A&U July 2016

JULY 2016 • ISSUE 261 • AMERICA’S AIDS MAGAZINE

FINDING UNITY IN DIVERSITY • Wanda Brendle-Moss • Pastor William Francis • Ray Mercer • Amazin LeThi • Shandora Lane

plus

• Photographer Nicholas Nixon • The Lavender Effect • Pulse Orlando

john GRANT

THE SINGER-SONGWRITER FINDS HIS CENTER LIVING WITH HIV

WHAT IS GENVOYA®?

GENVOYA is a 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in people 12 years and older. It can either be used in people who are starting HIV-1 treatment and have never taken HIV-1 medicines before, or people who are replacing their current HIV-1 medicines and whose healthcare provider determines they meet certain requirements. These include having an undetectable viral load (less than 50 copies/mL) for 6 months or more on their current HIV-1 treatment. GENVOYA combines 4 medicines into 1 pill taken once a day with food.

GENVOYA is a complete HIV-1 treatment and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines.

GENVOYA does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses, you must keep taking GENVOYA. Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the EJCPEG QH UGZWCN EQPVCEV YKVJ DQF[ ƃ WKFU 0GXGT TGWUG QT UJCTG PGGFNGU QT QVJGT KVGOU VJCV JCXG DQF[ ƃ WKFU QP VJGO

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

What is the most important information I should know about GENVOYA? GENVOYA may cause serious side effects: • Build-up of an acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious medical emergency. Symptoms of lactic acidosis include feeling very weak or tired, unusual muscle pain, trouble breathing, stomach pain with nausea or vomiting, feeling cold (especially in your arms and legs), feeling dizzy or lightheaded, and/or a fast or irregular heartbeat.

• Serious liver problems. The liver may become large and fatty. Symptoms of liver problems include your skin or the white part of your eyes turning yellow (jaundice), dark “teacolored” urine, light-colored bowel movements (stools), loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, and/or stomach pain.

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

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

Who should not take GENVOYA? Do not take GENVOYA if you take: • Certain prescription medicines for other conditions. It is important to ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about

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

• The herbal supplement St. John’s wort.

• Any other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection.

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

• Changes in your immune system. Your immune system may IGV UVTQPIGT CPF DGIKP VQ Ƃ IJV KPHGEVKQPU 6GNN [QWT JGCNVJECTG provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking GENVOYA. • Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys.

If you develop new or worse kidney problems, they may tell you to stop taking GENVOYA. • Bone problems, such as bone pain, softening, or thinning, which may lead to fractures. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your bones.

The most common side effect of GENVOYA is nausea. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or don’t go away.

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

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

Other medicines may affect how GENVOYA works. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist. Ask your healthcare provider if it is safe to take GENVOYA with all of your other medicines.

• If you take antacids. Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take GENVOYA. • If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if GENVOYA can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking GENVOYA. • If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk.

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

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

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

GENVOYA does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

SHOW YOUR

POWER

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

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

(jen-VOY-uh) MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT GENVOYA

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF GENVOYA

Genvoya® may cause serious side effects, including:

GENVOYA can cause serious side effects, including:

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

• Severe liver problems, which in some cases can lead to death.

Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any of these symptoms: your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice), dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored bowel movements (stools), loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, and/or stomach pain.

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

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

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

• Changes in body fat.

• Changes in your immune system.

• New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure.

• Bone problems.

The most common side effect of GENVOYA is nausea.

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

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

• Have any other medical condition.

ABOUT GENVOYA

• Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant.

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

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

Do NOT take GENVOYA if you: • Take a medicine that contains: alfuzosin (Uroxatral®), carbamazepine (Carbatrol®, Epitol®, Equetro®, Tegretol®, Tegretol-XR®, Teril®), cisapride (Propulsid®, Propulsid Quicksolv®), dihydroergotamine (D.H.E. 45®, Migranal®), ergotamine (Cafergot®, Migergot®, Ergostat®, Medihaler Ergotamine®, Wigraine®, Wigrettes®), lovastatin (Advicor®, Altoprev®, Mevacor®), methylergonovine (Ergotrate®, Methergine®), midazolam (when taken by mouth), phenobarbital (Luminal®), phenytoin (Dilantin®, Phenytek®), pimozide (Orap®), rifampin (Rifadin®, Rifamate®, Rifater®, Rimactane®), sildenafil when used for lung problems (Revatio®), simvastatin (Simcor®, Vytorin®, Zocor®), or triazolam (Halcion®).

• Take the herbal supplement St. John’s wort.

• Take any other HIV-1 medicines at the same time.

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

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

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

HOW TO TAKE GENVOYA • GENVOYA is a complete one pill, once a day HIV-1 medicine.

• Take GENVOYA with food.

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

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

GENVOYA, the GENVOYA Logo, GILEAD, and the GILEAD Logo are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

Version date: November 2015 © 2016 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. GENC0048 04/16

Benefiting

Rain or shine, this ride is amazing, and so important to the LGBT community living with AIDS/HIV. Being able to bring awareness to the AIDS epidemic before, during, and after the Ride is my reason for riding. I go into the Ride with one goal and finish accomplishing so much more. — Andrew, Rider No. 109

Boston

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ork o new Y

16

Septem

, 20 5 2 – 3 2 ber

brakingaidsride.org 866-858-6877

c o n t e n t s July 2016

44 Cover Singer-Songwriter John Grant Takes a Break from Touring with His New Album to Talk to A&U’s Dann Dulin About How Living with HIV Has Brought Balance to His Healing Journey & His New Role as an Advocate

Features

Departments

30 Gallery Photog Nicholas Nixon Revisits His Portraits of PLWHAs in the 1980s

7

Frontdesk

11

Mailbox

15

NewsBreak

34 Message Out of a Bottle Wanda Brendle-Moss Encourages the AIDS Community to Live Out Loud

18

Ruby’s Rap

viewfinder 22

Just*in Time

24

Second Acts

25

Our Story, Our Time

40 Speaking Up & Speaking Out William Francis Champions Awareness About Positive Heterosexual Men

26

Bright Lights, Small City

28

Role Call

42 Pure Artistry Dancer & Choreographer Ray Mercer Sets AIDS Awareness in Motion

54

Treatment Horizons

56

Hep Talk

58

Destination: Cure

59

The Whole Perspective

60

The Culture of AIDS

62

Lifelines

64

Survival Guide

36 Young City at War The Lavender Effect Compiles a Video History of AIDS in West Hollywood

50 See Me Amazin LeThi Uses Sport to Reach Out to Asian Communities At Risk 12 Poetry by Davi Walders cover photo by Sean Black; Nicholas Nixon, Tom and Catherine Moran, East Braintree, Massachusetts, 1987, gelatin-silver print © Nicholas Nixon, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

lifeguide

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY BLANK

PHOTOGRAPHY Sandro | DANCER Tom Mattingly

Chicago Dancers United presents August 20, 2016 5pm Hilton Chicago’s Grand Ballroom 7:30pm Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University PERFORMANCES BY Giordano Dance Chicago Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Joffrey Ballet Chicago Dance Crash Visceral Dance Chicago

S P ON S OR S

WORLD PREMIERES BY Randy Duncan Harrison McEldowney EMCEES Carisa Barreca and Tim Mason of The Second City BENEFICIARIES The Dancers’ Fund AIDS Foundation of Chicago $15 – $75 Performance Only $250 – $600 Includes admission to the 5:00p.m. gala reception and premiere seating at the performance

M E D I A PART N E R S a&u Magazine | 4Dancers.org | Best Gay Chicago | ChicagoPride.com | GC Magazine GRAB Magazine | Positively Aware Magazine | SDC Chicago SeeChicagoDance.com | Windy City Media Group

ChicagoDancersUnited.org | 312-922-5812 /DanceForLifeChicago

@danceforlifechi

/DanceForLifeChicago

A&U Frontdesk

Then & Now

J

ust when a few of A&U’s staff said they might skip Pride this year, Orlando happened. The Pulse nightclub in that Disney capital was attacked by a gunman on Latinx Night. Forty-nine people lost their lives; fifty-three were injured, some severely. Needless to say, everyone who said they might skip Pride went to be counted, to mourn our fallen brothers and sisters, to mourn an attack on the Latinx community, to mourn an attack on the LGBT community.

As many of the victims were LGBT, it sent shockwaves through the community.

As anyone living with HIV/AIDS knows, when we find a space where we feel free to be ourselves, we treasure it. The owner of Pulse knew this—she built the club as a tribute to her gay brother who had died from AIDS-related causes.

No, these spaces are never completely “safe.” Both communities, I would say, have never been perfect at inclusion, but we all come from experiences of being excluded so it’s never hard to empathize when one of our own feels left out. What we don’t expect in these spaces is out and out violence.

The best analogy is probably being attacked in one’s home. Dance clubs, community centers, and HIV-centric organizations are our homes. These are the places where we often live fully. These are the places where we often feel least isolated and most loved. These are the places where we take a breath and dare to dream.

I don’t have space to delve into differing perspectives on either side of the gun control issue, but one aspect intrigued me: The study of guns as a public health issue has been effectively disallowed. As recently as April, a coalition of 141 medical groups drafted and delivered a letter to four senior members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to encourage them to restore funding for gun violence research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You see, the Dickey Amendent, which was part of a 1996 appropriations bill, steers the CDC away from using funds to advocate for or promote gun control, and this has stalled all gun violence research. As gun violence reportedly claims more than 30,000 lives

AMERICA’S AIDS MAGAZINE issue 261 vol. 25 no. 7 July 2016 editorial offices: (518) 426-9010 fax: (518) 436-5354 Editor in Chief & Publisher David Waggoner

every year, it seems to me that it should be studied, like other public health issues.

We in the AIDS community know full well what happens when a public health issue is downplayed or marginalized. We lose, all of us; and some of us lose our lives. We had to fight for fast-tracking anti-AIDS meds and for more clinical research among other issues. We knew inaction and indifference, although not as obvious as guns, could inflict wounds that were just as fatal.

That’s why it’s important to study, if you will, what’s happening around HIV/ AIDS, then and now. As for “then,” our latest column, Second Acts, will each month feature the voice of a long-term survivor. Led off by regular A&U contributor Hank Trout, this month’s column delves passionately into why those of us at the beginning of the pandemic need to testify to what actually happened and what continues to happen. In this month’s Gallery, A&U’s Sean Black interviews Nicholas Nixon, whose photographs of people living with AIDS early in the epidemic helped to humanize our community. We also feature an article, penned

by Stevie St. John, about The Lavender Effect, an initiative documenting AIDS history in West Hollywood with the use of video interviews.

As for the “now,” we are excited to feature interviews with a new wave of advocates who are living with HIV/AIDS, Wanda Brendle-Moss and Rev. William Francis, as well as an incisive look by Jeremiah Johnson at how Florida’s HIV policies are impacting the health of PLWHA. Last but not least, A&U’s Dann Dulin talks with out and positive singer-songwriter John Grant, this month’s cover story.

One single statement perhaps shows us how far we’ve come since 1981 on the treatment and empowerment fronts: “For once in my life, I took control. Being positive was one of the greatest things that happened to me.”

DAVID WAGGONER

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

In Memoriam: Bill Jacobson, 1939–2005 Rhomylly B. Forbes, 1963–2011 • Chris Companik, 1957–2012 Nancy Ellegate, 1959–2015 A&U (ISSN 1074-0872) is published by Art & Understanding, Inc., 25 Monroe St., Suite 205, Albany, NY 12210-2743, USA. For A&U advertising information please call 518-426-9010; for subscriptions and address changes please call 518-426-9010; for letters to the editor and unsolicited manuscripts write A&U Magazine, 25 Monroe Street, Albany, New York 12210; fax 518-436-5354; or e-mail: mailbox@ aumag.org. All unsolicited manuscripts that do not have a S.A.S.E. cannot be returned and will not be acknowledged. ©2016 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.

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PostMaster: Please send address corrections to A&U Magazine, 25 Monroe Street, Suite 205, Albany NY 12210-2743, USA

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

WHAT IS ODEFSEY®?

ODEFSEY is a 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in people 12 years and older. It can either be used in people who are starting HIV-1 treatment, have never taken HIV-1 medicines before, and have an amount of HIV-1 in their blood (“viral load”) that is no more than 100,000 copies/mL; or in people who are replacing their current HIV-1 medicines and whose healthcare provider determines they meet certain requirements. These include having an undetectable viral load (less than 50 copies/mL) for 6 months or more on their current HIV-1 treatment. ODEFSEY combines 3 medicines into 1 pill taken once a day with a meal. ODEFSEY is a complete HIV-1 treatment and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines.

ODEFSEY does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses, you must keep taking ODEFSEY. Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the EJCPEG QH UGZWCN EQPVCEV YKVJ DQF[ ƃ WKFU 0GXGT TGWUG QT UJCTG PGGFNGU QT QVJGT KVGOU VJCV JCXG DQF[ ƃ WKFU QP VJGO

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

What is the most important information I should know about ODEFSEY? ODEFSEY may cause serious side effects:

• Buildup of an acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which

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

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

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

• Worsening of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. ODEFSEY

is not approved to treat HBV. If you have both HIV-1 and HBV and stop taking ODEFSEY, your HBV may suddenly get worse. &Q PQV UVQR VCMKPI 1&'(5'; YKVJQWV Ƃ TUV VCNMKPI VQ [QWT healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

Who should not take ODEFSEY?

Do not take ODEFSEY if you take: • Certain prescription medicines for other conditions. It is important to ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about medicines that should not be taken with ODEFSEY. Do not start a new medicine without telling your healthcare provider.

• The herbal supplement St. John’s wort.

• Any other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection.

What are the other possible side effects of ODEFSEY?

Serious side effects of ODEFSEY may also include: • Severe skin rash and allergic reactions. Skin rash is a common side effect of ODEFSEY. Call your healthcare provider right away if you get a rash, as some rashes and allergic reactions may need to be treated in a hospital.

Stop taking ODEFSEY and get medical help right away if you get a rash with any of the following symptoms: fever, skin blisters, mouth sores, redness or swelling of the eyes (conjunctivitis), swelling of the face, lips, mouth, or throat, trouble breathing or swallowing, pain on the right side of the stomach (abdominal) area, and/or dark “tea-colored” urine.

• Depression or mood changes. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you: feel sad or hopeless, feel anxious or restless, have thoughts of hurting yourself (suicide) or have tried to hurt yourself.

• Changes in liver enzymes. People who have had hepatitis B or C or who have certain liver enzyme changes may have a higher risk for new or worse liver problems while taking ODEFSEY. Liver problems can also happen in people who have not had liver disease. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your liver enzymes before and during treatment with ODEFSEY. • Changes in body fat, which can happen in people taking HIV-1 medicines.

• Changes in your immune system. Your immune system OC[ IGV UVTQPIGT CPF DGIKP VQ Ƃ IJV KPHGEVKQPU 6GNN [QWT healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking ODEFSEY. • Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys. Your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking ODEFSEY if you develop new or worse kidney problems.

• Bone problems, such as bone pain, softening, or thinning, which may lead to fractures. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your bones.

The most common side effects of rilpivirine, one of the medicines in ODEFSEY, are depression, trouble sleeping (insomnia), and headache.

The most common side effect of emtricitabine and tenofovir alafenamide, two of the medicines in ODEFSEY, is nausea.

Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or do not go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking ODEFSEY?

• All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare

provider if you have or have had any kidney, bone, mental health (depression or suicidal thoughts), or liver problems, including hepatitis virus infection.

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

Other medicines may affect how ODEFSEY works. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist. Ask your healthcare provider if it is safe to take ODEFSEY with all of your other medicines.

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

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

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

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

ODEFSEY does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

SHOW YOUR

RADIANCE

ODEFSEY is a complete, 1-pill, once-a-day HIV-1 treatment for people 12 years and older who are either new to treatment and have less than 100,000 copies/mL of virus in their blood or people whose healthcare provider determines they can replace their current HIV-1 medicines with ODEFSEY.

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

(oh-DEF-see) MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT ODEFSEY

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF ODEFSEY

ODEFSEY may cause serious side effects, including:

ODEFSEY can cause serious side effects, including:

•

•

•

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

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

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

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

•

• • • • • • •

Those in the “Most Important Information About ODEFSEY” section.

Severe skin rash and allergic reactions.

Depression or mood changes.

Changes in liver enzymes.

Changes in body fat.

Changes in your immune system.

New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure.

Bone problems.

The most common side effects of rilpivirine, one of the medicines in ODEFSEY, are depression, trouble sleeping (insomnia), and headache.

The most common side effect of emtricitabine and tenofovir alafenamide, two of the medicines in ODEFSEY, is nausea.

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

BEFORE TAKING ODEFSEY

ABOUT ODEFSEY •

•

ODEFSEY is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in people 12 years of age and older who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before and who have an amount of HIV-1 in their blood (“viral load”) that is no more than 100,000 copies/mL. ODEFSEY can also be used to replace current HIV-1 medicines for some people who have an undetectable viral load (less than 50 copies/ mL), have been on the same HIV-1 medicines for at least 6 months, have never failed HIV-1 treatment, and whose healthcare provider determines that they meet certain other requirements.

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

Do NOT take ODEFSEY if you: • Take a medicine that contains: carbamazepine (Carbatrol®, Epitol®, Equetro®, Tegretol®, Tegretol-XR®, Teril®), dexamethasone (Ozurdex®, Maxidex®, Decadron®, Baycadron™), dexlansoprazole (Dexilant®), esomeprazole (Nexium®, Vimovo®), lansoprazole (Prevacid®), omeprazole (Prilosec®, Zegerid®), oxcarbazepine (Trileptal®), pantoprazole sodium (Protonix®), phenobarbital (Luminal®), phenytoin (Dilantin®, Dilantin-125®, Phenytek®), rabeprazole (Aciphex®), rifampin (Rifadin®, Rifamate®, Rifater®, Rimactane®), or rifapentine (Priftin®).

•

Take the herbal supplement St. John’s wort.

•

Take any other HIV-1 medicines at the same time.

Tell your healthcare provider if you: • Have or have had any kidney, bone, mental health (depression or suicidal thoughts), or liver problems, including hepatitis infection.

• Have any other medical condition.

• Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant.

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

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

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

HOW TO TAKE ODEFSEY • •

ODEFSEY is a complete 1-pill, once-a-day HIV-1 medicine.

Take ODEFSEY with a meal.

