A&U Magazine - May 2021

art & understanding for 30 years

Zero Homophobia

Seth Sikes Tim Dlugos David Wojnarowicz

sister

ROMA

The Advocate Aims for Perpetual Justice & Healthcare Equity

MAY 2021 | ISSUE 319

IMPORTANT FACTS FOR BIKTARVY®

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

(bik-TAR-vee)

MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT BIKTARVY

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF BIKTARVY

BIKTARVY may cause serious side effects, including:

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

 Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. Your

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

ABOUT BIKTARVY BIKTARVY is a complete, 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults and children who weigh at least 55 pounds. It can either be used in people who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before, or people who are replacing their current HIV-1 medicines and whose healthcare provider determines they meet certain requirements.

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

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

including hepatitis infection.  Have any other health problems.  Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if BIKTARVY can harm your unborn baby.

Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking BIKTARVY.  Are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed.

Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take:  Keep a list that includes all prescription and over-the-

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

 BIKTARVY and other medicines may affect each other.

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

These are not all the possible side effects of BIKTARVY. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any new symptoms while taking BIKTARVY. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.FDA.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

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

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

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

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

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

visit BIKTARVY.com for program information.

BIKTARVY, the BIKTARVY Logo, GILEAD, the GILEAD Logo, KEEP SHINING, and LOVE WHAT’S INSIDE are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. Version date: February 2021 © 2021 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. BVYC0370 04/21

D’EVA LIVING WITH HIV SINCE 2009 REAL BIKTARVY PATIENT

KEEP SHINING.

Because HIV doesn’t change who you are.

BIKTARVY® is a complete, 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in certain adults. BIKTARVY does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

Ask your healthcare provider if BIKTARVY is right for you.

See D’Eva’s story at BIKTARVY.com.

Featured patient compensated by Gilead.

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

Contents COVER STORY

May

2021

12

RUBY'S RAP

Ruby Comer Raps with Actor & Singer Seth Sikes

28

A&U's Hank Trout Talks to AIDS Activist Sister Roma About Fighting for Name Recognition

20

FEATURES

24 Gallery Artist Carlos Aponte Lends His Talents to a Campaign to Fight Homophobia & Transphobia Through Allyship in Latinx Communities

DEPARTMENTS 4 Frontdesk 6 Digital Footprints 10 NewsBreak

FEATURE

A Dialogue About Chris McKim's Fierce Documentary About David Wojnarowicz

viewfinder 8 16

cover photo by Saul Bromberger & Sandra Hoover Photography

For the Long Run Art & Understanding

lifeguide 36 Access to Care 38 Money Matters 40 The Culture of AIDS 45 Poetry by Tim Dlugos 47 Lifelines 48 Tribute: Irene Smith

Frontdesk From the Editor

9 Minutes, 29 Seconds

AMERICA’S AIDS MAGAZINE issue 319 vol. 30 no. 5 May 2021 editorial offices: (518) 992-2232 fax: (518) 436-5354

M

inneapolis captured the world’s attention recently when the trial of police officer Derek Chauvin, accused on various counts of murder and manslaughter for kneeling on the neck of George Floyd for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds, ended in three verdicts of guilty. George Floyd repeatedly told the arresting officers and bystanders, “I can’t breathe,” and Darnella Frazier captured video of the murder on her phone. When she shared it on social media, and, later, as it was repeatedly shown on news sites and Facebook walls, we could not look away.

And then, inevitably, we look toward justice and accountability. When Ms. Frazier told the jury something she had earlier expressed——that she spends her nights sleepless, apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more to save his life——it made me remember promises made to loved ones who died of AIDS-related causes. We wanted to do more to help save their lives. We did what we could. That’s what I would like to tell Ms. Frazier——she did what she could. She in fact may have saved numerous lives of Black people and others who are at the mercy of the police who use brutality and brawn instead of brains.

We may feel powerless in times like these, but, just as Ms. Frazier is now part of a larger movement, we need to remember we are not alone. We often did feel powerless in the early days of the AIDS pandemic. Not all of us rolled out of bed and took to the streets automatically. Friends encouraged friends; phone trees grew and produced fruit. Soon, we did trust in our power to transform the world. Activists and advocates did make a difference——lifesaving medications were fast-tracked, the Ryan White CARE Act was passed, more and more women were included in clinical trials, among other changes for good.

There was more work to be done, for sure.

