A&U Magazine- April 2022 by A&U: America's AIDS Magazine

art & understanding for 31 years

Playwright Yilong Liu Advocate

Lailani Muniz Fiction by

Randi Triant

Photographer Mike Ruiz Poetry by

Steven Blaski

dominic

Colón

Rewrites the Story of HIV and Healing, On the Stage & In His Own Life

APRIL 2022 | ISSUE 330

IMPORTANT FACTS FOR BIKTARVY®

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

(bik-TAR-vee)

MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT BIKTARVY

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF BIKTARVY

BIKTARVY may cause serious side effects, including:

BIKTARVY may cause serious side effects, including:  Those in the “Most Important Information About BIKTARVY” section.  Changes in your immune system. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections that may have been hidden in your body. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking BIKTARVY.  Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys. If you develop new or worse kidney problems, they may tell you to stop taking BIKTARVY.  Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.  Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.  The most common side effects of BIKTARVY in clinical studies were diarrhea (6%), nausea (6%), and headache (5%).

 Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. Your

healthcare provider will test you for HBV. If you have both HIV-1 and HBV, your HBV may suddenly get worse if you stop taking BIKTARVY. Do not stop taking BIKTARVY without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to check your health regularly for several months, and may give you HBV medicine.

ABOUT BIKTARVY BIKTARVY is a complete, 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults and children who weigh at least 55 pounds. It can either be used in people who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before, or people who are replacing their current HIV-1 medicines and whose healthcare provider determines they meet certain requirements. BIKTARVY does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. HIV-1 is the virus that causes AIDS. Do NOT take BIKTARVY if you also take a medicine that contains:  dofetilide  rifampin  any other medicines to treat HIV-1

BEFORE TAKING BIKTARVY Tell your healthcare provider if you:  Have or have had any kidney or liver problems,

including hepatitis infection.  Have any other health problems.  Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if BIKTARVY can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking BIKTARVY.  Are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk. Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take:  Keep a list that includes all prescription and over-the-

counter medicines, antacids, laxatives, vitamins, and herbal supplements, and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist.

 BIKTARVY and other medicines may affect each other.

Ask your healthcare provider and pharmacist about medicines that interact with BIKTARVY, and ask if it is safe to take BIKTARVY with all your other medicines.

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

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

GET MORE INFORMATION  This is only a brief summary of important information

about BIKTARVY. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to learn more.

 Go to BIKTARVY.com or call 1-800-GILEAD-5  If you need help paying for your medicine,

visit BIKTARVY.com for program information.

BIKTARVY, the BIKTARVY Logo, GILEAD, the GILEAD Logo, GSI, and KEEP LOVING are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. Version date: February 2021 © 2022 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. US-BVYC-0008 01/22

#1 PRESCRIBED

HIV TREATMENT * *Source: IQVIA NPA Weekly, 04/19/2019 through 05/28/2021.

D’EVA LIVING WITH HIV SINCE 2009 REAL BIKTARVY PATIENT

KEEP LOVING.

Because HIV doesn’t change who you are. BIKTARVY® is a complete, 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in certain adults. BIKTARVY does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

Ask your healthcare provider if BIKTARVY is right for you. ONE SMALL PILL, ONCE A DAY Pill shown not actual size (15 mm x 8 mm) | Featured patient compensated by Gilead.

Please see Important Facts about BIKTARVY, including important warnings, on the previous page and visit BIKTARVY.com.

Scan to see D’Eva’s story.

Contents

April

2022

GALLERY

Photog Mike Ruiz Reflects on The Leathermen Project & the Fight Against AIDS

COVER STORY

A&U's Chael Needle Talks to Dominic Colón About His HIV-Themed Play, The War I Know, and Why Latinx Represenation Matters

FEATURES

20 Fiction What We Give, What We Take by Randi Triant

FEATURE

Advocate Lailani Muniz Stands Up for Transgender-Affirming Healthcare

36 Time Misbehaves Playwright Yilong Liu Uses Magic Realism to Explore PrEP and a Queer Generation Gap 48 Poetry City of Friends by Steven Blaski

DEPARTMENTS 4 6 8

Frontdesk Digital Footprints NewsBreak

cover photo by Stephen Churchill Downes

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14 17

Bright Lights, Big CIty Art & Understanding

lifeguide 40 42 47

Lifeguide In Brief The Culture of AIDS Lifelines

Frontdesk From the Editor

Bearing Witness

AMERICA’S AIDS MAGAZINE issue 330 vol. 31 no. 4 April 2022 editorial offices: (518) 205-5024

pril is the cruelest month——and I thought March was bad. The reason why I say April has that “honor” is because, since March, Ukraine has been invaded and bombed. Putin enthroned himself along with his cronies, and Russia has taken over Odessa because it failed to take over Kyiv. At least, the people of Ukraine are able to tell their stories and bear witness to the attempt to destroy them. Life goes on, but it’s not business as usual. Ukrainians are resisting. This month’s cover story subject, Dominic Colón, has written a heartfelt and heartrending play that bears witness to a different war——the war waged on Latinx individuals in the late eighties and early nineties by systemic racism and homophobia and the bombs that kept exploding were HIV/AIDS and crack. “I had this idea for The War I Know in my head for a long time——beginning, middle, end. But then at the beginning of the [COVID] pandemic, I noticed myself being triggered by a lot of the language,” Bronx-born Colón tells Managing Editor Chael Needle, adding that he started to see the parallels of the COVID pandemic and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, particularly in the way that individuals experiencing poverty were being treated. “I saw my experience, the experience of some of the members of my family, and I thought, Wow, we have gone through all of this together. Because it’s not just me. The characters in The War I Know are loosely based off of family members.” With beautiful photographs by Stephen Churchill Downes, the interview about resisting erasure and oppression is not to be missed. In another interview, playwright Yilong Liu bears witness to the experiences of queer Asian immigrants in the U.S. and the generation gap that often divides gay men on issues such as PrEP. Advocate Lailani Muniz bears witness to the experiences of transgender individuals who are seeking affirming healthcare no matter their serostatus in another feature. Our Gallery showcases the work of photographer Mike Ruiz, who pays tribute to how the gay leather community rallied to make a difference in the fight against HIV/ AIDS. And don’t forget to check out new fiction by Randi Triant and new poetry by Steven Blaski. We need these stories to bear witness to the ways that the world has harmed us and also the ways we have healed ourselves and society. Yes, life goes on in healing ways. The Interna-

Editor in Chief & Publisher David Waggoner Managing Editor: Chael Needle Senior Editors: Dann Dulin, Hank Trout Editor at Large: Chip Alfred Special Projects Editor: Lester Strong Arts Editor: Alina Oswald Fiction Editor: Raymond Luczak; Nonfiction Editor: Jay Vithalani; Drama Editor: Bruce Ward; Poetry Editor: Philip F. Clark; Copy Editor: Maureen Hunter

tional AIDS Conference is still going to happen in Montreal in July. Sponsored by such heavyweights as Gilead Sciences and ViiV Healthcare, the conference will help broadcast the news that new and exciting injectable treatments will be the norm by 2023. That means complicated daily drug regimens will become obsolete (with any hope their distribution will expand beyond developed countries) and the HIV population with access will no longer be tasked with remembering to take their pills on time. This revolution in treatment modalities will further expand the ability for HIV doctors to treat their patients. Sure, new technologies come with a higher price tag. Take, for example, the cost of my own treatment, which exceeds $100,000 a year. The injectables may be more money than some treatments, but the frequency of dosing may make it an attractive option. Of course that doesn’t mean community activists won’t continue to fight for affordable healthcare. One of the featured speakers at the International AIDS Conference: Solange Baptiste, Executive Director of International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC), who “leads community activists and allies across the globe to deliver ITPC’s mission to enable people in need to access optimal and affordable HIV treatment through education, demand creation, community-led monitoring and interventions to make medicines more affordable,” according to the IAS website. Life goes on, but that life should never be dwindling but as expansive as it can be.

Contributing Editors: Reed Massengill, Kelly McQuain, Lesléa Newman, Robert E. Penn, Nick Steele Contributing Writers: Ruby Comer, Alacias Enger, Claire Gasamagera, John Francis Leonard, Corey Saucier Art Director: Timothy J. Haines Contributing Photographers: Davidd Batalon, Tom Bianchi, Holly Clark, Stephen Churchill Downes, Greg Gorman, Francis Hills, Tom McGovern, Annie Tritt, Tommy Wu National Advertising Director: Harold Burdick, Jr. Sales & Marketing: David L. Bonitatibus Advertising Sales Office: (518) 205-5024 National Advertising Representative: Rivendell Media (212) 242-6863 Subscription Info: (518) 205-5024 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 • Patricia Nell Warren, 1936–2019 • Jeannie Wraight, 1968–2021 • Robert Schelepanow, 1946–2020 • Richard Garcia, 1951–2021 A&U (ISSN 1074-0872) is published by Art & Understanding, Inc., 4 Hall Street, Hoosick Falls, NY 12090, USA. For A&U advertising information please call 518-205-5024; for subscriptions and address changes please call 518-205-5024; for letters to the editor and unsolicited manuscripts write A&U Magazine, 4 Hall Street, Hoosick Falls, New York 12090; 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. ©2021 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, 4 Hall Street, Hoosick Falls, NY 12090 USA

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

Digital Digital D ig igi git ita taal Footprints Fo Footprints ootpprint in nts ts mosttweeted

art & understanding for 31 years

Cea, interviewed by Poetry Editor Philip F. Clark, garnered a lot of love for his insights about writing, art, community, and living with HIV.

Artist Miguel Cardenas Advocate

Muwonge Gerald Nonfiction by

David I. Steinberg

Actor Jonathan Miles Advocate

Claire Gasamagera

Cea

mostloved

Creates Connections Among Writing, Art, Community & HIV

Readers applauded Claire Gasamagera, who talked about her YouTube advice “column” for women living with HIV/AIDS.

MARCH 2022 | ISSUE 329

Photo by Timothy J. Haines

mostshared Along with readers on social media from around the world, Muwonge Gerald helped share the message of the Foaster Foundation for Healthcare Uganda. Photo by Afram King

@AmericasAIDSMagazine

@au_magazine

@au_americas_aids_magazine • APRIL 2022

NewsBreak

emergency grants for ukraine

roadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS announced on March 3, 2022, that it is awarding $300,000 in emergency grants to help the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine to be distributed immediately on behalf of the entire Broadway and New York City theater community. BC/EFA is providing $100,000 each to Global Giving’s Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund, the International Rescue Committee and Project HOPE. Global Giving’s Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund sprang into action immediately after Russia declared war on Ukraine. The fund supports affected communities in Ukraine and surrounding regions where Ukrainian refugees have fled. The focus is on those displaced from their homes and the most vulnerable with access to shelter, food, clean water, medical services and emotional support. The International Rescue Committee, which warns this could be the worst humanitarian crisis Europe has seen in decades, is mobilizing resources to aid the people of Ukraine forced to flee their homes. The IRC is meeting with partners and local humanitarian and emergency organizations to provide lifesaving support to civilians forced to flee their homes. Project HOPE is coordinating health care workers to provide medical support to prevent an even deeper crisis, particularly as the borders are overwhelmed by refugees. As conflict intensifies

inside Ukraine, Project HOPE is on the ground in Ukraine and in surrounding countries actively shipping medicines and medical supplies to assist Ukrainians in need. “The need for compassionate help in Ukraine grows exponentially every day and, through Broadway Cares, our extended theater community is there to heed the call,” said Robert E. Wankel, chairman and CEO of The Shubert Organization and president of the Broadway

Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Board of Trustees. ”As the philanthropic heart of Broadway, Broadway Cares again stands up with all of us to make a difference for those marginalized, oppressed and silenced.” To support Broadway Cares’ efforts, visit www.broadwaycares.org/donate. To learn more about these organizations or join us with your personal support, visit www.globalgiving.org, www.rescue.org, and www.projecthope.org.

• APRIL 2022

love

rocks:

n years past at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, God’s Love We Deliver has put on an exciting benefit concert with a roster of musical acts that, well, rocks! This year, the sixth annual Love Rocks NYC was no exception. On March 10, a sold-out audience was treated to performances by Keith Richards & The X-pensive Winos, Mavis Staples, Hozier, Warren Haynes, Ben Harper, Melissa Etheridge, Allison Russell, Larkin Poe, Tyler Bryant, David Shaw, Anders Osborne, Celisse, Jimmy Vivino, Maggie Rose, and Connor Kennedy. Jackson Browne, Bernie Williams, and Sista Strings made special appearances. The event was hosted by Mario Cantone, Gina Gershon, Steve Schirripa, Kiefer Sutherland, and Michelle Buteau. Bill Murray also lent a hand. Will Lee lent his talents as music director and band leader. Executive

nyc producers included John Varvatos, Greg Williamson, and Jeff Young. The concert raised raised over $3 million and the nonprofit will donate half of all donations raised via text-to-give to Ukrainian hunger relief. All proceeds from Love Rocks NYC benefit God’s Love We Deliver, a nonprofit that provides free-of-charge, cooked-with-care and home-delivered nutritious, medically tailored meals for people too sick to shop or cook for themselves in the New York metropolitan area. God’s Love also provides free ongoing nutrition assessment, education, and counseling. Watch the free live stream: https://fans.live/pages/love-rocks-nyc-03-10-2022. For more information about God’s Love We Deliver, log on to: www.glwd.org.

in memoriam: Paul E. Farmer

aul E. Farmer, a physician, anthropologist and humanitarian acclaimed for his work ensuring delivery of high-quality health care to some of the world’s poorest people, died February 21, 2022, at the hospital and university he helped establish in Butaro, Rwanda. The sixty-two-year-old Farmer died of an “acute cardiac event,” confirmed by Partners in Health, the global public health organization he founded. According to the New York Times, Dr. Farmer “was a practitioner of “social medicine,” arguing there was no point in treating patients for diseases only to send them back into the desperate circumstances that contributed to them in the first place. Illness, he said, has social roots and must be addressed through social structures.” Working with Partners in Health, Dr. Farmer significantly influenced public health strategies for responding to tuberculosis, HIV and Ebola. During the AIDS crisis in Haiti, he often traveled door to door to deliver antiviral medication to those in need. He often criticized international aid; he preferred to work with local providers and leaders.

