term survivors, I’ve had a kaleidoscope of experiences. I have been a Buddy volunteer and lost five souls to the ravages of AIDS in the eighties. Returned to college as an adult and got my BFA. And sitting on my upstairs front porch one day, I was talking to myself (nothing new there): “When will you begin to live with AIDS rather sit here dying from it?!” I asked aloud.

Right then and there I decided to check one item off of the Bucket List. Fortified by my whole four years of high school French, I booked a trip to Paris, France. As an art history minor, I bathed in the City of Light.

Alone, I walked cobblestone streets and sat at cafés. I quickly learned a café au lait did have espresso in it. I navigated the Metro with ease and delight.

Upon my return home, I spent six years on three of our Ryan White Planning Council committees. Our good work was noticed. I was taken to Washington, D.C., as a representative member of the affected population in our region’s well-running Planning Council. I volunteered with the Ohio AIDS Coalition’s Healing Weekend Committee. As a co-chair, I helped in planning, scheduling educational “healing” weekend events for anyone in the HIV spectrum. Those were weekends of joy, tears, and newfound friends.

After a “talent-no-talent-show” at GAYLA, a men’s gathering in Maine, I found I really could sing! Upon returning home, I searched for something, someplace to fit in. I auditioned for our local gay men’s chorus (without g-a-y in the name). I was a baritone! We performed concerts three times a season. My family came to see me once in six years. Concurrently, I was also the Public Relations chair for the Chorus.

My last, thankless act was to bring in Miss Bernadette Peters. To say she was gracious and wonderful is an understatement.

MARCH 2017 • A&U

Rob Toth

Set Asides

still alive, still kicking

In between all of this, I’d travelled to Chicago, Los Angeles, Key West, St. Louis, San Francisco, Toronto, and to Mexico where I climbed the pyramids in the Yucatan and swam on the white sandy beach of Tulum.

After an exhausting and frustrating three-year search for traces of my Hungarian ancestry and grandfather, I found long-lost family members in Hungary…and they wanted to meet me!

With my phrasebook partially memorized and with help from my family, I went to Hungary. My relatives were ever so gracious and kind. They took me all over north-central and northwest Hungary. I slept in my great-great-great-grandfather’s village home. Ate authentic Hungarian goulash (guylas) and drank way too much pálinka. At the airport I wept, my cousin wept, we all wept.

It really was a life-altering experience. For now, I now volunteer at our local Hungarian museum and gift shop. Calling it a museum is rather like gilding the lily, but I digress.

Many letters to the editor and years later, here I sit, alone with my cat. Like many other LTS, on Social Security Disability, food stamps and Section 8, I am apprehensive about the new administration. Only time will tell. I acknowledge my blessings in that I have safe, clean, and affordable accommodations, good medical care, and food in my fridge.

However—yeah there’s a “however”—I survived homelessness, a stroke, a heart attack, suicide, rape, a catastrophic car accident, and a daylight mugging at gunpoint. I don’t drink. I never party-and-play.

My party days are over. I’m only fifty-eight years old and there’s much life left in this “old” bag of bones. As much as I’d like to, I can’t afford to participate in a POZ cruise and have never been to an AIDS conference. I don’t have disposable income. I

don’t have a car. My days are pretty routine: morning sinus, pills, bathroom, a late breakfast, and, then, maybe get labs drawn and a doctor’s visit or two. Home again to watch TV or listen to music while typing out another letter to the editor or a tweet.

I haven’t any tech skills, I don’t know how to knit (yet). My last BFF died two years ago. My support system is dead, gone, or moved on.

So, like other LTS, I have an accumulated lifetime of experiences. Some good, some not so good. But I’m here and still very much alive. I’m a survivor, yet I feel as if I’m a can of peas put on a shelf, cabinet doors shut. Like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady when she bemoaned, “What’s to become of me…??”

With all that I am, all that we are, how do we settle in a set aside as a set aside?!

Rob Toth is a twenty-eight-year-plus year survivor of AIDS and a native of Greater Cleveland, currently living with his cat overlooking Lake Erie.

He is well-travelled, speaks a soucon of French and a dab of Hungarian and makes a mean meatloaf. Like many other long-term survivors, he is an accidental activist on his fourth life thread, Act II.

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viewfinder

Full Circle

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few months ago I made a return trip to NYC. I say “return” because I moved to the city in 1987 at the age of seventeen. I did something I can’t imagine being brave enough to do today. With $500 in traveler’s checks in my pocket (a high school graduation gift) and a lot of chutzpah, I picked up and moved from the upstate suburb where I lived and relocated to the city I had dreamt of since I was a boy. No institution of higher learning awaited me safely ensconcing me in its dorms, just a somewhat unreliable friend whom I had met shortly after graduation. I had never stepped foot in the city before.

I ended up, eventually, living in Alphabet City on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

I got a job bar-backing and tending in a popular gay bar of the era. Simply known as The Bar, it stood on the corner of Third Street and Second Avenue. I was just short of my nineteenth birthday.

The manager, David, didn’t ask for ID; he hired me based on how good I looked in a tight tank top. David and the other bartenders that made up our core group were all older than I. They soon became my circle of closest friends, my “gay fathers.” They taught me everything I needed to know at that point, their good habits and a lot of the bad ones, too. We had a lot of fun, too much at times. David ruled us all with an iron fist trying to reign in our excesses and indiscretions. I loved them all dearly.

These four men all had it, they had AIDS. Without benefits or insurance, they struggled to get the medical care they needed.

I lost touch over the years, as people often do, and could only assume the worst.

The intervening years brought much success for me. I relocated to Denver and eventually to L.A. I was in and out of the city often. I was always too busy though, busy with circuit parties and trips to Fire Island. Busy dining at trendy restaurants

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and visiting museums and galleries. The bottom line, though, was that it was just too painful to return to the scene of my earlier crimes. I heard at a party in the Hollywood Hills, of all places, that The Bar had burned down. That was hardly a surprise—the place was trendy, but it was a dive. The electrical system alone had always been slapdash to put it mildly. More

disturbingly, my fears were realized; the four men with whom I had been so close had succumbed to AIDS. So here I was, twenty-five years or more later, having dinner with my best and oldest friend at an acclaimed new bistro on The Bowery. The Bowery, once the home of flop houses and missions for the homeless, was lined with designer boutiques and trendy eateries. The old neighborhood had sure changed! As we enjoyed a wonderful meal I tried not to think of my plan to take a tour of the area to see the changes time had brought. It included a stop at that corner to touch base with my memories of my friends. It was time.

Fortified with plenty of Dutch courage, we set out after dinner down Bowery Street. As I looked with amazement at all

the new affluence, I shared my memory of walking down to this street from The Bar to buy new glassware from one of its few viable businesses at the time, a restaurant supply store. We walked up to and turned east on Third Street. The emotion was building within me as we got closer to my goal. I had to stop on the sidewalk several times, my friend rubbing my back to comfort me. He knew better than anyone how hard this was for me. As we approached, the tears started.

I’m not big on crying; I figure I’ve shed enough tears for a lifetime already, but I was powerless to stop them. I soon stood at the building whose ground floor had housed my place of work, the scene of my bildungsroman. The streets were filled with revelers on this Saturday evening as I stood in front of what was now a Korean market and wept under the rather alarmed gaze of its cashier.

I thought of them, all up somewhere above me having a giggle. “It’s not so tragic young lady,” they were saying.”

You survived! So many have!”

They, who taught me to “butch it up” when picking up a man, were so fond of switching pronouns among the members of our group. It made me laugh to remember it. I must have looked like an insane person standing on Third Street that evening, remembering.

Remembering the fun, remembering the laughter, remembering the solidarity. And the fights! God, two of us were on the outs with each other at any given time. But, we loved each other harder than we fought.

And that’s what remains. That’s what gets us through.

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. Follow him on Twitter @JohnFrancisleo2.

A&U • MARCH 2017

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

finally i had the courage to return to the city where i lost my friends

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hen being first diagnosed with HIV I personally handled it as best as I could. We all handle our diagnosis in different ways. Some people become severely depressed, some look at it as a chance to live their lives in a healthier way, and some, believe it or not, are happy because they don’t have to fear HIV transmission any longer. With mixed emotions flying high, we must remember some important things about not getting depressed about having HIV. I came up with seven ways to fight HIV depression.

Find a Network: Networking with people of like interest is important personally and professionally. There are plenty of HIV communities either online or in person that you can join. These groups, whether you find them on online social media or face to face, are meant to help you through this process. There are people you will find that have and are going through the same thing as you are.

It is important that you know you are not alone.

Go to Events: The community can always use help. My suggestion is first start off small. The first event I think I ever went to or got involved with was a White Attire Affair whose proceeds had benefitted an HIV/AIDS organization. Next

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I decided to do the Washington, D.C., AIDS Walk/5K Run, until my knee started having issues. There are small and large events you can attend, whether you are in a small or large community.

Join the Fight: Become an activist and start organizing fundraisers, join HIV campaigns for prevention, or go to different organizations and ask them, “How can I help?” Volunteer for an HIV organization that has ideals that align with your own.

This can help you further your own education in HIV. Get Political: There are going to be several obstacles that you are going to face being HIV-positive and politics will be one of them. Some politicians are continuing to take away monies that directly affect programs that reduce the cost of HIV medications for underinsured and uninsured persons with HIV. The Ryan White CARE Act, which was first enacted on August 18, 1990, is the largest federally funded program for people living with HIV/ AIDS. Congress has to reauthorize the act so that it can be extended for another period of time. Ryan White gives a huge chunk of its monies to the AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, which gives HIV medication to HIV patients across the United States. So yeah, it’s kind of important that we fight for it.

Seek Counseling: Sometimes

you just need to vent to someone about what you are going through.

But I suggest trying to find an HIV counselor or ask your local HIV organization if they have counseling services. If not, ask if they can refer you to a therapist who has a specialty in HIV or infectious disease. There are also numbers that you can call to be able to talk to someone who understands.

Find Solace in Friends: If you choose not to disclose your status and feel that you are going to bust keeping this in, chances are it is not helping your mental, physical, spiritual, or emotional state. Try to find a friend who might understand what you are going through and who is not going to judge you based on your HIV status.

Get Spiritual: I know that I’m really not one to do this myself, but I see that some of my really good friends that were recently diagnosed with HIV turn to their higher power or spiritual leader. A lot of them tend to feel better when turning to their own spirituality and drawing strength from it. Now whether you are a Jew, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, etc., it doesn’t matter—if you find strength to get through tough times by praying or getting involved spiritually, do it. It can’t hurt, try it. ◊

A&U • MARCH 2017

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

Justin B. Terry-Smith, MPH, 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. Presently, he is working toward his doctorate in public health. Visit his main Web site at www.justinbsmith.com. He welcomes your questions at jsmithco98@hotmail.com.

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY BLANK

Two&Men a Mrs. Vera

Artists David Faulk and Michael Johnstone Invite Us to Escape into the Outrageous Universe of the Verasphere

by Hank Trout

F

irst, there’s Mrs. Vera. Insanely colorful, impossibly imaginative, impeccably coifed and couture’d—even if her hat and clothes appear to be made from debris hot-glued onto the sixties’ most unforgivable fashions, they are impeccably put together nonetheless.

She is tall, and ageless, befitting her status as a gender-challenged goddess or maybe a visiting dignitary from an unknown galaxy. She is not a stage persona; there is no “act,” no “schtick.” Labels like “drag” or “camp” merely limit her. She transcends labels. She just is—an unnatural force of nature. She commands your attention.

And then there’s Michael, with the camera, sometimes, in years past, wearing “just something I’d throw on, like a miniskirt and a fake fur,” documenting Mrs. Vera’s excursions into public places, or into nature, “to lend a more incidental quality to the photo sessions.” One of their favorite locales is Golden Gate Park, where they have shot many photographs together. And mesmerized strangers.