GET MORE INFORMATION •

• •

This is only a brief summary of important information about ODEFSEY. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to learn more.

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

ODEFSEY, the ODEFSEY Logo, GILEAD, and the GILEAD Logo are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. Version date: March 2016 © 2016 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. ODEC0026 06/16

x o b l i ma

eases. To me it’s very important for young people in show biz to be proactive.

—Mary Ashland Coverdale Cape May, New Jersey

Not Foolish Ashanti is a very attractive young woman who is still at the top of her career [cover story, “On Time,” by Dann

Ashanti is one of those artists that I just love to follow. She has had many hit songs and has had some hit TV shows. I am very glad that she is

A Living Doll Cynthia Davis, you are one of my heroes; you’re a saint in my book [Gallery, May 2016]. I say, dolls, dolls, and more dolls! To me it is such a simple idea to give dolls to children and families who have lost people to AIDS. I find the dolls to be beautiful and so well created—the colors and designs are just amazing to look at. I say, please give all the money you can to Cynthia’s organization. Your story is just so heartwarming.

—Melodie Joubert New Orleans, Louisiana

“Ashanti says: ‘No matter what function I attend or perform [at], all through my career, AIDS weighs heavily on my mind and I take that opportunity to raise awareness whenever I can.’”

Flashback…What a Feeling

photo by Annie Tritt

Reading your article, Ruby’s Rap [May 2016], on Ms. Dini von Mueffling and her relationship with Alison Gertz was a reminder of something that happened almost twenty-five years ago. If I am correct she was one of the first women to [publicly announce that had] AIDS. I remember her testifying in front of Congress. Boy, sometimes your memory comes back to you with a simple reminder.

—Loreen Bel Loriss Olympia, Washington

Dulin, May 2016]. I am very active in the AIDS movement and as I’ve read in your articles over the years I am always looking for what these people do to fight AIDS. I see that she has worked for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and has done PSAs for the gay community. And she has gone to Africa to fight Ebola. So I am impressed about her commitment to fighting different disJULY 2016 • A&U

committed to fighting AIDS. Ashanti says: “No matter what function I attend or perform [at], all through my career, AIDS weighs heavily on my mind and I take that opportunity to raise awareness whenever I can.” I say, good for you and more power to you.

—Larry Van Ness Bismarck, North Dakota

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

11

poetry

She Came Late to Writing

She came late, her wheelchair hooked to a Critikon, her smile still slightly there, a bright red bandana tight around her head.

She wanted to talk about poems and poets.

She did not wish to talk about her family in Africa, about her sweats, or being ill.

Maya Angelou she wanted to read, so we read.

Marge Piercy she wanted to read, so we read.

We did not talk about her family in Africa, her sweats, or her illness. She wanted to hear sounds of savannahs, rhythms of rivers, and to write like the poets she loved.

So she wrote, shaping a world far away from her twenty-one years, words welling up from desire and deprivation, from other poets who whispered to her through the night. We did not talk about her family in Africa, her sweats, or illness.

The last time I saw her, she was surrounded by her family from Africa, her poems on her cool blanket and bedside table, smiling that broad smile, as though she had just heard a favorite line of a favorite poem and was in deep conversation with poets she loved.

—Davi Walders Davi Walders’s poetry and prose have appeared in more than 200 anthologies and journals. Her collection on women’s resistance during WWII, Women Against Tyranny: Poems of Resistance During the Holocaust, was published by Clemson University Press. Other collections include Using Poetry in Therapeutic Settings published by The Vital Signs Poetry Project at NIH and its Children’s Inn. She developed the Vital Signs Project at NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, for which she received Hadassah of Greater Washington’s Myrtle Wreath Award. Other awards include a Maryland Artist Grant in Poetry, an Alden B. Dow Creativity Fellowship, and fellowships at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale, and Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Her work has been read by Garrison Keillor on Writer’s Almanac, nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and choreographed and performed in New York City, Michigan, Cleveland, Ohio, and elsewhere.

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A&U • JULY 2016

JUNE 2016 • A&U

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NewsBreak

NEWSBREAK

Artwork by Robbie Rozelle/Broadway Records

We Are One Pulse In the wake of the Orlando, Florida, massacre on Latinx Night at Pulse nightclub, where a gunman killed forty-nine people and wounded fifty-three others, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS awarded $150,000 in grants to three service organizations in central Florida that are providing emergency assistance to the victims and their family and friends. The organizations include Equality Florida, the GLBT Community Center of Central Florida in Orlando, and the OneOrlando Fund.

“Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS historically has moved quickly and responsibly on behalf of the New York theater community to assist those affected by extraordinary, traumatic events,” Executive Director Tom Viola stated in a prepared release. “We stand with our brothers and sisters in the LGBT community in Orlando and indeed with all who suffer from the violence that comes with inflamed rhetoric, toxic misconceptions of each other and subtle promotion of hatred. Let us respond with love and real resources.”

Broadway Cares has also teamed up with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, who gave a moving speech at the Tony Awards ceremony, which took place less than a day after the massacre. The partnership will use Tee-Rico, a merchandising platform, to raise funds for the victims. Benefitting Equality Cares in Florida, merchandise includes “Love Is Love” T-shirts, which are emblazoned with excerpts from Miranda’s Tony speech. The T-shirts are printed by Nightsweats & T-Cells, a company staffed for more than twenty years exclusively with HIV-positive employees.

Miranda also joined in as the Broadway community as a whole responded in song. As part of a new charity initiative called Broadway for Orlando, a recording of “What the World Needs Now Is Love” brought together performers such as Sara Bareilles, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rosie Perez, Audra McDonald, Sean Hayes, Kimiko Glenn, Zachary Levi, Jane Krakowski, Gloria Estefan [A&U, December 2003], Lillias White, Whoopi Goldberg [A&U, June 2000], and Chita Rivera, among many others. The collaboration was led by Seth Rudetsky (Disaster!) and his husband, producer James Wesley.

Supporters may purchase the digital single for $1.99 on the Broadway Records website and iTunes. Proceeds will benefit Orlando’s LGBT Center of Central Florida.

For more information about Broadway Cares, log on to: www.broadwaycares.org. For more information about Tee-Rico, log on to: www.teerico.com. For more information about the charity single, log on to: www.broadwayrecords.com.

New Pediatric Research A new collaboration seeks to step up research into HIV and children, looking particularly at the development of the most efficacious treatment strategies and the possibility of achieving disease remission. ViiV Healthcare, a company specializing in HIV majority owned by GSK, with Pfizer Inc. and Shionogi Limited as shareholders, has partnered with the Pediatric European Network for Treatment of AIDS (PENTA) Foundation to direct funding toward PENTA’s EPIICAL (Early-treated Perinatally HIV-infected Individuals: Improving Children’s Actual Life with Novel Immunotherapeutic Strategies) Consortium, which comprises a multi-disciplinary group of HIV researchers from twenty-six leading institutions in Europe, the U.S., Canada, Africa, and Thailand.

ViiV Healthcare will not only fund this important work but the company’s scientists will lend their expertise as well to the JULY 2016 • A&U

15

NewsBreak PENTA Foundation and other cutting-edge researchers. Their immediate goal will be to study viral reservoirs and immune characteristics of pediatric patients with HIV from already established cohorts in order to develop models that will predict treatment response with an eye toward elucidating the most efficacious medications.

The research extends EPIICAL’s innovative approach: “The project arises from the firm belief that perinatally infected children treated with suppressive antiretroviral therapy (ART) from early infancy represent the optimal population model in which to study novel treatment strategies aimed at achieving antiretroviral-free, ART-free remission. This is because HIV-infected infants treated within two to three months of life have a much reduced viral reservoir size and rarely show HIV-specific immunity while preserving normal immune development,” its literature states.

New clinical studies may potentially be developed after the analysis of this data. Researchers hope that the research will also provide the groundwork for more data about new and existing treatments targeting HIV remission as well as a therapeutic cure.

“We are exploring existing data within the existing EPIICAL databases to see what they can tell us about how children infected with HIV respond to early ART treatment,” stated Professor Paolo Rossi from the Ospadele Bambino Gesù in Rome and scientific coordinator of EPIICAL in a prepared release. “By putting some of the best minds in HIV research against the question of ‘what is the profile of children who have achieved HIV remission?’ we hope to develop models that can be used to improve the treatment paradigm for children with HIV.” John C. Pottage, Jr, MD, Chief Scientific and Medical Officer for ViiV Healthcare, also weighed in, “Our collaboration with PENTA has set ambitious goals, but the need to optimize treatment strategies for children living with HIV is urgent. The knowledge gained through this research will generate a deeper understanding of viral remission that can be applied to the design of future clinical trials that test whether we can achieve what the model predicts in terms of HIV remission.”

On June 9, in honor of “Gay Heritage Month,” the Hollywood Museum in Los Angeles launched its third annual “Reel to Real: Portrayals and Perceptions of Gays in Hollywood,” an exhibition of costumes, props, photos, and iconic imagery that tell the story of LGBT representations in film, television, and digital platforms. Organized in partnership with Los Angeles City Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, the exhibition offers an important narrative about how LGBT life has been portrayed over a century and more, from early stereotypes to contemporary self-representations, and how LGBT creative expression has positively impacted our culture. Reel to Real also traces the LGBT history of Los Angeles, mixing the truths of fiction with reality.

Honored at the event were longtime supporters of The Hollywood Museum and the LGBT community, actress Doris Roberts [A&U, May 2003] and PR legend Dale Olson.

The keynote speaker of the evening was Tony-winning actress Julie Newmar, who quipped, “When I asked why they wanted me to welcome everyone to the Reel to Real LGBT exhibit, I was told that, at one point or another, most of you in this room have dressed up as me....Well, all I can say is that you all have good taste. I am honored to be here to support the community.”

Attendees at the private VIP reception included Kate Linder, Judy Tenuta, Lee Purcell, Shelly Goldstein, Moosie Drier, Todd Top: Harlan Boll and Erin Murphy Sherry, Dorell Anthony, Radames Left: Los Angeles City Councilmember Pera, Cathy Diane Tomlin, Mary Mitch O’Farrell, Julie Newmar, and Elizabeth Boylan, Jeff Houkal, Donelle Dadigan and Howard Henley, among many others.

Actress Erin Murphy [A&U, July 2007] opened the event with a remembrance of Bewitched costar Elizabeth Montgomery, a remarkable humanitarian and an American film, stage and television actress whose career spanned five decades. Montgomery is best known for her role as Samantha Stephens, television’s favorite suburban witch; her work was highlighted and displayed in the exhibition. In 1998, Montgomery’s children and husband generously donated her wardrobe for a fashion show and auction/sale, which was held at the Duet Nightclub in Westwood, California. They were joined by family and friends and proceeds, nearly $20,000, went to AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Montgomery was well known for her philanthropic work for AIDS charities.

“I modeled Elizabeth’s clothes at the event. We had a huge attendance, including many of the Bewitched cast,” Murphy told A&U in 2007. “I still donate my clothes to Out of the Closet [a now-defunct thrift store chain that supported AHF] and I shop there as well.”

Murphy herself has been a longtime supporter of the AIDS community. Along with volunteering and fundraising, Murphy added her Jane Hancock to the Hollywood Graffiti Gown [A&U, May 2007], an AIDS awareness project that features the sewn-on signatures of famous women.

16

A&U • JULY 2016

photos by Sean Black

Reel to Real

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by Ruby Comer

S

omeone cares.

That’s what I discovered in Atlanta! Someone Cares is a remarkable organization that provides educational programs and health services—an all-encompassing group. Schmoozing with a volunteer there one afternoon, I learned about another nonprofit that also helps those in need, Jerusalem House.

The next morning, I search the Internet for the organization then head to my 1967 ruby-red Mustang rent-a-car, and set the GPS on my cell. In no time I’m at the white-framed glass door entrance of Jerusalem House being welcomed by one of the residents, Shandora Lane.

Ms. Lane, fifty-one, has lived here for nearly three years, after finding herself and Shannon, her sixteen-year-old son, homeless, after losing their condo in the economic collapse. (For my two-cents worth, Obama is a hero; however, when he says the economy is better, I don’t believe it. Too much contradicts that statement.

The middle class is being squashed, but I digress.) Shandora has also faced addiction, arrest, and an HIV diagnosis in 1989 while she was in prison.

Jerusalem House has provided structure, stability, and a safe haven where Shandora can focus on her health. (She

also receives aid from The Ryan White Foundation to cover her meds and from Grady Hospital as well.)

Ms. Lane is seven-years clean and maintains a steady job as a server at the funky retro Landmark Diner.

She takes classes to become an alcohol/ substance abuse counselor, having a couple years of nursing under her belt as well.

We settle in the bright courtyard, with birds chirping and the wind rustling the chalkywhite crape myrtle trees. My gosh, it sounds like a Disney movie. In a way it is.

This person won against all odds.

Ruby Comer: I want to know right off the bat: What’s your favorite film and TV sit-

com of all time?

Shandora Lane: Oh! [She gets excited, responding quickly.] Philadelphia! I could watch this movie over and over because every time I do I get a new message from it. The main character fought a good fight. As for television, I love The Andy Griffith Show! It’s just a great show about love and you can learn something from every episode.

Good choices. Do you have any idea how you were infected?

Having multiple partners as a result of my drug usage infected me. I was promiscuous and didn’t have safe sex. [She ponders.] But now I know that HIV, my addiction, and my criminal behavior does not define me.

18

A&U • JULY 2016

Ruby illustration by Davidd Batalon; photo by Hilary Harmon

SHANDORA LANE

Kudos to you! Tell me about being arrested.

Because of my addiction, I was arrested for forgery, burglary, and an attempt to possess a controlled substance.

In 1989, while you were in prison you found out that you were HIV-positive….

It was very scary, Ruby. When I was diagnosed, I had just been admitted to prison and taken all the necessary diagnostic tests. About three days later, I was called into the prison’s psychiatrist’s office and he said that I was HIV-positive and that all they had to offer was AZT. I was afraid of not knowing what I was dealing with.

I was told to take this pill if I wanted to live.

Have you experienced any opportunistic infections?

In 1996, I contracted TB. I was so sick in my addiction that I didn’t even care that I was walking around with a 106-degree fever. My niece picked me up from a crack house and took me to the doctor. The doctor said that I was so sick they needed to make funeral arrangements. [She glances over at the blooming yellow roses.] I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t move and I needed a blood transfusion, but my body rejected it.

Everyone expected me to die. I was bedridden for nearly a month. Three days after my fever broke, I was home.

The only thing I know is that it was an act of God. Due to the virus, I also developed neuropathy. I have pain in my legs, too, because of a torn meniscus, though; I don’t think it’s HIV-related. I was an athlete in high school.

What sport did you play?

I used to play basketball and some golf. I played basketball all through high school.

Merciful heavens, Shandora, with my height, I used to dunk those balls in that

20

net like crazy! [She heartily grins.] Say, how do you approach Shannon, your son, about the disease?

I talk to him all the time about being safe. I use my life story as an example. I never blamed anyone else, only myself. I teach him about not only STDs but that everything in his life will have consequences. He’s seventeen and I know that sex is a possibility, so I keep condoms readily available—not to encourage sex, but to make sure he is being safe.

[One of the residents walks by, greeting Shandora.] Sometimes I take Shannon on my speaking engagements, to educate him more about the subject.

It’s undeniable that you are a fabulous Mama! So, tell me, how has Jerusalem House helped you?

Jerusalem House has been the best thing for my son and me! Since I’m a convicted felon, it’s very difficult for me to find housing—even though my last conviction was seven years ago.

I was afraid when I first came here.

In the past I’ve lived in homes with HIV-infected residents, but it was sterile like a hospital and we all lived in one room. [She sighs heavily.] To open the door to my own apartment that’s

only for Shannon and me was the most amazing feeling, Ruby.

I can only imagine, Shandora….

Jerusalem House gave me hope and has given me so many opportunities to speak about my HIV, teaching others. I’ve never been exposed to another facility that has given me this much help and hope.

It has opened my eyes to become a more loving individual and to return that love back to this community.

What have you learned thus far from your journey?

I have fought hard to stay alive. That’s the truth. I now take care of myself spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. [She pauses, taking a breath. Her brown eyes then dart directly into mine

and she declares in a staid tone.] This may sound crazy, but I think HIV may have been the best thing to happen to me. It helped me figure out who I am. My future is bright, Ruby!

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

A&U • JULY 2016

photos courtesy Jerusalem

Left and bottom: Jerusalem House (exterior and interior)

SOMETIMES, OUR HIGEST HEIGHTS HAPPEN

LONG BEFORE TAKEOFF. Proud to partner with the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.

Dear Justin— I hope you get to read this because I’m in desperate need of an answer about HIV prevention.

I actually met you years ago when you were the speaker at Howard University for Black AIDS Awareness. I was a freshman then and I didn’t know a lot about HIV. I think the reason why is because I didn’t know how to accept the fact that I was gay. When I finally acknowledged it, I thought about your presentation at Howard University. It scared me because I didn’t want to be HIV-positive. I had a boyfriend and we had sex only about twenty-five times. He was very abusive verbally at first and that really took a toll on my self-esteem; then he became physically abusive and would throw things at me in the house, punching me, smacking me, etc. I left him and now I have a new boyfriend.

My new boyfriend is amazing, but he is also HIV-positive. He doesn’t want to use condoms but he wants me to go on PrEP; I kinda already know what I want to do but I really wanted to know what you would do in this situation. Do not worry—I’m not basing my decision on what you say, but I am going to take it into consideration.

—A I hope all is well. I, too, have been in an abusive relationship before and

22

I am glad that you made it out of it.

As you stated, domestic violence can decrease self-esteem, thus leaving those victims more susceptible to becoming infected with HIV. That is, an individual experiencing violence may not take precautions to protect himself or herself. Sexual health may seem like the least of their worries.

You mentioned precautions in your letter, so it sounds like you are taking more ownership of your sexual health. In that context, let’s talk about PrEP. PrEP is ninety-two to ninety-six-percent effective in preventing HIV transmission. If I were HIV-negative and I had my choice again, at first the decision would be hard for me. I would have to think about the benefits and the limitations. I would probably choose to use PrEP over condoms and I wouldn’t look back. If I were in a relationship at the time I would probably want to have a talk with my boyfriend and our doctor(s) to see what HIV preventative prophylaxis would be beneficial to the both of us.