APRIL 2022 •

And he often lived among the people he was treating, moving his family to Rwanda and Haiti for extended periods. Dr. Farmer was known as a fierce advocate for public health; he was the subject of a 2017 documentary, Bending the Arc, and authored twelve books.

In a prepared statement, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) remembered Dr. Farmer as “a global exemplar helping people in poor countries access lifesaving AIDS treatment long before many in the field thought it practical or possible” and “a tireless champion of access to lifesaving antiretroviral treatments personally travelling to countries across the globe to deliver medicine and care.” “TAG’s staff and board of directors are filled with grief at the premature death of Dr. Paul Farmer, who illuminated and changed our world with his combination of passion, intelligence, solidarity with the poor, and determined will for social justice,” read a statement from the Treatment Action Group. “We are filled with gratitude for his work, his legacy, and the worldwide networks of researchers, activists, clinicians, and community health workers which make up Partners in Health (PIH), which Paul co-founded in 1987. He leaves a massive legacy, an illuminating series of books, lectures, and articles; and will always hold a place in our hearts and in our work. Rest in peace, beautiful man——you changed the world forever, and you will be missed forever too.”

Without health justice, we cannot end the HIV epidemic. Show your support at sfaf.org/shop

• APRIL 2022

a letter to biden on PrEP

n February 7, 2022, 111 public health, HIV, hepatitis, and STD community-based organizations, along with providers, community health centers, and advocacy organizations, signed on to a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to support the creation of a national PrEP grant program to prevent HIV transmissions in the United States. The groups commended the Biden Administration’s updated National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) for 2022–2025 and applauded the President’s acknowledgement on World AIDS Day 2021 that central to achieving this goal is increasing uptake of PrEP. They asked that he include at least $400 million in the FY2023 budget to establish and fund a national PrEP grant program to increase awareness and access to PrEP and related services. The letter signers advised that the program should provide funding to community-based organizations, including state and city public health departments, Indian tribal communities, rural health clinics, community health centers, Ryan White clinics, sexual health and family-planning clinics, community-based organizations providing

back-to-hiv rally and die-in

ake HIV a priority again and address the impact of COVID on people with HIV——that’s the message that Bay Area activists and organizations sent on March 21, when they held a back-toHIV rally and die-on on the steps of San Francisco City Hall. For the past two years, funds and resources have been funneled toward COVID pandemic-related needs, but the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS have not been fully recognized and tended to as “a population with the greatest social need,” as stated in the prepared release. Citing 2020 HIV Epidemiological Reports from the City & County of San Francisco Dept of Public Health, the activists point out that: • HIV testing is down by 44% from 2019 • Rates of viral suppression have dropped from 75% to 70% • Among homeless persons living with HIV, only 20% have reached viral suppression, a decrease from 50% in 2019 • PrEP use has decreased, leading to potential new APRIL 2022 •

HIV prevention services, and others to ensure that PrEP reaches the communities most in need. The program should also allow for the low-cost purchase of PrEP medications and utilization of generic PrEP. It should also work with people’s existing health care coverage and take advantage of zero-dollar cost-sharing for PrEP and associated ancillary services for those who have private insurance. The new program would build upon a component of the Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. (EHE) initiative that provides funding to community health centers to expand PrEP and PrEP-related services in EHE jurisdictions. To date, $102 million has been divided among 271 health centers to help increase PrEP uptake. However, additional funding is needed and only community health centers are eligible for this program. Two bills before Congress now, the PrEP Assistance Program Act (HR 5605) and the PrEP Access and Coverage Act (S 3295, HR 6117), would both

establish national grant programs to pay for PrEP and ancillary services along with community and provider outreach needed to carry out successful PrEP programs. The PrEP Access and Coverage Act would also ensure comprehensive coverage and eliminate out-of-pocket costs for PrEP for individuals who have private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. Read the full letter to the President at https://drive.google.com/file/d/19tIxAry2LcU7OaQMStdnUWg23EULjk_7/view.

HIV transmissions • During times of lockdowns, clinic visits decreased, interrupting testing and early treatment • San Francisco’s long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS still lack adequate access to deeply affordable housing, harm reduction, mental health care, social housing, and economic assistance The organizers of the rally also called for more research to understand the complexity and breadth of the impact of living during two pandemics. The keynote speaker was Dr. Monica Gandhi, Medical Director of SF General Hospital HIV Clinic, Ward 86. Recently interviewed by Hank Trout for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF) website, she said, “I think the HIV treating community, i.e., healthcare workers, need to team up with activists, community, and patients like we did in the 80’s to again raise awareness that HIV is not over and that more resources and support should go towards HIV/AIDS. Our strength in HIV activism has always been researchers, clinicians, patients, advocates and activists working together. We need to do this again to ‘take back’ HIV as a major priority in our city.”

Other speakers included Paul Aguilar, HIV Caucus, Harvey Milk LGBTQ+ Democratic Club, HAN; Harry Breaux, long-term survivor, Founding Member, The San Francisco Principles; Hulda Brown, long-term survivor, Shanti’s Honoring Our Experience; Vince Crisostomo, long-term survivor, Director of Aging Services, SFAF; John Cunningham, Chief Executive Officer, National AIDS Memorial; Nikos Pecoraro, Overdose Survivor/ HIV Advocacy Network; Michael Rouppet, long-term survivor, housing advocate; and Liliana Talero, health educator, Shanti Project (speaking in Spanish). For more information, log on to: https://www.facebook.com/ events/469929604792531.

BRIGHT LIGHTS, SMALL CITY by John Francis Leonard

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FACES

What We Show & What We Hide or so many years, decades if I’m to be completely honest, I ran head-first from who I truly was. I was a self-invented creature, still am to some degree. The difference being that now, at fifty-two, I live by two rules. Firstly, I always cleave to faith, my heart, instinct, and truth at its core. The second thing is the sure knowledge and lessons of two decades (actually, going well into a third). The years have added much to knowledge, taste, and no small amount of just good, common horse sense in most matters. I never want to stop learning and growing, and it’s a good thing. But for so many of my younger years I was running as fast as I possibly could. To put it bluntly, I neither loved or valued myself. Everything was a race I wanted to win as I was watching my true self in the rear-view mirror. Both my social life, and to some degree, my professional life (although I’m loathe to cop to it even now) were lubricated by lab experiments. What I was doing in the past, other than during occasional lapses of judgment, was watching and observing. I was never offended to be corrected or enlightened, especially when the intent was kindness. If the intent was not as kind, than all the better the lesson learned. I think I’m repeating myself here, but it’s an affirmation that often comes to my mind. I am a gay, single, happy, healthier, poz gay man of fifty-two. I can’t tire of saying it because it took me over forty years to get there. For twenty years I lived a life of some privilege, and for that I’m thankful, but my real school was one of hard knocks. For that now too, I’m always thankful. I very often had to smile, laugh, and be grateful to be in the space and company I found myself in. Eventually over time that feeling, and perhaps some of it was exaggerated by my perception, all but lifted. Now in my life, I’m just as comfortable, and happier, as an employee of a suburban supermarket as I ever was at a gay tech billionaire’s birthday party attended by hundreds. And I stand out in a crowd in these parts! We all wear masks at different times and in different spaces for the various people in our lives. My mistake as a younger man was taking that to an extreme that was untenable. Sooner or later the cracks started showing. Often in nightclubs and at large circuit parties around the world, I would steadily become higher and higher in a room filled with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of men on the road to the same state of inebriation. The smart ones, unlike myself and a few others, pulled the car to the side of that road much earlier in the evening. But I did as I pleased. But altogether, I projected the image of a young man spoiled and cosseted by my partner. Never mind my own career’s successes; this is what I wanted people to see, and that projection suited me. During a lunch in Rio, a good friend of my partner’s, who was back at the hotel resting up for the evening’s revels, asked me

point blank at a table full of mutual friends exactly why, when I had built and run a successful business, I would want people to see only that carefully crafted image. I had no ready answer. Looking back, I remember my favorite television program as a young teen, Dynasty. I seriously wanted to be Krystle Carrington and marry the boss. I wanted to be rescued from a life of mediocrity on the wrong side of the tracks and strike oil at the altar. I would do it twice to much effect. That image, as much as it would protect me, was a trap I would struggle to free myself from for years. It’s still a crutch I’m tempted to lean upon. At that time, the late nineties and early aughts, someone’s HIV status was a private matter. At least in the circles I moved in. I cleaved to this philosophy and respected my friends’ privacy. It was well known who among us was poz, but it was bad form to gossip about it. When the less discreet would attempt to, they would get short shrift from me. Even now, among my many friends, it isn’t something I discuss often. I crave neither sympathy or pity. Recent health issues ironically brought about by twenty years of long-term HIV have necessitated an honesty about those issues, especially at work, but still I don’t discuss their root cause. Doubly ironic is the fact that I have written about my life with HIV extensively and publicly. It’s just not an issue I care to have discussed publicly closer to home. I made the mistake once of sharing the information with a young gay man I thought I could trust and was sorely mistaken. My small city is not a place where such information is taken thoughtfully or lightly. I recently got back into shape and lost the ninety pounds I had slowly and seemingly inexorably put on over the past few years and my image and how people see me had been on my mind a lot. I’ve had a lot of fun with my image and how I present myself while now realizing that, no matter how stylish and costly, clothes do not make the man. I was taught from an early age that being a gentleman in all matters was of great importance. It still is to me, I admit, but I define that differently now. Manners and the proper form are all well and good, but what makes a man is kindness. Intent

informs all we do and every exchange we have with others is an opportunity to intend to be better and to always be kind. When people compliment me on my appearance and looks, I humbly thank them and resist the urge to be too self-deprecating, or, on the opposite hand, to preen. I have a realistic picture of myself, my true self. Instead of looking at my true self in the distance behind me, I embrace that man and take every day I’m blessed with as an opportunity to learn and grow. If I look fabulous doing it, all the better, but perspective is key. So, yes, I still am thoughtful of the image I present to the world, we all are to some degree. But more than at any other time in my life, who I truly am is important. I approach every interaction and situation more thoughtfully and don’t allow the expectations and preconceived notions of others dictate how I conduct myself. Style is all well and good, but it’s substance that matters. My brother’s father, the man who raised me until I was fifteen often would say that a man’s reach should never exceed his grasp. I do my best to remember that idea and conduct myself accordingly. Modesty and kindness are of far more importance than image and material success and it’s better to be a good person than to be able to place yourself above others. We all, each of us, have our own path and, as long as ours doesn’t block the progress and journey of others, real and lasting success can be ours. John Francis Leonard is an advocate and writer, as well as a voracious reader of literature, which helps to feed his love of the English language. He has been living with HIV for fifteen years. His fiction has been published in the ImageOutWrite literary journal and he is a literary critic for Lambda Literary. Follow him on Twitter @JohnFrancisleo2. • APRIL 2022

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ART & UNDERSTANDING by Chael Needle

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GOODBYE, BUT NOT FOREVER

Reflections After Twenty-Two Years of Editing an HIV/AIDS Magazine

t’s very hard to say goodbye, but it must be done. If I slipped out the door without a proper farewell, silence would be more painful. And anyway I have tried to resist silence at every turn. The AIDS community early on learned what silence equals. While some took to the streets and some sat down with community leaders, elected and not elected, in order to protest and advocate for the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS, others took to the printed word to express their collective grief and anger and joy and their unique ideas for making the world a better place. After twenty-two years, I am moving on from my position of Managing Editor for A&U. I wanted to take this chance to say goodbye——to the writers, editors, photographers, and designers with whom I have worked over the years and also the readers, for whom we do what we do. Editing an HIV/AIDS magazine has been a challenging task. A look at A&U column topics reveals all the facets that the publication covers: treatment, wellness, nutrition, legal issues, mental health, social justice, self-empowerment, historical perspectives, international perspectives, and the list goes on. These facets are not only many but often overlaid by a specific consciousness steeped in our histories. Patricia Nell Warren’s long-running column Left Field practiced a kind of activist skepticism that was honed in the early days of the epidemic, when critical thinking became a survival tool applied to science, politics, identity, and community, sometimes all at the same time. Corey Saucier’s Brave New World combined a literary aesthetic as bold and brash as the AIDS writings of David B. Feinberg and Assotto Saint. Hank Trout’s For the Long Run showcased the needs of HIV long-term survivors in a forthright way that people living with HIV/AIDS have had to develop to cut through the discursive fog that at times drifts over healthcare professionals and policy makers. How to write for an HIV/AIDS magazine (and how to edit one) quickly becomes an exercise in how to represent the present day while honoring the past, without flattening the differences between the two. It also becomes an exercise in embracing complexity. So where to begin? In my other life as a writing instructor, I always suggest to my students that they start every essay with an analysis of the rhetorical context: topic (what are you writing about?); audience (who is your targeted audience, knowing that others may read your essay, too?); occasion (why write this now?); and purpose (why write?). Let’s unpack the rhetorical context in terms of the magazine. APRIL 2022 •