Once, a busload of Japanese businessmen unknowingly came upon Mrs. Vera and Michael in the Park’s Dahlia Garden. The entire busload of men lined up single-file to have a photograph taken with her, individually, perfectly queued and patient and quite thrilled to be having what they figured was just an everyday event in wacky San Francisco. Mrs. Vera is indeed a quintessentially San Francisco experience.

For David Faulk (“Mrs. Vera”) and Michael Johnstone, it might well have

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been just another day in the Park. The pair began creating together in 1994. David utilizes the painting skills he honed at Syracuse University to transform Mrs. Vera’s face with each appearance, each costume, approaching Mrs. Vera’s face as a painting, not a mimetic make-up job. And he has always loved having an Audience. The way he pronounces the word “Audience” demands that it be capitalized. He gives his Audience a new painting/face every time Mrs. Vera ventures out.

David creates all the costumes that Mrs. Vera wears. His favorite sources for the base materials are the thrift shops in San Francisco. He loves outrageously colored sixties-style clothes and over-the-top hats that he can redecorate in his rule-disregarding more-is-more throw the kitchen sink and lots of plastic at it aesthetic. David constantly accumulates things that might end up as part of a costume some time.

Plastic eating utensils, pom-pom balls, plastic cups and straws, feather dusters, plastic gems, old game pieces, small toys all have gone into making up a Mrs. Vera original. David said he “let[s] the materials go where they want.” He often uses the simplest of components—hula hoops, for instance. Things that are collapsible are especially useful for storage purposes.

Michael had no formal education in the arts, but has been making puppet shows since his early childhood in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he loved attending the yearly Edinburgh Festival and the Fringe Festival. Michael told me that he

once received a ping-pong table for Christmas and, having no interest in ping-pong, turned the paddles into puppets. With his puppets and, years later, his love of photography and moving pictures, he honed his visual sense of storytelling early. There is always some backstory in the photos that only Mrs. Vera knows; she has clearly had a past, but she’s not telling.

For both David and Michael when they started out, photographing Mrs. Vera in “Snapshots” provided necessary relief from the burdens of the epidemic. Both had been active members of creative, vibrant groups of artists, drag queens, club performers, theater people, and other groups whose members succumbed to the epidemic. Creating Mrs. Vera and shaping the experiences that Mrs. Vera could instigate created ways for David and Michael “not to dwell on all the loss” going on around them; for the Audience, it was an opportunity to participate in a distracting, transformative experience.

Even when David and Michael themselves experienced medical problems related to being HIV-positive, Mrs. Vera magically gave everyone permission to be silly and outrageous, with Michael there to make the photographs, to bear witness and make art of it.

The two have grown, together as partners and as artists. Verasphere is a Two of Us, 2014, digital print, 8 by 10 inches. Photo by Michael Johnstone A&U • MARCH 2017

A&U Gallery

multi-platform, multi-faceted archive for the pair’s photographic work. Michael archives the pair’s work, including the “Mrs. Vera’s Daybook Series” of photographs examining everyday life, alienation, magic, and survival—with a spirit of fun partici-

pation and lots of color; photos from their many appearances at the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade and a June 2013 exhibit of costumes and photographs at the Mills College Art Museum; “Lost/Found,” a short film they made for the Frameline

Film Festival 2012; and a very successful exhibit at the Oakland Museum of Art in 2013; and other events.

In June 2012, David and Michael curated, produced, and with others walked the catwalk in a fashion show of David’s creations for Mrs. Vera at the Beautiful Rebels Fashion Show, in conjunction with the Jean-Paul Gaultier Exhibition at the M.H. DeYoung Museum. The Verasphere website includes a video of the catwalk show. More current photos and other content can be found on the Verasphere Facebook group page. Also, one of the more ambitious members of the Verasphere group created a Flickr page Top: Verasphere group shot, 2014, 10 by 16 inches. Photo

by Ruby Reike Left: “Mrs. Vera’s Daybook Series”: Cala Lilly Hat, 2012, digital print, 16 by 20 inches. Photo by Michael Johnstone

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A&U • MARCH 2017

A&U Gallery “Mrs. Vera’s Daybook Series”: Lamppost, Sydney, Australia, 2012, digital print, 16 by 20 inches. Photo

by Michael Johnstone with over 3,000 images of Mrs. Vera and other members of Verasphere.

Recognizing the uniqueness of David’s and Michael’s work, the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the San Francisco Public Library maintains the Verasphere Costume Archive.

Some of those costumes were included in the Library’s exhibit, “Celebrating the Past/ Creating the Future” which ran from April 16 to August 7, 2016.

The archive is housed on the third floor of the SFPL Main Library. cisco SPCA, the San Francisco Public “turning up impromptu in many places, Expanding Mrs. Vera’s reach into Library Bookmobile or the LGBT Center. both appropriate and inappropriate… the universe, David and Michael hold “It is almost an ambassadorial role at without the acid!” workshops for hat- and costume-making times,” Michael has written, “to remind In so many ways—with their arat the San Francisco LGBT Center and people of the eccentric aspects of queer chives and exhibits; with their imin Oakland. (Workshops for Pride 2017 promptu “Daybook” shoots; will be announced on their with their design-your-own website.) The workshops beworkshops and event apfore Pride have grown very pearances; with their online popular, with fifty-plus presence—these two men and Verasphere participants Mrs. Vera are still out there, in this past June’s Pride, giving people permission to marching in the outrageous be silly and outrageous, still costumes and hats they had encouraging us not to dwell on made in workshop. The pair loss and gloom, inviting us to really enjoy the workshops participate in larger-than-life for the great diversity of silliness. Mrs. Vera’s irreverpeople who attend and then ent, otherworldly, all-inclusive march—young teen lesbioutrageousness might be the ans, couples or single mothperfect antidote to the stormy ers and their child, older future we face in 2017. folks, anyone with a creative streak and a taste for the You can begin your exploration of absurd and surreal.

Verasphere at www.verasphere.com, Besides the photos, the move onto their Facebook group at www.facebook.com/Verasphere, and costumes and the archives, immerse yourself in images of Mrs. it may be that Mrs. Vera’s Vera and her disciples at www.flickr.

Double Portrait, 2013, costumes by David Faulk, straw vest , eyeand Michael’s greatest concom/groups/verasphere . glass, hat, digital print, 8 by 10 inches tributions have been simply the exuberant joy they seem Hank Trout interviewed Cleve Jones to foment wherever they life, both now and in another time.” He for the January cover story. go—LGBT events such as street fairs, considers himself and Mrs. Vera to be parades, festivals, etc., sometimes direct descendants of the outrageous supporting groups like the San Fran1970s theatrical troupe the Cockettes, MARCH 2017 • A&U

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kindness is

ACTION ACTRESS & ACTIVIST ALEXANDRA BILLINGS EXTOLS THE IMPORTANCE OF COMPASSION

by Chael Needle

Photographed Exclusively for A&U by Sean Black

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lexandra Billings knows how to light fires. On-screen, on a cabaret stage, or at an APLA benefit, she takes whatever matter that makes up stars—that molten, nebulous energy, roiling in a lifetime of sparks and explosions—and disperses it on earth to everyone. The flames are kindled by kindness.

When accepting a Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award in 2016, she spoke from the heart to the attendees at the gala dinner about being a survivor: “I look around and I see you all, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’re here.

And I have to say something to you: I think you look great! You look swell, really. It’s wonderful that you’re here, eating the chicken. It’s delightful. But I must tell you that we have to do more than sit and speak and talk to our neighbors and eat great food and put on fancy clothes. I come from a tribe of people that I lost, almost eighty-five percent of. They’re not here. And when I buried them, in the eighties and the early nineties, nobody wanted them. So we would tie my friends up in hospital sheets and leave them outside hospitals. We would put them inside people’s cars because they were ‘diseased’ and nobody

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wanted to take care of them. So we were the caretakers. We took care of each other. We were family. That’s what we did. And for all those people who are no longer here, who can no longer speak, who can no longer see you, that can no longer stand, walk, eat, dress up, and talk to their neighbors, I ask you, with everything that’s left in me: You must speak loudly, clearly, with distinction, with history, and, most of all, you must speak with kindness.”

In other interviews, Billings has extolled the power of the tribe as essential for survival. I asked her what the power of the tribe means for her.

“The power of who we are, and when I say ‘we,’ I mean the transgender community can be found in the fact of us. What I mean is, we’re still on the planet, and we have been since the beginning of time; since humanity began to discover itself and its own gender containers we’ve been around....We appear a lot in history, artistically—statues, painting, and writing....

“And I think that history reverberates. I don’t think it’s random. I think it’s very specific. What I mean is, when we first started to communicate, we began to draw on walls. ‘Here’s what I did today; I killed this animal, I brought it here and we ate it. Now we’re going to go to sleep. And I’m going to draw you these pictures.’ We did that because we needed desperately to leave a mark, because, otherwise, we could have grunted and groaned, and made sounds; and we did that, but we also needed to leave a mark. We needed someone, something, a record of ourselves. I believe the transgender tribe has done the same.

There’s a great power in that.

A&U • MARCH 2017

“This is something that we forget a lot.

We bypass who we used to be because we’re so concerned with who we are. If we forget who we were, then we don’t become who we’re supposed to be. We stay stagnant.

That’s the reason there’s history,” she says about the ability to recollect and see what worked and what didn’t. That ability to recollect, she says, is “tied to our instinct.

So, the power of our tribe lies in the history of us. We have got to pay attention to it, because we’re living in a political hotbed right now. I’ve been through revolutions. I lived through the AIDS plague. I remember this revolution very clearly. I know exactly [what’s happening]. I know the signs; I can smell it

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a mile away. I’m telling you, if we don’t pay attention to how we behave, we’re lost.”

Nurturing the tribe, or anyone, depends on another essential element. “In order to support other human beings you have to be present.

I have a very, very good friend who has been positive for many many years and he never told anybody, ever....He’s in his fifties. I’m the first person he told. I’m going to say two maybe three months ago, he said, ‘Okay Alex, I think I’m ready to tell people.’ It was extraordinary—he hasn’t done it yet; he’s just sort of readying himself—but it was extraordinary for me to witness this fear and hesitation in this day and age of coming out, however you come out, genderwise or sexuality, religious,

whatever the door is, you open it. I’m always going back to The Wizard of Oz, because everything’s about The Wizard of Oz, quite frankly,” she says, speaking this last part, this truism, quickly as a jokey aside. “You remember when Dorothy opens the door, when she first opens the door and it’s sort of slow at first? Then it picks up a little bit of speed. You see everything becomes Technicolor. Everything becomes alive, and fresh, and new. So I think if we’re going to help each other, if we’re going to support each other, if we’re going to nurture each other, we’ve got to be present. That means you got to speak what’s true, whether it’s about your HIV status, whether it’s about your gender politics, your religious convictions, your A&U • MARCH 2017

spiritual questions, whatever it is that you’re holding in; the only way we can support each other is if you are fully there, I think.”

As a commencement speaker at a recent California State University, Long Beach, College of the Arts graduation ceremony, the recently named Most Distinguished Alum rallied the students to believe in themselves and follow their own paths—to speak what’s true. As the daughter of parents who were both teachers, perhaps it’s no surprise that she loves to engage others in dialogue, in the process of learning, whether it’s in a university classroom, at her local LGBT center, moderating a panel on transgender issues at the MARCH 2017 • A&U

White House during the Obama years, or in her guest columns for The Huffington Post, speaking out against HB2 and Hillary Clinton’s misrepresentation of the Reagans’ involvement in the fight against AIDS, among other topics.

A few years ago, Billings was graduated from California State University, Long Beach, with an MFA. With her newly minted degree, she pursued a position in academe and expressed interest in teaching at her alma mater. However, the theatre arts department did not have a tenure line open.

She was offered a year contract.