You have to understand that I am from Generation X. We were the generation that grew up with condoms as the primary way to prevent HIV transmission. It was the preferred way, at least for me. The other way was abstinence and there was no way in hell I was going to do that. No matter what, however, taking control of your sexual health sometimes comes with struggles.

I lost my virginity to a female at

thirteen and used a condom; I lost my virginity to a male at seventeen and used a condom as well. I used a condom until the age of nineteen, when I had sex with a guy that excited me enough to stop the precautions.

Then two so-called “friends” informed me that he was HIV-positive. I cried my eyes out for hours; I agonized about going back to base (I was in the United States Air Force) and taking an HIV test. I took one test when I got to base and then one test three months later and I was HIV-negative. Then days later after the three-month test, I found out it was a cruel joke and he wasn’t HIV-positive and my so-called “friends” were just jealous. In a way, they were controlling my sexual health—not me.

The point of my telling you this story is to take control of your own sexual health. Whatever you choose, whether it be condoms or PrEP (or condoms and PrEP), the point is that you are the one taking control. You make the choice of how you want to protect yourself and others around you. Granted, the general message is to use both condoms and PrEP at the same time, but we don’t live in a reality where we can be assured that that practice will catch on. People are going to make their own choices about their own sexual health, as you have here, and as everyone else should feel they have a right to do so. ◊

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

Justin B. Terry-Smith, MPH, has been fighting the good fight since 1999. He’s garnered recognition and awards for his work, but he’s more concerned about looking for new ways to transform society for the better than resting on his laurels. He started up in gay rights and HIV activism in 2005, published an HIV-themed children’s book, I Have A Secret (Creative House Press) in 2011, and created his own award-winning video blog called, “Justin’s HIV Journal”: justinshivjournal. blogspot.com. Presently, he is working toward his doctorate in public health. Visit his main Web site at www.justinbsmith.com. He welcomes your questions at jsmithco98@hotmail.com.

A&U • JULY 2016

“

Don’t think about it.

Just do it.

Protect yourself and make HIV testing part of your routine like I do.

”

— Jaime Pressly, Actress

I’M

DOING IT Testing for HIV

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

O

n Friday, March 6, 2016, in response to First Lady Nancy Reagan’s death, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recalled “how difficult it was to talk about HIV/AIDS” in the 1980s and praised the Reagans for helping to start a “national conversation” on the disease.

She said, …because of…Mrs. Reagan…we started a national conversation when, before, nobody would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it…. [T]hat too is something that I really appreciate with her very effective, low-key advocacy but it penetrated the public conscience. And people began to say, ‘Hey, we have to do something about this too.’

As a long-time survivor who buried more than thirty friends who died of AIDS during the 1980s and 90s, I was quite shocked. Mrs. Clinton’s statement certainly did not reflect what I remember of the Reagan administration. In fact, the image I remember most from the Reagans’s response to the AIDS crisis is Reagan Press Secretary Larry Speakes actually laughing and joking when a reporter asked him about this new disease, AIDS. “What’s AIDS?” Speakes asked.

“It’s known as the ‘gay plague,’” the reporter said.

“I don’t have it. Do you?” Speakes cackled.

The man whose job was to represent the Reagan Administration to us Americans and to the rest of the world laughed about AIDS as if it were a naughty adolescent locker-room joke.

Under pressure, Speakes acknowledged that neither Reagan nor anyone else in the White House knew anything about the epidemic, even though 850-plus Americans died from AIDS that year and thousands more had been diagnosed.

That is what I remember as the cornerstone of the Reagans’s “low-key advocacy” during the worst years of the AIDS epidemic.

Thirty-four years later, a candidate for the Presidency of the United States applauded the Reagans as allies of folks with HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. That should

24

Why I Write

Hank Trout a survivor’s call to safeguard aids history

have caused the jaw of every gay man on the planet who survived the Reagans to crash to the floor.

I don’t believe that Mrs. Clinton intended anything hurtful with her misstatement—and I certainly don’t mean to equate her misstatement with Larry Speakes’ blatant bigotry. I suspect Mrs. Clinton was simply scrounging for something nice to say about Mrs. Reagan.

To Mrs. Clinton’s credit, judging from her apology/retraction, she seems to have learned from her mistake.

But this kind of off-the-cuff gaffe is significant because it is indicative of the many ways in which our real history gets erased or rewritten if we don’t safeguard it. And we safeguard our history by writing it ourselves.

This is why I write. I wear a hoodie that sums it up perfectly—“I Write What Should Not Be Forgotten.”

Neither forgotten nor rewritten.

I am utterly, unshakably convinced that it is vitally important for us survivors of the HIV/AIDS pandemic—all of us—to tell our stories about the grief and loss we have known; our stories about the friends and lovers and co-workers and family members whom we have lost to this plague; our stories about our own diagnoses, about being told in our twenties or thirties that we were going to die in a matter of months; our stories about outliving one death sentence after another; our stories about all the caregiving and home-nursing and growing-up-realdamn-fast that we learned how to do; our stories of ACTing UP and fighting back, of marching and dancing, of die-ins and riots; our stories of carrying a container of hot-and-sour soup six blocks to a sick and hungry friend, of hiding another sick friend’s porn stash from his visiting parents, of being entrusted with that friend’s ashes later.

Each of us who survived the pandemic has stories to tell that are unique portals to understanding a time of unfathomable loss and unspeakable grief.

We spent fifteen years fighting for our lives and the next twenty fighting for our right to live. That’s a helluva lot of stories! They

The only photo of Hank Trout that survived the Reagan era. are unique tales of loss and grief, yes, but also of unprecedented heroism and growth, stories of a burgeoning awareness of community, stories of generosity and of building new families, stories of grace and revelry and healing.

It is up to us to tell our stories, to write our history as we lived and shaped it. We simply cannot allow other people to write or rewrite our history. Intentionally or not, they invariably get it wrong.

The first step in erasing a people is to erase or rewrite their history.

For the sake of us long-term survivors, and for those of us who didn’t survive the eighties and nineties, we cannot permit the straight-washing of our history.

It’s our history, it’s our lives, and it’s our obligation to tell the stories that we have lived.

We control our history only if we write it.

Hank Trout edited Drummer, Malebox, and Folsom magazines in the early 1980s. A long-term survivor of HIV/AIDS (diagnosed in 1989), he is a thirty-six-year resident of San Francisco, where he lives with his fiancé, Rick Greathouse. He is a Contributing Writer to A&U; follow him on Twitter @HankTroutWriter.

A&U • JULY 2016

photo courtesy Hank Trout

by

Am I a Faggot?

let me spell out the answer

photo courtesy G. Johnson

F

inally the day had come. I had waited four months since her announcement at the SuperBowl and I wasn’t going to disappoint. As I got dressed up for the “Greatest Living Entertainer,” aka Beyoncé, I knew what I was about to get myself into. For years, I dreamed of dressing how I wanted to dress, living how I wanted to live, but afraid of the projection and questions my family, friends, and others would have to answer on my behalf. Afraid of the shunning, and disassociation of people from my circle because I had decided that conformity would no longer be a disease that I could bear to live with.

It was at the Beyoncé concert that I finally decided to get “In Formation” with myself, and I went for it. The long-sleeved croptop creation done by revitalizing an old shirt was all set to go. The jeans made of stretch denim and tighter than a fitted sheet were ready too. A pair of black boots and a black sunhat big enough to cast shade to every phobic person who would be in the building. This outfit was thirty years of the little boy with no voice who finally became who he was always supposed to be. The “faggot” was now free. Unapologetic and ready to take the world on his own terms.

Faggot. Just writing the word makes me cringe some on the inside. There are truly not enough fingers and toes to count how many times I or many of my friends have been called this term.

During the fight for marriage equality, I thought that the term “faggot” had reached the ultimate peak of use, until the tragic events of June 12 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. The worst massacre in U.S. history, leading to forty-nine dead, and over fifty more injured members of the LGBTQ community, specifically Latinx and Black, brought some of the world’s worst to the forefront. A time when humanity should overrule hilarity, it didn’t. The “radical Christians” used this as a reminder that those who are “wicked” shall face the JULY 2016 • A&U

perils of events such as these. The FDA used this as a reminder that our blood isn’t good enough to support our brothers and sisters, continuing the stigma of HIV, sexual promiscuity, and hate speech that aided these attacks. Thankfully, as a leader in my community, I use this moment to not let those deaths and injuries be in vain, and place power in the words that “faggot” hate speech creates.

Placing power in the word.

My F stands for being fearless and fabulous. For many of us, getting dressed every day is a revolutionionary act within itself, and events like these serve as a reminder that we cannot allow ourselves to be closeted by tragedy.

My A is for awareness. Awareness of who I am and following my natural feelings of gender and sex. Awareness of my surroundings and those who hide in bushes waiting for their chance to attack my existence.

My G is for the “grit”-and-bear-it mentality that I must take with me every day. There are definitely some days where giving up seems to be the best solution, but my existence matters too much. The fight for LGBTQ children who are not even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes matter too much.

My G is for galvanizing. During times like these we have to come together. When we are attacked, we must come back stronger than ever before.

We must love, support, trust, and protect one another.

My O is for optimism. I have to continue to have hope for the future.

I am seeing a country unite around a community that has far too often been marginalized, oppressed, and forced

into silence and secrecy. I can only now hope that our narrative be told by us and our stories be shared, appreciated, and accepted.

My T is time. Time heals all wounds.

People who once called me “faggot” now call me “friend” and “family.” Time allows us to grieve and grow. Time allows us to think and reflect on being better versions of ourselves. Time is also precious, and should be used to live life every day like it is the last.

Because of my intersectionality, I place power in the word “faggot” similar to how many in my community placed power back in the word “nigger” or “nigga.” So yes I am truly a “faggot” in every way, and me and my LGBTQ brothers, sisters, and non-identifying siblings plan on continuing to live this way for a long time to come.

We are faggots. So deal with it!

George M. Johnson is an HIV advocate who works for Us Helping Us, People into Living, Inc., located in Washington, D.C. He has written for Pride.com, Musedmagonline.com, Blavity.com, Rolereboot.org, and Ebony.com.

Follow him on Twitter @IamGMJohnson.

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A Friend in Need

reaching out when you’re newly diagnosed

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his diagnosis, and still no meds. Even if it’s just mentally, the proverbial clock is ticking. Robert, I’m sad to say, was shutting down and not feeling very proactive. The social worker told him point blank that he wasn’t “homeless or suicidal,” he was way down on the list of priorities.

I didn’t like hearing that. While Robert holds down a full-time job, he is definitely at risk. He is in fact homeless, having lost his apartment due to an expensive crack cocaine habit. He is also still engaging in risky behavior sexually. (Yes, Robert knows I am writing this and knows that I am doing it anonymously, so he’s fine with it.)

He is very forthright about the challenges he faces.

Now, you can be easily treated when you have HIV once you have the right doctor.

Trouble is, in getting that treatment you’re occasionally going to hit some roadblocks.

It is vital that you be your own best advocate and get, even demand, the help you need.

I saw clearly that Robert was in need of a guiding hand, so I stepped in and am trying to help. I first got him to my place where I put him on the phone with our state’s wonderful ADAP program. They make things very easy—all I needed was a phone and a fax. I put them on the phone with Robert and it turns out he needed only one missing piece of paperwork. He’s produced that and given it to me to fax. In a few weeks, he’ll have his medication. Things just needed a little push.

I’m worried about Robert still. I’ve helped with several things. I even sat in on our state’s interview with newly diagnosed HIV-positive individuals. Turned out to be harmless; they simply want to know if there are any partners they can anonymously inform and encourage to be tested for STDs. Trouble is, they pretty much strong-armed their way into getting him to

meet with them, even calling him at work!

It made him more than a little nervous and he’s already a little jumpy. I’ve certainly tried to be there to talk to. My partner at the time I was diagnosed positive had just been so himself, so I know how important that can be. But, I can’t do everything for him and being positive can and will be logistically challenging as time goes on.

I’m going to keep an eye on him though and continue to nag him, especially about his drug habit. I can relate to that as well.

What frustrates me is how a trained social worker gave up so easily on someone who could so easily fall through the cracks.

Neither I, nor anyone, can make someone unwilling to help themselves do what is needed. But shouldn’t we try our best?

Incredible resources and information are just a mouse click or a phone call away. ADAP, the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, is available in all fifty states, though funding varies. Simply Google “ADAP” followed by the name of your state for more information. A good starting point for someone newly diagnosed could be the CDC’s National AIDS Hotline 1 (800) CDCINFO(232-4636) TTY 1 (888) 232-6348. One incredible online resource that can further refer you to things like medical care and other coverage providers nationwide is TheBody.com. And drug or alcohol abuse and HIV are a dangerous combination; you can contact The National Institute of Drug Abuse at www.drugabuse.gov or 1 (800) 662-HELP(4357).

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 twelve years and his currently at work on his first novel, Fools Rush In. A&U • JULY 2016

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

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s I’ve discussed before, I’ve left a full-time and stressful career behind me in L.A. To keep busy, I volunteer, have started writing, and work part-time for a local grocery store to bring in a little extra steady income. Some months back, a gay male coworker, one with whom I work closely (I’ll call him Robert here), reached out to me. My HIV status is not something I discuss openly at work, but I had disclosed it to a young friend there who decided it was something to gossip about.

So, unintentionally, Robert was aware.

It turned out to be a good thing because Robert was feeling a little shell-shocked, having just been diagnosed himself. It was obvious that he needed someone to talk to and I felt both honored and obligated to be that someone.

Robert’s family doctor was savvy enough to test him, given his history, and, when the results came in, quickly referred him to a local clinic. They assigned him a social worker to navigate the landscape of treatment and of what is probably one of the trickiest factors when you’re new to HIV. Yes, you now know that there are drugs you can and must take daily, but they’re not exactly inexpensive.

Even with decent insurance coverage, as in Robert’s case, there are costs involved. How will you meet those monthly costs? And, let’s not forget, some of us have no insurance at all. HIV treatment can cost thousands of dollars a month and even co-pays can be daunting for someone who works full-time.

The social worker got him started in the application process for ADAP, a national program administered by all fifty states, that pays for all or some of the drug costs for low to even median-income individuals. I have it myself and it’s been a godsend. So far so good, but obstacles started coming up.

Robert told me that again and again the social worker came back to him with yet more paperwork he needed. Each time he met with his caseworker meant spending time and money he didn’t have parking downtown. He was quickly becoming frustrated and the worker harder to reach.

Robert is in his early thirties and has no clear idea of when he was infected and, in today’s treatment model, the more quickly you’re on medication the better. It had already been more than four months since

Bringing hearts together since 1998

P zMatch.c m

lifeguide

Rick Scott’s Silence

by

Jeremiah Johnson why the health and wellbeing of lgbtq

floridians is at risk

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or two days following the deadliest mass shooting in American history and the murders of forty-nine mostly Latino/Latina patrons of a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida’s Governor Rick Scott neglected to even mention LGBTQ people. For the state’s Republican leadership, it wasn’t enough that LGBTQ people were specifically targeted and executed—we needed to be systematically erased from the narrative as well.

This is par for the course for Scott and his administration. His insensitivity and neglect in the wake of the Orlando massacre is emblematic of a longstanding political tradition of ignoring marginalized populations or being openly hostile toward their struggles to achieve equality.

A now-infamous CNN interview with the state’s Attorney General Pam Bondi following the murders nationally exposed the Scott administration’s horrifically oppressive stance on marriage equality. In March of this year, Scott signed completely superfluous and unnecessary language into law saying that clergy do not have to marry same-sex couples.

One of the best barometers for how a state or a nation supports its most marginalized populations, especially LGBTQ individuals, is its HIV epidemic.

HIV travels along the cracks in society and depends on the neglect of oppressed populations in order to spread. Given the obvious political hostility to LGBTQ populations, it is not surprising that in 2014 Florida had the second highest rate of new HIV diagnoses in the nation.

According to 2014 CDC surveillance data, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach is the second most affected U.S. metropolitan statistical area (MSA) by rate of new diagnoses, while Orlando is part of the fifth most affected MSA. According to estimates at the Florida Department of Health, since Rick Scott took office, reported new infections have continued to hover around 6,000 cases per year with no improvement in sight. An overwhelming number of those new infections occur in gay and bisexual men and transgender women of color.

Florida’s HIV epidemic isn’t out of control due to chance. The state is con-

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sistently doing worse than the rest of the nation because for years the Republican leadership has not been interested in the basic needs and rights of Florida’s most marginalized populations, particularly LGBTQ communities and people of color.

By repeatedly and vociferously refusing to take free federal dollars in order to expand Medicaid in the state, Republicans are effectively denying healthcare to many of the state’s nearly 2.8 million uninsured and poorest residents, most of whom come from communities of color. The health and wellbeing of marginalized Floridians is of such little concern to Rick Scott and his administration that he, along with his recently dismissed Surgeon General, John Armstrong, have spent much of their time in office slashing funding inside their Department of Health and county health departments. When we talk about structural and social oppression of marginalized populations as the primary drivers of HIV and other health crises in LGBTQ populations and communities of color, this unwillingness to invest in public health is exactly what we are talking about.

The oppressive attitudes, behaviors, and policy decisions of political leaders like Scott place marginalized communities at an increased risk of countless forms of harm. By refusing to even acknowledge LGBTQ populations following one of the single most violent events in our history, the Republican leadership has been placing sexual and gender minorities at increased risk of additional physical violence and contributing to a culture of hate and neglect.

No matter how much work communities do to protect themselves and make themselves safer, they cannot overcome a state government that seeks to completely erase them from the discussion.

Similarly, by failing to construct an adequate healthcare coverage system in the state, Rick Scott is perhaps the biggest risk factor for acquiring HIV in Florida. His policies effectively deny expedient access to treatment for those living with HIV, making it far more challenging for individuals to suppress the virus and nearly eliminate the possibility of passing it on to others. They

also ensure that it will remain almost impossible for the most marginalized HIV-negative individuals in Florida who want pre-exposure or post-exposure prophylaxis to access these essential prevention tools. Just as we cannot protect ourselves from violence without support from our political leaders, we cannot protect ourselves from HIV when oppressive politicians do not prioritize our needs or outright ignore us.

In the face of Orlando, we deserve more than moments of silence and prayers from all of our local, state, and national leaders; we need them to stop denying our equality, ignoring our health and physical safety, and effectively contributing to our figurative and literal erasure. If there were true justice in the face of this tragedy, then Scott would take the money he’s slashed out of his Department of Health and heavily invest into a whole division whose sole focus is to identify and solve the biggest threats to the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ individuals in his state, including violence and HIV. Scott would be publicly held accountable to provide healthcare coverage options for every single person in his state.