Topic: Someone once asked me, How can you write about AIDS month after month? The assumption in the question posed to me had been freckled by judgments: the topic of AIDS has been exhausted; AIDS as a topic would become boring after a while; I am limiting myself as a writer if I write about HIV/AIDS. How can you write about AIDS month after month? I said to them, I write about life. I write about people. Life, people——endless, expansive. Mostly I have tried to be of service to those I represent in my writing, the advocates and artists who have agreed to be interviewed. The writing is about them, not me. As a guiding principle, I have tried to showcase their insights about how to live well with HIV/AIDS and how to fight for themselves and others impacted by HIV/AIDS. By insights, I mean tools. What tools can we offer for readers’ toolboxes for living? Audience: Everyone——everyone is at risk for acquiring HIV. It’s a common, perhaps now antiquated HIV prevention saying——we know risk exists on a differential, as does healthcare access. Because of social unevenness created by intersections of systemic racism, gender oppression, homophobia, transphobia, and so on, and the unequal distribution of wealth and resources (material and psychological), risk manifests in ways that resist blanket statements that start with “Everyone....” One message does not fit all. Readers arrive with different attitudes toward HIV/AIDS, or different life experiences, or different health literarcies, or different ways of learning (a poem might spark something that a treatment report might not). The goal is to not see the AIDS community, or our readership, as a monolith. Thus, attention to difference is an asset when addressing a multitude of readers. And also difference within difference. When I would ask the students in the technical writing course I taught how to address the audience implied by Caribbean-American HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, they had a lot to say. Many of them were from nations in the Caribbean and proclaimed identities based on homelands, not the Caribbean. That is they sought ways to embrace the differences between people living in Jamaica and Haiti, not gloss over them. Occasion: The “why now?” concern has at least two modes: the short-term and the long-term. The short-term mode is immediately apparent. More funding is needed. A large group of people have been

excluded from a drug trial. Someone is facing a harsh prison sentence as a result of HIV criminalization law. Writers swoop in to identify and describe the problem at hand. Shine a light. Suggest a way forward. The long-term mode is trickier to figure out. Oh, we can say we are aiming toward “ending the HIV epidemic,” and cite a year, but it’s a horizon that (so far) shifts forward. And then shifts forward again. So, we know we are putting out little fires in the short-term, but why do we keep the torch burning for some future unspecified day, year, decade? For me, it’s to honor those who have died of AIDS-related causes, those who are not here to fan the flames. Purpose: What do you want readers to think or to do at the end of your essay? Yes, very often, writers will want readers to come to a deeper understanding of a particular issue, but this purpose cannot be the only one. People living with HIV/AIDS are not “students” of HIV/AIDS. Standpoints are not endpoints. More discussion may be needed and different sides considered, but talk is not the goal. People living with HIV/AIDS seek to put into practice what will sustain them and what will help them thrive. So, they are invited to consider what writers/advocates know, and, if they find it useful, transform that knowledge into action. Action——the readers themselves must take it. That is the potential for liberation that writing holds—— ideas waiting for someone to realize them. And that someone is you. I am full of sadness about leaving, but I am heartened to know I have been able to be a small project of a global project and will continue to be in a different way. I will miss the team at A&U, especially editor in chief David Waggoner, who took a chance on me two decades ago: Harold Burdick, National Adverstising Director; Dann Dulin, Senior Editor; and art director Timothy J. Haines. I will miss the advocates I have come to know, and the members of the AIDS community I now count as friends. So instead of goodbye, maybe it’s better to say see you soon——at an AIDS Walk or AIDS conference, in a webinar, or in that special space we call writing. Chael Needle is Managing Editor of A&U.

the AIDS activist project Faces from the frontlines of the fight against AIDS

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NONFICTION 20

What We Give, What We Take excerpts from the novel

by Randi Triant

hen my trailer burned down last year due to faulty electrical wiring, I moved in with Spin. It was the first time I’d lived in a home that didn’t have wheels or cement blocks underneath it. His house is a small purple Cape off Commercial Street, the main street in Provincetown. Out back, in a garage, Spin’s got a lab——“the still”——that would rival any biotech firm. It’s always best to put yourself front and center to avoid attention. Spin agrees. Small-town cops normally don’t think the drug trade lives in a garage painted fuchsia and surrounded by iris beds. Spin’s wiry from his head to his thin feet. He’s usually dressed in a wife beater, tight cutoffs, and some Converse high tops, one purple, one yellow. It’s not my style, which is khakis and a pressed shirt. Evidence that I came from an imaginary good home. People who live here think we’re lovers, but we’re not. We’re not even friends. I stick to picking up women in town only for a short stay. As much as I try not to get involved, I’m worried about Spin. He’s HIV-positive and while he’s always been compact, now he’s shading into the land of the skinny. “Have you been dipping into the still?” I ask him. We’re eating breakfast in the backyard——currant scones that he baked. The man is a constant source of surprise. He stops mid-chew, the scone filling out his cheek like a chipmunk with a nut. “Nooo,” he says. “You okay?” I press on, although an old voice inside my head from my childhood is saying, Back away. He swallows. His Adam’s apple seems like a big goiter to me. “I’m all right,” he says, confidently, but then looks away too quickly. There’s a part of me that wants to ask him again about how he’s feeling, to force him to tell me the truth, but that other voice is back, the one that keeps me alone, safe. Don’t say a word. Gathering our crumb-filled plates and dirty coffee cups together, he walks toward the house. Spin’s having a hard enough time as it is. He doesn’t need me telling him how sick he’s starting to look. To point out to him how he’s never going to be accepted by the men he pursues: dark-haired, strong jaw-lined boys whose bodies ripple as they strut through town. He doesn’t have the mandatory GI Joe good looks. His hair is all wrong. No matter

how he grooms it, it’s the inside of an electrical box. The truth is, though, I have the same genetic flaw as my mother: We’re experts at excusing ourselves as soon as anyone demands some sort of involvement. During the hot, summer days in Provincetown, the scorching sun at the beach gets on everyone’s nerves. Some days at three when my shift ends, Spin takes a break from the “still,” stopping at the PO on his way to the beach. “Wanna come?” he asks. I tell him no and that’s that. I avoid going to the beach. It’s not that I don’t love the ocean or the sight of a pretty woman, in a bikini the width of dental floss. I got polio as a kid. Sand is not exactly a steady surface for a forty-yearold man with two crutches. But when he comes by this afternoon and asks me, I’m still feeling bad this morning. It takes us an hour to walk what everyone else does in minutes. We’ve drawn more stares than if we were buck naked. My white shirt is unbuttoned. I’m drenched in sweat. With my khakis, I’m wearing my heavy oxfords. Not exactly beach attire. “He’s driven,” one of the gay boys says about me as we pass by. Spin snaps our blanket in the dead air. He smooths it over the hot sand. He practically hops up and down he’s so happy. His thin chest looks even scrawnier against the expanse of sea and sky. He has the physique of a boy who builds sandcastles. He’s wearing a backpack, adding to the schoolboy illusion. Throwing my sticks down, I find a spot on the blanket and sit. “Aren’t you hot with that shirt?” he asks as he unshoulders his pack. I know what he wants. He wants me to lift the curtain, wow the audience. My small, rippled waist leading up to broad shoulders, the muscular arms—this is his bait for the sharks circling around us. He lies on his stomach, facing me, eyes closed, his toes tapping the blanket. Immediately, I notice it. A purple lesion, dime size, on the back of his thigh. It should be hidden by his shorts, but he’s cut this pair too high. I look away and watch two men in the water. They’re grimacing as the water inches up their thighs. It’s no good. I’m drawn back to that lesion. Maybe I hadn’t seen it correctly. The afternoon sun

• APRIL 2022

can transform the beautiful into the ugly: a sunburn in a dark club looks healthy, on the beach it’s painful to look at. Maybe it’s not a lesion. Maybe it’s a spider bite. A mysterious grape stain. It’s a lesion. The more I stare at it, the more it seems to throb. Should I tell him? That second voice of mine kicks in: Not your problem. “Take off your shirt,” Spin murmurs. “Everyone’s staring at us.” This is, of course, exactly what he wants. But does he? With that angry sore on his leg? “Roll over, will you? I can’t talk to you that way.” He opens one eyelid. “Roll over,” I say. Still, Spin doesn’t move. I take off my shirt and he flips over. Minutes later, he starts to turn his body again, but I stop him with my hand on his shoulder. I’ve never touched him before. I’ve gone out of my way to avoid it. Touching someone is open to interpretation. But I don’t care what message I’m sending as I grab his shoulder, other than don’t move. He stares at my fingers on his bicep. “Don’t,” I say quietly. “Don’t what?” He smiles. “There’s a lesion on your leg.” “What?” His smile falters. He tries to lift his head, but I’m still holding him down. “On the back of your leg.” “Shit.” He closes his eyes. “What am I going to do?” I think he means now, but when his eyes open, they’re wet. “How long?” I ask him. He doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t have to. Somewhere in me I know. Nearby sunbathers are pulling their stuff together, umbrellas are folded, sand chairs gathered. It’s time for T-dance where they’ll show off their glistening bodies, dancing with wild abandon, proud of how full of life their bodies are. How good

APRIL 2022 •

their lives are. How much they’re loved. I place my shirt on Spin’s chest. “Here. Put this around your waist.” He massages the collar before he sits up, ties the shirt around his waist. “Pete, I’ve wanted to tell you——” “There’s a trailer for rent,” I interrupt him. Whatever it is he wants to tell me . . . it can’t be good. “I’m looking at it at six tonight. I really appreciate you letting me stay temporarily.” It’s a lie, of course. I hate myself for saying it. But how can I take care him? I don’t know the first thing about taking care of anyone, other than myself. I don’t know the first thing about sickness or death. “Well, that’s great,” Spin says, forcing a smile. I want to slap him hard to make him angry. It would be easier for me then. For him to grab one of my sticks and smack the living daylights out of me. Better yet, take the goddamn sticks with you, so I’m left until a park ranger comes and takes pity on me. Let me fry in this fucking sun. But Spin isn’t angry, or at least he’s not showing he is. He knows I’m leaving when he needs me most. Still, he says in the gentlest voice, “We should get going then. You don’t want to miss your appointment.” He stands and then starts to pull the blanket out from under me. Randi Triant is the author of the novels What We Give, What We Take (April, 2022), The Treehouse, selected as an AfterEllen ultimate summer read, and A New Life. Her short stories have appeared previously in literary journals and magazines, including A&U and two anthologies of writing about HIV/AIDS, Art & Understanding: Literature from the First Twenty Years of A&U and Fingernails Across the Blackboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora. She has taught writing at Boston College and Emerson College. She lives with her wife in Massachusetts.