She was game. “I have been teaching now for almost thirty years,” she says, most notably the Viewpoints acting courses offered by the famed Steppenwolf Theatre, with whom she has worked since her Chicago days. “I really wanted a home and I really loved CSU. The students there are really extraordinary. I’ve taught in universities all across the country, and it’s a very special group of actors that come into the theater department.”

She accepted the appointment and then wanted to stay on. She fought for it.

Thanks to her diligence and tenacity, and a supportive chair and colleagues, Joanne Gordon and Hugh O’Gorman, in particular, the department found the money to open a tenure line for her. As we spoke, she was busy preparing for the upcoming semester (two undergrad acting classes and one grad course).

When asked what she enjoys most about teaching, Billings pauses before replying: “Being the student. Because it really is what happens. I find that the longer I do this, the more I’m able to stand in awe of all the things I sort of don’t know. And it’s always reflected back in the hearts and the actions of this generation.”

This generation—the Millenials—have gotten a bad rap, she says, referencing the stereotypes that they are “lazy, self-centered, selfish.” “I don’t find that to be true at all, not at all. I find them to be imaginative and powerful and funny, intelligent and kind, and extremely compassionate. My being transgender isn’t an issue that they deal with. It’s a non-issue to them. It doesn’t exist for these people. This whole older generation—and I include Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives...[who] are coming down on this generation—I challenge them by saying, ‘You don’t know this generation. I do. I’m with them, all the time. I’m telling you, they are the ones who are going to go out and reshape what we have caused.’ Because Donald Trump is our fault, not theirs.

“That’s what I learn from them, constantly.

I teach them art and they teach me life.”

Her core message that she tries to convey in her teaching is that “there is no line between your art and your life. If you bring your whole life into your art, you will have art in your life. I really try and hammer home that what they do on the stage—imagine and dream, and tell stories of other human beings, they can do off the stage.”

Billings has had a long career of imagining and dreaming and telling stories of other human beings. She has mined her own experiences for her one-woman autobiographical stage piece, Before I Disappear, and two theatrical cabarets, I’m Still Here, and, more recently, S/He and Me. She has also made two albums, Being Alive and The Story Goes On. Her life story was the subject of a PBS documentary, From Schoolboy to Showgirl, which garnered an Emmy nom in 2009.

Billings was introduced to musical theater at a young age (her father Robert Billings taught music at Harbor College in Los Angeles, and served as the musical director for the L.A. Civic Light Opera House for nearly two decades). Coming of age in Chicago, where she had moved with her newly remarried mother and brother, she did drag in the early eighties as Shanté. After years of theater work in Chicago, in Off-Broadway and touring productions; performing her nightclub act; collecting awards (five After Dark Awards, a Joseph Jefferson Award and the MAC Hanson Award for Best Cabaret Artist); and often working with her wife, director and writer Chrisanne Blankenship, Billings moved to L.A., where she found work in television and film. Recent credits include How to Get Away with Murder and the feature film, Valley of Bones.

Her current role on the Emmy, Golden Globe, and Peabody award-lavished Transparent, for which Billings won a SAG Award as part of the ensemble, has expanded her fan base. It’s easy to understand why. Billings brings to Davina her superb acting chops, infusing the character with a serenity and groundedness that makes it understandable why Maura, played by Jeffrey Tambor, feels emboldened by the friendship and gravitates toward her. As a fan of the Amazon original series, I gravitated toward Davina, too, and I’m not alone.

“People are gravitating towards her I think because she represents a very specific kind of person, period, but certainly a very specific kind of trans person you rarely see [on television or in the movies],” Billings shares.

Her past television acting turns, all of which, by the way, have been characters who are transgender, on shows like Grey’s Anatomy (on a GLAAD Award-winning episode), ER, and Nurses, among others, have been stellar, but they have been arguably a narrow view

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of transgender life, mining drama from issues associated with transgender women (health complications, transphobic parents) rather than from the characters of the women themselves.

“There was a time in my life where I told my representation, ‘Listen, here’s the deal. I’m not playing any more people in hospitals, so I’m not wearing any more hospital gowns. I’m not going to die anymore.

I’m not going to be a prostitute or a drug dealer.’ After I said that, I didn’t work for about three years. There was nothing to do.

There was no part.”

Transparent was a different story. Though the show has been criticized by some for casting a cisgender man (Tambor) as a transgender woman, the show’s creator Jill Soloway has sought to create a trans-inclusive space on set, within the cast, and behind the scenes, hiring writers, directors, and crew who are transgender or gender nonconforming. Soloway was more than receptive to Billings’s input about Davina. The part was “written beautifully. There certainly wasn’t a big conversation to have. I said, ‘Listen, if this is going to continue, I don’t want to

42

get sick; I don’t want to be ill. I don’t mind being complicated and having problems,’” she said, very much aware that “problems” are par for the course on television. “‘But I want to be honest. This is how I dress, this is how I sound, this is what I look like, this is the way I speak. I would like that to be true in the show.’”

Soloway, says Billings, was completely committed to that vision. “You know what’s funny and sad is that it’s so revelatory. This is such an unfortunate conversation that we’re having because a trans person is acting in some [everyday] way, and I hate to use this word, but in some way we’re normalizing being transgender. That tends to shake up a lot of people,” she says about the attitude that wants to keep transgender indiviudals as part of “them” rather than a part of “us.”

“You know, a little assimilation is fine.

It really is. We can all meet in the center and then we can go away and go to our outer edges. It’s okay for us to meet occasionally, truly.”

What Transparent does right is that it avoids positioning the audience as tourists, as cisgender visitors to the lives of characters who happen to be transgender. The show is as much for the LGBTQ community as it is for the global community. By following Maura, who, by transitioning, suddenly has two families, an ex-wife and three children and a trans family, the show is able to challenge viewers’ assumptions about difference.

Thanks to Maura Pfefferman’s bold and self-empowered move to be herself and to resist other people’s attempt to closet her, all of the other Pfeffermans begin to be more open about their own gender identity and past and present relationships that do not conform to a heteronormative template.

They all become one big queer family. And the characters who are trans and the LGBTQ

community members that Maura meets, though not without their own conflicts and issues, are the ones who provide a sense of stability for Maura, a counterpoint to the frenetic Pfeffermans.

Billings finds that liberating, as well. “I think what is life-changing for other trans folk, especially for the youth, is that they see trans people like Trace Lysette [who plays Shea], and myself, on TV and they know we’re trans actors but they also see the characters behaving in ways that are not necessarily overly irresponsible, that are fairly well adjusted, kind, compassionate human beings. They’re your neighbors or your friends, or your relatives. So the example is more about our own community than it is about this gigantic lesson that we’re trying to change cis people’s minds about something.

That doesn’t really enter into the equation.”

Transparent has been a blessing for Billings. “Every year I get more and more grateful. To have something like this happen at this stage in my life is really extraordinary and so completely unexpected. Completely unexpected. Everyone that’s involved in the show is very much like-minded. We all can’t believe our luck....” Season 4 of the show has yet to start filming and is due next September.

It’s a bright spot on a horizon that has been looking bleak for many. Asked what she is most concerned about as we go forward in terms of protecting our health or protecting our communities, she says about our current political state, “I’m really concerned about the way that we’re handling this. I think that we need to be careful that we don’t become alarmist. The most important thing that we can do—and I mean this, if nothing gets in the article, put this in because this is really important to me—for humanity in this country, but also around the world, is to spread who we are and our love and compassion, and kindness to the people who disagree with us the most. What I’m witnessing right now is a real disdain for people who don’t agree with whatever it is we subscribe to.

That not only creates distance and animosity, it creates a gulf [that] I don’t know that we will ever recover from. I’m far less worried about Donald Trump—you know, he’s a reality star for godssakes....It’s all smoke and mirrors. He’s P.T. Barnum. I couldn’t care less about this man. I’m far more concerned with how we’re receiving him than I am about him on the whole. We’ve got to get together because we’re splitting ourselves right down the middle.”

Did she have to go through a process, a learning curve, to become compassionate toward people who don’t agree with us?

“Absolutely. Remember I’m fifty-four years old. I’ve been on the planet for a long time.

A&U • MARCH 2017

That took me a long time. I still haven’t really figured it out, but I do know, for me, [compassion and kindness] gets me out of my own fear and my own ego.

“When I was little, the bullies won.

They beat me up and pushed me and hit me, and called me names, and sabotaged me. They won. I turned all of that inner anger to outer anger. I was a very angry twentysomething, and violent. What I realized was, I can disarm the bully and the enemy, if, in fact, that’s who they are, if I go toward them in a loving, kind way and ask them, ‘How can I help? What can I do?’ Not, ‘What’s wrong?’ Not, ‘What do you believe?’ None of that stuff, because all that does is start debate. But really, truly asking, ‘How can I be of service to you?’

“Does it always work? Of course not.

But that’s not the point. The point is, I’m no longer drawing lines in the sand and saying, ‘You stay over there, I’m going to stay over here. You believe that and I believe this.This is how we’re going to speak.’ It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t work in relationships and doesn’t work with humanity.”

Seroconverting to positive in 1985 and diagnosed with AIDS in 1995, Billings had to find her footing at first. How did she survive those first years physically, emotionally? What kept her going post-diagnosis?

“Oh, boy that’s a good question. I really believe that my wife saved my life. I was loved completely and fully,” she says about Chrisanne, whom she has known since high school drama club. “I had an incredible support system. I went out and I searched for stuff, support groups and information, and one thing or another.”

It started, however, with Chrisanne.

“I remember when I was first diagnosed, I went into a terrible depression, which makes sense. I was lying on the bed curled up in a little ball. My wife came in and said, ‘Okay, look, here’s the thing. I totally get that you’re super-depressed and super-sad, certainly. But if you’re going to curl up in a ball and die, I can’t watch it. I can’t be around to watch it.’

“That really struck something in me because I thought, ‘She’s right,’ and not just her, but that would be true of anybody, everybody in my life. With the help of others, I just didn’t give up. I didn’t stop.

I kept doing things. I felt like, ‘Look if my time is up and I’m going to go, then I’m going to go.’ I helped a lot of my friends die, a lot....I felt, ‘Well this is what’s happening right now. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. But it’s not going to MARCH 2017 • A&U

happen with me just sitting around and doing nothing.’”

Being an active participant helped her thrive, as did learning to be kinder to herself and others. “Kindness is action. You have to do things. You can’t just be kind.

You got to do something in order for that to be true.”

Were there moments that stick out for her where she kind of found her “kindness groove,” to say “Hey, this is working’”?

She laughs at my description: “My ‘kindness groove.’ That’s genius. I feel like that sort of happened, oh, I don’t know, probably fifteen-ish years ago,” she says, giving a nod to meditation and her

ly murdered.”

“Look, I think the younger generation hears as much as they want to hear and then they go out and they play. That’s what they should do. You can only talk to somebody for so long about the old days before they just become the boring old days. You come back to: I say what I say. I speak what’s true. If twenty percent of it penetrates, I’m good.”

Speaking of the disconnect with the old days, I mention that students in one of my writing classes had never seen West Side Story. I was agahast until I remembered it debuted sixty years ago.

“Listen, that happens to me all the time! I

On Transparent, Davina (Alexandra Billings) and Shea (Trace Lysette) are friends who are part of Maura’s new family. students. “My students are some of the greatest teachers I’ve ever had. Just in the last fifteen years as I’ve been teaching more and more, they have allowed me [to grow] and said to me very clearly, ‘When you do this, when you say this, when you behave in this way, this moves us forward or this opens us up even farther.’ That’s when I went, ‘Okay, then we should keep doing that....That’s a really good idea.

That’s what was changing me.’ They were changing me. I would leave and go, ‘Okay, I think I can actually apply this. Maybe I can actually try this myself.’”