Given his track record, it’s difficult to expect Scott to pursue any meaningful solutions without aggressive advocacy.

Unless affected communities find a way to organize themselves, act up, and fight back against his oppressive stances, Florida will spend at least two more years with a leader that actively and deliberately omits the needs of queers from his consideration and contributes directly to our erased identities, our erased existences…our erased public health needs.

Many thanks to Benjamin Barnett for contributing research to this piece.

Jeremiah Johnson is the HIV Prevention Research and Policy Coordinator at the Treatment Action Group in New York. His career as an HIV activist began in 2008 after working with the ACLU to challenge the U.S. Peace Corps for wrongfully dismissing him from his volunteer service because he had tested positive for HIV. He is a frequent speaker and writer on topics related to HIV, racism, and LGBTQ rights.

A&U • JULY 2016

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1/19/16 10:43

When Lightn Light Renowned Photographer and Educator Nicholas Nixon Shoots Straight When It Comes to Making intimate Pictures of People With AIDS

I

by Sean Black

n the 1980s, when feelings and fears surrounding AIDS were excruciatingly raw and visceral, Nicholas Nixon set out to tell a catastrophic and epidemic truth. Not gratuitously, not exploitatively, and certainly not without careful communication with his sitters through the help of AIDS Action Committee, a Boston-based ASO. Nixon’s work was and still is deliberate, bold and predicated on his hopes of stirring a catharsis in the viewer whereby he or she would be able to assimilate shared humanity with that of the subject sufferer, an aim not always in the forefront of photojournalistic minds.

Born in 1947, Nixon is a lifelong educator and photographic traditionalist known for working in the style of Edward Weston and Walker Evans. Nixon uses a large-format, “view” camera to impart impeccable detail in his decidedly, strict black and white imagery (color imagery was thought to exaggerate realism and dilute visual potency and according to Evans was entirely “vulgar”).

In the Spring 1989 Aperture (Volume 114) article, “In Grief and Anger: Photographing People With AIDS,” writer and critic Robert Atkins opens with the question “How do you photograph AIDS?” He then immediately elaborates with a subset of questions and issues, including a central one: How do you represent a “condition that prompts social stigmatization as frequently as it elicits sympathy”? Atkins arrives at an answer: “The urge to create sympathetic portraits of PWAs is an understandable response to the racist and homophobic media construction of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ AIDS ‘victims’—the former being children and hemophiliacs, the latter gays and drug users.” The critical delineation in media reporting at this time between infection with HIV and the clinical diagnosis of AIDS was less rigorous and in many cases the con-

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firmed positive test result for HIV along with the AIDS diagnosis defined by not only the positive result but also severely depleted CD4 cells or one or more AIDS-defining illnesses such as Kaposi’s sarcoma and toxoplasmosis. Many times both diagnoses were delivered together to patients of the mid to late 1980s.

Atkins leads the reader through this meditation in order to discuss the “documentary/modernist mode” photographs of Nicholas Nixon along with those of Rosalind Solomon —two of the first photographers to be exhibited in a solo show about AIDS in galleries and museums around New York City in 1988.

Just prior, in 1987, Nicholas Nixon began to photograph PWAs. The Museum of Modern Art published his first images of Tom Moran in his monograph Nicholas Nixon: Pictures of People in 1988, coinciding with an exhibition of his work. The work was prefaced by subtext: “People with AIDS: Excerpt from Work in Progress.” Peter Galassi introduces Nixon’s work thusly: “Nixon’s mastery of craft and his surprising pictorial innovations brought new vitality to a venerable tradition. But most remarkable is the psychological depth of Nixon’s work and its freedom from the familiar burdens of irony and sentimental cliché.

In this candid interview, nearly thirty years later, Nicholas Nixon talks openly with A&U, about his picture-making as he shares intimate stories of heroic proportion.

Sean Black: What brought you to photography?

Nicholas Nixon: I was a student at the University of Michigan, an English major, and I figured to pay the rent, I would get a doctorate and teach English. That was the best I could think of, but I wasn’t crazy about it. The summer between my junior and senior years, on a whim, I took a photography course. I was [also] working in a bookstore and had looked at photography books. I decided to take a course, and it only took about two hours for me to sort of love it; lightning struck and I’ve loved it ever since.

Can you describe your take on the medium as evidence (photography as truth or historical record) or that of artistic expression, or both?

I think it [the medium] is changing now. There’s a lot of interesting questions that digital photography raises about evidence, and I think, there’s a lot to be said by a lot of people who have different opinions. But there are changes that are possible now in an image [Photoshop] that weren’t really possible when I started. I A&U • JULY 2016

ning Strikes tning

sort of looked at every picture as a kind of evidence, you know, because it hadn’t been manipulated to the extent of what you can do now. Digital manipulation pretty much showed up and [I thought] it was silly-looking. I look at making photographs as a straight kind of thing....You know, photography started in 1839 with this sort of central mission of bearing witness, and I still think, for me, that’s still the central thing and I haven’t veered from that....

In regards to this “bearing witness,” using it as a lens to talk about the work that JULY 2016 • A&U

you did in the early days of AIDS, what brought you to that work at the time?

One night, I was having dinner with my wife Bebe’s friend and her husband, who had testicular cancer. He was tall and thin and Nordic, and she was curvy and Italian and short, and they were this amazing couple. And at dinner, I got the idea that I’d like to photograph them, if they were willing, every month for the rest of their lives together as he was dying. So probably after a glass of wine, I proposed this to them, and he liked the idea and she was a little bit more reserved about it. And

Tony Mastrorilli, Mansfield, Massachusetts, 1988, gelatin-silver print © Nicholas Nixon, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco then when he called me the next day, he said, “You know, she can’t do it, because every time you come over, it’s just going to remind her that my end is real. She doesn’t want to have that sort of interface, whereas I would relish it; I would love to make something of my illness and give it some form.”

So, after they turned me down, the

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Tom and Catherine Moran, East Braintree, Massachusetts, 1987 © Nicholas Nixon, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco same day I called up AIDS Action Committee...and started trying to find volunteers, and learn about [the disease]. It was kind of like a landslide....[M]ost of the people with AIDS that you saw in the newspapers and on television looked pretty bad, that sort of look that people get when they’re near the

end, that I think it makes it easy for people who aren’t sick to sort of shun, almost the way you shun somebody who has soiled themselves. That just seemed not fair to me, and so I sort of figured, well, maybe my process of [photographing] individuals might make one-tenth of one-hundredth of a percent of difference, and [that perhaps my book could] change people’s minds.

From the start, I wanted it to be a book. I promised everybody it would be a book.

To reiterate Atkins’ Aperture question, which I think is still pertinent today: How do you photograph AIDS? A lot of people nowadays think that you can photograph an abstraction, and I just don’t. You know, I think the way you photograph AIDS is to photograph Tom Moran who has AIDS, and then you see where it is. You have to deal with what’s specifically in front of you and get the big concepts out of the way. [Thinking in terms of big concepts] makes you have an agenda; it tends to close you up to different things than you might think in the process. And so it’s easy to sort of stay stuck with an original idea, [your “big idea,” even when] the evidence proves otherwise. So I stay very loose....I start with the individuals.

So, the answer to your question is— the same way I’d photograph somebody who had tuberculosis or the same way I’d photograph somebody who was schizophrenic. I wouldn’t be pretentious enough or braggart enough to think that I was photographing schizophrenia. That would be for somebody else to decide later on, but I would just start it by photographing one schizophrenic patient, and that’s what I did.

Do you think that now, by looking back with such clarity, these images perhaps could speak to young people to catch their attention about what the early epidemic was like, and to maybe mitigate some of this desensitized view of HIV, that today it’s, oh, you can just take a pill?

I would love it if they could be used for that. You know, whenever anybody calls up and wants to use an image, once I find out that they’re legit, I let them do it. I showed the whole body of work and read excerpts to my class at Massachusetts College of Art last week because some of my students had been asking me about it. And only one person in the class was born when I was making the work, so it was really quite shocking and quite eye-opening to them to see what [living with AIDS] looked like, and how little hope there was for a long life, and how cruel [AIDS] could be.

The other thing that struck me is that a lot of the people, a lot of the patients still had parents who had rejected them for being gay, and so the way that our Tom Moran, East Braintree, Massachusetts, 1987 © Nicholas Nixon, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

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A&U • JULY 2016

A&U Gallery culture has embraced gayness in the last thirty years is really amazing. I mean, it’s probably not fast enough for you [as a member of the LGBT community], but it’s pretty fast as far as a cultural shift goes, if you step back. And all of these kids—and, I mean, half the people [who couldn’t be “out” to family]—Tom Moran could not tell his mother he was gay. Tony Mastrorilli could not tell his mother he was gay; he was Catholic and ashamed. So the degree to which men were in the closet, and either a little bit ashamed themselves or that their parents were ashamed, and hiding it, was huge compared to now.

Huge. The guy Donald Perham, the guy with the beard and his son, he was a hemophiliac and his house—people threw stones in his window up in a small town in New Hampshire that said “faggot” on them. So this poor guy, I don’t even know if he knew what a gay man was, he was a hick. I’m sure he did, but I mean, he was just this guy who had a family and was a schoolteacher, and he was treated like a leper, and so that’s why he volunteered, because he was angry. You know, the degree to which it was—I mean, there were deathbed scenes where guys didn’t want their parents to be there, because their parents had rejected them for so long. And so, I can think of three scenes where it’s late in the day, the patient is really sick, he’s not going to live too long, his friends, his lover, the people who’ve supported him are there with him, I’m there with him—sometimes the friends don’t want me to be there, but the patient does, because I haven’t really known the friends that well, but they say, “Who’s this guy?” And then the parents come in and they say, “Who’s this guy?” and the patient doesn’t want the parents to be there, because they’ve let him down.

You know, he loves them, but he feels awkward and he’s ashamed of them. And it’s just awful—I just felt so bad for these guys, because that’s not what they needed at the end of their life, to have all this nonsense in the air, all this bitterness, and all this dissension. It was just terrible; it was just terrible. I did my best to come up to them afterwards, as did their supporters, but you’d be surprised how many—of my thirteen people, I would say five had been stiff-armed by their parents.

Wow, no, I remember those days, and I still see young gay, lesbian, trans members of our community who have a really hard time or that are rejected, and leave home, and have to try to find ways to survive. And, you know, changing our societal consciousness on gender and sexuality is still perplexing, but I think, as you said, the times are moving forward. Now, in closing—and I really appreciate the bravery, you know, in taking on this, because, I think, your work acts as a record, which aligns with part of A&U

Tom Moran, Boston, Massachusetts, 1988, gelatin-silver print © Nicholas Nixon, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco Magazine’s mission, to record the good and the bad in this journey. Were there any messages or any other relationships with the subjects that you photographed that might help us to understand perhaps some of the compassion that was given to them continued on page 62

Robert Sappenfield and His Parents, Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1988, gelatin-silver print © Nicholas Nixon, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco JULY 2016 • A&U

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MESSAGE OUT OF THE BOTTLE

Outspoken HIV Activist Wanda Brendle-Moss Urges People Living With HIV to Live Out Loud

by Alina Oswald

E

photographed exclusively for A&U by Gianna Haley

verybody knows Wanda! I personally connected with her on social media. Inspired by her posts, I decided to go ahead and call her, to find out more about her story of becoming the passionate HIV activist known and respected in the virtual, and also real world.

“I’m originally born in Winston-Salem, I still live in Winston-Salem, and I will probably die in Winston-Salem,” Wanda Brendle-Moss chuckles. A registered nurse by profession, now retired, Wanda seems to have taken care of people her entire life.

“I graduated from nursing school in 1981,” she mentions, recalling the first time she came face to face with what turned out to be HIV. “That’s when there was this thing going around. Then we just got the name for it, and the name was HIV. I was one of the nurses that never ever refused to care for [patients with HIV] who were coming in. And in all honesty, most of them were men.” She pauses for a moment, and then she adds, “My belief is that any time a man has a [sexually] communicable disease, there’s going to be women who have the same disease. It’s just the way it works. But sadly our society did not accept that belief.”

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Twenty years later, Wanda found herself in a marriage that was about to fall apart. Her husband at the time turned out not to be a knight in shining armor after all; quite the contrary. “During the last little bit of our relationship I had started losing weight,” she recalls. “I was having a lot of thrush in my mouth, candidiasis [which usually is a tell-tale sign that the virus is present in the human body]. But still, it didn’t click in my brain that I could be susceptible to HIV [infection]. Propaganda was saying that [HIV] is linked to gay men and prostitutes.”

In 2002, following her son’s advice, she went to a local women’s shelter. She also went to a walk-in clinic to see a doctor.

“I was very fortunate that I got a doctor who was a true human being,” she says.

“He came in and put his hand on my knee, and said, ‘Let’s do a test.’ And in that moment I knew that I would be diagnosed with HIV.” Not long after her doctor’s visit she got a phone call from the walk-in clinic asking her to come in. The doctor also came in, on his day off. There was also a social worker in the room. Wanda remembers that someone handed her a piece of paper and asked her to sign it. The paper said

that she would not do any harm to herself. To this day she believes that form had some role in saving her life, at least in part.

She began what she calls her “last relationship” a couple of years later, but that did not end well for Wanda. She found herself “one minute away from living on the streets,” she says. “I called AIDS Care Services and came into the family of AIDS Care Services here in Winston-Salem.” While still devastated by the breakup, she also needed to have a purpose; therefore, she started volunteering in the food pantry. That gave her self-confidence.

From then on, she started living very openly and showing her true colors in terms of her HIV status. After all, she declares, “I am a white heterosexual woman, I might be white on the outside, but on the inside I A&U • JULY 2016

JULY 2016 • A&U

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in the fight to end HIV agree that in order to make that happen we first have to deal with the stigma surrounding the virus.

In 2014 Wanda went to her first AIDSWatch conference. She basically went on faith, not knowing where she was going to stay, sleep, or eat during the event. Later that year she attended an HIV Day event in Winston-Salem. One of the individuals at that event remembered Wanda from AIDSWatch. “I was so moved that you came on faith,” she remembers him saying. “But you were determined to make a difference.” That statement validated her work, yet again, and also that being honest with people did, indeed, make a difference.

And Wanda Brendle-Moss has been making a difference. She is now on the Board of Directors of the AIDS Drug Assistant Program Advocacy Association.

“Since its inception in 2007,” says Brandon M. Macsata, CEO of ADAP Advocacy Association, “the [organization] has promoted a patient-centric approach to its governance, programmatic activities and coalition building. We don’t simply talk the talk, but more importantly, we walk the walk evidenced by the fact that a majority of our board has to be people living with HIV/AIDS. All of our programs—including our flagship ADAP Directory—are designed from the patient perspective.”

Wanda first came to ADAP in 2013.

She was the only North Carolinian to attend the ADAP event, and so she was asked to bring in more people, which she did, two years in a row. One day she received a phone call from Brandon Macsata, and she thought she’d done something wrong. Instead, she recalls him asking, “He said, ‘Wanda, how would you feel about being on our board of directors?’ and I said ‘I would be honored to be on your board,’ and then he kind of chuckled and said, ‘That’s a good thing you said yes, because we voted you in last night.’”

Wanda is the first to admit that one has to be ready to become an HIV activist.

Many young individuals, women in particular, living with the virus want to become activists and public speakers like Wanda, and thus ask for her advice. “There’s a process,” she tells them. “Before you [become ready to] do what I do, you have to believe in yourself. Because if you go and speak before a group [of people], and get that question that bothers you, you will not be ready for it if you’re newly diagnosed [with HIV].” She reiterates, “Newly diagnosed persons are not ready to be public speakers until they accept the diagnosis. And [they] can’t play the blame game!”

Wanda is adamant that HIV is not a A&U • JULY 2016

photo by Cherise Richards Photography

to a few individuals, and explained her financial situation, as well as her goals.

And in turn they rewarded her bravery and passion for what she was ready to do by helping her get not only a computer, but also some other office equipment.

It didn’t take long for people in the local HIV community to hear about Wanda.

The Adam Foundation, a local AIDS nonprofit founded in 1990 with (as mentioned on its website) “the primary goal to provide funds for those in need in the LGBT community... specifically members who were directly affected by HIV/ AIDS,” an organization which, to this day, “remains steadfast in its commitment to our healthcare-based Wanda at 2020 Leading Women Society of legacy,” invited her SisterLove, Inc., induction in 2015 to speak at one of its annual festivals and to share a little bit about her story. am a rainbow.”

After the speech, Over the years she became the activshe noticed that a lot of white women in ist—and cyber-activist—we know today. the audience had tears in their eyes. She She also realized maybe from the start found out that it was because, before hearthat outside the big cities and their bright ing her story, they had no idea that they lights, outside cities often associated with could be at risk of contracting the virus. the epidemic (like New York, L.A., or San That’s because nobody talked about white Francisco), in small towns of America, women, who often have more resources there are different issues surrounding HIV than other women, as being at risk of and AIDS. She realized that although HIV contracting HIV. is alive and well in Smalltown America, in “My theory is that a lot of Caucasian particular inside the Bible Belt, there’s an women come from privilege,” Wanda exongoing shame and stigma associated with plains, speaking about disparities between the virus. Nobody is willing to bring it out “women of color and women of no color.” into the open. Nobody would talk or come She adds, “Privilege affords them to pay out about being HIV-positive. So Wanda for medication outside their insurance felt compelled to become a voice, perhaps and not to report their status to the CDC. the only or at least thee strongest voice in I have preached that widely. And I have her community, in her state. gained some momentum in that.”

But in order to do that, in particular, in Everybody’s journey is different, in order to tap into an HIV community outparticular when it comes to HIV. “We side Winston-Salem and North Carolina, have to start talking about HIV and call it she first needed a computer. The problem what it is—Human Immunodeficiency Viwas that she had not much money to rus. The key word here is ‘Human.’” She afford to buy one. And so, she reached out points out that many individuals involved

crime. “We are all responsible for our own wellbeing,” she says. “If you’re shooting drugs, no judgment, but don’t share your works [and use clean needles and works],” she advises. And despite the fact that nowadays PrEP is available, she still urges that it is important to use condoms. That’s because, if taken as directed PrEP is effective in preventing HIV, but it doesn’t prevent any other STIs. “C’mon, get real. You still need a condom,” she reiterates.