Promises to Keep Celebrity Photographer Mike Ruiz Talks About Photography, the Leather Community & HIV/AIDS

by Alina Oswald

ecades ago, Mike Ruiz made himself a promise. That, if life were to give him the opportunity to help others, he’d take the first chance to do just that. Yet, at the time, being a teenager, he had no idea what that actually meant. Years later, when he was twenty-eight, he found a Canon EOS camera under his Christmas tree. It was a present from his friend, Roberto Ycaza. Ruiz still remembers picking up that camera and checking it out. Then, as he started photographing, he had an epiphany. He realized that photography was another way for him to communicate and express himself, and he became obsessed with it. To this day, Mike Ruiz is still grateful to his friend for giving him that camera. To this day, being “a creature of habit,” he is still a Canon shooter. Nowadays, Mike Ruiz’s name resonates with fans of shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race and America’s Next Top Model (and one of its sister shows, Canada’s Next Top Model). Over the years, he has captured iconic portraits of celebrities such as Prince, Betty White, Queen Latifah, Alan Cumming, and Taraji P. Henson; has made various TV appearances; and directed music videos for artists like Kelly Rowland and Vanessa Williams. Recently, Ruiz was named the creative director and principal photographer for L’Officiel Fashion Book Australia, L’Officiel Fashion Book Monte Carlo, and Photobook Magazine. Yet all along the way, Mike Ruiz has never forgotten the

promise that he made to his teenage self, all those years ago. And he used his camera, talent, and vision to give back. As a result, he has supported various organizations such as The Trevor Project, It Gets Better Project, and Live Out Loud. He is also an honorary board member of the Let There Be Hope research foundation. Readers of A&U might remember Ruiz’s breathtaking photography in the “PrEP Heroes” article [A&U, July 2015] highlighting the Housing Works promotional campaign with the same name. “PrEP Heroes was [a] very creative [experience],” Mike Ruiz recalls when we chat on Zoom. “My friend, Jack Mackenroth [A&U, November 2010], who’s always been very outspoken about his HIV status——asked me to do this campaign. It was right up my alley with the body painting, and the whole surreal, fantasy aspect of it. So, [photographing it] was gratifying, creatively. And also, I was able to do something positive for the community.” Over the years, Mike Ruiz has photographed various promotional campaigns to support organizations that make a difference in many people’s lives. Among many others, he partnered with RÖKK Vodka to photograph a campaign for GLAAD. He donated artwork. And he also donated all proceeds from his coffee table book, Pretty Masculine, to GMHC. Also, for several years, Mike Ruiz has used his birthday and birthday party as a fundraising opportunity for The Ali Forney Center. He’d get a venue and an event producer to Mike Ruiz, digital photography, 11 by 14. From Pretty Masculine (2011). © All rights reserved

• APRIL 2022

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create as much awareness as possible for the organization. That’s because its mission——to help marginalized and homeless LGBTQ+ youth—— resonates with the photographer. “I wish I had a resource like that when I was [a teenager] and struggling…. So, I really admire what they do and I support them.” Mike Ruiz grew up in the suburbs of Montreal. In 1981 he was only seventeen when he heard about GRID. “In hindsight, Gay-Related Immune Deficiency is a disturbing name for a disease,” he reflects. “It was alarming, but I was

young and naïve, and, to a certain extent, in denial that I had to worry about it.” It wasn’t until a few years later, when more and more people started getting sick and dying, that he realized that the AIDS crisis was “serious” and that it was going to be “devastating.” Then, in 1987, when he moved to New York City, Ruiz started seeing, firsthand, the direct effects of the crisis. Because he came of age at the height of the AIDS crisis, he was always very cautious and kept himself safe. Yet, because of the pandemic, he’d always feel surrounded by a consuming “feeling of impending doom,” by a fear that he’d “fall victim” to the virus. And so, he’d tell himself that he had a lot of living still to do, in order to survive and motivate himself to push forward. “I haven’t really thought about how [the HIV/AIDS crisis] has directly affected me creatively,” Ruiz comments. “Looking at my early work I realize that it was basically a manifestation of my very rich fantasy life that I had as a child and a teenager. I realize that all the trauma

that I’ve endured in my life has resulted in me having this need to create an alternate reality,” Ruiz comments. It wasn’t until he started photographing that he discovered “a way to channel all of that angst,” and use his work as “a form of escapism,” which, in turn, became a vehicle to his success. In so many ways, his photography work—— surreal, super glossy, and aspirational——still remains “a form of escapism” for the artist. At the same time, it offers us, the viewers, that much needed dare-to-dream kind of moment. That doesn’t mean that the photographer doesn’t remain acutely aware of everything, all the crises, happening in real time, all around the world. Quite the contrary. To this day, Mike Ruiz doesn’t take anything for granted and continues to push forward and to use his photography work to help others and give back. “I find it really difficult to just kick back, you know,” he says. “There are so many things that I want to do and this feeling that there may not be a tomorrow has led me to voraciously devour life and want to leave a legacy.” He calls the current pandemic his “reset button”: “I had eighteen months of not having to worry about hustling, but I just still feel like there’s so much stuff that I want to do, so much stuff that I don’t even know about yet that I’m going to want to do.”

• APRIL 2022

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Emerging from the recent COVID quarantine, Mike Ruiz started working on a new photography project——The Leathermen Project——which explores the leather community, and how its culture and history was, at least in part, shaped by the early AIDS crisis. Images from this particular body of work will be featured in several exhibitions opening this summer at the Tom of Finland Foundation, in Los Angeles; the Leather Archives and Museum, in Chicago; and at the Academy Social Club, in San Francisco. Working on The Leathermen Project has allowed the photographer not only to better understand the culture and history, but also the effects the AIDS crisis has had on the leather community. “Community service has been a big part of the leather community,” Ruiz explains. There’s a whole hierarchy system, and to go up in the hierarchy is, in part, based on what members can give to the community. And that’s something that resonated with the photographer. “I found that a lot of these guys are decent human beings. But, because of their sex-positive attitude, which dates back to the sixties and seventies, unfortunately, they got the brunt of the AIDS crisis. I have a lot of admiration for everything that these guys went through, directly related to the AIDS crisis.” Some of the active Leathermen, now in their sixties and seventies, have a lot of stories to tell. They are inspiring stories of survival, of caring for friends and loved ones when nobody else would. They are stories that young individuals should hear today, so that they can truly appreciate all the progress that’s been made

APRIL 2022 •

in the fight against HIV/AIDS, in the fight for equal rights. “…But I don’t feel that the burden of how horrific the AIDS crisis was is theirs to carry,” Ruiz says, mentioning the young generation. “Right now, there’s the war in Ukraine, there’s a [new] pandemic, global warming…they have enough to worry about,” he adds. And yet, as the older generation is about to pass the baton to a younger one, Mike Ruiz wants to ensure that the LGBTQ+ history is being preserved. Hence, he uses his photography to build lasting intergenerational bridges in the community. Currently, Mike Ruiz is working on releasing several Leathermen portraits as NFTs, as a way to bring together two generations. Active leathermen get to discover new ways of experiencing and exploring images; and young individuals have a chance to connect with members of the leather community and learn more about its history and culture. Thus, along the way, through his photography work, Mike Ruiz brings the history of the LGBTQ+ community into today’s metaverse, hence, preserving its legacy.

Left to right: Steve, 2022, digital photography, 11 by 14 inches. © All rights reserved Todd, 2022, digital photography, 11 by 14 inches. © All rights reserved Gerard, 2022, digital photography, 11 by 14 inches. © All rights reserved Jeff, 2022, digital photography, 11 by 14 inches. © All rights reserved Scott, 2022, digital photography, 11 by 14 inches. © All rights reserved James, 2022, digital photography, 11 by 14 inches. © All rights reserved

Find out more about Mike Ruiz’s work by visiting online at www.mikeruiz.com. Follow him on social media, on Twitter @mikeruiz1 and Instagram @ mikeruizone, for updates about his live NFT talks and other related events. Alina Oswald, Arts Editor of A&U, is a writer, photographer, and educator based in the New York City area. She’s also the new Arts Editor of Out IN Jersey Magazine. Contact her online at alinaoswald.com.

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Healing Words With the Play The War I Know, Dominic Colón Breathes Life into Latinx Characters at the Intersection of Trauma & Transformation by Chael Needle Photographed Exclusively for A&U by Stephen Churchill Downes

• MARCH 2022

MARCH 2022 •

hen Dominic Colón won the inaugural Write It Out! (WIO!) Playwright’s Prize competition for The War I Know, the thrill he felt leapt off the page. “You don’t always control what the blessing in your life will look like, but you do control what you do with it! HIV is that blessing!” he said in a prepared statement about the December 1, 2021, literary contest announcement. “Writing and developing The War I Know has not only been one of the greatest joys of my life, but it has also been a major part of my own healing and liberation.Healing and liberation are my prayer for everyone. That is why I write! That is what theatre at its best can do. That is what we at our best can do! I’m so honored to be the inaugural recipient of the WIO! prize. With the support of WIO!, I can continue to develop The War I Know trilogy so that it can inspire healing and liberation to those who need it! And we ALL M*THERF*CKIN need it!” Donja R. Love [A&U, December 2021] and Timothy DuWhite created the Write It Out! workshop program for playwrights living with HIV/AIDS in partnership with National Queer Theater, Mobilizing Our Brothers Initiative (MOBI), The Lark, and The Each-Other Project. Subsequently, the program launched the WIO! playwriting competition. Tony and Emmy-winner Billy Porter donated $5,000 as a cash prize, which is supplemented with a stipend and one-year’s dramaturgical support from GLAAD. It’s easy to understand why The War I Know, which is the first play in a

planned trilogy, took top honors. Set in the Castle Hill Projects in the Bronx in the late eighties and early nineties, the play is a masterful work whose central characters——Eggie, Puchi, Macho, Nene, Maribel, and the Soldier——will live in your heart. Early in the play, we meet Eggie, a twelve-year-old whose favorite movie is Fame and who dreams about performing on stage, in mid-audition for Mr. Larry, an after-school performing arts program director who is mounting a production of Annie. He is full of life, despite the obstacle course of bullying and homophobic slurs he must run every day. Later in the play, however, the animus all becomes too much. An older Eggie responds to Puchi, when she notices the change in him: “The world beat the joy outta me.” It’s a heart-stopping moment. Sixteen years old——and the joy is gone. But, gone forever? Though a child, Eggie is played by an adult and Colón cleverly allows the audience to see the man Eggie might become, and we will see that man, once he finishes the trilogy and the characters grow through the decades. The reference to Annie at the start of The War I Know helps set up our understanding of the characters. They are not a Depression-era white girl banking on “Tomorrow,” but a corps of parentless siblings (Puchi, Macho, and Nene) who are struggling to get through each day but nevertheless trying to make their way through a world that doesn’t make it easy to succeed for Latinx people, or gay twelve year-olds, or teen girls living with HIV. With Puchi as the maternal center, they adopt Maribel (formally) and, informally, a neighbor kid, Eggie, who Puchi

• APRIL 2022

babysits. They are characters orphaned——orphaned by AIDS, crack, economic oppression, PTSD. “The War I Know is very close to my heart. That opening monologue [when Eggie talks to Mr. Larry] is true,” Dominic Colón shares during our Zoom interview. Ever since he was a little kid, the self-described “Bronx-born-and-bred, Nuyorican, Boricua gay male” Colón has been interested in acting. He started out at the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club (which moved from the Manhattan neighborhood of Kips Bay north to the Castle Hill community in the Bronx in 1969), which has a performing arts program, whose alum include Jennifer Lopez and Kerry Washington. (Pose co-creator Steven Canals did not attend the program but was part of the club). The performing arts program was founded by a dancer, a real Mr. Larry, and, says Colón, “it became a big haven in our community.” His interest sparked in acting and dance, he went on to perform in plays in high school. “I stood out in a positive way. At least in my head I received it as positive,” he notes, explaining that being “overweight, affected, gay, flamboyant” as a kid only drew negative attention around the neighborhood. He enjoyed the positive attention and discovered he was good at performing. He wasn’t a fan of school, but he had found a way to stay engaged and so he auditioned for New York University and got in. Colón’s foundation in the arts (and a deep well of talent) has led to an exceptional, multi-hyphenate career——actor, writer, director, and producer. As an actor, he has performed in over fifty films and television shows, including guest spots on Power, The Blacklist, and Orange Is the New Black and in the Showtime limited series Escape at Dannemora. Younger readers may recognize him as Manny in the 2009–2011 rebooted The Electric Company. As a writer, he turned his BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) award-winning play, Crush, into a screenplay and won the 2011 HBO/New York International Film Festival Short Film Script Competition. With funding from HBO and a small window of time (nineteen days), he made Crush into film. Crush, about a gay teen at prom, premiered at the Latino Film Festival and played on the festival circuit, as well as on HBO. Another film, Skin, also won a BRIO for screenwriting; a comedy about a man who is afraid to have sex with his boyfriend without a shirt because of weight loss-related loose skin, the film premiered at the HBO New York Latino Film Festival before going onto the film festival circuit. He also created a half-hour television pilot, Papi. Currently, Colón is a staff writer on Pink Marine, an upcoming Netflix series. His play Prospect Ave. or The Miseducation of Juni Rodriguez was produced at New York City’s Rattlestick Theater. The War I Know has been developed by the Latinx Playwrights Circle, LAByrinth Theater Company (2021 Barn Series), and SOLFEST. As a director, he has helmed Eduardo Machado’s Marquitas (Rattlestick Theater/Pride Plays), Episodes 4-6 of The MTA Radio Plays at Rattlestick Theater, and the LAByrinth Theater Company (Zoom) reading of The War I Know, starring Victor Almanzar, Robin De Jesús (Tick Tick Boom; The Boys in the Band) , Paola Lázaro (The Walking Dead), Marlon Quijije, Daphne Rubin-Vega (RENT), Ed Ventura, and Kara Young. Colón’s short play Where’s Our Angels?, which is the first scene of the third play in the War trilogy, received the 2021 Latinx Playwrights Circle & Pregones/ PRTT Greater Good Commission. A recent reading, which Colón also directed, starred Javier Muñoz, Eddie Mujica, and Ed Ventura. As one of the prizes of the WIO! competition is a year-long consultation with the aforementioned GLAAD-sponsored dramaturg to develop a new work, Colón APRIL 2022 •

is using the opportunity to finish the third play of the War trilogy. Later, he will write the second play. His dream is to have these plays one day in repertory. Says Colón: “I had this idea for The War I Know in my head for a long time——beginning, middle, end. But then at the beginning of the [COVID] pandemic, I noticed myself being triggered by a lot of the language.” He started to see the parallels of the COVID pandemic and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, particularly in the way that individuals experiencing poverty were being treated. “I saw my experience, the experience of some of the members of my family, and I thought, Wow, we have gone through all of this together. Because it’s not just me. The characters in The War I Know are loosely based off of family members. So the first play is all about death, what war does, and specifically the war of HIV and the crack epidemic and the effects of that around community. The second play is all about rebuilding and it takes place on the first anniversary of 9/11——that’s the first act and the second act begins on the night of Barack Obama’s first inauguration. And then the third play begins on the night before the Broadway shutdown.” The War I Know speaks not only to the joy he experienced as a child discov-