I wondered if the younger generation, especially when she speaks to LGBT audiences, heed her lessons about the early AIDS epidemic—how she carries with her always those who were “systematical-

can’t tell you how many Liza Minnelli references I make in class, and people look at me like I’m insane and have to ask me, ‘Isn’t she the daughter of Dorothy?’ I just go: I can’t have this conversation with you, it just upsets me!”

“And it all comes back to Dorothy,” I quipped.

“Well, hello.”

For more information about Alexandra Billings, log on to: www.alexandrabillings.com.

Post-production (digital styling) by Eve Harlowe Art & Photography (www.EveHarlowe.com). Hair

by Louise Moon/GRID Agency; Makeup by Garret Troy Gervaise/GRID Agency. Special thanks to Apex Photo Studios: www.apexphotostudios.com.

Sean Black photographed Dita Von Teese for the December 2016 issue.

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Phoenix Rising Activist Peter Rodriguez Is as Indefatigable as the Bird That Rises from the Ashes

by Hank Trout

Photographed Exclusively for A&U by Sean Black

W

e’ve all heard the old adage, “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.”

If you’re living in Phoenix, Arizona, these days and you want something done in the LGBTQ community, particularly in the HIV/AIDS community, you might start with, say, the Vice Chairman of the Joshua Tree Feeding Program, a food bank and nutritional program for community members living with HIV/ AIDS. Or you could approach the Event Manager for Aunt Rita’s Foundation, the center for HIV/AIDS awareness, education and support in the Phoenix area, dedicated to the elimination of HIV and AIDS. You might also turn to the Founder and CoChair for the Phoenix AIDS Candlelight Vigil (PACV) Steering Committee, which held its third annual vigil and march on December 1, 2016, World AIDS Day. And best of all? You can reach all three with one phone call to one man, Peter Rodriguez, who just might be the busiest LGBTQ activist and advocate in the entire Southwest.

But then, he has a busy history as an activist stretching back more than thirty years.

Born in 1964 in Brooklyn, New York, Peter became a homeless runaway at age sixteen in 1980. He was taken in by an older man named Jeff Cates, who “became like a father to me.” Peter was diagnosed with “GRID,” as it was called, in 1982, and then with AIDS in 1986, spending extended periods in hospital. “It was gruesome. I lost

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thirty pounds in a week and a half. The doctors told me I had maybe six months to live.

“Every time I went into the hospital, I went in thinking, this is it. When Jeff and I starting taking care of friends who were dying of AIDS complications, I always wondered if that was the way I would die.”

Determined that he was not going to go the way of so many friends, Peter turned to activism and community involvement for sustenance. In 1986, with a friend named Hector who also had AIDS, Peter started one of the first support groups for PLWHA in the Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn.

From an initial group of twelve members in 1986, the group grew to over 125 and in 1989 moved from Hector’s apartment to the Sheepshead Bay Methodist Church. By that time, Peter says, “I had lost over 100 friends to AIDS and I was the only surviving member of our original group.”

Peter’s response? To throw himself even more fully into community activism.

Over the next four years, he served as an HIV/AIDS educator, peer counselor and support group facilitator for the Brooklyn AIDS Task Force; as an educator and outreach director for the Hispanic AIDS Forum; as a peer counselor and safer-sex educator for the Men of Color Task Force.

In 1990, he founded and became President of Gays and Lesbians of Brooklyn and Everywhere (GLOBE); he became a Board Member of the Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Rights where he worked on New

York’s domestic partnership bill; a member of Mayor David Dinkins’ LGBT Advisory Board; and a member of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s LGBT Advisory Council; and was active in the Stonewall Democratic Club of NYC and in ACT-UP NY. And then, in 1991, he crashed.

On November 23, 1991, Peter lost his partner Paul Defranco to AIDS; on December 13, 1991, he lost his best friend, Jeff, who had taken him in years earlier.

“After seeing so many of my friends pass away, and especially losing Paul and Jeff so close together, I just stepped down and walked away from everything that had to do with AIDS. I couldn’t do it anymore.

I walked away from my work and just waited to die.”

Luckily, in 1992 he met and fell in love with Glen Malcolm, whom Peter calls “My saving grace! My savior! My blessing!” On May 15, 1994, Peter and Glen were united in the very first gay wedding acknowledged by the Episcopal Church at St. Ann Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights. Internationally acclaimed photographer Thomas McGovern immortalized the exuberance of the ceremony in one of the photographs in his book and archive, “Bearing Witness (to AIDS)” [Gallery, November 2016].

Peter and Glen were also among the first couples to register as domestic partners in New York City.

Peter’s painful but necessary withdrawal from HIV/AIDS activism continued A&U • MARCH 2017

FEBRUARY • A&U MARCH 20172017 • A&U

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Peter Rodriguez (right) and husband Glen Malcolm for some fifteen years. In 2007, Peter and Glen moved from Brooklyn to Phoenix when Glen’s job transferred him there.

Unfortunately, the job fell through after a while, and Peter and Glen found themselves in a city without the support system they had helped to create in NYC. Peter knew to turn to the people he knew he could count on—his community.

He turned first to the Joshua Tree Feeding Program, a store-modeled food bank that allows PLWHA to “shop” for groceries for free, the only free food bank for PLWHA in western Arizona. The program, which is funded entirely by private donations and staffed entirely by volunteers, also sponsors four community meals per year, celebrating and nourishing the HIV community of Maricopa County. Peter’s path led him from client to volunteer to Member of the Board in 2011; since 2013, he has been the

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Vice-Chairman for Joshua Tree.

With his long history of AIDS-related activism, it seems only natural that Peter eventually gravitated toward the Phoenix community’s commemoration of World AIDS Day. In 2014, he founded the Phoenix AIDS Candlelight Vigil and has just served his third term as its Co-Chairman.

More than 200 participants took part in the Vigil this past December 1. “The Vigil is so important,” Peter told me, “in so many ways. We have to remember our history, how did we get here, and remember that AIDS is not over—people are still dying from it.” Peter sees stigma attached to being HIV-positive as the greatest hindrance to combating the disease. “Change will come only if we come out of the HIV closet! Don’t be ashamed!” He remembers that even at the first Vigil, some participants were reluctant to wear a “FIGH+ER” t-shirt for fear of being identified as HIV-positive. “We have to be authentic. We don’t have time to hide!”

In conjunction with the Vigil, and under his duties as Event Manager at Aunt Rita’s Foundation, Peter was involved in planning several activities as part of a twoweek commemoration of World AIDS Day. The Foundation arranged for a display of fifteen panels from the NAMES Project, AIDS Memorial Quilt, from November 29 thru December 8. The panels on display represent members of the Phoenix community lost to the epidemic; community members who requested specific friends’ panels were asked to read the names of their loved ones at the beginning of the vigil. Peter and the folks at Aunt Rita’s also arranged for fourteen “Embers of Light Discussions,” panels hosted and moderated by various ASOs in the area, on topics including aging with HIV, substance abuse, mental health, and nutrition.

Simultaneously, the Foundation hosted artwork displays, called “AIDS through the Eyes of Art,” and poetry readings.

Aunt Rita’s Foundation has long served A&U • MARCH 2017

the LGBT community in the Phoenix area. The non-profit was founded near the beginning of the epidemic by three friends (Randy Schrock, Gary Mangum and Skip O’Neill) who “set [out] on a humble quest to raise money in annual bake sales to provide relief for those living with, and dying from, AIDS,” according to the Foundation’s website. The three “saw in the mid-eighties a lack of resources and recognized something needed to be done, as they watched close friends die from the disease with nowhere to turn.” Since 2005, Aunt Rita’s has donated more than $1.5 million to sixteen local HIV/AIDS Service Agencies. The World AIDS Day Commemoration is just one of the Foundation’s many activities, one of its most successful.

A genuine highlight of this year’s commemoration was a performance at the Foundation of the AIDS Quilt Songbook, a benefit for Joshua Tree Feeding Program.

The performances featured songs by and about people facing HIV, on a broad range of related struggles, triumphs, stigmas, medical treatments, survival, grief and transcendence, throughout the thirty-fiveyear history of AIDS. One of the evening’s songs, “My Mask,” was one of Peter’s poems set to music by Drew Nichols, perMARCH 2017 • A&U

formed by Mario Vazquez Morillas. Peter described the experience as “overwhelming to hear my poem, set to music, and sung in an operatic style, by such amazing performers.” He continued, “It is my understanding that another of my poems is also being turned into a song. It was not

ready for this year but will be performed next year.”

The World AIDS Day commemoration culminated with the Aunt Rita’s Foundation Red Brunch, under the guidance of—you guessed it—indefatigable Peter Rodriquez. The Red Brunch is an annual event at which Aunt Rita’s Foundation awards grant monies to the sixteen HIV/ AIDS service organizations they fund.

Approximately 800 people attended this year’s RED Brunch where the Foundation distributed approximately $7,000 to each of the agencies.

As for the future, don’t expect busy Mr. Rodriguez to slow down any time soon. He wants, he says, to work with various parties in the Phoenix area to improve services specifically for long-term HIV survivors. He wants those services to include education in a “self-care first” approach and confronting stigma. Can he get it done?

“I’m way too stubborn to go away!”

Peter laughed.

His record would suggest he’s right.

For information on the Joshua Tree Feeding Program, log on to: www.jtfp.org. For information on Aunt Rita’s Foundation, visit: www.auntritas.org.

Alfonso Paul DeFranco (October 10, 1961– November 23, 1991), Peter’s late husband

Hank Trout writes the bimonthly For the Long Run column for A&U.

47

Unfinished Friendship

In her one-woman show, David’s Friend, Nora Burns pays homage to her best friend, David, and revisits the AIDS crisis in New York City

by Alina Oswald

T

he above verses from Ecclesiastes came to mind when reading about Nora Burns’ new show, David’s Friend. As if to take the message a step further, she says over the phone, commenting on her show, “The PTSD is wearing off, and now we realize that [because of the AIDS crisis] we lost this huge part of our lives—people we couldn’t grow old with. I think that’s especially true for me. That’s one thing I’m really sorry [about, that my friend, David,] really didn’t get to see who I became—a comedian and a performer—didn’t get to meet my kids.

I don’t know what he would have thought.

He was very technologically advanced. He was on computers back then, and I was, ‘Oh, computers, that’s never going to get anywhere,’” she says, and I can sense a faint smile in her voice. She goes on, “I’m sure he would have been on the forefront of technology and all that.” She pauses then adds, “People that worked with me

on the show call it an ‘unfinished friendship.’”

The AIDS crisis cut short too many friendships, relationships, and lives. Those who are still here to tell the story continue to do so, even more today. The reason is multifold. On one hand, there’s the feeling that an HIV cure is within our reach. The idea of an actual cure makes many people pause in remembrance of those gone too soon, those who did not make it to the finish line. This reminds Burns of another time, back in the mid-nineties, when lifesaving medications became available. “The most tragic thing was that most people died between 1991 and 1994, like literally a year or two before [protease inhibitors],” she says.

On the other hand, as Burns further explains, the generation of those who have lived through the first years of the AIDS epidemic is getting older. “We’re the last ones with the stories, and with the memories of these people who died [during that time],” she says. “[And so] it is important to talk about it, and let these people [who lost their lives to AIDS] live again, through these stories, in present and future generations.”

Nora Burns is a New York writer and performer, and a founding member of the

comedy groups Nellie Olesons and Unitard.

She has performed in New York City at La MaMa, PS122 and Joe’s Pub, among other venues. She has appeared in films like Broken Hearts, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and Florent: Queen of the Meat Market, and on TV, in LOGO’s comedy show, Wisecrack, and The Sandra Bernhard Experience.

A couple of years ago, she started working on David’s Friend. “I started thinking about my friend and missing him,” she explains. “And I wanted to somehow remember him and his friendship.” She adds, “[The show] has changed a lot as I brought in other people and other people’s ideas. I’ve never worked on [anything] like this before.”