Nowadays, thanks to the Internet and particularly social media, we can see the changes that need to be made more quickly. For all of its limitations, social media has become the public square, our political homebase. That’s part of the reason why this month’s cover story subject, Sister Roma, fought back against Facebook’s “real name” policy a few years back with the #MyNameIs campaign. Sister Roma explained to interviewer and A&U Senior Editor Hank Trout why she needed to take action when Facebook locked her out of her account until she could prove who she was with an appropriate I.D. Says Sister Roma: “When it happened to me, I tried to contact Facebook, which is literally impossible, so I went to Twitter and tweeted ‘Tell @Facebook that their ‘real

Editor in Chief & Publisher David Waggoner

name’ policy is unfair and discriminatory. #MyNameIsRoma.’ The next day the tweet had gone viral and local [television station] CBS5 came to my office to interview me about the situation.” The stakes for using a name of one’s choosing were high: “I’m talking about heart-wrenching stories from domestic violence survivors, schoolteachers, authors, mental health workers, trans youth, burlesque performers, law enforcement officials, this was a huge problem.”

The campaign worked!

Sister Roma has long used her voice to support individuals living with HIV/AIDS, too, and, as the stunning photography of Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover shows, she knows the power of the visual to make a statement.

Others taking a stand in this issue include the Latino Commission on AIDS’ poster campaign, designed by Carlos Aponte, that celebrates allyship to combat homophobia and transphobia, as Hank Trout reports. Chael Needle explores how director Chris McKim created a powerful documentary about David Wojnarowicz, utilizing the artist’s own visual and audio recordings, as well as paintings and drawings. Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1992, pulled no punches. He was fearless when it came to being graphic. And violence surfaced often in his art. It may be hard to look at sometimes, but so are all forms of oppression, including police brutality.

Most people I know found it very, very hard to watch Darnella Frazier’s video; some even refused.

But while some of us had to look away, none of us can deny something must be done to stop the violence.

As President Biden tweeted in response to the nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds of Floyd’s murder, “We must not turn away. We cannot turn away.”

DAVID WAGGONER

Managing Editor: Chael Needle Senior Editors: Dann Dulin, Hank Trout Editor at Large: Chip Alfred Special Projects Editor: Lester Strong Arts Editor: Alina Oswald Fiction Editor: Raymond Luczak; Nonfiction Editor: Jay Vithalani; Drama Editor: Bruce Ward; Poetry Editor: Philip F. Clark; Copy Editor: Maureen Hunter Contributing Editors: Reed Massengill, Kelly McQuain, Lesléa Newman, Robert E. Penn, Nick Steele Contributing Writers: Ruby Comer, Alacias Enger, John Francis Leonard, Candy Samples, Corey Saucier, Jeannie Wraight Art Director: Timothy J. Haines Contributing Photographers: Davidd Batalon, Tom Bianchi, Holly Clark, Stephen Churchill Downes, Greg Gorman, Francis Hills, Tom McGovern, Annie Tritt, Tommy Wu National Advertising Director: Harold Burdick, Jr. Sales & Marketing: David L. Bonitatibus Advertising Sales Office: (518) 992-2232 National Advertising Representative: Rivendell Media (212) 242-6863 Subscription Info: (518) 992-2232 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 • Patricia Nell Warren 1936–2019 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 518-992-2232; for subscriptions and address changes please call 518-992-2232; 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. ©2021 Art & Understanding, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. A&U may not be reproduced in any manner, either in whole or in part, without written permission of the publisher. A&U and the graphic representations thereof are the registered trademarks of Art & Understanding, Inc., a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization. Individual Subscription rates: $24.95 (12 issues). Institutional rates: $80.00 (12 issues). For subscriptions outside the USA and possessions, $30.95/Canada, $49.95/international, payable in advance in U.S. currency. First North American serial rights revert to contributors upon publication. A&U retains the right to anthologize work in further issues, as well as in microform or reprinting on the Internet within the context of each issue.

Statements of writers, artists and advertisers are not necessarily those of the publisher. Readers note: subjects and contributors to A&U are both HIV-positive and HIV-negative. In the absence of a specific statement herein concerning the serostatus of any individual mentioned in, or contributing material to, this publication, no inference is made with respect thereto and none should be implied.

Letters written to A&U or its contributors are assumed intended for publication. Art & Understanding, Inc. assumes no responsibility or liability for unsolicited submissions and does not guarantee the return thereof.