ering his gifts but also the trauma, individual and collective, the generational trauma that comes from the ways in which systemic racism and homophobia, and other engines of Othering, negatively impact (in this case) Puerto Rican families in the Bronx. As the play progresses, the characters help each other write a manifesto of healing. The play is educative and empowering, centering contextualized social issues and critical perspectives without losing sight of the universal human condition. With its deft unpacking of the silencings of Latinx experiences in white-supremacist America and the abuse experienced by gay people and people living with HIV/AIDS, it’s hard to imagine Colón didn’t always know what he wanted his art to be or to do. Like most students, he was in the process of finding himself at NYU but a sobering experience led to a course correction. During sophomore year he started working a lot as an actor, going on auditions, doing plays, while making the hour-and-fifteen-minute commute back and forth from the Bronx to NYU in Greenwich Village. Needing to work and caught up in the nonstop struggle of becoming a working actor, he convinced himself he didn’t need academic classes. “But no one told me that Incompletes turn into Fs,” he says, with a signature laugh as big as a bearhug. “I stopped going to certain classes. I never withdrew...[and] I ended up being placed on terminal probation.” At the time, he was also in the process of opening the closet door wider and wider and knew he needed to move out of his neighborhood. He applied for a job as a teacher/counselor at a summer program for economically marginalized youth at the Boys Club of New York (different than the Kips Bay one) and was hired. It was a Monday through Friday 24/7 on-site job, so he only went home on weekends. It was a crucial move. At the Boys Club, he discovered his ability to teach performing arts and inspire students. “And I found myself, with everyone else, teaching the importance of education. Being this mentor,” he says about the family-like environment that allowed the staff and young clients to bond. Yet, a massive contradiction wasn’t sitting well with him. On the one hand, he was championing education and on the other hand he was failing out of school. His counselor at NYU advised him to withdraw from the program to avoid the stigma of being kicked out. “I remember I was on West 4th, calling my mom——this was pre-cell phone days——and I [asked her] What am I going to do?

“And she said, You’re going to go and register for school...” He did. He stayed in school but took electives that spoke to him——Theater of the Oppressed, Actor and Education, and so on. “All education courses, so——the intersection of social justice and education. I never got less than a 3.7——in anything,” he says with pride. He raised his cume and, even with four Fs on his transcript, he was graduated with a B-. The experience “instilled in me this importance of knowing that my art coould be used for something bigger,” he says, noting that after graduation he didn’t wait tables but signed on as a theater director of an educational theater company focused on HIV education. And, as a teaching artist, he was able to develop his acting and playwriting skills. “I was able to use all of these skills that created my artisty that eventually led me to creating and writing, but specifically work that is centered through social justice and social issues.” Though emboldened by his anti-oppression mission as a teacher and an artist, he was aware that the industry very often lags on progressive movements. “I graduated in ‘99, so as I entered the business there wasn’t a lot of opportunity. We had Oz, we had Third Watch, and eventually we got Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU and I started working my way through all the New York shows.” But casting directors matched his physical type with the drug dealer, the villain-type roles. Colón reiterates, “There wasn’t a lot of opportunity. But I was grateful to be working. That was the other side of it.” He began to chart his own course, as much as he could. His belief that representation matters led Colón to create his own work, like Crush and Skin and eventually The War I Know, that could tell the complex stories that weren’t being told about Latinx communities, about being gay, about living with HIV. And though he knew how society and its institutions needed to heal, he wasn’t sure how to usher in his own healing. So, when he found success early on with Crush, he wasn’t able to capitalize on it as much as he could. “Crush was the spark…It made me realize the potential of what I could do with my art, but in order for me to do what I had to do I had to work on myself first. And that’s when I started my own journey of healing, physically, mentally, spiritually, all of that stuff.” Post-Crush “was an incredibly dark period of my life,” he says, as he was beginning to come to terms with his serostatus. He became positive in 2005 at twenty-eight but told few people; he didn’t tell his best friend for a couple of years or his mother for six years. He had been cocooned by shame for decades and shame fueled the silence. “I’ve known I was gay since I was a child. And that’s when I really started feeling——that was the beginning of my trauma,” he explains. With Mr. Larry, Dominic had felt seen. And Dominic had a moment of inchoate recognition with Mr. Larry: I’m like him. “And it was heartbreaking, losing him so fast. Because auditions were in September, October 1986 and he died February ‘87 [of AIDS-related causes].” “I would have never thought it would have the effect on me that it did, being so young,” he says about Mr. Larry’s death. Misinformation about AIDS was swirling around, too——”this mysterious thing that supposedly only killed gay people but other members of your family had it. And all of this secrecy and • MARCH 2022

all of this shame. And then realizing that you’re [gay].” AIDS loomed over him as a young person. Is that going to happen to me? became a horizon that haunted him. And then it did happen to him. “The shame that I carried when I tested positive, being the theater director of a company that did HIV prevention,” he says about the should-have-known-better chastisements we sometimes flog ourselves with. “And all of the fucked-up psychological shit that I did to myself, to a certain extent because of being raised with that shame. It affects you in ways you couldn’t possibly understand, growing up as a kid.” He continues: “I feel like I was set up, almost, by society, in terms of toxic masculinity, with a lack of mentorship. I didn’t have that community. And a bunch of my peers didn’t as well.” His writing is invested with “getting to the root of that, telling that story, specifically, because oftentimes narratives around HIV (at least on the stage for the most part) are told through the lens of the gay white male, which is why I’m such a fan of Donja and everything that he’s doing with the Write It Out! program and the Write It Out! prize. “I told him one time he’s saving lives. He saved mine.” Winnng the WIO! prize and continuing to work on the play has been healing. And healing is a process that is not yet complete. But he knew entering the contest meant the possibility of telling the world he was living with HIV. Colón says he makes bets on himself, and he knew he needed to step up with The War I Know: “You better fucking walk the walk, dog. You better be the person you say you are——that’s a mantra of mine.” "I feel like He says: “Not to sound my theme cocky but I knew I was going is people to win. And for me it was a test because I was like, You’re going stepping into to win and you’re going to come the best out about your status. I knew version of I had been doing the work to support that.” t h em s el ve s. People knew he was living Because I with HIV, but “there’s just a difbelieve that." ference between having a circle know and then being able to Google that shit,” he says with a laugh. Most people supported him and he was met with a lot of love. Coming out about his serostatus “has been liberating and I feel that it allows me to work on this play...How can I say this? I knew that I could not tell the whole story of this play, these plays, in the way that I want to and not be out about my status. I feel like I have to be. This is what it is.” It aligns with his working definition of healing: “The goal every day is to love myself more. To be more fully present. To live and be my authentic self and to show up as my full self in all situations.” To illustrate, he mentions the show he has been working on, Pink Marine. The writers’ room is like a family, “amazing people,” he says. “One of my affirmations every day is to show up as my full self, unapologetically. Be fearless with my opinions. Because it’s a queer show about a young man who’s positive in the military in 1990. And I’m fully aware that I’m the only Latino writer in the room. I’m one of two gay males who lived through this generation. So I have an obligation to these characters that we tell them with humanity and with complexity and love.” It doesn’t matter if his suggestions are taken or not, ultimately. “It’s one of those things where you have to go out and you have to fight for your characters and fight for their choices. And that’s not always easy to do sometimes in preMARCH 2022 •

dominantly white spaces, typically in Hollywood, because even though society has been going through this reckoning it does take time for certain things that were established to change and I recognize that when I come into the room I bring Dominic and I’m not going to apologize for bringing Dominic.” He laughs good-heartedly because he knows sometimes people need time to get used to him, though he is serious about people seeing and accepting all of him. “But it’s work——because showing up for yourself is exhausting ,especially when you’re tired. But I do it, one, because I have to be happy with myself. And,

two, I realize that it’s bigger than me. So that, I guess, is what healing looks like——because it’s a choice. Do you know what I’m saying? That’s why alcohol addiction or any sort of addiction can become [an issue] because you could choose not to heal and to stay in pain. The thing is, healing fucking hurts....and it takes a lot of fucking work...I feel like everyone is capable of it but it’s not easy.” continued on page 46

Access Routes Advocate Lailani Muniz Discusses the Impact of HIV on Women and How to Navigate Healthcare Barriers by Chael Needle

f you look at the health disparities that exist——why Olga in the Bronx does der issues or proper inclusive language. These all pose obstacles to HIV testing, not have the same access to healthcare and its potential positive outcomes prevention, and care that can be addressed among transgender women.” as Marsha in Manhattan——you will soon uncover they intersect with and indeed are an effect of a larger engine of disparity: structural gender oppres- Chael Needle:What are your top three issues when you think about sion, racism, transphobia, and economic oppression, among other social and women of color and HIV health? What needs to be addressed and economic harms. why? Healthcare obstacles often make it more difficult for individuals to advocate Lailani Muniz: The HIV epidemic has taken a disproportionate toll on for themselves. And, with less opportunity to stablize your health, it’s harder to people of color, particularly cis and trans women of color. In 2020, 95.1% of thrive and it’s harder to work toward changing what needs to be changed so new HIV diagnoses among cis women in New York City were women of color. everyone benefits. That’s why some people living with HIV/AIDS have found Transgender women are also deeply impacted by HIV and are estimated to power in collective action. be forty-nine times more likely to be living with HIV compared to the general Like Lailani Muniz, a Bronx resident, Amida Care member, and HIV and trans population. In 2019, transgender women of color accounted for 91% of new HIV rights advocate She is one of those advocates who has the time, energy, and diagnoses among transgender women in New York City. willpower to speak out and work with others toward positive change. That’s not To address these disparities, we need to address three important issues: a to say it has been easy to eke out this space; diagnosed as HIV-positive in 2006, lack of access to culturally competent and gender-affirming care; social detershe has faced difficulties trying to secure healthcare that minants of health like poverty, unstable housing works for her rather than against her. and high unemployment; and stigma and Organizations need to discrimination. These factors make it harder for In time for March, National Women and Girls HIV/ AIDS Awareness Day, A&U was able to chat via email with of color living with HIV to stay engaged in break down barriers to women Lailani Muniz about healthcare access in New York CIty care, and for those who are HIV-negative to access care. Right now, men in prevention tools like PrEP. and transgender rights issues across the nation. But first let’s look at some national statistics about the impact of New York City are ten What can organizations or institutions do HIV/AIDS on women. In the United States, according to HIV.gov, women times more likely to take to support women living with HIV/AIDS or account for 23.45% of people living with HIV. One in nine for acquiring HIV? PrEP than women. This at risk women are unaware of their positive serostatus. Organizations need to break down barriers According to the Office of Women’s Health, a branch shouldn’t be the case. to care. Right now, men in New York City are of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services: ten times more likely to take PrEP than women. • Black women account for the largest amount of This shouldn’t be the case. We need to improve new HIV diagnoses. African-American women made up more than 61% of outreach directly to underserved communities so more people know about PrEP new HIV infections among women in 2015 but are only 14% of the female and how to access it. And for people living with HIV, we need to support their population in the United States; health holistically. That includes addressing non-medical needs like housing, • Hispanic women made up 15% of new HIV infections among women food insecurity, and unemployment, as well as physical and behavioral health in 2015 services. We also have a lot more work to do to break down stigma and health disparities for trans women in particular. Gender-sensitivity training is an HIV.gov reports that an estimated 14% of transgender women are living important first step. with HIV. Trans women of color are disproportionately impacted. According to the new National HIV/AIDS Strategy, “an estimated 44% of Black transgender What does an organization like Amida Care, which takes a comprewomen, 26% of Latina transgender women, and 7% of White transgender womhensive, coordinated approach to addressing the disparities that en have HIV. Transgender women experience stigma and discrimination and persist for New Yorkers of color, do right when it comes to addressing often encounter healthcare providers or clinics lacking knowledge of transgenthe healthcare needs of women, and particularly women of trans

“

• APRIL 2022

experience and those who identify as gender nonconforming or nonbinary? Amida Care is a Medicaid Special Needs Health Plan for people like me who are affected by HIV. Its intensive, integrated model of care is about more than pills and doctors’ visits. This starts with creating a strong sense of belonging as a first step in a true partnership between health plan, provider, and member. They provide integrated services that address the whole health of their members, including primary care, hormone therapy, gender-affirming care, sexual health services, HIV treatment and prevention, substance use treatment, pharmaceutical services, and mental health services. It’s so important for trans New Yorkers to have access to gender-affirming surgeries so that they are living in bodies they feel are worth taking care of. Amida Care specifically tailors its services to the health needs of TGNC New Yorkers so they can live healthy, authentic lives. Amida Care also advocates that more healthcare providers receive training in culturally competent care, and calls for all health insurance plans to mandate coverage of comprehensive gender-affirming care. Is there anything we haven’t covered that you would like to cover? Transgender Americans face systemic discrimination at almost every turn, from family members, at schools and at work, in the justice system, in access to housing, and in the healthcare system. Many trans Americans, myself included, have reported having to teach healthcare professionals, including their medical providers, about transgender care; have been refused treatment due to their gender identity; or have been harassed in a doctor’s office. I hope we can change this so less trans women experience the same trauma that I experienced. This discrimination has resulted in unconscionable health disparities and destroyed the trust many people of transgender experience have in our healthcare system. It is important that we invest in making quality, whole-person healthcare accessible for people of trans experience, and that we vigilantly advocate for transgender rights, which are shamefully under attack in legislatures throughout the country. For more infomation about Amida Care, New York’s largest Medicaid Special Needs Health Plan (SNP) that specializes in serving HIV-positive New Yorkers, log on to: amidacareny.org. Chael Needle interviewed Muwonge Gerald of the Foaster Foundation for Healthcare Uganda for the March issue.