Wanda Brendle-Moss is a loud activist voice, in some cases maybe the loudest voice, especially in North Carolina. She’s fearless, unafraid to tell her HIV story in hopes that it will help others.

When I ask what motivates her to be an activist and do everything that she does, she answers with excitement in her voice, “Do I get a high because somebody [says] ‘Go get Wanda; Wanda will make things happen’? My old heart goes JULY 2016 • A&U

kaboom-kaboom [when I hear that].” She continues, “But [most importantly] if what I do makes one person think before they get into any of the [so-called] risky behaviors—which means just people being people—if I plant a seed [to make them think before engaging in such behaviors] then I’ve done my job.”

There were events in North Carolina where she showed up wearing buttons proclaiming that she has HIV and she’s living in the community. She was told not to wear such signs, not to draw unintended attention to herself and others around her. But she wasn’t intimidated or afraid to go public about her HIV status. When I ask why she’s not hesitant to do so, she answers, “My life has had so many twists and turns. HIV ain’t nothing. It is a virus. It is a preventable, treatable virus.

There’s nothing in the world to make you ashamed of HIV. Humans make you ashamed of HIV.” She goes on to

say, “[Living with HIV] is my reality. Just because you’re sitting or standing beside me that’s not outing you as an HIV-positive person. Please do not try to put me in a bottle!”

Wanda Brendle-Moss lives out loud with HIV and encourages others to do the same. “Please have the courage within yourself to live out loud,” she says, “because once you take that step to living out loud and accept that this is just a virus—a treatable, preventable virus—only then you will find true freedom.”

Learn more about ADAP by visiting www.adapadvocacyassociation.org. Find out more about Wanda Brendle-Moss by contacting her online at https://www.facebook.com/WandaBrendleMoss.

To contact photographer Gianna Haley, e-mail her at gianna.haley@gmail.com.

Alina Oswald is Arts Editor of A&U.

37

Young City At War The Lavender Effect Documents the Early Days of HIV/AIDS in West Hollywood

by Stevie St. John

I

ncorporated in 1984, Southern California LGBT enclave West Hollywood was a new city as the community faced the earliest, most devastating days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. And LGBT people—marginalized, criminalized, and largely despised—united to care for the sick, to fight the scourge of the virus, and to propel forward the LGBT civil rights movement.

The Lavender Effect, a culturally and historically oriented nonprofit that aims to eventually establish a museum and cultural center in Hollywood, is releasing a series of video interviews that document the memories of people who played a role in the fight against the disease. Among those featured is John Duran, a West Hollywood City Councilmember and a longtime HIV/ AIDS activist.

“It is not possible to put into words the trauma and devastation experienced by our community during the period from 1980–1995. We lost 10,000 souls in West Hollywood and our surrounding zip codes during that period of time,” Duran said.

“That is the equivalent of having multiple bombs dropped on a small town where everyone lost someone they knew and loved.

You would think that since it has been twenty years since the arrival of protease inhibitors that the pain has passed. It has not. It is buried just below the quickly closed scars that sewed onto ourselves to protect us from the trauma. But we now have a generation of community people walking the streets of West Hollywood with PTSD from this era.

“This project is the beginning of opening the scars and letting the pain out so

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photographed exclusively for A&U by Sean Black

that we can continue to heal. The city has also launched the construction of an AIDS monument in West Hollywood Park to not only memorialize the dead but to recognize the heroic efforts of the women and men who responded to the worst plague in our nation’s history.”

The Young City at War videos expand on the Lavender Effect’s previous Oral History Project videos—recorded starting in 2012—that record the stories of prominent LGBT and allied people who have played roles in LGBT history.

Andy Sacher, founding executive and creative director of the Lavender Effect, noted that there is a “sense of urgency” in recording these “interviews with pioneers,” as many document the memories of elders who will not be here to educate future generations. Sacher said that he grew up in a Jewish family and learned early on “how valuable it is for us to document history and to have it told firsthand from the people who lived it.” As part of the project, Sacher said, the organization chose some key content areas, including the community facing the “invisible enemy” of AIDS. “Essentially we did not know what it was. Men were dying. They were shriveling up….Many men had these purple blotches all over their bodies….Their immune systems were just destroyed,” Sacher said of the early days of the epidemic.

The Oral History Project, which began with general LGBT activism stories, has expanded to include a round with an “intense focus” on West Hollywood and surrounding areas.

On World AIDS Day 2015, the Laven-

der Effect starting rolling out the Young City at War Oral History Project videos.

The Young City at War project received a $10,000 grant from California Humanities, matched by a $10,000 grant from the city of West Hollywood. The organization also accepts donations to support the project on its website. At press time, the Young City at War webpage featured video interviews with eight people. They recalled the early days of AIDS and addressed topics such as homophobia, community activism, public policy, and the pain of losing loved ones and seeing the community decimated.

The Young City at War videos share a similar theme, but each subject often touched on different issues.

Some commented on painful goodbyes endured.

For example, Michael Weinstein, president and CEO of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, shares: “On the weekends, you were going from one hospital to another, and there were memorials constantly.

And it seemed like supporting people you knew became…almost like a full-time occupation….You had no idea where it was going to strike and when it was going to strike and who it was going to strike.”

And here is Ivy Bottini, activist in the feminist and LGBT movements, commenting on her experience: “Every day, myself and everybody else in the community would get up and see death again, every day, and see men falling by the wayside getting sick, and we felt so helpless. We didn’t know how to stop it….We learned some really good lessons. We learned that we cannot walk this alone. Men and A&U • JULY 2016

women have to work together—they have to. We also learned that there are allies out there. That there are people who understand, who believe that we’re born as we are. And we learned that you can’t just win things with just grassroots or just money.

You’ve got to have both. I think the biggest thing we learned was that we can take care of ourselves if we have to.”

Other interviewees remarked about the hatred and homophobia of the era.

Torie Osborn, former director of the LGBT center in Los Angeles and the National Lesbian & Gay Task Force, states: “We were the community they loved to hate…and AIDS gave them the perfect excuse….It was killing young men at the prime of their lives.”

Alison Arngrim [A&U, March 2002], a longtime AIDS advocate and actress who played Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie, recalls finding out that her friend and former costar Steve Tracy was dying and her subsequent AIDS activism: “I learned how suddenly you can just find out that you’re not going to live anymore and how quickly people can be gone and just die. I learned how horrible people can be—the people who burned down the houses with the children…the people who…threw families with children with HIV out of school and out of churches and out of their homes.”

And Dr. Michael Gottlieb, the physician who described AIDS as a new disease, bemoans the apathy of the era: “There was little happening in the way of a public response. You were swimming upstream. There was a lot of reluctance to do anything…I was shocked by the fact that gay people were so poorly regarded, that there wasn’t a concerted effort to get to the bottom of this….In 1984, I was asked to see a celebrity patient, Rock Hudson, and determined, in fact, that he did have AIDS ....I always knew his case had the potential to be some kind of turning point.”

In the end, as some of interview subjects remind, a community had been mobilized.

John Heilman, West Hollywood City Councilmember, states: “Everyone was walking around scared, but we had to go on….There was really a groundswell of activism….It really was the best of the community all coming together—not all agreeing but all doing something to address the problem….I don’t know how I got through it; I don’t know how any of us got through it—but we had to.”

John Duran, West Hollywood City Councilmember, also remembers the challenges of encouraging an appropriate response to the epidemic: “We learned the hard way how to organize, how to raise JULY 2016 • A&U

money, how to gather ourselves together, and you have to remember at the same time we were doing that, we had friends that were dropping left and right.”

Karen Ocamb, LGBT community journalist, bears witness to a shared empowerment: “The thing we can be most proud of is how we reacted to each other, how we embraced each other—being in the spiritual vanguard. Government and religion and in many cases our own families turned their backs on us, shunned us—said we were going to hell, said we were evil, said we were no good, said we should be ashamed of ourselves. You know, we stopped and we stood up, and we held our dying to our breasts and we said, ‘I love you. I love you. And you are a worthy person, and you are worthy of dignity.

We belong here. We have a right here, and ours is a movement of love.’ … And what

Andy Sacher people… need to understand is that all our dead friends live still within us. We promised never to forget, and we won’t.”

Andy Sacher noted that the organization would like to expand in the future to include additional Young City at War interviews.

“This really does feel like just the beginning,” he said.

Log on to: www.thelavendereffect.org for more information. The nonprofit’s Oral History Project videos: www.thelavendereffect.org/ projects/ohp; Young City at War videos: www. thelavendereffect.org/projects/ycaw.

Stevie St. John is an assistant editor at Brief Media, a veterinary medical publishing company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her byline has appeared in many LGBT publications.

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P U G & N I T K A U E O SP G N I K A E SP

Rev. William Francis Is Leading the Charge to Raise Awareness About Heterosexual Men Living with HIV

by Connie Rose photographed exclusively for A&U by Alina Oswald

O

n August 16, 2012, Reverend William Francis, CEO of Atlanta Faith in Action (AFIA), and lead servant at the AFIA Center based in Atlanta, Georgia, began holding one of the only Heterosexual Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day events in the United States. Since acquiring HIV, Rev. Francis has made his ministry a ministry of “zero,” where he believes that through faith and action there will be “zero” new HIV infections, “zero” injustices, “zero” hunger, “zero” homelessness, and so on. His mission and work through the church, his personal ministry (William Francis Ministries), and The Zero Campaign keep him busy as he addresses social justice issues such as HIV and health matters, discrimination, HIV criminalization and reform ideas, and increasing access to care, as well as quality housing, ending homelessness, domestic violence, hunger, and human sex trafficking.

Currently traveling the country, Rev. Francis is training faith-based and community-based organizations how to better address ending the HIV epidemic, drawing on his personal experience and knowledge of prevention, care, and other advocacy issues he has worked on as a consultant and ambassador over the last six years.

Another activity that falls under Rev. Francis’s mission is the building of tiny homes for the homeless, installing an urban garden and aquaponics system on their church’s property to help feed the community, and offering job training, mental health, and substance abuse programs through The AFIA

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Center. The AFIA Center provides several other public social services including HIV and STI testing, condom distribution, and linkageto-care services.

This year the reverend is hoping to expand this grass-roots campaign into a national day of awareness so that the growing group

of heterosexual HIV-positive men of which he is a part can begin to get the support and acknowledgment that they deserve. HIV-positive himself since 2009, William Francis noticed immediately the lack of support for straight-identified men within the HIV community. Heterosexual men from around A&U • JULY 2016

the nation are chiming in on their desire to host an event in their cities and some of the men will be privately showing their support in any way they can to observe Heterosexual Men’s HIV/ AIDS Awareness Day on August 16.

While the collective voice of HIV-positive heterosexual men who have taken up this cause may be small, the numbers of heterosexual men affected by HIV are not. Where you find groups that have people with a common cause you will find that courage and bravery are not far behind. HIV-positive heterosexual men are one of the least talked about and most overlooked groups of people whose needs are being left untreated; they are very often being stigmatized within the very community that can help them. Instead of finding help and support, many of these men are finding blame, shame, and very few sources of empowerment.

With more than a month to go, however, there is still plenty of time for your city or town to organize a event and help Rev. Francis bring this plan of action to fruition.

To date, various people and organizations are joining in to show their support in various cities in the states of Nevada, California, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. Currently, the CDC has very few statistics to offer for men who have sex with women (MSW); one estimated infection chart from 2010 states that out of 12,100 new HIV infections among heterosexuals, 4,100 of those were heterosexual males. Additionally, MSW are not part of PrEP campaigns yet they very well could be as there is time to get ahead of the problem.

Recently I discussed these issues as well as Heterosexual Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day with Rev. William Francis.

Connie Rose: Rev. Francis, would you tell us why you decided to organize this event the first year in your community and what is your hope for the future of this day of awareness?

Rev. William Francis: Heterosexual Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (HMHAAD) was started as a local event with a few groups of heterosexual men having open conversations about HIV. Last year, we were excited to get our first partner and held the event with several Bike Groups in the Atlanta Metropolitan area, where we were able to do HIV education, distribute condoms and do rapid HIV testing.

Our goal this year is to mobilize more men, in more cities, to form a National Steering Committee and begin to organize around a national policy agenda. The ultimate goal is to launch a social awareness campaign of our own, along with gaining national recognition of our own JULY 2016 • A&U

define itself around awareness, education, testing and care. This observance will push research and ultimately the “will” for a cure. It will have other men across the globe no longer feeling as if their stories need to be in the shadows.

It will, in my opinion, have an even broader impact on HIV and its defining roles as did Magic Johnson’s announcement in the nineties.

This movement will be that conduit, the catalyst for that change. The change that moves us past just sexuality to mutuality and a commonality. This movement will move us past ambiguity and anonymity and back to humanity.

Awareness Day from the CDC and others within the HIV community as a whole. Not to single out our community or any other community but to make the community, whole.

The voice or should I say the silence of heterosexual men has been fueled by stigma, shame, self-stigma, ridicule, and, yes, even a permeated “sense of ownership” of HIV. There has been a missing link for far too long, and even an empty chair at the leadership table. Women and our MSM brothers have bore the brunt of this fight for far too long.

Often fighting alone in the masses. But the time has come that our involvement will no longer be just a conversation. We want to uphold our responsibility to self, to our families, to our loved ones, to our brothers and sisters within the community.

Realizing there needs to be many healing, tough conversations, realizations, and even some apologies that need to take place for us all to come together. Not to place blame or again point fingers at one another but to end this disease and all the “dis-ease” that comes with it. This “place” we must assume on our own—not ask permission, or by invitation.

What do you think the group of HIV-positive heterosexual men will gain as a whole from having a recognized day of awareness in their honor?

Our goal is simply to recognize a population underserved and often not even invited to the table. In doing so we are hoping to lift the stigma and self-stigma placed on and around heterosexual men and HIV. But the movement began to

If your group could speak to every heterosexual man living with HIV and make a plea for him to step forward and stand with his brothers, what would you say?

Live in your truth. Live out your Destiny. We no longer need to stand in the shadows but together let’s walk into the Light. Together we can break the stigma and self-stigma and the need for the community to heal as a whole.

As I mentioned, there is a national conference call scheduled where we, as group of HIV-positive hetero male leaders, will discuss forming a steering committee and creating a national policy agenda to create interventions and target prevention efforts at heterosexual men. This agenda will also include expansion of needed services, support groups as well as targeted care and treatment options. We will also stress that “our” community wants to be inclusive of other communities because we understand the hurt—we just haven’t experienced the same pain.

Any final thoughts?

I want to give kudos to all of those that came before me....Their blood, sweat and tears have only cleared the way for something like this to even happen.

For more information, contact Rev. William Francis by e-mail at: revwilliamfrancis@gmail.com.

Connie Rose acquired HIV at twenty-one years of age from her husband because she didn’t ask for an HIV test before they married and if he did know he didn’t tell her. Forty-one, Connie Rose is a mother and grandmother living in Las Vegas, Nevada, changing the world one blog at a time. When she is not writing for multiple ticket venues, including the Vegastickets website, she manages and writes for her own website, livingpos.com, an information and blogging site dedicated to the four H’s in the STD community. She also is an advocate in her local community and on social media. Follow Connie Rose on Twitter @Cricketlv.

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pure pure ARTISTRY

Dancer & Choreographer Ray Mercer Exemplifies Why Broadway Cares

by George M. Johnson

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YouTube to get a glimpse into the world of dance through his artistic vision. Ray’s pieces are vibrant and spellbinding, and they consist of power, grace and the transformative approach of spreading a socially conscious message through the art of dance. Video after video had me mesmerized as I watched dancer after dancer poetically convey imagery that scorched my soul while making my heart pound.

Just like the quickness of a movement in dance, Ray is hard to catch up with, between working on Broadway and simultaneously creating his own shows with full choreography created by him. I had the pleasure of taking a few moments of his time to get some insight on the legend known as Ray Mercer.

George M. Johnson: How long have you

been involved in dance and what inspired you to get started?

Ray Mercer: I have been dancing since the age of seventeen. I started off as a competitive gymnast and transitioned into dance during my high school/college years. I took my first formal ballet class, and instantly fell in love with dance.

Name the worst thing and the funniest thing that has ever happened to you during a performance?

I am a Giraffe in The Lion King and during the opening number I fell onstage in my fourteen-feet-high stilts. Due to the restrictions of the costume the stage crew had to come on and drag me off by my legs, in front of 1,700 people!

That was probably my worst and funniest all at once.

photo by Jon Dee

F

rom Dancing with the Stars to So You Think You Can Dance, the art of poetry in motion has stormed back into our households on a weekly regular basis, where millions can tune in to see everything from twerking to the foxtrot. While most of the current generation is just getting acclimated to the long history of dance and the performing arts as an artistic expression of culture, choreographer and dancer Ray Mercer has long known its beauty and power. For the legendary performer, dance is more than a job—it is a way of life.

Ray Mercer, originally a native of Omaha, Nebraska, currently works on Broadway as a part of the cast of The Lion King. Starting his dance training at the age of seventeen, Ray studied at the University of New Orleans, as well as in Chicago and New York. His extensive résumé includes working with legends like Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, Garth Fagan, and Louis Johnson, just to name a few.

Ray’s talents have taken him across the globe to teach master classes in dance and he has been featured in publications like The New York Times and Chicago Sun-Times for his work. His accolades prove that he is one of the best at what he does. Among his many honors, he has received Joffrey Ballet’s Choreographers of Color Award and Broadway’s Gypsy of the Year Award a record six times from Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, including a run of four in a row from 2011–2014. He recently created “Pure Motion: An Evening of Dances

by Ray Mercer,” a dance performance that helped raise funds for Broadway Cares, which provides services to individuals impacted by HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses as well as grants to other similar organizations.

When researching Ray, I turned to

A&U • JULY 2016

What has been the experience working on The Lion King for more than a decade, and how has that helped craft the way you create your own performances?

I am in my fourteenth year at The Lion King, and it has been one of the most fulfilling, challenging, and rewarding experiences of my life. It is the best thing that has happened to me, career-wise. I am constantly exposed to brilliant artists, lighting designers, wardrobe, musicians, actors, carpenters, and stage crew. It has taught me so much about the business.

And to be a part of a show that has longevity and one of the longest and most successful shows in history is truly a blessing and an honor.