David’s Friend tells the story of Nora Burns and her best friend, David, and their exhilarating journey from Boston to New York (and, at times, beyond). Called “an achingly funny coming-of-age story about love and loss at the center of the universe: New York City,” David’s Friend revisits the answer to “what are best friends for?” and offers a fresh glance at New York City life before, during, and after the AIDS crisis. Burns, who wrote and performs in the one-woman show, emphasizes that David’s Friend is not a documentary. David’s Friend is a show. Some might call it “an homage” to her best friend, David, their friendship, and life in New York City.

Perhaps what’s most interesting about the show is that, as the title suggests, David’s Friend actually tells the story of the playwright herself.

After all, she is David’s friend. And she brings the story to life on stage, in the most unusual way.

It’s Friday night, January 31, in the East Village. At The Club at La MaMa, the audience is waiting, anticipating the beginning of the show, which is announced, “as they do it at La MaMa,” by the ring of a bell. And then, just like magic, Nora Burns appears on stage dancing, surrounded by a background of video and photomontages, as disco music fills the room.

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photo by Eric McNatt

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, a time to die; […]

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; […] a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.”

A&U • MARCH 2017

David’s Friend is a “true-life epic” about friendship, one that surpasses life and death.

The candid moments Burns shares with her audience—songs, videos, photos, and even snippets from her journal and from David’s own writings—bring the story home for many of us.

“Emotionally, it is not the easiest show,” she tells me, “but I still want to do it, because MARCH 2017 • A&U

I want to spend time with my friend. After the New York performances, which were extended, she plans to take the show on the road.

“We’re now not one, but two generations past the AIDS crisis,” she comments.

“Now there is PrEP. [And in part because of PrEP], AIDS is preventable.” She hopes that “prevention is a real thing” and yet, even in the U.S., not everybody has access to PrEP. There is still no cure. Awareness is still necessary.

With the passing of time, the AIDS crisis is starting to fade away from memory, and it is not part of young people’s lived experience. Young people, today, cannot imagine what it was like to live during the AIDS crisis, but many are interested in finding out; hence, the importance of telling the story

and keeping it alive.

“Tragedies that threw us together, as a community, made us able to fight the fight that we needed to fight,” Nora Burns says, referring to the AIDS crisis. For instance, during the eighties there was ACT UP; today there’s Black Lives Matter. To today’s youth she offers, “Every generation needs to learn for themselves,” and “to unite in order to fight their own fight, because we are much stronger united as a people.”

photo by Jason Rodgers

photo by Jason Rodgers

“I met my best friend [David, while dancing on a speaker] at a gay bar in Boston. We stayed up till 2 a.m. It was Boston,” Burns jokes as she begins, addressing the audience. It was the summer of ’79. They were seventeen. She was “obsessed with gays, gay clubs, and New York City. New York City was my Oz. I knew that was where I wanted to be.”

She continues to tell the story, taking us along on her journey from Boston to New York, where she went to college.

David came to visit and never left. The early days of living in New York City were “a cacophony of drugs, sex, clubs, and antibiotics.” In time, they moved in together. David would always clean up her mess, keep her alive. “There are people who find life, and others who life finds,” she says, describing her friend. “David would go out for milk and come back with [Elton John tickets]. I would get back with Half & Half.”

Then, one particular night, they read an article about “a gay cancer caused by poppers.” And although they never talked about it, “David sensed that a storm was coming. Several storms were coming,” she says on stage, as “It’s Raining Men” plays in the background. First storm was that she got a boyfriend. The second storm “was a tsunami.” Her voice breaks with emotion as she speaks of those who lost their lives to the AIDS crisis.

“David wanted to live,” she assures the audience. “He really believed that he would beat the odds. And he did, until he didn’t.”

The night David died, she was dancing on a speaker in Fire Island.

“It’s 2017 and David has been dead for twenty-three years,” she tells the audience.

“I’m just mourning him in a completely visceral way. For those of us who have lived through the age of AIDS, the PTSD is wearing off. It’s a collective mourning. I’m still here, in 2017, in New York City. It’s impossible to describe how it was back then; to face the incurable plague, so we put on our costumes and danced as hard as we could.”

Years passed and life, for Burns, went on.

Every once in a while, she’d run into people who knew David. And she’d say, “I’m Nora, I’m David’s friend.”

Find out more about Nora Burns by visiting her online at noraburns.net . For more about David’s Friend and La MaMa visit lamama.org/davids_friend.

Alina Oswald is Arts Editor of A&U.

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All the World’s a Stage

ACCELERATE!’s “As Much As I Can” Amplifies the Voices of Black Gay Men through the Arts to Expand the Dialogue About HIV

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts...”

—William Shakespeare

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our Black men and one Black woman, interconnected by a highly stigmatized yet misunderstood virus. On a balmy January night in Baltimore, an intimate crowd of twenty-plus people got to witness how these friends struggle, dream, fight, cry and rejoice together. As Much As I Can, an immersive theater play, began its brief tour in Charm City.

As Much As I Can is one of the innovative, community-driven projects supported and funded by ACCELERATE!, a four-year, $10 million, collaborative health-impact initiative from ViiV Healthcare that works to support the health and well-being of Black Americans, a community that has been heavily impacted by HIV, and, especially, Black gay and bisexual men, and men who have sex with men, in two cities hardest hit by HIV, Baltimore and Jackson.

The approach of As Much As I Can is unconventional right from the start. Audience members are separated into groups by wristbands and guided by the actors themselves to different opening scenes.

As the play goes on and the audience visits scenes, the ties between the characters begin to bind the storyline together. And they tighten around the audience, drawing them closer to the cast, closer to the truth, and closer to an emotional denouement.

The show will go on for two more days before heading south to Jackson, Mississippi, to start the process again with a new and captive audience and local actors from the community joining the principles.

Immersive Innovation Immersive theater is an interactive tool designed to bring the audience into the performance and encourage partici-

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pation. This form of storytelling creates a deeper imprint in the mind of the receivers and makes a durable impression. You’re not just watching a play, you’re experiencing it.

The adventure is made to push those uncomfortable conversations into the spotlight so that people can have a clearer picture of what living with HIV/AIDS is like for black gay and bisexual men. The audience goes to the clinic, the barbershop, the club, the church and even the bedroom with these characters for a deeper look into the conflicts, both external and internal.

The audience members walk into each scene breaking through that “fourth wall” in order to witness the action, the agony and the exhilaration within a few feet of them.

Marc Meachem, Director of External Affairs (North America) for ViiV Healthcare, says there’s a purpose for this design: “Immersive theater experiences are designed to break down the ‘fourth wall,’ where the performance happens in the midst of the audience and involves audience participation. This approach not only alters the course of the experience itself but also stirs genuine emotions in people so that they are more likely to remember the issue or topic and be inspired to take action.”

Immersive theater re-imagines audience engagement much like ACCELERATE! is trying to re-imagine engagement in prevention, testing, and treatment.

A&U • MARCH 2017

photos courtesy accelerate!

by Candace Y.A. Montague and Chael Needle

Breathing Life into the Numbers Currently, Black gay and bisexual men face not only a high incidence rate of HIV but also barriers to sustained engagement with care. One in three Black MSM is living with HIV in the United States, with the CDC estimating that one in two

Black MSM will be diagnosed in their lifetime if current trends persist. Only twenty-four percent of Black MSM who have tested positive stay engaged in care. Thus, MARCH 2017 • A&U

only sixteen percent of Black MSM have achieved viral suppression from adherence to anti-HIV medications.

More specifically, Baltimore had the tenth highest HIV diagnosis in the nation in 2014 and thirteen percent of MSM were living with HIV in 2012. In Jackson,

with HIV between 2012–2013 (the highest in the nation).

As Much As I Can seeks to go beyond the science and statistics, addressing the lives of Black gay and bisexual men holistically and authentically so that the audience helps create the message they most need

the numbers were even more dire with the city having the fourth highest HIV diagnosis rate in the nation in 2014 and thirty-nine percent of MSM were living

to hear. The theater piece emerged from the ethnographic research conducted by ACCELERATE! in both communities, and relied on sustained dialogues nurtured

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by organizations and individuals. It was created with the help of the Jackson State University Department of Speech and Theatre (Jackson, MS) and The Community Cares Project of LIGHT Health & Wellness Comprehensive Services, Inc. (Baltimore, MD). Says Meachem: “I think the answer to addressing the incredible and enduring disparities in HIV, among Black men as well as Latino men, is going to come from those men.

And when I say ‘those men,’ I’m talking about going outside of the care community. So there’s the healthcare provider, the clinic, the ASOs, and all of that, and they’re good and important. But I think when you look at all the work that’s been done, and you look at that [estimated] 1 in 2 lifetime incidence rate for Black gay and bisexual men, we’re not going to close that gap with science alone. Closing that gap is going to involve people.

And the people who we need to involve are Black gay and bisexual men.”

Those numbers need voices behind them. Accountability is a crucial part of advocacy. Meachem strongly encourages people to advocate for their needs.

“When we talk about the systems that provide care, again it’s around holding those systems accountable and saying these are the things that we need, these are the things that prevent us from remaining in care.

Whether it’s knowing where to go when you move and you’re new to town; whether if it’s if you find that a clinic isn’t a good fit for you and you need another clinic. Making sure that those issues that aren’t working as well are the issues that are raised and elevated and shared. So jointly holding society accountable both in the communities and the systems that provide care is important.”

So, what are the needs that should be addressed to help with engaging people in care and keeping them in care?

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One need is an environment, inside and outside of healthcare settings, free of stigma. Notes Meachem about what ACCELERATE! learned from interviewing Black gay and bisexual men and other research, stigma can be silencing; individuals are hesitant “to talk about or disclose their HIV status, to disclose the fact that they’re gay, to disclose the fact that they’re

in love, frankly.”

Other needs include a compassionate, humanizing healthcare environment and the security of privacy, especially in small cities and towns.

An important need is an individualized approach to healthcare. Says Meachem: “Different people want different things, right? Some people want just the facts when they approach their care provider: ‘What do I need to do? When am I coming

in for my next blood draw? Show me the pictures of the pills….Goodbye.’ They don’t want the pat on the back; they don’t want the ‘I feel your pain’ approach. Other people…can’t even think about starting treatment until they deal with some emotional issues or social issues that might prevent them from getting care. They might not be in stable housing [for example]...a host of issues that interfere with them engaging in care.”

Addressing these needs is important. If people don’t see that their needs are being met in a healthcare setting, they are less likely to come back or spend time and energy searching for another clinic. If options for healthcare are already limited, they may fall out of care entirely.

From its research, ACCELERATE! seeks to invest in four truths: feelings of empowerment and support networks need to be strengthened; sex ed needs to be made relevant; testing is a critical opportunity for care engagement; and navigation services need to be made more robust.

After the Lights Go Up As Much As I Can was positively received by the audiences after each performance. Many people raved about the superb acting and the emotions they felt while experiencing the play. Other audience members praised the education they subliminally collected that night. During an open discussion after the play, the audience and actors shared their revelations. Audience dialogue is critical to the success of the play, says Meachem. “We feel like the engine that is going to drive reducing these disparities is dialogue, participation, and engagement by A&U • MARCH 2017

Black gay and bisexual men, in both their communities and the systems that provide them care.”

Moderated by Kali Lindsey, member of the Content Guidance team for ViiV Healthcare, the actors spoke about how doing this play pushed them out of their comfort zones and challenged their personal advocacy. “I feel like I have so much knowledge that I did not have before.

When I talk about the piece I talk about the crisis and what’s going on. I find myself talking less about the ‘gig’ and more about the fight that we’re in. It’s really kinda changed everything. It’s not just a gig. It’s my fist in the fight. I feel like when I talk to my friends it’s a chance to educate people. Before this I knew nothing. Now I feel so empowered.” Monique Scott, who played trusted friend Voya/Shawna. Actor Aaron Tisdale, who played a quiet barber in the barbershop scene, says playing this character made him more reflective.