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

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

Digital Digital D ig igi git ita taal Footprints Fo Footprints ootpprint in nts ts mosttweeted The release news of DANCE (RED) SAVE LIVES Vol. III, a new Afrobeats-inspired album that raises money for the Global Fund COVID-19 Response, created lots of positive buzz.

mostshared art & understanding for 30 years

accelerate Initiative The Crisis in

Venezuela Advocate

Jim Pickett Artist

Larry Schulte

Actor

Kyle Brown

Poetry by Akpa Arinzechukwu

Joe Babcock

huan

DONG,MD

The Physician & Researcher Works to Make Healthcare & HIV Awareness Accessible to Everyone

APRIL 2021 | ISSUE 318

Readers on Facebook loved learning more about Dr. Huan Dong. Interviewed

by Senior Editor Dann Dulin, the researcher and physician offered sound strategies to meet the needs of individuals impacted

by HIV and gave readers hope for the next generation.

Artwork by Laolu Senbanjo

Managing Editor Chael Needle’s most tribute to writer and former columnist Patricia Nell Warren reminded readers why they loved her hardhitting insights.

@AmericasAIDSMagazine

6

@au_magazine

Warren photo by John Selig Dong photo by Tommy Wu

loved

@au_americas_aids_magazine • MAY 2021

by Hank Trout

WRITING THE PAST

Writing is Easy. You Just Sit at the Typewriter and Bleed.

—Ernest Hemingway

O

n the Monday after Easter, I learned from mutual friends that Irene Smith, the renowned massage therapist, had died Sunday night. Irene had been something of a legend here in San Francisco’s HIV community since the early 1980s.

As AIDS raged through the city, at a time when even healthcare providers were afraid to touch those of us who had AIDS, Irene insisted upon touching us, holding our hands, massaging our exhausted, wasting bodies. The staff at San Francisco General’s Ward 5B [A&U, November 2019] remember Irene’s angelic presence and the many hours she volunteered there, massaging and soothing the dying patients.

As I set about duly gathering information about Irene’s life and quotes of remembrance from her co-workers and closest friends for the “In Memoriam” that I wrote for her [see Tribute, this issue], I realized, to my shock, that Irene’s is the eleventh “In Memoriam” that I have written for A&U in the five years I’ve written regularly for the magazine.

In just five years, I’ve written farewells to scientists and doctors (Drs. Mathilde Krim and Joseph Sonnabend); writers (Michael Friedman, John Ashbery); activists (Larry Pettit, Ken Jones, Andy Valez, Denis Peron); a healer (Irene Smith); and icons (Larry Kramer, Timothy Ray Brown). Although I knew only three of them personally, each of these people

8

had a profound impact upon my life. Writing about their deaths brought back painful memories of writing friends’ obituaries for the Bay Area Reporter, but it also brought me some clarity about my writing and about my difficulty with facing the past.

In late 1982, after several years of writing a lot of fiction, I suddenly couldn’t write any more. I knew I should be writing about all the chaos and fear and grief consuming all of us at the time, and I wanted to, but I just couldn’t. It was all too painful, too all-consuming for me to write about it concurrently. Besides, who had time? As another writer friend told me some years ago, “When you’re up to your elbows in bedpans, it’s hard to find time to write about being up to your elbows in bedpans.”

But when my then-fiancé Rick convinced me in 2015 that I must start writing again, I knew he was right——that if I don’t write what I remember about those years, the Plague Years, those stories will die when I do. Feminist writings taught me that we control our history only if we write it ourselves.

So I started writing again. I promised myself that I would memorialize friends lost to AIDS, those who took care of us, and those who fought with us. As a survivor, I owe those people so much.

I quickly discovered that, even with the passage of thirty-three years, some of what I remember was still too painful to write about.

I’ve tried. The first two things that I wrote in

2015, after writing nothing for thirty-three years, were profiles of two friends who died in the 1980s——my co-worker Dean and my best buddy Jim. And then I stopped writing about friends lost to AIDS. It just hurt too much. Both of those pieces are relatively short, but each took weeks to pound into the keyboard. Each sentence felt like a bloodletting, like ripping open old wounds and bleeding all over the page. I cried for Dean and Jim, cried for what might have been, more during those weeks than during all the years since they died. Recreating dialogue, I “heard” their voices again, remembered crying with them, remembered the last time I saw them, the last time I heard their real voices. Writing about them hurt every bit as much as I had suspected it would.

Nearly six years since I started to write again, it still hurts like hell to remember and write about that time. I honestly don’t know how other writers have done it. Every time I’ve tried to write about any of my other friends lost to AIDS, I’ve been unable to remember them without “reliving” all the emotions, all the pain, all the hopelessness, all the fear we endured. Thus far, every time I’ve tried to write about Tom, or Hennig, or Rex, or any of the many others, their memories paralyze me. I sit gazing through tears at the keyboard in frustration, and those stories go untold.