It has also allowed me to have access to some of the best dancers who are at the top of their game....This has allowed me to create freely and really has provided me with an amazing level of exposure. I am truly grateful.

What inspired you to create “Pure Motion” and collaborate with Broadway Cares in the fight against HIV and AIDS? I have been presenting work for Broadway Cares’ Gypsy of the Year since 2005, and I have won the competition more than any other choreographer in their twentysix-year history. So, they approached me about presenting all my winning works and two premiere works in an evening of dance. We went into pre-production in the summer and started rehearsals with the dancers in January [to prepare for the February 29–March 1 run of performances].

photo by Dirty Sugar Photography

Do you have any personal connection to HIV that inspired you to do this project?

My biggest connection with HIV is Broadway Cares; I have worked with them for over fourteen years and not only have they given me a platform to create, but at the same time I feel like I am helping millions of people, not only in my community but all over the world.

How was the event? Any takeaways or thoughts?

“Pure Motion” was one of the highlights of my career. I was honored to have so many talented artists that were so dedicated to this project. It was one of those instances where hard work and dedication pays off. It was truly a magical moment! I am so glad that we were able to do it for a great cause.

What do you hope your legacy will be?

I hope that my legacy will be one of pure artistry. That they will recognize my work for the way that it touches the human spirit. I JULY 2016 • A&U

am constantly challenging myself to produce good work that inspires and entertains!

If there was a piece of advice you could tell your younger self, what would it be and why?

I would tell myself to trust your instincts; they are there for a reason.

And in life there are no short cuts; great things only happen through dedication and very hard work. Why? Because it is the key to success.

Ray Mercer is a perfect example of

how art can imitate life. When you are dedicated to your craft you can also use that same motivation to change and impact the lives of others. Ray’s hard work and dedication throughout the years has not only helped provide a platform for him, but helped hundreds of others in the fight against the disease.

Catch up with Ray Mercer by logging on to: www.raymercerdance.com.

George M. Johnson writes the monthly column Our Story, Our Time for A&U.

43

richly deserved

As Singer John Grant’s Painful Past Fuels His Powerful Autobiographical Songs, His Soul-Searching Work Brings Him Closer to Inner Peace

by Dann Dulin

photographed exclusively for A&U by Sean Black

D

iscover Iceland’s Greatest National Resource…

Icelandic Glaciers. This gigantic eye catching advertisement swiftly whizzes by, covering the entire length of a double-sized Los Angeles Metro bus. I’m seated at a cozy corner table at the Ace Hotel restaurant looking out on downtown traffic at 9th and South Broadway, waiting for the arrival of the eclectic singer, John Grant, who lives in Reykjavik, Iceland, where surely he has come to know about glaciers. “Glacier” is one of his popular songs about John’s struggles growing up gay, and he was recently joined on-stage by Kylie Minogue [A&U, February 2013] for a duet of the song in tribute to the victims of the Orlando masscre.

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A&U • JULY 2016

JULY 2016 • A&U

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The musician is widely famous in Europe, not—yet—all that visible in the U.S. Currently on a national tour, John has collaborated with Elton John, Sinead O’Connor, Hercules & Love Affair, Tracey Thorn, and Alison Goldfrapp. He’s been called a “diarist of the human condition,” as his narrative songs are deeply personal.

One reviewer wrote about his live performance, “Leaves his audience awestruck and on its feet.”

His folksy electronic pop-rock poetic music and his honest-to-the-core velvety baritone voice landed him a Best International Male Solo Artist nomination at the 2014 BRITS. Several of his songs have been used in films and TV shows, including the HBO series, Looking. Last year he released his third album, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure (an Icelandic expression meaning “midlife crisis”), following his debut album, Queen of Denmark (2010), and Pale Green Ghosts (2013). His current album debuted at #5 on the U.K. charts.

The songwriter is a bookworm (just finished the Madeline Kahn biography), a horror fan (loves all the Exorcist films), and enjoys the music of Donna Summer and Karen Carpenter, his first inspiration.

Moments later, a Brit, Matt, Grant’s tour manager of three years, appears and escorts me backstage to John’s dressing room.

Grant performs tonight at The Ace Theatre, a majestic Spanish gothic superstructure built in 1927 by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplain (originally known as the United Artists building). Several years ago the city talked about bulldozing the structure. What a pity it would’ve been to destroy such a sacred historical ornate relic. Pickford had it built as her own private screening room.

On entering John’s petite dressing room, there’s an immediate disarmingly magnetic quality about him, a warmth and softness that belies his ruggedly handsome bearlike appearance. He could be Zach Galifianakis’ brother. Though a stagehand is fussing about, along with his personal manager of many years, Fiona, Grant is serene. Matt introduces us and soon everyone departs. As he walks out the door, Matt tosses, “I’ll leave you guys to it.”

The musician is clad in dark blue jeans, a black T-shirt with a graphic of the Tokyo subway map, and a black knit hat that sports a small logo, Lucky Records Reykjavik. I quickly learn that the man doesn’t harbor secrets and is refreshingly raw.

Flipping through pages of an A&U issue I brought, John makes several comments until he stumbles on an article about Anjelica Huston. “Class act...,”

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he notes thoughtfully. “She has an interesting background, doesn’t she? I didn’t realize she was raised in Ireland. It’s on my radar to read her memoir.” He quickly scans over the story and repeats a byline, “No shame about being HIV positive…”

He mulls it over a moment then slightly bristles.

“When I hear people telling me that I’ve gotten that disease because I’m a pervert who’s going to hell, I respond, ‘Oh, so my mother had Christian lung cancer?’ [His mother died of the illness in 1995.] There’s some serious non-loving going on there,” John points out, irritated by the obvious hypocritical flaw. “Ridiculous. Yeh, so what’s your fucking excuse [why you have a disease]?!”

He clears his throat. “I’m just so surprised the way people act in this country,” he groans in somber disappointment, correcting himself, “Of course, it’s everywhere. Don’t get me started on Russia.”

I mention the homophobia on the island of Jamaica and Grant responds, “[Sometimes I feel like] I’m never going to be welcomed or considered a human being [there]. [But] I recently saw Gully Queens [Young and Gay: Jamaica’s Gully Queens on Viceland channel] about Jamaican homeless LGBTI youths. They blow my mind. The circumstances that people are thriving in and they find their way. They’re taking care of each other,” he avers, sitting on the edge of an Old World Luther-style crescent platform chair, with leather seat and back, enhancing his Viking appearance. His elbows are planted firmly on the chair’s arms, while his hands are folded in front of him. He maintains this defensive position most of the time.

“I suffer from PTSD, due to the hatred and abuse I took for twenty years. I was rejected from outside the home and from inside the home. It left me crippled, battling addictions because the need to escape was so big.” He pauses. “I’m so ashamed sometimes, because I look at these kids, and in places like Russia and Jamaica, and they are thriving. But maybe they don’t have someone at home telling them they’re going to hell,” he says, “I don’t know....”

“I don’t want to be any different than I am, but I certainly don’t….”

John doesn’t finish his thought and A&U • JULY 2016

mumbles a few inaudible words. “My brain resets every day. When I get up, I set about writing [out] my thought processes.

I experience a constant knee-jerk reaction by projecting the past onto the present where a lot of these dangers no longer exist, but I react as though I’m still in it. It’s understandable,” he attests, crossing his feet at the ankles. “But it’s not something I feel particularly proud of.”

Though he is forty-eight (this month), the bullying John experienced in his childhood is as fresh as the snow in winter. Raised in Buchanan, Michigan, his fundamentalist family moved to Parker, Colorado, when he was twelve. Badgered by kids at school for being gay and his lack of supportive parents (“Homosexuality was not an option!” he blurts) made him feel like an alien. The negative jabs of others seared him and over time, and he developed a massive dose of toxic shame. This led to twenty years of self -destruction, wrestling with drugs (mostly cocaine), alcohol, and eventually sex.

He suffered from agoraphobia, panic attacks, anxiety, and depression as well.

John lauds therapy, Paxil, and Alcoholics Anonymous as lifesavers, navigating his way to a healthier self.

A stagehand fleetingly pops in looking for Fiona. “Haven’t seen her,” replies John.

Delicately stroking his beard, Grant reflects on his childhood. “I knew I was gay from a very early age. I wrote the song ‘Sigourney Weaver’ about being in middle school with the hyper-rich and coming from a small town in Michigan.

There was all this disgust and hatred thrown at me from the perspective of class, which got mixed in with the hatred that was being directed towards me for being gay. Others had already figured out that I was gay even though I wasn’t able to have any sort of dialogue with myself,” he recalls. “I hadn’t expressed anything to anybody. There just seemed to be rejection no matter where I went: ‘What the fuck are you looking at, faggot?’ ‘I’m going to kill you, fucking faggot!’ ‘What are you fucking doing here you fucking faggot?’”

Grant’s chilling words cut close to the bone. His tone is fiery as though those hate-filled words were just uttered. At home he was constantly reminded that he must fit into the picture that his parents had of him, that it was not okay for him to be authentic. Try to imagine it for a second. You’re bound by the intolerant judgment of your peers and your family.

Unfortunately, many of us can.

JULY 2016 • A&U

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The only sexual advice his pious parents ever gave him was that masturbation was wrong, but it didn’t prevent John from experimenting. When he was six, he played around with a kid next door. One time the neighbor’s sister caught them.

Later, the boy’s cousin approached John and fired, “I know what you guys are doing and I’ll ruin your life if you keep on.” It scared the hell out of Grant. (At fifteen, he had his first sexual experience with a boy he met at church.)

During his formative years, John just swallowed his true feelings and morphed into what others wanted him to be. He was riddled with stress and it climaxed during his senior year in high school.

came together…and changed. I couldn’t audition in front of these people who I knew for years, who loved me exactly the way I was,” he laments ruefully, removing his hat. “It was a horrrrifying experience!”

He soothingly tugs on his beard and looks down. “I feel like I’ve spent every moment since then trying to get back to that unaffected child or young person. I’ve made progress, but it’s an ongoing battle.”

When he was twenty, John lived in Germany where he attended a conversion conference. Brainwashed in his youth, his parents voices echoed: “We still love you but this isn’t something that you choose.

You’ve got to be healed.” His engineer father had once revealed to him that they

AA. In 2004, John kicked alcohol and drugs. Freshly sober, he made a commitment to start over. He laid down roots in New York, where he lived for three years.

While there, John worked as a flight attendant for a small airline (“The worst job I ever had!”), a clerk in a record store, a waiter, and a professional translator. He trained to be a Russian Medical Interpreter at New York University School for Continuing and Professional Studies, and then was hired by a hospital to translate between doctor and patient. (“That was an amazing, amazing job,” he emphasizes solidly.) On the downside, he also began replacing his former addictive substances with sex—a lot of sex.

But there was a silver lining, someone who believed in…him. His drama teacher confided, “You’re one of the people that I would encourage to act as a living, if you feel you want to do that.” Of course, his parents wouldn’t have any part of it, grousing, “No son of ours is going to get into a disgusting field like acting.” But John was a good actor.

He was good at auditioning as well.

When the time came to audition before his fellow thespians, whom he’d known for several years, it should have been just routine. But this time it was disturbingly different. He tried out for the Cheshire Cat in Alice In Wonderland, which was going to be performed around elementary schools.

“In that moment on stage, everything just

knew he was different from the age of two. John’s invalidating mother once stung him when she confessed, “I’m disappointed in you.” At the conference, John met some “wonderful people,” and ended up sleeping with his roommate.

He lets out a guffaw and adds deliciously, “And he was cute.”

Grant returned home to Colorado and in 1994 started a band, The Czars. Despite favorable reviews, they didn’t build an audience. The band broke up ten years later due to John’s unbearable behavior. He hit rock bottom.

It was a nurse that mended John’s life.

He met her at Denver General Hospital where he was getting tested for STIs. She urged him to seek rehabilitation through

Several years later, John received a text from a former one-night stand admitting to him that he had just been diagnosed HIV-positive. “I was in shock,” declares John, who was on a press junket in Stockholm. “This guy was actually a journalist who came to interview me while I was in London. There was this crazy sexual thing going on between us during the interview.”

Due to a tech rehearsal, the interview was interrupted, and on a later date, they reunited in Den Haag, Netherlands, and completed the interview.

“I put myself in this situation,” concedes Grant. “I had the choice to put on a condom. I knew what I was doing.”

He cracks a faint smile. “I was not taking drugs and alcohol but I was still engaging

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A&U • JULY 2016

in destructive behavior. Changing my attitude toward sex seemed like such an insurmountable task that I just decided, ‘Well I’ll just give into it and do whatever the fuck I want,’” he says. “You can’t pick and choose which destructive behaviors you’re going to keep, you have to go all the way.”

Grant credits being diagnosed as a “gift,” as it empowered him to take responsibility for his life. “For once in my life, I took control,” the poet-singer recounts with pride. “Being positive was one of the greatest things that happened to me. It caused me to get more serious about being in recovery, too.”

To ease the anxiety over his diagnosis,

gnine’s performances. “I always saw him in these disaster flicks, really liked his face, and thought he was a great actor,” he opines. “He’s just sort of one of the fixtures of the seventies for me, and that era is one of the greatest things that ever happened, besides the eighties, which I think were even better!” the songwriter exclaims with overwhelming enthusiasm.

“I really am stuck in the seventies and the eighties.” (When asked to describe his music Grant answers, “It’s a mixture of the seventies and the eighties.”)

The artist ponders pensively. There’s stillness. “I used food, I used money, I used sex—all for escape,” announces John.

“For decades I’ve used everything for the

“I was not taking drugs and alcohol but I was still engaging in destructive behavior. Changing my attitude toward sex seemed like such an insurmountable task that I just decided, ‘Well I’ll just give into it and do whatever the fuck I want.’”

John wrote a song, which is how he copes with pressing issues. “Ernest Borgnine” was created.

Got off of the hooch and the crack and skipped the smack down— But then you had to find yourself a lower low.

Doc ain’t lookin’ at me; says I got the disease.

Now what did you expect? You spent your life on your knees.

The repeated phrase in the chorus explains where the idea came from: I wonder what Ernie Borgnine would do. “He was a favorite actor of mine and I’d ask, ‘What would this film hero do in a situation like mine?’” John was mesmerized by BorJULY 2016 • A&U

wrong reasons.” He takes a deep breath and let’s out a hearty sigh. “Ya know, it’s a horrifying place to be self-aware and none of those toys to play with anymore that helped you forget.”

Though John relentlessly confesses in self-disparaging words, with insightful humor, his next move in life was bold and gutsy. With his trademark frankness, in 2012 at a live performance at the Meltdown Festival in London, he came out publicly about his status.

He wasn’t sure he’d do it and even when John walked out on stage, he wasn’t definite. He hadn’t even told his family.

“I felt shame for being HIV-positive, but I thought, why not?! I knew it was time for me to own this. I realized that I was not the only one who was going through this.

So I guess I came clean to help others.

It was really about doing it for them.”

After confessing, John sang “Ernest Bor-

gnine” to a stunned crowd.

Someone lightly raps on the door.

John answers, “Come in.” A fellow enters saying, “Excuse me.” John pronounces, “This is my incredible keyboardist.” Chris extends his hand and we shake. He grabs something from the table and walks out. There’s an obvious affection between the two.

Living with HIV for John has been a challenge. “There’s been weirdness going on since I’ve started taking the drugs,” he specifies, currently taking Truvada and raltegravir and the virus is undetectable. “Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, it takes me time to focus. It’s like everything is a moving mosaic made up of tiny little tiles moving very slowly. I have nightmares and vivid dreams too. You know, you hear all about these kinds of things [when you’re infected].”

Grant maintains sobriety by the using the foundation he’s laid down for himself and by using the support of the 12-step program. “It…is...tough,” admits John, gradually and gently. “Anything that smacks of my upbringing, especially Godtalk, is very difficult for me to stomach.

It’s so deeply ingrained in me,” he says.

“It’s very hard to conceive of believing in anything, even though I feel like I do. But on the surface, I wonder to what extent I’m capable of actually believing in something on my own, which isn’t connected to programming that I received.” For an instant, John sits back, presses his forefinger to his mouth, as if he’s shushing someone, looks upward, then returns to his usual position of leaning forward. “I do experience incredible things in these programs, and I’ve met incredible people who are there for you consistently and are not judgmental. I’ve learned anytime that I see shit that I don’t like, I move on.”

Therapy helps as well. He’s had plenty of it on an irregular basis. Before his national tour, he had a session with a new continued on page 61

49

SEE ME Advocate Amazin LeThi Sheds Light on Invisibility, HIV-Displaced Children & Homelessness Among LGBTQ Youth in the Asian Community Text & Photos by Alina Oswald

I

n a recent post on social media, actor Daniel Dae Kim (Hawaii Five-O) sent “a big shout out to all my brothers and sisters out there, well known or just starting out, who are working hard to do good work and make our voices heard.”

Kim, who also appeared on Broadway in The King and I, refers to a New York Times article highlighting “Asian-American actors fighting for visibility.”

The post reminded me of something Amazin LeThi [A&U, September 2014] mentioned to me not that long ago.

She reiterated the message quite recently, when I caught up with her this past May, while she was in Washington, D.C. May was AAPI (Asian/Pacific American) Heritage Month. It turns out that during AAPI month, GLAAD named Amazin LeThi one of seven Asian advocates who, alongside the likes of comedian Margaret Cho [A&U, September 2000], help advance LGBTQ equality.

“We’re [often made] invisible. In terms of the broader community, we’re not the first that people think of,” she says, talking about the Asian community. “The Asian community is not outspoken about LGBTQ issues, bullying, HIV,” LeThi also points out. “That’s the reason why I’m an HIV advocate, doing what I’m doing, in particular working in Asia with marginalized groups. It’s because Asian people, we don’t speak about these kinds of issues.” She pauses, as if to reflect on those words or maybe what she’s about to say next. “It is important to have these conversations in terms of HIV awareness, because particularly children are so marginalized if they’re living with HIV or are displaced by HIV.” During her travels, especially when in Asia, she’s met LGBTQ youth, street kids, poor kids or those who’d been sex-trafficked. “But the saddest kids that I’ve ever met,” she says, “and that have absolutely no hope at all, are the kids that have been displaced by HIV.” The first children displaced by HIV she’s ever met were in

50

the care of another Vietnamese AIDS and LGBTQ youth advocate, Pham Thi Hue [A&U, April 2015] who has in her care several thousands of children displaced by HIV, and their grandparents. These children had lost their parents to the pandemic and had to face “a hideous amount of stigma and discrimination” because of that. The children were first left in the care of their grandparents who couldn’t even “fend for themselves, let alone take care of a child, and who now were having this new experience of trying to get educated about HIV.” Hence, the situation was near-hopeless and sad.