“I’ve been in situations where I was called faggot or sissy because of my mannerisms.

People can be so judgmental because of that. So playing that character made me reflect on that. We judge each other based on experience when we should actually love each other for it.”

One of the biggest challenges in theater is playing a role that is the complete opposite of yourself. Actress Roxie Johnson, a Baltimore native, claimed she hated playing the loud, rude, dispassionate, judgmental receptionist at the clinic. “She’s everything that I’m not.” Cory Gibson, heterosexual actor who started with the cast in New York, says it took some work for him to play drag queen Larry/Miss Hope Chest but it also inspired him. “As a straight black man from Texas I can say that it’s a lot of straight people who don’t have the courage to speak up for people that are gay and in situations. I feel honored to be in this production and to be Miss Hope Chest, in drag. I’m a straight dude and I speak up. I speak up for the goodness inside of people. We have to be responsible for that. Straight people who keep their mouths closed are just as bad as the people with their mouths wide open.”

ACCELERATE! affirms that real change around HIV and its impact will only be achieved through co-creation. With As Much As I Can, the initiative modeled collaboration from the first step to the last—drawing on ethnographic research, engaging and training local co-captains within the community to help assemble groups of men and elicit their concerns, working with playwrights on the script, enlarging the community of concerned MARCH 2017 • A&U

stakeholders in the cities so that Black gay men and those who are caring for them are not going it alone, reflecting on and refining the script based on community feedback, and amplifying the voices of men living with and vulnerable to HIV so that challenges like stigma and universal truths about love, family, faith and self-acceptance resonate with others.

Launched in 2015, ACCELERATE! hews to ViiV Healthcare’s mission to go beyond the development of new HIV medications and address all the needs of individuals living with and impacted by HIV/AIDS. Solutions to problems along the continuum of care, from prevention to treatment, are patient-centered but also importantly people-driven. The practice of involving those most affected is essential for creating lasting and positive transformative change—after all, it’s people who need to act. And that’s how As Much As I Can flips the script.

After the performance, the creators hope that audience members continue the co-creation after they exit the play, when individuals potentially transform what they know and what they have learned from others into change that makes a positive difference as they navigate their relationships, communities, and healthcare settings. Shifts need to happen, too, within community-based organizations and healthcare sites.

about advances in HIV medications and what it actually means to live with HIV. Some people, says Meachem, are relying on older narratives—about AIDS as a death sentence, about AIDS treatment with high pill burdens. “At the same time, when there’s a certain level of awareness that treatment has evolved and that there’s even this one pill a day you can take, people still [sometimes] have that selective memory of the way things were and how bad they were, and that can sometimes get in the way of people engaging in treatment.” Distrust in healthcare institutions (stemming from betrayals like Tuskegee)

Drivers of Hope The statistics, however, can seem daunting, and HIV care researchers have pointed out that lasting engagement in care depends on having hope—having hope that you can prevent HIV, or having hope that you can lead a healthy life with HIV. Does ACCELERATE! seek to counter this potential sense of hopelessness?

“Absolutely,” says Meachem, breaking the problem down into two parts.

Individuals do need to be educated about the statistics. But, Meachem says, his team has learned that statistics can drive individuals’ motivation toward a self-empowered approach to health and representing their lived experiences.

“We’ve heard a number of people say that when they got a positive diagnosis, they didn’t want to be a statistic,” he says, adding that these individuals wanted to make clear that they were living their lives, living out universal hopes and dreams.

“They were looking for a relationship; they thought they were in love; they thought they were in a committed relationship.”

And to nurture hope, says Meachem, there needs to be a greater awareness

also “still weigh on people,” he adds.

A crucial part of our mission, says Meachem about ACCELERATE! and ViiV Healthcare in general, is “about telling people that treatment has evolved, that treatment today is better than treatment in earlier days, and about things like PrEP, and about things like Treatment as Prevention, because that stigma we talked about, it’s also within a community, between people who are HIV-positive and HIV-negative. I think that increasing the level of knowledge and discussion around these facts and hopefully bringing this up more will help decrease the stigma, ultimately. I think that will be a driver of hope.”

For more information about ACCELERATE!, log on to: https://us.viivhealthcare.com/emaccelerate-em-initiative.aspx.

Chael Needle is Managing Editor of A&U. Candace Y.A. Montague is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. Her work has been featured in a number of print and online publications including The Washington Post and The Grio.com. Follow her on Twitter @urbanbushwoman9.

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#youth #HIV #awareness Social Media-Savvy & Camera-Ready AIDS Activist Benjamin Di’Costa Is Voice for Today’s Youth

by John Francis Leonard Photographed Exclusively for A&U by Michael Kerner

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ne need not look any further than the Kardashians and their ilk to know that to reach young people today, image is everything. The power of social media is paramount in getting a message across and reaching your target audience. Your image can be what you use to grab the attention of your intended demographic. But what if you want to be a voice for change; what if your cause is more worthy than any desire for fame or recognition? Benjamin Di’Costa has such a message and is motivated to use the power of social media to reach young people with important information about their sexual health and stop HIV/AIDS in its tracks. He reaches that demographic through Twitter (almost 40,000 followers) and the ubiquitous Facebook (over 10,000 followers) among other platforms.

So Benjamin is not just a handsome face; he understands the politics and the history of the HIV/AIDS pandemic as well as anyone twice his age and cares deeply about saving lives and empowering today’s generation with regard to their sexual health regardless of socio-economics, eth-

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nicity, geographical location, gender identity, or sexual orientation. His outreach through blogging, public speaking, and as the face of many worthy HIV campaigns and causes hasn’t gone unnoticed. In 2016, he was awarded a prestigious Honor 41 Award as a leader in the LGBTQ Latinx community and included in the 2015 “15 HIV Advocates to Watch” list.

Benjamin is a driven, focused, socially conscious twenty-six year-old who currently resides in Chicago where he attends Truman College as a political science major.

It is clear after minutes talking to him that this major is integral to his deep understanding of subjects such as HIV activism, research, and demographics. Like many who have been inspired to make a difference in the world, he was brought to action when an issue affected his life personally.

In 2010 his then-partner was diagnosed as HIV-positive and Benjamin was struck by the negligence and insensitivity of those in the role of healthcare professionals. Procedure and standards were not maintained at all. Then and there he vowed to effect change and get educated, for his boyfriend and for all young people.

As he says himself, “I didn’t really know much about HIV. My parents had never really had the birds and the bees talk with me.” He started to get passionate about the subject and was soon recruited by an intervention program called “Popular Opinion Leader,” where he recruited his social networking group, educating them about HIV/AIDS and compelling them to get tested. Asked what his reply is if someone asks him what he does, Benjamin says of his work. “I would describe myself as a community health advocate working to insure that, regardless of background, you have equal access to prevention tools.”

He continues to be compelled to reach out to young people because they need to understand that HIV can affect anyone regardless of who you are or what your background is. He promotes himself as a “face of HIV prevention because, as he sees it, “HIV/AIDS has no one face.”

He wants youth to understand that their voices are heard and that they matter. In the healthcare space, he feels, that’s not happening as often as it should be; their voices are marginalized and discredited due to inexperience. He gets frustrated at conferences he attends seeing the same major organizations and the same major healthcare providers espousing the same message to the same audience.

New organizations and especially new and different healthcare providers need to be empowered so that they can reach underserved communities with advances in treatment and also prevention with tools such as PrEP. Benjamin may live in a major urban area where testing, treatment, and prevention tools are more readily available to those with the means to access them, but he hasn’t forgotten about underserved urban and rural communities affected by HIV/AIDS. One of the major reasons HIV rates are climbing in the Deep A&U • MARCH 2017

South and rural areas is this lack of access to care. Benjamin notes that a young person, of already limited means, is expected to drive thirty, forty, even fifty miles or more to get tested for HIV and then drive back for treatment if they’re positive or for a prescription to PrEP if they’re not. Further complicating matters is the fact that Planned Parenthood, which is often the only economically viable provider available, is under attack with its clinics closing due to cutbacks to its funding. Young people in poor inner cities face the similar barriers in accessing care within their own communities.

Benjamin’s work goes beyond social media; he provides boots on the ground for Chicago House, working as a Care Navigator in his free time.

He gets people tested for HIV and if they’re positive, connects them with a network of much needed services and resources. For Advocates for Youth, he’s a Great American Condom Campaign Ambassador, providing condoms to those who need them on college campuses. He’s also a member of the Youth Advisory Board for ViiV Healthcare. The CDC’s recent “Doing it” campaign, which encourages people to get tested for HIV, features Benjamin. He’s also a face of the “#TrustPrEP” and “My 60 Second” campaigns. Benjamin is an ambassador for “Embody Progress” which is an important social justice organization.

Over the course of his work in HIV/AIDS Benjamin noticed that the messages being sent were redundant and repetitive and he saw early on what an asset his own image could be to his work. He could use his voice and image to inspire his peers to feel empowered when it came to their sexual heath. He had the message and found the perfect means of delivery. It has proven quite effective.

The new political administration has many on their guard, but Benjamin remains cautiously optimistic. In the Reagan years, he feels, we were unprepared for the onslaught. We had to figure it out as we went along. Benjamin notes that now, “my fear is for [the administration], because they’re dealing with a community and movement that is now organized….

We have a solidified voice to respond to injustices.” He’s hopeful about the research that’s being conducted but understands that, with red tape and the cutbacks this MARCH 2017 • A&U

research will be subject to, he might not see a proven cure in his lifetime. Advances in PrEP and antiretroviral treatment, however, could be just down the road.

Benjamin’s proudest moment came this past December when he had the opportunity to meet Ryan White’s mother, Jeanne. He was thrilled to share a space with her and actually received a few words of wisdom from this remarkable woman.

In the future, Benjamin sees himself in the field of urban community development, helping grassroots organizations build a solid voice in their communities.

He’d like to expand his horizons beyond HIV and bring his own voice to different

spaces around the country. One thing is certain, if he continues to bring even half of the passion and depth to the table that he does now, whatever he puts his mind to will be a huge success.

For more information about Benjamin Di’Costa, log on to: www.benjamindicosta.com.

For more information about photographer Michael Kerner, log on to: www.kernercreative.com.

John Francis Leonard interviewed advocate and educator Daniel Garza for the January issue.

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Bluegrass Triage

what could happen to hiv/aids patients in kentucky without obamacare

Larry Buhl: What is the current state of accessing healthcare?

Robert Parrish: Because we don’t have our own state-run [ACA] exchange anymore, patients now go through healthcare. gov, and it’s very confusing. We went from an efficient system where anyone could sign up without much help, to one that’s been broken up into two different websites that don’t communicate with each other well. Under Kynect, we could have someone enrolled in Medicaid in thirty minutes.

Now it takes weeks to resolve issues. And they need our help much more often to advocate and to navigate Medicaid enrollment. That’s time I could be spending on actual case management instead of dealing with those issues.

What was it like before the Affordable Care Act went into effect?

Alice Thornton: When the state exchange, Kynect, was implemented, many of our patients were crying out of happi-

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ness because had insurance for the first time. They knew their lives would not be destroyed if they had a huge bill.

RP: You had Medicaid, Medicare, employer-based plans, or nothing. And forty-two percent of our population had nothing. They were totally reliant on Ryan White funding for medications and all HIV care.

But there are gaps that can’t be covered

by Ryan White. If you have to go to ER, or be in hospital or ride in ambulance, now these patients can be covered. And it doesn’t cover in-patient care.

AT: In 2013, before Kynect, forty-two percent or our patients were uninsured.

That decreased to twelve percent in 2014 and 2015 it went down to seven percent uninsured. For 2016, though we don’t have the full numbers, we think the uninsured percent will be even lower.