APRIL 2022 •

timeMisbehaves

Yilong Liu Discusses H Work, PrEP Play, or Bluis New HIV-Themed Importance of Queer He Parachute & the istory Affected by HIV/AIDS by Chael Needle

n PrEP Play, or Blue Parachute, playwright Yilong Liu introduces us to Erik, twenty-eight, and Bryant, fifty-four, a New York City-based couple from different generations and different countries of origin with different attitudes toward new biomedical interventions like pre-exposure prophylaxis and different relationships to the early AIDS epidemic in the U.S. As the play opens, Erik tries (once again) to read a book that Bryant has written, which in part recalls Jared, a love that he lost in the eighties. Erik doesn’t get too far. It’s “depressing” to return to 1986, surmises Erik; PrEP has seemingly made all Bryant and Jared’s talk about loss “dated.” The two main characters’ disparate attitudes toward PrEP are excavated when Erik acquires an STI while having condomless sex on PrEP outside of the relationship and Bryant becomes aware that he may have been put at risk for acquiring gonorrhea. Erik sees PrEP as liberating for queer men; Bryant isn’t convinced it’s so easy (or that anyone might want) to become untethered from the past.

bryant but i don’t want to leave them behind me i don’t want to forget i don’t want to forget jared i don’t want to forget my friends you’ve read my book you know what they meant to me good people and innocent people didn’t die just so we could fuck bare and binge queer eye In the course of the play, Liu transports the audience to the past via tradi-

tional flashbacks but he also creates a character, Agent 701, named after the Truvada as PrEP pill, who helps Erik to travel through time. The magic realism is forged out of the vivid dreams Erik has been experiencing as a PrEP side effect. One stage direction pops out for the reader and you can begin to understand what’s in store for the audience: lights shift. time... misbehaves. Characters inhabit other characters in the 1980s: Erik becomes Bryant and Agent 701 become Jared, in one of of the switches. As with any time-travel narrative, the question arises: Can present-day outcomes be changed? And, in this instance, what can we learn if things stay the same? Erik and Bryant must

photo courtesy Y. Liu

erik but isn’t that what’s so amazing about this? you can just pack up that thirty years of fears and anxieties and leave them behind you.

• APRIL 2022

PrEP Dream by Yilong Liu

wrestle with what has happened while finding their way back to each other on the terra firma of the present. Opening for previews on April 1 at New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco, California, PrEP Play is a beautiful, insightful story about queer relationships, cultural differences, personal loss, and communal history. PrEP Play is not the first time Liu has focused on the subject of HIV/AIDS in his work. An earlier work, Lily, drew inspiration from babies in China who ostensibly have been genetically altered to make them unable to acquire HIV. In general, his plays cover the gamut——queer men, family, science, grief, culture clashes. Produced plays include June is The First Fall; Joker; Flood in The Valley, a Bilingual Folk Musical; and Good Enemy. Originally from Chongqing, China, Yilong earned an MFA at University of Hawai’i and now lives in New York City. His plays have garnered awards (Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award) APRIL 2022 •

and he is a Core Writer at Playwrights’ Center. The playwright is under commissions from Audible’s Emerging Playwrights Fund and EST/Sloan Project. His last produced play before PrEP Play, the Lambda Literary award-winning The Book of Mountains and Seas, saw the briefest of productions (also at New Conservatory) before being shuttered by the first COVID-related lockdown after one preview performance in March 2020. When A&U spoke with Liu, he was in San Francisco in the rehearsal process for PrEP Play, the first time in two years he had been back in a physical space with others to work on a play. Like many of us, he spent the lockdowns working online and is now making the transition to in-person collaboration. Upon returning, Liu discovered that time could misbehave off-stage too. It felt weird, he noted, to be back at the same theater that had been mounting The Book of Mountains and Seas. Now, with PrEP Play, almost half of the team is

back, including the set designer, lighting designer, and stage manager; the lead actor in Book plays Erik in the new play. “I arrived in San Francisco from New York about two weeks ago and we started rehearsal immediately after. I could feel the ghost of my past production, the production that never opened,” says Liu, especially as evidence of the past production remained——banners, programs, a calendar opened to March 2020 still hanging on the wall in the conference room where they did paperwork. “Sometimes it feels like, Oh, no time has passed because I’m in the same space, surrounded by almost the same artists. But at the same time I have a very strong feeling of a whole different world right now and all the time has passed. Because we’re doing a different play and we’re also in a different place as humans, and as artists.” Back in March 2020, no one knew how soon we could return to anything resembling

pre-pandemic theater, Liu reminds. “Two years ago, we never knew that we were not coming back together to do that old show again because, when the pandemic hit, nobody knew how long it was going to impact us. So, at first, we were like, Okay, it’s March, maybe this will pass in a few weeks, maybe we’ll gather again in April, and then maybe we’ll gather in the summer, or maybe we’ll gather in the fall.” They had hope but no set schedule. No one from Book knew they would start a new show post-lockdown or that the new show would be by the same playwright. Yet all had not been lost. The past resurfaced and merged with the present. “In a way I feel like that production that never happened is finding a new way to live within that space. And the way I found out about it is also very weird,” Liu says. “We were rehearsing in that space, wandering in the theater, and I felt something in the corner of the theater——I felt it calling out to me. And I walked over there and found this very tiny piece of wood, and I recognized it: Oh my god, this is from my last show. And I picked it up and our set designer was in the house and he tells me he used the old set to build the new set. That was the moment where I felt like, Oh my god ,time and space are really misbehaving, in a very beautiful way.” The characters of PrEP Play also experience the beautiful, wonderful mysteries of time and space. It’s a theme that Liu has lived. “As a writer I’ve Bryant’s roommate always been very interand first love, Jared ested in the eighties, (Troy Rockett) the AIDS crisis, because for me personally I was

associated with sex, associated with intimacy, for me, especially coming from a place, coming from a culture where I feel there’s less open communication or discussion about HIV. So...for a long time intimacy was something that scared me. So I really felt a shift in my energy, in my relationship with intimacy after I started taking PrEP....It was so revolutionary, so liberating; it freed me from a lot of those anxieties and fears. “But very quickly, I was experiencing some side effects. Vivid dreams...or heightened dreams,” he says, only reassured once his primary care doctor assured him the side effects were normal. And, as a writer, as a creative person, he embraced the dreams as “exciting.“ “All my senses were heightened in these dreams. I could feel, I could touch, I could smell, I could remember,” he shares, likening the experience to reading literature, being transported to the world created on the page. Sometimes he felt transported to his childhood. At other times, to the future. An unfettered kind of time travel. “And there was this one time I had this dream or this vision where I felt like I was going back into the past. I was in a sky descending into a dark place and that place felt like the eighties to me. It felt like a darkness, it felt like the skyline of New York,” he says about the eerie feeling. “Then, a few weeks after that dream, my friends invited me to a paint party, where we drank and we painted and talked. And I started to put that dream on the paper and it’s a picture of man descending into a dark place but with a blue parachute and the parachute has 701 on it, so it’s basically the PrEP pill.” The clarity he experienced inspired him to start writing PrEP Play. He continues: “I’ve always felt that, even though PrEP is magical, it’s lifesaving, it’s revolutionizing to our community, at the same time I’ve always had this concern or fear that it’s also creating a distance, or disconnection, or it’s making the younger generation less aware or less empathetic toward what the eighties were like. So in a way I feel PrEP is protecting us the same way a parachute is.” And yet PrEP might allow us to make that jump to land in the past, suggests Liu. “At least for me, PrEP is allowing me to feel safe and to get in touch with that dark side of that part of history.” agent 701 we are flying past history and time. ready to jump now? erik you’re messing with me again. agent 701 i’m not kidding. erik it’s like suicide!

cast photos by Lois Tema

Writer turned math teacher Bryant (Matt Weimer)

born in China, born in the nineties, so——very far away from my experience. But ever since I started learning English, ever since I started to know about queerness, ever since I started exploring, I started to read a lot of queer literature——plays—— and very quickly I started to learn about the AIDS crisis in the eighties and I felt that indescribable, that visceral feeling inside of me, as if I was reading part of my history. “Even though I wasn’t there, I wasn’t born, I wasn’t even an American, I was in China, I was just waiting, I felt that this was my history, a history of living and breathing and bleeding inside of me. That feeling that a lot of plays, literature, talk about, that feeling of lineage, that feeling of sheer trauma, and that feeling of a legacy being passed down to you.” The magic realism in the play, says Liu, is not so much a literary device brought in from the outside but organic to the queer experience. “As a queer person, as an immigrant, I feel like we don’t experience the world in a linear or normal way, right? At the same time a part of us are so progressive; we are actively pushing for change, pushing for transformation——actively we want to live in the future because we all believe the future is queer——but at the same time so many of us are trapped in the past. Trapped in different places in the past, in history. We experience the world in a very magical, very non-linear, very chaotic, very fragmented way. I feel like magic realism is how we are living our life.” The play draws from the past but also the present, partly inspired by his own use of PrEP, which he started in 2015. “I’ve been in the U.S. for ten years now, but, before I took PrEP, my relationship with intimacy had been more or less impacted by that time, weirdly, the shadows of that time, or the gravity of that time. I feel like there are so many anxieties and so many fears

• APRIL 2022

Metaphorical prescription drug (PrEP), Agent 701 (Akaina Ghosh) agent 701 you have a parachute! erik what if it doesn’t work?! agent 701 there’s a 99% success rate. Getting in touch with “that dark side of that part of history”——it’s a need Liu senses, a gap of knowledge among members of the younger queer generation. We have many literary works and media reports about the eighties, so “there is a general understanding about our shared history,” he says. “But maybe not the gravity of that history.” By incorporating time travel into PrEP Play, Yilong Liu finds a way to create a way to connect the generations. bryant language has a way to preserve the visceral, the ephemeral, the “here and now.” “A common thread I am seeing in some of my younger-generation friends is maybe they’re less interested in some of the literature, or in some of the stories from the eighties and nineties because it feels so removed from them, or it feels so distant from them, which partially inspires Erik’s reaction. He tried to read [Bryant’s] book but he couldn’t finish it because he finds it so ‘depressing’ and ‘dated.’ And I wonder if that’s how sometimes the younger generation thinks... APRIL 2022 •

or may feel. And I wonder if PrEP in the mix of that, in relation to how they feel like this.“ In PrEP Play, the gravity of the past helps pull PrEP parachuters down to earth; what Erik finds is not a revision of the eighties (and what he feels it means to his life) but a re-envisioning of that time and those lived experiences. “In the beginning of the play [Erik] is very much in a way fantasizing about the eighties because I think PrEP allowed him to do that, to enjoy all the freedom in intimacy and sex without all the fears and anxieties....” Freedom, Liu suggests, can return us to history, to what “people might forget: Oh, this is a luxury we didn’t have twenty or thirty years ago and we actually now have PrEP because so many people have suffered, have died, have [made] sacrifices, have participated in drug trials to have this. And the purpose of this is for us to remember, not for us to forget.” “Erik starts in the play on one side of that spectrum [and] having finished this journey he’s more aware of his role now, at least aware of where he is in the lineage of queer history,” says Liu. “I think Erik is never really sure if he is living inside the events of the book or if he’s experiencing having a dream or if he is really back in time and trying to save Jared...[but] the transformation for me is not if Erik can save Jared and truly change the course of Jared’s history but the understanding of the willingness that Queer millennial he wants to try. immigrant, Erik “I think what he (James Aaron Oh) needs to understand is the gravity, the reality of history, and knowing that the past cannot be changed. What can change, what he can work on is himself and his relationship to history. I think that is what’s more important to him.” Erik is not the only character who finds a new sense of history; Bryant also starts to reconsider PrEP and what it means to him and his generation. Liu’s conversations with some of his older friends inspired Bryant’s distrust of PrEP. Says Liu: “I started to imagine PrEP as an agent who’s on a special mission to fix that because that’s not the purpose. PrEP is not here for us to feel safe and party harder, but for us to remember that we’ve gone very far to reach this place.” Time misbehaves. Here and now is also here and then. agent 701 once upon a time... in 2018, there is... a chinese boy who sort of lives with his boyfriend... in the village. east... village. “Once upon a time in 2018. And that actually

feels real. Isn’t that true?” Liu poses. “Three years ago——that feels like ages ago. It feels like ‘once upon a time’ because you know that feeling of time is really not behaving. The last two years feel like a decade, a century. Let alone like the eighties.” He could have updated the play and set it in 2022 but he and the creative team decided to keep the year as 2018. The COVID pandemic would have to be addressed if it were 2022, notes Liu. In addition, he says, Erik grew up in China and as a Chinese man living amid COVID-related stigma “there would have to be much more complicated feelings” if the play were set in the immediate present. He’s not dismissing those feelings. “That’s something I think I want to explore in another project. I wanted the play to speak true to the time

when I first wrote it.” The doubling of epidemics might have overburdened the play, but, even without direct references to COVID, now may very well still resonate with then. One of Yilong’s friends told him: “What the [COVID] pandemic did to the world was what the AIDS epidemic did to the [queer] community back in the eighties.” The play runs from April 1—May 8 in San Francisco, but there is talk of rolling premieres——productions that might be mounted in Chicago, New York, San Diego, and wherever and whoever else wants to pull the cord and open a blue parachute. For more information about the current production at the New Conservatory, log on to: nctcsf.org. For more information about Yilong Liu, visit: yilongliu.com. Chael Needle is a writer and editor. Follow him on Twitter @Chael Needle.