So LeThi decided to do something about it. She decided to use her foundation to give these children not only hope, but also the possibility of a bright new future, a template on how to succeed in life.

Two of the Amazin LeThi Foundation main programs include #VoiceWithAction Promise, and Teaching and Support—Leadership and Mentoring Program (T2S or Take It to the Streets).

The #VoiceWithAction program is an international anti-bullying youth campaign to raise awareness about LGBT issues across Asian communities that will launch after summer. Last year, LeThi’s foundation supported Act to Change, the White House’s first Asian American/Pacific Islanders anti-bullying campaign.

LeThi’s own story is highlighted on the Act to Change website.

The Leadership and Mentoring Program will launch in August, in Haiphong, Vietnam, and then in at least five major cities in that country, including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. “The hope is for it to become a national program across Vietnam.

Eventually, we hope to launch in other Asian countries,” LeThi says, commenting that next year, in 2017, she plans to bring the program to the States.

For the Leadership and Mentoring Program, LeThi’s foundation is working on the ground with Pham Thi Hue. It will also partner with VietPride and collaborate with Save the Children Foundation, “as they are working with LGBTQ street youth in A&U • JULY 2016

JULY 2016 • A&U

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A&U • JUNE 2016

photo courtesy A. LeThi

Vietnam,” LeThi adds.

The weeklong program offers children and youth—Asian youth orphaned by AIDS and homeless LGBTQ youth ages eight to eighteen—a “template” to help them believe in themselves and succeed in life. LeThi expects some sixty to 100 participants in the first week, in Vietnam, depending on funding. In the U.S., the program will include smaller groups of twenty to forty children and youth who happen to be Asian American. “It will be a smaller number since we’ll not be including children living with HIV,” LeThi says.

“As part of the leadership and mentoring side of the program we will work with the youth, and get them involved in community activities or have them engage with disabled or terminally ill children. I’m passionate about bringing joy to children in need and have youth engaged in activities where they find their voice and purpose in the community.”

She believes that it is important that youth work together, and plans on bringing into the program other youth groups.

This way Asian youth can learn from African-American and Latinx youth. They can work together towards finding a common voice and purpose, and building a broader community whose members, in turn can work together in particular when it comes to ending bullying.

“I think there’s a stereotype around the Asian community. That we’re such an affluent community,” LeThi says.

Assuming this, people might question the need of programs such as the one she’s about to launch. “In terms of LGBTQ homeless youth, the Asian community makes up one or two percent of the LGBTQ homeless community. But the data might be incorrect, because we don’t [really] have hard data.”

The Leadership and Mentoring Program offers a mind, body and soul experience, and also education. “I think that is important,” LeThi comments, “because you’re not just half a person.” Also, for those reaching puberty and/or are at risk of contracting HIV, the program also provides sexual education classes.

The “language” used to communicate and educate, and also connect participants together is that of sports—soccer, to be exact. That’s because all Vietnamese children play soccer. “[Soccer] is really great for leadership and mentoring,” LeThi explains, “because it teaches so many different life skills in terms of leadership, goal setting, working as a team.”

But that’s not all. LeThi is a qualified health and fitness coach, so she will be JULY 2016 • A&U

looking at participants’ wellbeing in terms of health, fitness, and also nutrition, as well.

“We’ll [also] be doing meditation and yoga,” she mentions. “I think we need to look at their psychological needs, because they’ve been through so much trauma at such a young age.”

She explains that, while that trauma can become toxic, meditation can help calm their minds.

Also, next year she plans on adding other sports, like Amazin LeThi shares a lighthearted moment with children at an swimming, for orphanage in Vietnam. example, in particular in Vietnam. [having a purpose] is so important for The country is mostly surrounded by their self-worth!” water, but the reality is that the majority One of Amazin LeThi’s ultimate goals of Vietnamese don’t know how to swim. is to become an HIV ambassador for one Vietnam has one of the highest rates of of the larger organizations, like UNAIDS, drowning in Southeast Asia. “One [person] for example. And there’s a good reason for falls into the river, and then three other that. She needs a larger platform in order people go to save that person, and they all to better resonate the voice of children die, because none of them knows how to who are living with HIV or are affected by swim,” LeThi explains about a doubled HIV, in particular in Asia. After all, when need to promote swimming. Through her it comes to the number of HIV infections, foundation, LeThi is working on having a Africa may come in first, but Asia is now national campaign around the importance in second place. of learning how to swim, in Vietnam.

“It’s not just about educating the As part of the Leadership and Mentogeneral public,” Amazin LeThi explains, ring Program, participants will also learn speaking of HIV and AIDS in the Asian English. They will have the opportunity to community in particular, “it’s also about meet with local and international busihaving access to leaders of countries and ness and world leaders, and visit different change makers that can create policies and companies, to get a taste of what it would social change, to shift the conversation to be like to work in such companies. end AIDS, social stigma, and discriminaThe goal is “to ignite the spark within tion. We need more voices, internationally. the youth,” LeThi explains about the foundation’s new program, “to give them We need to find ways to share stories, so a template to work with in terms of where that we don’t become forgotten, so that the youth can find different services.” these children don’t become more invisible Participants will be evaluated than they already are, because many parts throughout the program. Those who of Asia, including my country of Vietnam, have done well can become leaders, are losing their HIV funding. And that themselves, within the program, and becomes a very big issue. And how do you have the opportunity to take the program keep moving forward?” further. “And when we travel,” LeThi adds, “they would travel with us, and To learn more about Amazin LeThi and her continue their leadership and share their amazing activism work, please visit her online at stories. They can meet youth that are www.amazinlethifoundation.org. like [themselves] in other parts of the world. That [in turn would] give them Alina Oswald is the author of Journeys Through work experience, and [purpose]. I think Darkness, a biography of artist Kurt Weston.

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lifeguide

Fast-Tracked or Foiled?

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and women, who often experience violence and discrimination that exacerbate HIV risk and prevents HIV care.

The declaration’s commitment to treatment goals covers three primary areas.

Closing treatment gaps. Building on earlier success, namely, the fact that the number of people on HIV treatment reached 17 million at the end of 2015, exceeding the target, the U.N. seeks to double the number of people receiving HIV medications so that 30 million are receiving lifesaving care.

Promoting an integrated health approach.

The declaration reiterated its commitment to approach HIV/AIDS within an integrated health framework, working to respond to a number of health issues—such as tuberculosis, hepatitis B and C, cervical cancer, human papillomavirus, noncommunicable diseases, and emerging and re-emerging diseases— that sometimes intersect with HIV. Financing the end of AIDS. As the proposed goals need funding, leaders made robust financing and allocation commitments appropriate to a fast-track level of delivery; Member States called for $13 billion to replenish the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and Member States also promoted a stepped-up and strategic engagement of the private sector. The declaration also addressed barriers to affordable, gold-standard generic medications, diagonostics, and health technologies related to ending AIDS. While many of the progressive goals were lauded, some advocates point to the declaration’s failure to make visible populations most in need of prevention and treatment resources and to spell out practices that would ensure health as a human right across the board.

Considering that the declaration includes a “[c]all for urgent action over the next five years to ensure that no one is left behind in the AIDS response,” the declaration fails to call for comprehensive sexuality education, as activists, organizations, and others who collaborated on the draft, have pointed out.

Contrary to the overall principles of UNAIDS, the declaration reaffirms heterosexual and gender normative relationships at the expense of LGBT and gender-nonconforming youth: “Commit to accelerate efforts to scale up scientifically accurate age-appropriate comprehensive education, relevant to cultural contexts, that provides adolescent girls and boys and young women and men, in and out of school, consistent with their evolving capacities, with information on sexual and repro-

ductive health and HIV prevention, gender equality and women’s empowerment, human rights, physical, psychological and pubertal development and power in relationships between women and men, to enable them to build self- esteem, informed decision-making, communication and risk reduction skills and develop respectful relationships, in full partnership with young persons, parents, legal guardians, caregivers, educators and health-care providers, in order to enable them to protect themselves from HIV infection.”

The declaration also fails to substantially address key populations, such as gay men, people who use drugs, transgender people, sex workers and other criminalized and excluded populations. Men who have sex with men, for example, are mentioned once. Transgender people are mentioned once. Sex workers are mentioned once. These key populations are in fact reduced to a single sentence. Activists have called out countries like Russia, Poland, and Iran, among others, for editing out these populations in order to sustain their own bigotry. The exclusionary language will cost lives and further nurture stigma, discrimination, and criminalization of individuals who need prevention and treatment, say critics. It begs the question: How can the global fast track be up to speed if healthcare as a right that encompasses all human beings is at a dead-stop or slow to progress in some countries?

Chael Needle wrote about a call to action to address the needs of long-term survivors in the June issue.

A&U • JULY 2016

illustration courtesy UNAIDS

L

ast month, the Member States of the United Nations adopted the “Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS: On the Fast-Track to Accelerate the Fight against HIV and to End the AIDS Epidemic by 2030” at the High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS. Calling for a global push to ensure a collective and concerted response to the pandemic, the General Assembly’s declaration seeks to implement this acceleration over the next five years in order to meet the 2030 deadline for the Agenda for Sustainable Development, which encompasses issues beyond HIV/AIDS but understands health as a precondition as well as an outcome and indicator of sustainability. Taking a multifactorial and people-centered approach, the goals address HIV/AIDS in the context of development, injustice, inequality, poverty, and conflict as well as health. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), with the help of eleven U.N. agencies and national and global partners, leads the implementation of these guidelines.

Dependent on engaged leadership in all sectors of society, including among individuals living with HIV, the short-term (2020) goals include decreasing new HIV infections to fewer than 500,000 globally; decreasing AIDS-related deaths to fewer than 500,000 globally; and the elimination of HIV-related stigma and discrimination.

Among its many commitments, too numerous to list here, the declaration advocates for providing targeted comprehensive HIV prevention services (including condoms, PrEP, and male circumcision) for all women and adolescent girls, migrants, and key populations—sex workers, men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs, transgender people, and prisoners; eliminating mother-to-child transmission of the virus; revising laws that create barriers for and promote the stigmatization and discrimination of individuals living with HIV/ AIDS; promoting health as a human right (for example, calling for universal health coverage); assuring input from PLWHAs in monitoring and accountability practices; and increasing funding to close resource gaps.

The declaration also calls for national and regional tailoring of approaches (making special note of hard-hit regions like sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, among others), as well as a new focus on social and legal protections for youth as well as girls

a u.n. declaration to accelerate the end of aids may not be up to speed

lifeguide

It’s a Hispanic Thing

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n a presentation at a National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA) meeting in February, Dr. Julio Gutierrez, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio starts with a paradox of Hispanic health. Contrary to popular belief, Hispanic Americans are twenty-four percent less likely to die of all major causes than whites, according to the CDC, and are much less likely to die of chronic lower respiratory diseases (-137 percent), suicide (-160 percent) and heart disease (-34 percent). But they are much likelier to die of chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (+40 percent) than whites.

And within the baby boomer cohort Hispanics are six times more likely to be infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV).

Gutierrez goes on to shatter some myths about why Hispanics might be especially disadvantaged with liver disease.

It is not, he says, due to high alcohol use, language barriers, or poverty rates.

The truth is, many Hispanics start off with a genetic disadvantage: fatty liver, or, in medical terms, a high likelihood of having non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NFLD). A 2008 Dallas Heart Study showed that forty-five percent of Hispanics have “fatty liver” compared to thirty-three percent in whites and twenty-four percent in African Americans.

Gutierrez concludes that the combination of HCV plus fatty liver in Latinos explains some of the increased risk of death but fatty liver alone is probably a bigger problem.

What a propensity for NFLD means is that anything that affects the liver, whether it’s alcohol or hepatitis, is likely to affect a person of Hispanic origin faster and more severely than it would a member of another group.

There are additional challenges, Gutierrez says, that disadvantage Hispanics and can lead to worse health outcomes.

Only five percent of gastroenterologists in the U.S. are Hispanic. And Hispanics

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are more likely to be uninsured, even in the era of Obamacare, than Americans in every other racial category.

The insurance disparity is especially troubling to Mariah Johnson, a senior manager on the hepatitis and policy and legislative affairs teams at the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD).

“What we need is a stronger political will at the federal and state level to dedicate

resources to communities most vulnerable (to hepatitis),” she tells A&U. “That includes Hispanics and American Indians.”

But dedicating resources is one challenge. Determining which resources to dedicate in which ways is a bit trickier, according to Dr. Elena Rios, president and CEO of the National Hispanic Medical Association.

“Hispanics trust medical professionals and have a high respect for them,” Rios tells A&U. “But making sure that they actually go to the doctor for routine screenings, that’s more challenging.”

Rios and Johnson agree that there should be a massive education and outreach campaign aimed at Hispanics in the U.S. But they admit that the messages and media need to be tailored to meet Hispanics where they are.

“We need to talk to leaders in the communities,” Rios says, suggesting that topdown institutional messages are less likely to be effective than a grassroots campaign to inform Hispanics about liver health and the importance of testing.

And to overcome some preconceived notions about hepatitis, Johnson adds. She tells A&U that there are no hard statistics on it, but rather anecdotal evidence that Hispanics, more than other groups, think of hepatitis, especially HCV, as something that people only get from having unsafe sex or from using IV drugs.

IV drug use is a major risk factor for HCV infection, but it’s not the only way a person can get it. Other risk factors include age (baby boomers more likely to be infected) and having a medical procedure before widespread testing of the blood supply began in 1992.

All of these factors, and the tendency for people with HCV to have no symptoms for decades—while the virus is doing its damage— mean that the Hispanic community in the U.S. is, according to Rios, “sitting on a time bomb.”

Gutierrez in his presentation suggested a novel approach to education and outreach for Hispanics, or, more specifically, a telenovela approach. He says NHMA has a goal of writing PSAs targeting Latinos to run during the popular TV “Hispanic soap operas,” telenovelas. PSAs and other media vehicles could share a narrative of health risks for Hispanics/Latinos.

He adds that a “test and treat” protocol for HCV must be incorporated in clinics and health care settings that serve Hispanics and that genetic testing—the PNPLA3 gene is associated with a high risk of fatty liver disease—should be affordable, accessible and routine. And Gutierrez wants more Hispanics to be included in clinical trials, and even for more Hispanic researchers to lead those trials.

Larry Buhl is a journalist, radio producer, screenwriter, and novelist living in Los Angeles.

A&U • JULY 2016

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

hep outreach & research are needed for a vulnerable community

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Step Forward

vaccine candidates like hvtn 702 are needed to build momentum

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benefit thus far. Further research concluded that the rate of protection reached sixty percent during the first year of the study. A research initiative called the Pox-Protein Public-Private Partnership (P5) was formed to build on the success of the RV144 study. P5 is a collaboration of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), The Gates Foundation, the U.S. Military HIV Research Program, Sanofi Pasteur, the HIV Vaccine Research Network (HVTN) and Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics. P5 initiated several further studies based on the RV144 study: RV305 and RV306, where additional boosting of ALVAC, AIDSVAX or a combination was given; and RV328, where AIDSVAX was studied alone for intense immunologic assessment.

The P5 also launched HVTN 100, a twoyear study of the components of the RV144 regimen initiated in February 2015. HVTN 702 is a direct follow-up to this study. Both studies will evaluate a vaccine regimen modified from the RV144 vaccines to work specifically against Clade C where, according to the NIH, “the composition and schedule of the RV144 vaccine regimen have been adjusted to try to increase the magnitude and duration of vaccine-elicited immune responses, and to extend the higher level of protection seen at one year in RV144 throughout the entire three-year follow-up period of HVTN 702.”

The vaccine regimen will consist of a canary pox-based vaccine called ALVAC-HIV and a bivalent gp120 protein subunit vaccine with an adjuvant that enhances the body’s immune response to the vaccine and is combined with

an adjuvant called MF59 to potentially generate greater robust immune response. The vaccine regimen will include booster shots at the one-year mark in an effort to prolong the early protective effect observed in RV144.

HVTN 702 will test the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of the vaccine regimen and will enroll 5,400 at-risk HIV-negative men and women. To ensure that women are adequately represented, a minimum of forty percent of participants will be women. In all, fifteen sites in South Africa will participate in the NIAID-sponsored study. Participants will be randomized to either the vaccine regimen or placebo and given five injections over a oneyear period of time. They will then be followed for one or two years.

A therapeutic and preventative vaccine that can be used against all clades for a widespread protective benefit is essential in preventing new infections and controlling existing immune responses in people already living with HIV. HVTN 702 may help us move towards these goals. Its results, predicted to be released in 2020, are much anticipated.

Jeannie Wraight is the former editor-in-chief and co-founder of HIV and HCV Haven (www.hivhaven. com) and a blogger and writer for TheBody.com.

She is a member of the Board of Directors of Health People, a community-based organization in the South Bronx and an advisor to TRW (Teach me to Read and Write), a community-based organization in Kampala, Uganda. She lives with her husband in New York City.

A&U • JULY 2016

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

“I

f current HIV diagnoses rates persist, about 1 in 2 black men who have sex with men (MSM) and 1 in 4 Latino MSM in the United States will be diagnosed with HIV during their lifetime,” stated a February 23, 2016, CDC press release about the agency’s new analysis by researchers.

A second quote reads, “As alarming as these lifetime risk estimates are, they are not a foregone conclusion. They are a call to action,” said Jonathan Mermin, M.D., director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention.

We recently marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of the first reported case of HIV. In the past three and a half decades we have made a great deal of progress in HIV therapies and decreasing new HIV transmissions. However, to read statistics such as these, we have to question whether we’re progressing fast enough in the right direction. Comfortingly the recent announcement of HVTN 702, a large preventative vaccine trial, has us moving a step forward in vaccine research, a field where tangible results have been slow to materialize in recent years.

As highlighted in Destination: Cure’s last column, “Orphaned Vaccines,” a vaccine should optimally be both a preventative and a therapeutic vaccine that can be utilized globally.