What surprised you about the ACA? AT: Back then a lot of our patients were diagnosed by the health department. Then suddenly with the ACA, we got people coming from different sources. We got referrals from urgent care clinics and from primary care doctors who were testing them for HIV. I never thought that was one of the outcomes we would see. That goes to preventative care. Folks could get screenings that they would normally not be screened for.

Assuming ACA is repealed without replacement, do you worry that more people will not be getting preventative care? Or drop out of the continuum of care?

AT: I do. And fewer people will be getting diagnosed. And medications could be a problem. We have ADAP, and right now there’s no waiting list, but if we put those forty-two percent back on no insurance,

there’s going to be a waiting list like there was before ACA. I mean, we had a system [under Kynect] that really worked.

What are some other concerns about repeal of the ACA without replacement?

AT: We’re hearing a lot of fear about what will happen with insurance and not knowing what’s going to happen. We’ve had an increase in patients wanting to see our mental health counselors about the anxiety over that. One scary thing for HIV patients is the pre-existing clauses, which might come back.

RP: That would be one portion of repeal that would be devastating for our patients, who are generally low-income. And that means people with hepatitis, with diabetes.

It will affect almost everyone, not just those with HIV. AT: Many of our patients do work and have access to insurance, but you can imagine that premium may go from a low amount to $800 or $1,000. These are often young people, maybe still going to school, working in food service. It’s not like they’re staying at home being lazy.

They happen to have HIV and need to make a living. They might not be able to keep working if something disastrous happens. It can be a vicious cycle.

Larry Buhl is a radio news reporter, screenwriter, and novelist living in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter @LarryBuhl.

A&U • MARCH 2017

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

I

n January, the Republican-led U.S. Congress set into motion the full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. There have been a few trial balloons offered by Republicans as possible replacements, but nothing concrete. Which means many people with HIV, HCV and other infectious diseases who have benefitted from the ACA have no idea what kind of care they’ll be able to afford next year.

In the first part of a series on the possible effects of ACA repeal, I wanted to find out what would happen to those who work with at-risk populations with HIV/AIDS in Kentucky, which was touted as a model for ACA implementation with its state exchange known as Kynect.

I spoke with Alice Thornton, MD, the Chief of Infectious Diseases at the University of Kentucky Medical Center, and Robert Parrish, a Medical Case Manager at Kentucky’s Bluegrass Care Clinic, which serves primarily lower-income patients.

They told me that some benefits patients enjoyed have already been eroded since their new governor, Republican Matt Bevin, ended Kynect in 2015.

Buyer Beware

the new administration may threaten hiv care & cure research

The tone and language of these questions is worrisome and we can only hope that we will not have a battle on our hands to retain George W. Bush’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that millions depend on for HIV treatment and care. Though, as of yet, the only other indication that PEPFAR will be under attack is Trumps “America first” mentality and actions.

Through the Obama administration, support for an HIV cure had grown, not quite flourished, but the political recognition of the importance of a cure was evident with NIH grants and support.

This allowed for basic science on the HIV reservoir.

Conducting such basic research has been the most logical course with the many questions pertaining to the viral reservoir the most obvious priority. But in the wake of a political upheaval and dismantling of much of what we know in this country to be logical and sacred,

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it’s reasonable to consider that HIV cure research may not be “business as usual.” Even if the NIH continues its grants at the current rate, private donations to universities and organizations will certainly be on a major decline. With so many other battles that will need to be fought on immigration, climate change/ the environment, human rights, etc., an HIV cure may not remain a top priority for some donors.

Curiously, Trump has stated that he wants to speed up the FDA drug approval process by reducing some of the regulations that may be considered red tape and which lengthen the amount of time it takes for a drug to make its way through the development pipeline. His logic here appears to be that the more drugs we have, the more competition there is, which will force lower drug prices.

One of Trump’s main contenders for FDA Commissioner, Jim O’Neill, managing Director of Mithril Capital Management, has also stated this this might be a course he would take. Although not an MD like the last four FDA Commissioners, this affiliation, at least offers hope that he may have some progressive intentions.

In a 2014 speech to biotechnology companies, O’Neil stated that he would like to “[l]et people start using them [unapproved drugs], at their own risk.” He suggests that the FDA should only require that drug companies “prove that a drug is safe,” before the public is allowed access to it. Data then would be generated through the use of these drugs and not clinical trials.

On the one hand, many lives could be saved with this approach. Countless numbers of adults and children have died waiting for a drug that had proved in clinical trials to work but didn’t receive FDA approval in time. If this were the case, need would likely end up dictating

risk—how long a person would wait for a drug might depend and how sick they are. The more people who use it before them with good results, the more chance it would work.

On the other hand, it’s difficult to imagine that insurers would pay for drugs that are yet to be proven. Either way, regulations that could help HIV drugs move through the process quicker would likely be a good thing, as long as safety is paramount.

It remains to be seen the degree to which PLWHAs, HIV research, and the field of HIV will be affected by the Trump administration. Through this historic and chaotic time, the HIV community must and are doing what we do best—take action, not only to protect the lives of PLWHAs but all vulnerable populations. We cannot and will not sit back and hope that things, including PEPFAR and our research agenda, will be okay. As we have in the past, we must do everything in our power to ensure that we not only survive the Trump era, but that we continue to thrive.

Jeannie Wraight is the former editor-in-chief and co-founder of HIV and HCV Haven (www. hivhaven.com) and a blogger and writer for TheBody.com. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Health People, a community-based organization in the South Bronx and an advisor to TRW (Teach me to Read and Write), a community-based organization in Kampala, Uganda. She lives with her husband in New York City.

A&U • MARCH 2017

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

O

ur way of life in the U.S. has already drastically changed as I write this, barely weeks after Donald Trump’s election. As of yet (the time of this writing), HIV has not made the hit list, but most of us involved with or concerned about the HIV community are on the edge of our seats. With Trump staffing his cabinet and positions of power with people like his Chief of Staff Steve Bannon (a man often referred to as a White Supremacist), it’s far from alarmist to have concerns about the fate of a community with a disease known for mostly affecting people of color, gay people, and injection drug users.

A fear for PEPFAR’s future is already brewing, ignited by a questionnaire sent

by Trump’s transitional team to the State Department. The questionnaire covered many aspects of our relationship with Africa, with two questions directly targeting PEPFAR: • “Is PEPFAR worth the massive investment when there are so many security concerns in Africa?”

• “Is PEPFAR becoming a massive, international entitlement program?”

Golden State Reform

by

Chip Alfred california may be the next state to

change its hiv criminalization laws

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

I

t’s the largest state in the nation, with an alarmingly high number of HIV-related prosecutions. Now, thanks to a broad-based coalition of organizations and advocates, things may be about to change. “People are being criminalized just because of their HIV status, which is grossly unjust,” says Craig Pulsipher, strategist for Californians for HIV Criminalization Reform (CHCR). The state affairs specialist for APLA Health (formerly AIDS Project of Los Angeles), Pulsipher represents one of fifteen nonprofits leading CHCR, which also includes ACLU of California, Black AIDS Institute, Equality California, Lambda Legal, Los Angeles HIV Law and Policy Project, Los Angeles LGBT Center, Positive Women’s Network-USA, Sex Workers Outreach Project, and Transgender Law Center, among others.

CHCR was inspired by the first HIV Is Not a Crime conference in 2014, and had its first planning meeting soon after that.

Over the last few years, the coalition has been working on a comprehensive plan to modernize California’s outdated HIV criminal codes. “These laws, which were put on the books in the eighties, aren’t based in science or any harm that’s being committed,” Pulsipher claims. In California, ninety-five percent of HIV criminalization cases involve solicitation. That statute states that “any person who is charged with soliciting or engaging in prostitution” will be charged with a misdemeanor and required to take an HIV test. For a second offense, if the individual previously tested positive for HIV, the penalty is enhanced to a felony, and no risk of transmission or actual sexual contact is required. Pulsipher tells A&U that the coalition’s top priority is to eliminate the sentencing enhancement for sex workers. Unlike HIV criminalization laws in other states, specific provisions in California’s current non-disclosure statute for consensual sex make it tough for district attorneys to make a case.

For a person to be convicted of a felony under this code, the prosecution must prove that the individual is guilty of all of the following: 1. Knew their HIV status; 2. Engaged in sexual intercourse without a condom; 3. Did not disclose their status to a sexual partner; 4. Acted with specific MARCH 2017 • A&U

intent to infect a sexual partner with HIV. According to a recent study conducted by the Williams Institute, from 1988 to June 2014 there were 385 incidents in which one or more HIV-specific charges were brought in the Golden State, and all of them resulted in a conviction. In all, at least 800 people have come into contact with the California criminal justice system during this time period under an HIV-related law or under the state’s misdemeanor exposure law. While the number of prosecutions has declined after a peak in 2000, the coalition wants to eliminate HIV-specific criminal laws altogether. These laws stigmatize people living with HIV and those at risk, disproportionately affecting communities that are already marginalized—including women, people of color, and sex workers. “Stigma is the number-one driver of the epidemic. We know it keeps people from getting tested and seeking treatment,” Pulsipher explains. “The chance that we have to address HIV-related stigma is a really important piece of this movement.”

On February 6, 2017, Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblymember Todd Gloria (D-San Diego) introduced a bill to modernize California’s HIV criminalization laws. SB 239 updates California criminal law to approach transmission of HIV in the same way as transmission of other serious communicable diseases. It brings California statutes up to date based on current science, and

eliminates several HIV-specific criminal laws that impose harsh penalties, including for activities that do not risk exposure or transmission of HIV. “These laws are discriminatory, not based in science, and detrimental to our HIV prevention goals,” said Sen. Wiener.

“They need to be repealed. During the 1980s—the same period when some proposed quarantining people with HIV—California passed these discriminatory criminal laws and singled out people with HIV for harsher punishment than people with other communicable diseases. It’s time to move beyond stigmatizing, shaming, and fearing people who are living with HIV.” CHCR will continue to focus on raising awareness across the state, and expanding the reach of the coalition. “HIV criminalization can be a very complex topic to understand if people don’t have the basics.

We need to educate folks about how HIV is and isn’t transmitted and about how harmful these laws can be,” says Pulsipher, adding that it’s crucial to have meaningful involvement from people who are directly impacted by HIV criminalization laws.

“People living with or affected by HIV need to have a seat at the table.”

For more information, visit www.eqca.org/chcr.

A&U welcomes your HIV criminalization story ideas or suggestions. Please contact Chip Alfred, Editor at Large, at chip.alfred@gmail.com.

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Hands-On Approach

reiki promotes emotional & physical wellness

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specific regions of the head, limbs, and torso using different hand shapes.

Generally speaking, each hand position is held for several minutes, until the practitioner senses that the energy has stopped flowing. The work can be very general or focused. If the Reiki practitioner is working on a particular injury or area of concern, they may hold their hands just above the wound.

It is said that one of the most beneficial health benefits of Reiki is the reduction of stress and enhancement of relaxation, which triggers the body’s own natural healing processes and abilities, such as the immune system. This could most certainly be of interest to people living with HIV/ AIDS. In addition, Reiki is said to assist in better sleep, which is paramount to helping maintain health. Reiki is said to reduce stress, increase energy levels, and help improve chronic health problems. As is the case with many types of energy work, more research is needed. However, one double-blind study of twenty patients with advanced AIDS who received Reiki healing sessions found that patients who received the therapy experienced significantly fewer doctor visits, fewer hospitalizations, fewer days in the hospital, fewer new AIDS-defining illnesses ,and significantly lower severity of disease than those who did not.

It is said that Reiki can help to relieve assorted aches and pains from a variety of sources and may help with symptoms of asthma, chronic fatigue, and insomnia. There are claims that Reiki may speed up recovery time from surgeries

or even long-term illness.

Reiki is also said to help stabilize and balance one’s mind and emotions.