L I FEGU I D E

in brief

HIV is Not a Crime

he HIV Is Not a Crime V National Training Academy (HINAC V) will be held June 4-7, 2023, at Emory & Henry College, which has a long history of engagement in social justice issues. Every two years, the conference convenes people living with HIV, HIV policy leaders, and other stakeholders (mostly U.S.-based) to educate and train “advocates to mobilize to end HIV criminalization, support PLHIV empowerment, and facilitate intersectional coalition building,” according to a prepared release. “HINAC particularly focuses on uplifting the work of PLHIV and PLHIV networks, and grassroots activists and networks engaged in racial, social, economic and gender justice movements.” The upcoming conference in Emory, Virginia, is organized by The SERO Project, in partnership with Positive Women’s Network– USA, Positively Trans, THRIVE SS, and US PLHIV Caucus. Deirdre Johnson [A&U, February 2021], a Virginia-based advocate and cofounder of Ending Criminalization and Over-incarceration in Virginia (ECHO VA) , noted “I am excited to celebrate with the other states that have either reformed or modernized their HIV criminalization laws and provide encouragement to those that are in the midst of coalition building, drafting bills and creating change. What I am honestly looking forward to is the HIV criminalization community having the opportunity to experience the beauty of Virginia for HINAC V at Emory and Henry College! I am always screaming our state tourism motto, ‘Virginia is for Lovers’ and now the HIV criminalization community will get to witness first hand our passion for setting the standard of creating change, our Southern hospitality, and Viginia LOVE.” With the help of activists, Virigina recently reformed the laws that criminalized non-disclosure of positive serostatus by people living with HIV to sexual partners, a law by which Andre Leaphart was prosecuted in 2017. The Justice Counsel Member of Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF) and Executive Director of Access Restoration Community Center (ARCC) explained the necessity of HIV decriminalization: “HIV criminalization punishes individuals who have chronic health conditions. HIV criminalization also unjustly stigmatizes and disproportionately targets vulnerable populations with poor social determinants such as people of color. Modernization of HIV laws is not just an issue for those impacted by HIV, but it is also a human rights issue.” For more information, visit: seroproject.com.

South Africa Approves Dapivirine Vaginal Ring

n March 11, 2022, the nonprofit International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM) announced that the monthly dapivirine vaginal ring received regulatory approval from the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) for use by women ages eighteen and older to reduce their HIV risk. With nearly two-thirds of new adult transmissions in South Africa——and across sub-Saharan Africa——occurring among women, women bear a disproportionate burden of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. In South Africa, every week, nearly 2,700 women ages fifteen and older acquire HIV. Expanding women’s HIV prevention choices so that they can choose the method that best meets their individual needs helps to ensure their sexual and reproductive health and rights and aids in controlling the pandemic. The monthly dapivirine ring offers women a long-acting HIV prevention product that they can control and use discreetly to reduce the risk of HIV transmission during vaginal sex, an important option for women who cannot or choose not to use higher efficacy products such as daily oral PrEP. Women insert the product themselves and replace it every month. Made of flexible silicone, the ring slowly releases the antiretroviral (ARV) drug dapivirine directly in the vagina, with minimal exposure elsewhere in the body. This approval brings the first long-acting and woman-controlled product another step closer to reaching women. IPM has applied for approval for the ring’s use in eastern and southern Africa, and plans to apply elsewhere in Africa in the future. The dapivirine ring has also been approved in Zimbabwe. “I’m grateful and delighted to hear that South Africa has the regulatory go-ahead,” Dr. Linda-Gail Bekker, professor of medicine and deputy director of the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation and immediate past president of the International AIDS Society, said in a prepared statement. “I look forward to the next steps to see this wonderful HIV prevention choice in the hands of women all over South Africa as soon as possible.” For more information, log on to: ipmglobal.org.

• APRIL 2022

Dining Out For Life Returns

fter two years of being curtailed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dining Out For Life returns to in-person dining for their twenty-sixth annual fundraising event. Each year, more than fifty local HIV service organizations partner with 2,400+ participating restaurants, 4,100+ volunteers, and 300,000+ diners to raise an average of $4 million for people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States and Canada. All funds raised through a city’s Dining Out For Life event stay in that city to provide help and hope to people living with or impacted by HIV/AIDS. Since 2006, Dining Out For Life has raised more than $52 million dollars with support from Subaru, thousands of restaurants and hundreds of volunteers. “Subaru and our retailers are committed to caring for our communities nationwide, and over many years of partnership, we’ve been privileged to support the HIV/AIDS community through Dining Out For Life,” Alan Bethke, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Subaru of America, Inc., said in a prepared statement. “We’re excited to bring Dining Out For Life back to cities across North America and invite people to sit down for a meal and show their support for their neighbors who are currently living with HIV and other chronic illnesses.” Participating in Dining Out For Life couldn’t be simpler: 1) Visit www.diningoutforlife.com to find a Dining Out For Life event in your community; 2) support participating restaurants——make a reservation, order takeout, or purchase gift certificates. What could be easier? You can also sign up to volunteer as an Ambassador, greeting diners, explaining how Dining Out For Life works and the importance of the work. Dining Out For Life 2022 will be held in more than fifty cities in the United States and Canada. Traditionally, DOFL is held on the last Thursday in April; however, in some cities, the event will be held on other days that week. Visit www.diningoutforlife.com for dates and participating restaurants in your area.

APRIL 2022 •

AIDSWatch 2022 Recommendations

n March 28, 2022, the organizers of AIDSWatch 2022——AIDS United, the US People Living with HIV Caucus, and the Treatment Access Expansion Project/Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation—— released its summary of policy recommendations to the U.S. Congress. The event, now in its twenty-ninth year, has transformed and grown even as the COVID-19 pandemic has upended lives. While there has been tremendous progress since that first AIDSWatch, the need for vigorous HIV advocacy has never been greater: communities impacted by HIV are struggling under the burden of syndemics and their social and economic impacts. AIDSWatch aims to inspire the political will to utilize the scientific knowledge we have to address the pandemic and the racial and social injustices driving the epidemic. AIDSWatch has identified demands in three categories that must be taken: • Congress must support the health of people living with or vulnerable to HIV. • Proposed actions include expanding Medicaid throughout all the States; encouraging HHS to update federal guidance for state Medicaid programs on the provision of treatment and services for HIV and hepatitis C to reflect recent advances in care; extending financial assistance to low- and middle-income people for health insurance; increasing funding and coverage for PrEP; investing in programs that address social determinants of equity and health; and increasing mental health services for the HIV-positive, among other actions. • Congress must address ongoing and persistent unfair and discriminatory practices that perpetuate structural and institutional racism and other inequities. AIDSWatch demands the passage in the U.S. Congress of the Equality Act, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Freedom to Vote Act, the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage, the Paycheck Fairness Act, the LGBTQ Data Inclusion Act, the Build Back Better Act, the Medicare for All Act, the HEAL Act for Immigrant Families; and the repeal of HIV criminalization laws. Congress must accelerate and support efforts to end the HIV epidemic in the US by 2030 through the appropriation of federal dollars. AIDSWatch demands the full funding of The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS (HOPWA), Minority AIDS Initiative; and the Opioid-Related Infectious Diseases program. They also demand additional Ending the Epidemic supplemental funding across programs. Read the full report at https://aidsunited.org/aidswatch-2022-summary-of-policy-recommendations/.

DIGITAL SERIES DIGITAL SERIES i need space

Written, directed & Created by Donja R. Love Presented by The New Group Off Stage in association with NŌ Studios and Frank Marshall

arcus Graham Marcel (played by Christopher Livingston) is away from home, holed up in his childhood bedroom when not caring for his dying uncle. He video-chats with his fiancé Marquise (Justin Weaks), his bestie Lee (Ja’Mel Ashely), and Dick (Cedric Leiba, Jr.), an online hook-up. He is pulled toward the release, mental and otherwise, that Dick promises. He pushes away from Marquise, even though it is obvious they love each other. And he vents to Lee, panicked that he has cheated on Marquise with Dick. “Am I fucked up?” he asks Lee, who has his own issues with his husband’s parents, whom he has yet to meet and, from afar, accept him as a transgender man but “draw the line at [him] being HIV.” The first three episodes of i need space provided for the press set up the central conflict and made me eager to find out why Marcus is tied up in knots about tying the knot and how he and the other characters will find the space they need. Exclusively on Broadstream (www.broad.stream), the series also stars Dane Figueroa Edidi. Writer and director Donja R. Love [A&U, December 2021] gives us black queer folx, rendered with emotional complexity via intimate backand-forths that do not shy away from sex and romance and friendship. His characters are unique and universal at the same time. The writing is sharp and fearless——it will draw you in and leave you anticipating the next episode and the one after that. I would have binged the entire series in one afternoon if I had had access! Love makes the formal constraints——we only ever see the cam view of each character——work to advance the series’ theme: Marcus wants both intimacy and distance from others, connection and disconnection. In one scene, Marquise and Dick are fused in a video-chat mash-up, as if they are speaking to each other, their voices inhabiting and creating chaos in Marcus’s brain. The video-chat often becomes a confessional booth, allowing the characters be expressive but also screened-off from each other. When Marcus, who is an actor, films his audition for a project Lee is working on, he can’t get past the line, “Loss is like....” Livingston brings the deep well of Marcus’ pain to the surface. And the audience will want to console him. Understand him. As an award-winning playwright and filmmaker, Love has wowed audiences with the HIV-themed one in two and Sugar in Our Wounds, as well as digital series like Modern Day Black Gay. He also has worked to strengthen representations of life with HIV/AIDS on the stage by cofounding the Write It Out! workshop series for playwrights living with HIV, and its playwriting competition (Dominic Colón, this month’s cover story subject, won the inaugural prize). i need space addresses HIV/AIDS in subtle ways——the aforementioned

rejection of Lee by his parents-in-laws is one, and another is the vulnerability and loneliness that Marcus suffers might be understood as laying the groundwork for taking risks, emotional and physical, that sometimes lead to HIV acquisition. The wider journey of healing, whether driven by HIV or some other trauma, is threaded through Love’s work. He told Chip Alfred in the A&U cover story interview: “As odd as it may sound, it took me being diagnosed HIV-positive to actually get a full sense of my purpose, and what it means to write and to use writing as healing.” i need space continues this work in heartrending and heartwarming ways. —Chael Needle Chael Needle is Managing Editor of A&U.

• APRIL 2022

P O E T RY

S T. M AR K’S

RED DOOR SERIES First and third Wednesdays at 6:30 pm • September 2021–May 2022 Curated by Philip F. Clark, Jared Harél, Spencer Reece, and KC Trommer

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021 9/11 Remembrance

APRIL 6, 2022 National Poetry Month Meditative Readings

Wisława Szymborska

A Poet Every Half Hour 12–4 PM

Read by Spencer Reece OCTOBER 6, 2021

Safia Jama

OCTOBER 20, 2021

Glenn Mott

NOVEMBER 3, 2021

Ananda Lima

NOVEMBER 17, 2021

Dante Micheaux

Readers read a single poem, followed by a 10-minute silent meditation, and close with a second reading of the same poem.