Unfortunately, in the HVTN 702 trial, the regimen being studied is neither a therapeutic vaccine nor a vaccine that, in its current form, could be used against any clade other than Clade C. Clade C is the predominant clade seen in sub-Saharan Africa. Although not ideal, HTVN 702 may help achieve some degree of protection in a region such as South Africa where 16.6 percent of the adult population aged fifteen to forty-nine are living with HIV/AIDS. HTVN 702 stems from the controversial 2009 RV144 study, which showed a 31.2 percent protection rate against HIV. This Phase III study raised eyebrows and voices from its inception—predominantly due to the amount of money spent on the singular trial that, even if found wholly effective, would still have needed further studies to determine the individual effects of its components (particularly ALVAC, as the other component, AIDSVAX, had already been shown to be ineffective as a singular component).

RV144 did show the greatest protection

lifeguide

Slow & Steady tai chi, a good fit for all fitness levels, may improve immune function

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

S

ome years ago, I recall walking through Madison Square Park in Manhattan and seeing a group of people gathered in the grass.

Each was performing identical actions and moving at a slow, rhythmic self-pace. In the midst of the usual New York City hustle and bustle, they seemed peaceful and unaffected by their surroundings. I stayed and watched for a while and spoke to one of the group members when they were done. I learned that they were practicing Tai Chi. I have found that the specific history of Tai Chi varies depending on where you do your research and who you talk to, but many will agree that the art is centuries-old, has origins in traditional Chinese medicine and deep roots in martial arts.

While Tai Chi may have begun, in part, as a method of self-defense from external attacks, many people practice it today strictly for its health benefits—perhaps a method of internal defense? While more research is needed, and, I believe, warranted, there is evidence that suggests a variety of health benefits from practicing Tai Chi, many of which may be of some importance to people living with HIV/AIDS. Some people say Tai Chi is like a combination of meditation and yoga. They refer to it as a moving meditation. It is a gentle, fluid, and graceful form of mind and body exercise that keeps the practitioner in constant motion.

One of things that I most enjoy about Tai Chi is that while you are in constant motion, it is a low-impact practice and only places minimal stress on the joints and muscles. Generally, this makes it a feasible option for all fitness levels and ages at various stages of health.

However, those with any medical conditions should consult their doctor before getting underway. Each Tai Chi posture and movement eases gracefully into the next without pause. It is precise movement and is done along with focused, deep breathing. There are a variety of different Tai Chi styles and there are variations within each style. Some, may be more focused on the martial arts aspect, while others focus on assorted health benefits.

In speaking to people who indulge in Tai Chi, something that I found comforting about the concept and practice is the sense of ritual. Many practitioners have touted the JULY 2016 • A&U

importance of setting a routine —practicing Tai Chi in the same place at the same time each day and making it a part of your ongoing routine. Now, this is not to say that the benefits of Tai Chi will be diminished if your schedule is such that it does not allow you to do so. You can do Tai Chi anytime, anywhere, and you can certainly indulge in the healthy mind and body concepts of Tai Chi without doing the movements when you are in any stressful situation. It is also said that while the benefits of Tai Chi can come with short-term practice, that you may enjoy greater benefits by practicing long-term and becoming more adept at the art.

Evidence in some studies suggests that Tai Chi may enhance the immune system, which can be of interest to individuals living with HIV/AIDS. In one such study, people had ninety-minute Tai Chi sessions, along with other alternative stress management interventions, for ten weeks. The results showed that there was significant enhancement of immune function, more specifically, in lymphocyte proliferation counts. In another study, a group of experienced Tai Chi practitioners were studied for twelve weeks to measure the impact of the practice on immunity. It was found that there was a significant boost in the regulatory action of T cells. Some experts suggest that the slow, gliding movement of Tai Chi along with controlled breathing present a powerful force against toxins and diseases and that by bolstering the lymphatic system, Tai Chi may

protect against autoimmune diseases.

Other evidence indicates that Tai Chi may help lower blood pressure, enhance the quality of sleep, reduce risks of falls in older adults, and improve joint pain, symptoms of congestive heart failure, and overall well-being. With proper instruction and performance, other benefits of Tai Chi may include improved aerobic capacity, balance, agility and stamina, increased muscle strength and definition, improved mood and a decrease in stress, anxiety and, depression, which can negatively impact immune system function. Stress management interventions may help to improve immune function and coping skills in individuals living with HIV, according to a study published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Some studies have found that Tai Chi increases psychological health.

Tai Chi is available at many alternative health centers, community centers, and in a variety of fitness settings. Be sure to seek out experienced and qualified instructors when beginning this or any new practice.

After a lengthy career in the arts and LGBT activism, Robert Zukowski pursued his goal of a career in complementary and alternative healthcare. He is a New York State licensed Massage Therapist, a Certified Medical Massage Therapist and is certified by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork. In addition to his hands-on work, he is a writer and lecturer in the field of therapeutic massage therapy.

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E R U T L U C S THE

AID OF

BOOKS The American People Volume I: Search for My Heart

by Larry Kramer Farrar, Straus & Giroux

R

ecently, I’ve been on something of a search. A search for recently published work that addresses the HIV/AIDS crisis in print. I often check on some of my favorite gay authors both out of my own interest and to this end. Published last year, the long-awaited, much talked about new novel by Larry Kramer was published and completely flew under my radar. I believe one thing strongly—not only is Kramer a brilliant author and playwright, he is truly an American hero. He’s never been afraid of saying what’s hard for people to hear, often to his own detriment. And he can have the satisfaction of knowing how important his stance was because, while difficult and hardly wished for, it has so often been proven right.

As I said, there’s been a lot of talk about the “theories” presented in this work. He not only floats the idea that more than a few of our most beloved presidents were gay, but he also presents some far-reaching theories about the origins of the disease. But, to dwell on those as fact or plausible theory is to miss the point entirely. He presents us with a work of fiction. A radical revision of what we know as American history. History by nature is sometimes a game of filling in the blanks after all, and if it could have happened, who’s to say it didn’t?

This book, while brilliant, is not an easy read by a long shot. It covers a period of hundreds of years and is told through

60

the eyes of many narrators, one of them the virus itself. Another narrator is Fred Lemish, who we remember from Kramer’s novel of New York gay life in the seventies, Faggots.

He is busy at work trying to compile this hidden history of gay life in America and trying to get to the bottom of where and how the virus took hold. He’s trying to make sense of so much loss.

The American People gives one a lot to think about.

What did it mean to have sex with other men far in our past?

It certainly didn’t look like it does today. There was no gay identity per se, but it still was a fact of life. It certainly must have had a share in shaping our past as Kramer’s story of the first Puritan colonies makes clear. What do isolated groups of “straight” and “gay” men do when there are no women available for extended periods of time? Do they seek the company and comfort that can be found between two men? If George Washington or Abraham Lincoln were gay it would have been a private matter. You’d hardly find them bellying up to the bar at Sunday tea cruising for their next conquest. And AIDS came from somewhere, maybe far in the past. In a time where there was practically no knowledge as to the cause and course of a disease, much less a virus, could an unusual amount of fatalities have been simply written off or attributed to something else?

The novel also takes a long, hard look at how the disease may have originated.

Initially transmitted through monkeys eating each other, it takes its biggest strides among humans, via sex. While it may be easy to discount the fact that people were as sexually licentious hundreds of years ago as they are now, Kramer takes a different view. He writes of secret places off in the woods and fields where

likeminded men met for sex, our earliest cruising spots. In the nineteenth century and moving forward men congregate in secret clubs often in bars and bordellos.

Sex is there if you look for it and so is the nascent virus, secretly spreading and going on to kill. An early aphrodisiac is discovered that drives its victims to literally fuck themselves to death. All in all gay life in the seventies begins to look like nothing new at all.

This novel is definitely fascinating. In revising what we know about our history, it paints a compelling picture. It takes great license with history but is really only proposing things that we can’t entirely discount. Truth, in this case, is irrelevant; we are reading a novel. It also does what Larry Kramer has done throughout his storied career—it asks questions. Perhaps in time some of the answers he provides here will prove to have weight. The man has been right before.

—John Francis Leonard John Francis Leonard writes A&U’s monthly Bright Lights, Small City column.

A&U • JULY 2016

continued from page 49

John Grant

therapist in Iceland. “It seems promising,” he boasts. In their first session, the therapist asked, ‘Why do you think you’re here? Your sponsor called me and as a favor to him I’m seeing you, even though I’m not accepting new patients right now.’ “I told him my story and he said, ‘Ahh, let’s get you signed up for another appointment, shall we?’” John is amused. We laugh.

Iceland is therapeutic for John too.

“I feel safe here,” he remarks. John first visited Iceland in 2011 to attend the Iceland Airwaves Festival. Soon after, he moved there, captivated by the country’s beauty. Though he’s fluent in German, Russian, and Spanish, he hasn’t quite tackled Icelandic completely. “I’m making great progress in Icelandic,” he insists, “but I’m not fluent. It’s a very hard language. There are one hundred and twenty forms for every adjective and sixteen forms for every noun—and that’s the good news!” He chuckles.

Of many things Grant likes about Iceland, one is his Icelandic boyfriend, a graphic designer. He doesn’t want to mention his name, as he honors his beau’s wishes to remain private. They’ve been dating for nearly three years. When time permits, his partner will cozy up with him while John’s on tour.

They recently returned from a trip to Japan.

“He’s quite something…,” he coos.

Mystery is not a high priority for upfront, straightforward John. On their second date, John revealed his HIV status. “I didn’t want anything to develop between us, and then lose it.” Afterwards, his beau went home, researched it, and returned, saying, “Hmmm…I can deal with that!”

Their relationship is developing, Grant says. He’s content with their connection, which is a barometer of the progress he’s made in intimacy. “Being close to someone was never a possibility for me before,” John divulges. “It isn’t possible if you don’t have access to yourself. You just don’t have anything to bring to the table.”

This is a new position for the crooner and it’s tricky. Sex was always an escape, a validation, and he was usually high. “Having sex in the moment, with somebody I deeply care for, brings up a lot of fear of intimacy for me.” He arches an eyebrow and deduces, “This is not a fantasy.”

“Sometimes I wonder why sex is such a complicated issue with this person who you feel so deeply for and yet, you know that you’re willing to fuck at least fifty of the guys you saw earlier today, no questions asked,” he smirks. “That’s a problem for me.

It doesn’t make sense. I’m uncomfortable talking about it and feel embarrassed or JULY 2016 • A&U

ashamed. But I talk about it because I know I shouldn’t be ashamed.”

I mention the “Madonna/Whore Complex,” a psychoanalytic term for those who have the inability to express their full desire with a loved one, tending to place them on a pedestal, thus finding it easier to have anonymous sex, where there’s no preconceived intimacy.

The door creaks open. Matt pokes his head in, “Be ready for you in five minutes for the sound check.” John replies playfully, “Yeh, I’ll believe that!”

Music keeps John healthy. Music is his life; life is his music. He listens to a litany of singers: Gary Numan, New Order, Nina Hagen, Lene Lovich, Alien Sex Fiends, Skinny Puppy, Vicious Pink, Blamage, Visage, Culture Club. There’s urgency when he names these musicians. It’s his passion. Without warning, John eagerly asks, “Oh, have you heard of Susanne Sundfør, from Norway?!”

I haven’t. “You have to hear her, Dann! Her voice is pure, angelic...”

John swiftly drops to the floor, knees scooting under the coffee table and hurriedly clicks on his laptop that lies on the table. He needs to get to the stage. John is like a kid who’s found buried treasure. Trying to call up a YouTube video, he finds the reception is poor. Disappointed, he searches for his phone and tries to pull up the singer’s video.

“I really want you to hear her,” he proclaims.

The cell works! The video plays while he holds the phone in the palm of his hand. We watch together. At one point he says, “Look, I’m all chills.” Indeed. I look, and his arms are splotched with goosebumps.

John’s reaction to Sundfør is really him looking into a mirror. He’s the one who sings with purity, beauty, and fervor. After the interview, I sneak into the theater and

listen to Grant sing for a sound check.

Aside from the technicians, I was the only one in the 1,600-seat venue. His live performance can’t compare to viewing him on YouTube. The Internet screen does not do him justice! He’s the Tennessee Williams of music. John’s killer voice, laser-sharp sensibility, and luscious bewitching phrasing, transfix me. This time, I had chills.

The Susanne Sundfør video is nearly over, so John lowers the volume. He looks at me with those striking, dancing blue eyes and reflects. “There was a moment when I could have said that I could go back to that [addiction] and finish the job [suicide]. But I said to myself, ‘Wouldn’t you like to actually find out what’s at the bottom of all this shame and self-loathing and what’s been keeping you back from actually realizing yourself all these years?

“I realize I connect with people,” clarifies John, with a pleasant satisfaction. “I like doing what I do and I feel comfortable on stage.

I didn’t feel comfortable in my skin in any way shape or form for years. I still struggle with that, but it’s getting better.” John briefly glances to his side at the dominating theatrical makeup mirror, with its illuminating lit high wattage bulbs, which expands the width of the room.

“Of course I still have a lot of shit to deal with. Happiness is not this Holy Grail where you get there someday. It’s right now. And that doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of pain. They aren’t mutually exclusive.”

He grins, glancing down at his blue leather trainer shoes. “It’s acceptance. Acceptance,” John repeats eloquently, with a knowing nod.

“My latest album Grey Tickles, Black Pressure is all about acceptance.”

A faint crescendo of a rockin’ beat of African drums can be heard. It’s his phone. John switches it off. He knows it’s Matt calling.

He abruptly says, “I gotta go.” With a bear hug (he gives good hug!), he’s out the door.

“I hope we run into each other again. Thank you,” offers John genuinely, concluding, “Don’t forget to check out Susanne Sundfør…” as his husky resonating voice echoes down the hall, slowly fading out.

For more about John Grant and tour dates, log on to: www.johngrantmusic.com.

Photographer’s Assistant: Fridgeir Helgason; Grooming by Garret Gervais at GRID Agency (www. gridagency.com); Digital Styling by Eve Harlowe (www.eveharlowe.com).

Dann Dulin interviewed Joel Goldman for the June cover story.

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A Calendar of Events

“T

Gallery

continued from page 33

he secret of life is in art,” Oscar Wilde once opined, and that’s something Art Project Los Angeles knows well. The fundraiser, now in its sixth installment, will offer live and silent auctions of art work by local emerging artists as well as world-renowned ones (in events past, works by Keith Haring, Ed Ruscha, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol have been featured). The media is very mixed as well—paintings, prints, photography, sculpture, and jewelry, among other pieces, will be represented. Guests will be treated to a catered cocktail reception.

Art Project Los Angeles is also holding a juried competition to find a featured artist of the event. The work of the selected artist will become one of the live auction’s centerpieces and prominently featured in the Art Project catalog and promotional materials. Last year, the top honor went to Plastic Jesus for his piece titled Stop Making Stupid People Famous.

All proceeds will benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles, which provides vital services to more than 14,000 people in Los Angeles County each year. Services include primary medical, dental, and behavioral health care services; PrEP counseling and management; HIV testing and STD screening; eight Vance North Necessities of

at the end, that you were there with them, or is there a story or an anecdote you might share with us?

Well, there’s a general one. Several of the people, in wanting to participate and wanting to be part of a book, wanted their survivors to understand that, the more they could accept that life has an end and death is part of it, the happier they will be, and the happier their survivors will be. The more you can accept it, the more you can own it, the better and the happier you’ll be. I heard that a number of times, and so I sort of felt it’s my mission to pass that along, because they asked me to.

Sure, sure. And thank you.

There were incidents, oh yeah, there were a lot of incidents. Here’s a funny one. Tom Moran—you have a picture of him with his mother—he was living at home, he was alcoholic, couldn’t tell his mom he was gay. She was a great mom; she probably knew. You know, they were very close anyway, and he—I went out with him on New Year’s Eve—and he was feeling good, the AZT seemed to be working, he was spiffy, we stopped in at a couple of his friends’ houses. And about two days later, he called me up and he said, “It’s time,” by which I knew he

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Life Program food pantries; in-home health services; housing support services; and HIV prevention efforts.

Date: September 17; time: 6–10 p.m.; location: Bonhams, 1706 W. Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California; tickets: $75.

For more information, to submit a juried art donation, and to purchase tickets, log on to: www.artprojectlosangeles.com. For more information, please visit apla.org.

meant that he was going to have to go to the hospital. And the hospital in Boston at the time was called Shattuck Hospital, and that was the place typically where people with cirrhosis of the liver and alcoholic problems were treated, and his father died there. But at the time, Shattuck Hospital was also the place in Boston that had the best AIDS care. They had a whole floor of AIDS patients and volunteers and docs and nurses, and it was terrific, or as terrific as it could be. It was a cheerful, supportive Laverne Colebut, Providence, Rhode Island, June floor for the AIDS patients, full of 1989, gelatin-silver print, © Nicholas Nixon, light, music, volunteers, while at the courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco same time it remained a dreary one for the liver and cirrosis patients. and I have the camera there, and talked And so Tom felt a mixture of—he was to his mother a little bit. And then I start to glad to be able to go to this place where cry, and he looks at me with that funny Irish he could get cared for, but he also felt look of his, and he says, “Fuckin’ liberal. ashamed, because it was, like, you know, Take the goddamn picture, would you? What this failure place where drunks go. And good is it going to do me if you get tears on so he calls me over, he says, “Okay, you the film?” And he was joking with me, but better take a picture. They’re coming he was also—like, he was being nice to me, for me this afternoon.” So I come—and because I was hurting. That was one really you can see the picture in the series, it’s good story. I’ll never forget that. pretty clear, it’s like four pictures from the end. He’s sitting on a couch, and he’s really shrunken, and he feels awful, Sean Black is a Senior Editor of A&U. A&U • JULY 2016

JULY 2016 • A&U

63

Survival Guide

[a portrait by sean black]

Jenna

The Very Kind Girl There once was a girl who was very kind you know, the kind of girl you want by your side.

Through good times and bad arguments and tiffs that friend will remain loyal and always be your BFF. I had a friend I got angry with one time we talked out our differences and now everything is fine I know a lot of people but have few friends but it all works out for me in the end.

Jenna, eleven, lives in Los Angeles, California, and, as her poem above shows, she loves writing.

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

A&U • JULY 2016

You want time for important things Š2015 Walgreen Co. All rights reserved.

97483-620-1015

Walgreens HIV-specialized pharmacies can coordinate your prescription refills so you can pick them all up on the same day. Plus, we can remind you about medication doses and refills.

It’s our way of helping you simplify your busy life.

To learn more, visit HIV.Walgreens.com.