Users of Reiki on a regular basis claim to experience a calmer and more peaceful state of being and mental clarity, which makes it possible to better cope with the trials and tribulations of everyday life and stress. Practitioners and clients of Reiki say that the energetic healing via Reiki helps heal mental and emotional wounds, assists in working through varied dysfunctions, helps alleviate mood swings, fear, frustration and even anger.

Reiki energy healing has several basic benefits, including promoting deep relaxation, breaking up energy blockages, and detoxifying the system.

There is no evidence that suggests that Reiki has any harmful side effects, but it should not be used as a standalone healing method. Reiki may be helpful addition to your existing wellness routine.

After a lengthy career in the arts and LGBT activism, Robert Zukowski pursued his goal of a career in complementary and alternative healthcare. He 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 to his hands-on work, he is a writer and lecturer in the field of therapeutic massage therapy.

A&U • MARCH 2017

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

I

n the past, I have discussed different forms of energy work. Shiatsu, for example, being one of them. There are many different kinds of energy-based modalities to choose from. What I find most interesting is that while they all work with energy, generally, in some capacity, each modality works with the energy differently. Energy healing is being woven into patient services and treatment programs for people with cancer, fibromyalgia, pain, and depression. Like many other forms of complementary and alternative medicine, Reiki is now viewed by many as an effective, accepted alternative practice in mainstream America, where at least 1.2 million adults have tried the energy healing therapy. More than sixty U.S. hospitals have adopted Reiki as part of patient services, according to a UCLA study, and Reiki education is offered at 800 hospitals.

Reiki, a form of energy work, was developed in Japan. The word itself is derived from rei, meaning “free passage” or “transcendental spirit,” and ki, meaning “vital life-force energy” or “universal life energy.” Reiki works on different energetic levels of the whole person; the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspect of your being. It is said to be one of the oldest forms of energy healing as well as one of the most versatile. The energy that Reiki practitioners work with is said to come from a higher power. Bear in mind though, while Reiki energy may be referred to as spiritual, it is not a religion. Reiki is said to bring about inner peace and can be helpful in the quest for spiritual growth, if in fact that is something you seek.

Reiki is a complementary health approach in which practitioners place their hands lightly on or just above a person, with the goal of facilitating the person’s own healing response. It involves the transfer of energy from practitioner to client to enhance the body’s natural ability to heal itself through the balancing of energy, using specific techniques for restoring and balancing the natural life-force energy within the body. Reiki is done with the client fully clothed. The client may be on a table or seated in a comfortable chair. The practitioner places their hands lightly on

E R U CULT S THE

AID OF

Streaming Transparent’s Positive Story Arc Season Three Amazon Prime

S

poiler Alert: In the interest of starting an important conversation about a particular story arc in the third season of Transparent, one that I found revolutionary, I give away some important details in this piece. The third season has finished, but I know some viewers might not have started!

Not even eight years ago, I would have thought I’d never say that I watch more television than film. But, starting with the advent of some great series on the premium cable channels and burgeoning with the rise of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon, something shifted. New stories were being told in brilliant fashion. Hands down, the quality was better than the suddenly waning networks. The freedom from censorship and the dependence on fans, not advertisers, meant that I was seeing my community reflected. LGBT characters’ stories could be told in fresh and exciting new ways. Ground continues to be broken for my transgender brothers and sisters and, with one of my favorite shows, Transparent, they’re at the forefront of our nation’s zeitgeist. Also thrilling is the opportunity to see both the history of the AIDS epidemic told and, with Transparent, in its third hit season, even the story of someone living with HIV unfolding and speaking to our community.

But wait, not only a poz character, but a trans female poz character played by a trans

JULY 2016 • A&U MARCH 2017 • A&U

actress, all rare birds in television. I still remember one of the first poz characters on TV way back in the nineties on the NBC show, ER. There haven’t been a lot of them since, especially living a healthy normal life, as so may of us do every day.

HIV doesn’t define us; it has challenges, as this character played by the talented actress Trace Lysette shows us. I saw myself in this episode—nevermind that I’m a gay cisgender male, it spoke volumes to me. I think all of us, whatever our sexuality or gender identity expression, if we are living with HIV we will see ourselves reflected in this story.

Any of us that have had to have the dreaded “conversation” with a potential romantic or sexual partner will understand. For those who haven’t, it’s a great opportunity to be both entertained and enlightened.

Lysette plays Shea, a beautiful young friend of Maura Pfefferman (played by Jeffrey Tambor) the show’s main character, who is transitioning. She meets Josh Pfefferman (Jay Duplass), Maura’s son, a cisgender straight man, at Maura’s birthday party, where they find themselves in close quarters during a family game of Sardines.

There’s an easy attraction between the two. The mother of Josh’s long lost son has recently committed suicide and it shakes Josh to the core. On a road trip to Colorado to tell his son about the death of his birth mother, Josh brings Shea along for moral support. But there’s more at play, their easy relationship grows into a mutual attraction. This is brought to life subtly and brilliantly by both actors. You can’t help but find yourself rooting for it.

On a romantic romp through an abandoned amusement park, things heat up.

Josh initially steps in it by declaring that sex with a trans woman would be ideal, you wouldn’t have to worry about pregnancy. An offended Shea flees, but not so fast that she can’t be caught and Josh’s apology culminates in their making out. Shea breaks it up, mumbling that “It’s fucked up.” And flees again. What is she scared of? She’s been open about the fact that she’s had “bottom surgery”; she’s been frank and open about so much else. When he’s chased her down again, more making out ensues. “Hey wait.

Will you just stop for a second?” she asks.

By now, I’ve guessed it and am proven right. It’s not exactly shocking. The HIV prevalence among transgender women in countries like the U.S. is twenty-two percent,

disproportionately high. Worldwide, regardless of country, trans women are forty-nine times more likely to be HIV-positive.

So, now it gets awkward; it’s “that conversation” that many of us have so often had.

She assures him that she’s perfectly healthy and “It’s really nothing to worry about,” but she is HIV-positive. I’m sure all cisgender straight women can relate to this woman.

Straight men are not always among the most well informed people on HIV/AIDS. We all struggle, try as you might to make it a natural part of pre-sex dialogue; it’s like slamming on the breaks of an eighteen-wheeler going seventy. Josh assures her he’s “cool” with it—he’s not going to hate her, he’s not going to “murder her.” Gee! Thanks buddy! But that slip is telling. As a transgender female it must be at the back of her mind somewhere.

LGBT and HIV-affected communities face a higher level of violence. When you break it down to trans women, the rate soars. She’s disclosing information that can be a trigger for violence and she’s alone with this man in the middle of nowhere.

But, it’s “Joshie”—he’s not angry, he’s scared. He wants reassurance that there’s something that will offer a 100-percent, ironclad guarantee that he can’t be infected. She can’t give him that in the end.

So in the end, they both walk away disappointed. Lysette beautifully conveys this woman’s initial attraction, subsequent hesitation, and ultimate frustration and anger. I’m not in the entertainment industry, by any means, but I will be shocked if she doesn’t receive at least an Emmy nomination. It’s that groundbreaking. And kudos to all the transgender producers, directors, and writers on this groundbreaking show for giving us this story, a story about all of us who are living with HIV. And that’s the beauty of inclusion.

—John Francis Leonard

BOOKS

The Soho Press Book of 80s Short Fiction Edited by Dale Peck Soho Press

T

he eighties were a decade that began twelve straight years of conservative power in the White House.

It was often said at the time that during such a conservative era of power, counterculture thrives, nowhere

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A Calendar of Events

C

lassic Broadway show tunes have universal appeal, but something changes if the gender of the song’s character changes. New inflections of meaning and new insights are produced, while love is foregrounded as a constant and we are reminded that our differences makes us stronger. We need to backwards in order to go forward.

The annual Broadway Backwards, directed by its creator, Robert Bartley, will offer a dazzling evening of performances by a star-studded cast assembled from stage and television. Since its inception in 2006, Broadway Backwards has raised more than $2.8 million for the vital services of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City. BC/EFA has raised more than $285 million for essential services for people with AIDS and other critical illnesses across the U.S. since 1988.

Date: March 13; time: 8 p.m.; location: Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 302 West 45th Street, New York, New York; tickets: $85 (sold out), $175 and up. VIP tickets and special packages are available.

For more information about tickets, contact the organization by phone at (212) 840-0770, ext. 229, or log on to: www.broadwaycares.org.

moreso than in the arts. This collection of short fiction illustrates that theory beautifully with a culturally, ethnically, sexually diverse group of authors across gender.

Yes, the Reagan-fueled yuppie excesses of greed and affluence are represented here. Bret Easton Ellis’s testosterone-ridden, misogynistic, gay-bashing contribution to the anthology, a violent Eighties vampire tale, fits that bill perfectly. Yes, he represents the heterocentric voice of the times (despite eventually coming out himself), but his problem is that he still does. One can just imagine which lever he pulled in this past election.

But this is a balanced anthology. The stories are curated beautifully by Peck beginning with its author’s recollections of their childhoods in the sixties and moving through their formative years in the seventies and eighties as young adults.

And there’s one national theme at play that touches these pieces both directly and indirectly, and that’s the AIDS pandemic.

So many of the pieces deal with sexuality, and not a few of them addiction, that its presence starts out subtly and grows as the decade morphs into the end of the Bush, Sr. Administration in ’92. Gary Indiana writes of the “gay” seventies in the sexually frank “Sodomy,” always referring

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to events as “before the war.” The writer Laurie Weeks describes a young woman whose body is being colonized by disease in “Debbie’s Barium Swallow.” She exemplifies how short stories, as a device,

give an author license to experiment on the page unfettered by the structure of the novel. The gay writer David Wojnarowicz writes of a post-apocalyptic New York in “Spiral.” Its protagonist alternates between visiting a dying friend in the AIDS ward of a hospital and haunting the literally underground gay sex clubs of the city where the men carry on as if the virus that’s killing their brethren had never existed. The last story of the collection, “A Good Man,” is more of a traditional narrative. The heart-wrenching piece describes a gay woman’s vigil by the bedside of her best friend during an extended stay in the hospital due to complications stemming from AIDS. Perhaps most importantly, this collection documents the work of three authors we lost far to soon due to AIDS, Gil Cuadros, Essex Hemphill, and Sam D’allesandro. This is a thoughtful, provocative, and important anthology highlighting a seminal decade in the written arts. The author Dale Peck, its editor, has chosen each piece with care and much discernment.

—J.F.L. John Francis Leonard writes the column Bright Lights, Small City for A&U. A&U • MARCH 2017

MARCH 2017 • A&U

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Survival Guide

[a portrait by sean black]

“So many of my memories live in the rainy afternoons of San Francisco winters. Sometimes those memories pour down hard, relentlessly pounding, trying to drown me in a flood of grief. But more often, they glide down warm and gentle, they cleanse me, and puddle on the ground where they glisten like precious gems.”

Hank Trout Hank Trout has lived in San Francisco since 1980, the last thirteen years with his fiancé Rick Greathouse. Diagnosed with HIV in 1989, he is a twenty-eight-year long-term survivor, writer, and activist. He contributes features and the bimonthly For the Long Run column to A&U. He interviewed Cleve Jones for the January 2017 cover story. Follow him on Twitter @HankTroutWriter and http://wrestlerswob.com/hanktrout.

Sean Black is a Senior Editor of A&U.

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A&U • MARCH 2017

HIV TREATMENT CAN GET YOUR VIRAL LOAD SO LOW, IT’S UNDETECTABLE. GO FOR UNDETECTABLE.

There is no cure for HIV, but being undetectable helps protect your health. See how. Watch “The Goal of Undetectable” at HelpStopTheVirus.com © 2015 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. UNBC1853 03/15

The world is my stage, and this is just Act 1.

Let’s Grow Old Together See what life with HIV looks like from diagnosis through grandkids with a little help from Walgreens. Explore Kecia’s HIV journey at Walgreens.com/LetsGrowOldTogether. ©2017 Walgreen Co. All rights reserved.

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