DECEMBER 1, 2021 World AIDS Day

On Poetry & Prayer 6–7 PM

Chael Needle

Pádraig Ó Tuama

JANUARY 5, 2022

Philip F. Clark

Logos Lent Event 7–8 PM

Carmen Giménez Smith Ariel Francisco

JANUARY 19, 2022

Suzanne Wise FEBRUARY 2, 2022

M. A. Dennis

APRIL 20, 2022

Jared Harél

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Michele Karas MARCH 16, 2022 COVID Remembrance

Alice Quinn

Francisco Aragón Diane Glancy Michael Klein Naomi Mulvihill Meera Nair Nikay C. Paredes Hope Snyder Maria Terrone

MAY 4, 2022

Jenny Xie LIVESTREAM:

facebook.com/stmarksjh

MAY 18, 2022

KC Trommer

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church • 33-50 82nd Street • Jackson Heights, NY 11372 For more information, please contact: reddoorseriesjh@gmail.com • saintmarks.net

DESIGN BY JOHN CANDELL • ILLUSTRATION BY SPENCER REECE

BO OKS BOOKS Love Your Asian Body: AIDS Activism in Los Angeles by Eric C. Wat University of Washington Press

A “community memoir” might sound like an oxymoronic, or at least recherche, creature. A memoir, as we think of it usually, is the story of one person, told by themselves. But communities, shaped by particular heritages and unique challenges, have voices, too. In Love Your Asian Body: AIDS Activism in Los Angeles, Eric C. Wat brings a singular talent in constructing this kind of memoir and oral history. “Between 2017 and 2019,” Wat writes, “I interviewed thirty-six people for this book. These stories are interwoven in eighteen chapters.” These stories proceed more or less chronologically, though Wat is careful not to adhere to a strictly linear format or ignore more general research. There are particular focusses on often-neglected women activists, for instance, specific national origins within “Asianness,” and the role of mental health services. About half the book is devoted to the formation (in 1992), rise, success, and transformation of APAIT – the Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team. (There is a similarity in this arc to the infinitely better-known ACT UP, though that group is, perhaps intentionally, not mentioned much in the book.) Firmly based in the oral history tradition, and avowedly political (“I have also written this book for younger generations of activists”), Love Your Asian Body is an urgently written labor of remembrance.

The Political Economy of Stigma: HIV, Memoir, Medicine, and Crip Positionalities

by Ally Day Ohio State University Press

The Political Economy of Stigma: HIV, Memoir, Medicine, and Crip Positionalities is a scholar’s book, written primarily for other scholars——more specifically, for academic theorists in the fields that the author, Ally Day, works in: disability studies, gender and sexuality studies,

narrative medicine and ethics, and cultural studies in general. As such, it is a daunting work, written, abstrusely written, replete with jargon and references to dozens of other academic theorists. The book’s theoretical ambitions are undergirded by empirical foundations, though, and these are ultimately simple questions: in the fight against stigma, who wins, who loses, and who gets to decide? In Day’s own dense formulation: “In what follows, I recount and analyze my experience with these two reading groups——that is, women living with HIV and AIDS service workers——in order to address the divergent impact of narrative on medicine and care. The Political Economy of Stigma provides a methodological innovation: a reading group praxis for creating theory through narrative and medicine that is collaborative, critical, and creative. It also provides a theoretical apparatus for reading and interpreting disability and illness narrative within a neoliberal medical economy…I define the political economy of stigma as the formal and informal circulation of personal illness and disability narrative that benefits some while hindering others.”

Beyond the Mask: The First Wave by Ellen Matzer, RN, CCRN and Valery Hughes, FNP, RN

Fulton Books

The COVID-19 global pandemic is far from over, but in many parts of the United States life has more-or-less returned to normal, what Valery Hughes, FNP, RN and Ellen it was like in the Before Matzer, RN, CCRN Times——before, that is, March 2020. In New York City, for example, some 80% of all residents have been fully vaccinated (although racial and geographic disparities persist). This should not make us forget the early, terrifying days of the pandemic. And if we remember the heroism of healthcare workers collectively, we are liable to forget that they are individuals as well. In Beyond the Mask, two HIV/AIDS nurses, Ellen Matzer and Valery Hughes, have created a set of overlapping fictional narratives, set between January and May 2020, seen through the lives and experiences of six nurses and technicians. Maureen, Michael, Ethan, Sandy, Kyle,and Fran are a diverse set——in age and medical experience, certainly, but more importantly in their personal backgrounds and temperaments. What they have in common is the unprecedented suddenness of the pandemic’s assault——working within a creaky, unprepared, often callous healthcare system——while also facing their individual, personal challenges. Many COVID-19 novels have already appeared, by well-known writers. What Matzer and Hughes add to this burgeoning literature is their unique perspective as front-line workers and practicing nurses; they have created compelling fiction from the all-too-nonfictional tragedy they faced in the early months of the pandemic. —Jay Vithalani Jay Vithalani grew up in Mumbai, India. He studied English and philosophy at Amherst College and Harvard University, and has also done graduate work at the University of Iowa and Boston University. Vithalani is the co-author of a book of industrial history, Horizons: The Tata-India Century. He currently lives in New York City. Vithalani has been living with HIV since 2005. He is the Nonfiction Editor of A&U. • APRIL 2022

ALI NA O S WALD Photography

portrait - editorial - creative - promotional - event

photo editing & retouching photo education portfolio review

alinaoswald.com

Cover Story

continued from page 33

The War I Know touches on generational trauma with clarity, and so I ask Dominic if he sees healing as a venture of the individual plus larger networks/ communities. “I do. And that’s one of the reasons why I do what I do. My mom is going to be eighty years old——and she just started therapy. I’m so proud of her....” He tears up at the thought of it. “And even in that, that is a huge success. You know what I’m saying? If I can encourage that... “You know how people say, people always write about one thing, over and over again? I feel like my theme is people stepping into the best version of themselves. Because I believe that. Like I said, that’s one of my goals! I think about it every day. That’s at the center of my work and everything that I do. “Because I feel like: I didn’t know what the fuck generational trauma was. I knew its effects.” He laughs to punctuate how well he knew its effects. “I knew what it did to me later on, once I got the word. Oh, that’s why we’re like this. That’s why we have this issue in my family. That’s why we don’t talk about certain things. “It’s unfortunate but, collectively, shit can’t change until we we address that.” Colón’s mention of his mother reminds me of how strongly women are portrayed in The War I Know. Puchi is burdened with trying to take care of everyone. And Puchi and Maribel protect and nurture Eggy. Crush also features the character Nikki, who is super-supportive of Michael, the gay teen. Asked if that is something he wanted to bring out, the importance of women in the lives of gay men, or particularly gay Latinx men, Colón says, “Definitely, in Crush. Because I have always had the privilege of being around women who were really, really encouraging....I grew up with a lot of anxiety, so I’ve been fortunate enough to have my special corps of divas, of all genders [laughs], to lift me up. “Puchi, for me, is representative of some women in my life who embody resilience, who face so many obstacles. I gave this note to an actor who was playing her in that live reading we did of that first act and I was like, She is the captain of a ship that is sinking, and she is trying to fix the holes with duct tape. She’s not going to [fix everything] but she’s trying. It’s hard, but no matter what she’s going to fight.” I mention that, in The War I Know, it’s great to see a representation of HIV/AIDS

in the eighties that’s not about activism, about gay, middle-class white men taking to the streets, but Colón has a different take. The activism is present. “I think Puchi is very much an activist. It’s different. It’s not going to ACT UP....Her activism is different. “There are so many other stories. I live for Angels in America. I live for The Normal Heart. But I’ve realized there are so many other stories that it doesn’t represent. To me that’s one of the reasons why I decided to write [The War I Know]; it’s because I felt like because me and so many people that I know went through a different type of experience that hasn’t been seen in the theater.” The character of Macho also comes to offer an emotion-centered activism. Near the end of the play, Macho wants to break the cycle of the generational trauma: “It true tho. That pain. Poisons. And it spreads. From Papi to Mami....she passed it to us.... and unless we do something we gonna keep passin it and passing it. I don’t wanna pass it. I want to heal....” Deep into Act Two of The War I Know, Macho says: “The only thing that’s REAL is how we make each other feel. And I know, I spent enough time in my life making people hurt and makin em feel like shit. And I want to do better. I want to be a good person. I want to be the person, whose actions, matches his heart.” Helping each other feel something. A different form of activism. “I don’t have favorites but I have a particular soft spot for Macho because I feel like Macho is the character that people always write off and, as someone who has often felt written-off, it’s so important that the Machos of the world get seen and validated as human beings who feel and who hurt and experience joy and who are capable of change,” says Colón. “Just because a character looks a certain way or talks a certain way doesn’t mean, you know [they aren’t worthy]...they are worthy of love and they’re worthy of their stories being told. “I love all of my characters but I always fight for the Machos.” Colón himself has come to understand how precious the transformative power of healing can be. When he was first diagnosed, during that “dark period,” he would dismiss advocates who proclaimed living with HIV as a blessing. Now, he feels blessed. “I have come into the Dominic now as a result of that experience. And I have learned that I am not only resilient but I am worthy of all great things,” he says. “That’s why it was so important for me to come out with my status and live in that truth. Because receiving the diagnosis...it was so hard. To be able to come through that and realize that my diagnosis was not who I am. Who I am is that spirit of resilience, [which allowed him] to get back up and thrive and provide spaces for others to thrive and tell stories that really uplift community and culture. That is a blessing. I would not take it back for the world because I really do believe if it wasn’t supposed to happen then it wouldn’t have happened. I feel like that is a part of my journey and I love who I am now. So that’s how it’s a blessing.” Dominic Colón is looking forward to workshopping The War I Know this summer, possibly in Los Angeles, thanks to sponsorship from The Sol Project. It’s a next step in securing a full production. Says Colón: “It’s so exciting talking about this play because I know we’re still working and I can’t wait till the one day when people get to see and experience it—— the complexity of it, the journey of it.” That day will come. Sooner rather than later, one hopes. And when audiences are able to experience The War I Know, they will, in turn, be blessed. Chael Needle interviewed Grace Detrevarah for the February cover story. • APRIL 2022

A Calendar of Events

isual AIDS announced a new research fellowship program to support original writing and scholarship about artists who are living with or were lost to HIV/ AIDS. Research fellows will work with Visual AIDS to develop an article to be published on Visual AIDS’ website, drawing on primary sources in the Visual AIDS Archive Project and related resources. The Archive Project collects artwork documentation, personal papers, and records pertaining to the lives and work of artists living with or dead from HIV/AIDS. Started in 1994 by Frank Moore and David Hirsh, the Archive Project is open to researchers and the general public by appointment. The fellowship includes a $1,000 research stipend and editorial support. When possible, VA will connect researchers to estates, families, and friends of artists who have passed away, as well as other archival collections. Research on historically excluded and lesser-known artists will be prioritized. Anyone conducting original, primary source-based research on HIV-positive artists is encouraged to apply. The application deadline is April 11, 2022. If you have any questions about the application process, contact Kyle Croft, Programs Director, at kcroft@visualaids.org or log on to www.visualaids.org.

APRIL 2022 •

lifelines

Left: The Visual AIDS Archive Project and reading room Below: Photographs and documents related to artist Garland EliasonFrench, part of a collection donated to the Visual AIDS Archive Project in 2019

POETRY

City of Friends I dreamed in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth, I dreamed that was the new City of Friends, Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it led the rest, It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words. –Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass When the young men who once wrestled in orgy rooms like Greek Olympians filled AIDS wards cannibalized by the killer they unleashed on each other when the old man in power fed the killer with his silence when too many fistfuls of ash stained our hands and obituaries blacked out our address books some of us joined the exodus from the city believing we could outrun plague retreating to the hometowns we long ago escaped to perish in boyhood beds in our mother’s arms Others like you stayed to bury the dead Now thirty years later summer mornings in Iowa I watch the cherries ripen— little cysts jaundiced full of stones At dusk the crows settle like a mourning cape over the infected elm with a raucous roll call of the dead— the names of men who sheltered me men who slept with me men who fed me men who schooled barbered clothed me men who offered knives men who offered flowers men who worshipped with me in dream churches of the silver goddesses men who marched beside me in processions of grief and white night riots men whose faces glimpsed through the window of a bar or passing trolley could rend time from space We fucked each other bare shared needles courting the assassin in blood and seed I boarded the same train as you brother rode to the same terminus of internment They stripped off my clothes shaved my head

But at the final gate they turned me away: Negative reaction to HIV antibody They gave back my ID my deserter’s suit You’re free to go Free! On my way out they handed me a plastic bag holding what of you survived the fire— grains of bone and star Dear brother I have carried you long enough It is time: Midnight on an abandoned bridge I open the bag to scatter you to the black Mississippi— flakes of moonlight to sail the seaward waves Before letting you go I lick a finger jam it deep into your remains I say your name and stick the gritty finger in my mouth —Steven Blaski Steven Blaski is the author of Keep the Killer Asleep, poems that explore his experiences of living through the early years of AIDS in San Francisco and his involvement there in the burgeoning gay rights movement, including marching with Harvey Milk.

• APRIL 2022

Brian had his HIV under control with medication. But smoking with HIV caused him to have serious health problems, including a stroke, a blood clot in his lungs and surgery on an artery in his neck. Smoking makes living with HIV much worse. You can quit.

CALL 1-800-QUIT-NOW.

#CDCTips

HIV alone didn’t cause the clogged artery in my neck. Smoking with HIV did. Brian, age 45, California

HOW DOES HIV TREATMENT WORK AS HIV PREVENTION Starting and sticking with HIV treatment every day helps lower the amount of HIV in your body. It can get so low it can’t be measured by a test. That’s undetectable. Less HIV in your body means it causes less damage. And according to current research, getting to and staying undetectable prevents the spread of HIV through sex. It’s called Treatment as Prevention. Or TasP for short. There’s no cure for HIV, but if you stick with treatment you can protect yourself and the people you care about.

Talk to a healthcare provider and watch It’s Called Treatment as Prevention at YouTube.com/HelpStopTheVirus