I cannot help wondering how many other stories out there go untold because they are too painful to write. How do we safeguard our own history when remembering and contextualizing parts of that history is so paralyzing? How can one achieve the historian’s objectivity when writing about lost friends and lovers? If it’s too painful to write, is our history doomed to be incomplete?

Writing Irene’s “In Memoriam” and remembering the ten others I’ve written, made me realize that I haven’t kept my vow to memorialize lost friends; I haven’t been as good an historian as I promised.

I still haven’t learned how to write about the lives of lost friends without suffering from memories of them——to reconcile my obligation to write about them with the pain of writing about them. Maybe someday I’ll achieve the emotional distance I need to write about lost friends, the same kind of objectivity I’ve brought to writing each “In Memoriam.”

Like Larry, Irene, Ken, and the others we’ve lost, they deserve no less.

Hank Trout, Senior Editor, edited Drummer, Malebox, and Folsom magazines in the early 1980s. A long-term survivor of HIV/AIDS (diagnosed in 1989), he is a forty-year resident of San Francisco, where he lives with his husband Rick.

• MAY 2021

illustration by Timothy J. Haines

FOR THE LONG RUN

Without health justice, we cannot end the HIV epidemic.

Show your support at sfaf.org/shop

NewsBreak

addressing the intersection of hiv & intimate partner violence

O

n March 31, 2021, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Office of HIV/ AIDS Housing (OHH) announced the release of a set of three training videos that address the intersection of HIV and intimate partner violence, which includes domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.

In 2016, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), HUD awarded joint funding to eight demonstration projects across the U.S. to provide housing assistance and supportive services to low-income persons living with HIV/AIDS who were homeless and/or in need of housing assistance due to intimate partner violence.

The new videos discuss best practices and provide an ongoing training resource for all

HOPWA grantees and project sponsors, as well as other agencies working with people living with HIV/AIDS and experiencing intimate partner violence. The first two comprise a two-part webinar on key factors to consider in serving persons living with HIV/AIDS who are survivors of IPV. The first video in the series teaches viewers how HIV impacts victims of domestic violence, how to understand what is needed for a strong partnership, and to gather information on how survivors and PLHIV can be involved in developing these partnerships. The second video helps participants learn how to create services, to build partnerships between housing

and service providers, and to engage with survivors of violence and PLHIV. The third video is a roundtable discussion between OHH staff and three of the demonstration sites (Kansas City, Missouri; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Portland, Oregon) describing successful approaches to developing effective and collaborative community partnerships to best serve those at the intersection of HIV and IPV. The videos range from forty-five minutes to nearly an hour. In addition to streaming the video recordings, webinar slides are also available for download at https://bit.ly/3vmaJIn.

HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute (HHPI), said in a press release, “We thank President Biden for demonstrating his commitment to ending HIV in the United States by including this

substantial funding increase in his budget to ramp up the Ending the HIV Epidemic Initiative. While it falls short of what the community has requested, if this funding is realized it will continue the momentum already created and make further progress in ending HIV in the U.S. efforts to end HIV and will help eradicate an infectious disease that we have been battling for the last 40 years and help correct racial and health inequities in our nation.”

The HHPI commented that, despite the medical community’s having turned its attention to battling the COVID epidemic, there have been promising results of the Ending the HIV Epidemic Initiative. The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program reports they were able to bring nearly 6,300 new clients into the program and re-engage an additional 3,600. Community health centers were able to increase PrEP uptake from 19,000 in 2020 to nearly 50,000 people early this year.

It is important to note that this increase in HIV funding is still in the “proposal” stage.

Passing the budget will require overcoming likely Republican Party opposition to HIV funding.

biden budget p r o p o s a l increases funding for ending hiv

P

resident Joseph Biden’s first preliminary budget, released on April 9, 2021, proposes an increase of $267 million for domestic HIV testing, prevention, and treatment programs as part of the Ending the HIV Epidemic. This proposal adds to the $400-plus million Congress appropriated for the first two years of the initiative to end HIV by 2030 by initially focusing on programs in jurisdictions most impacted by HIV. Last year’s budget included an increase of $412 million for the second year of the initiative for a total of $716 million, while the Congress settled on an increase of just $137 million. If the Biden budget request is approved, funding for the initiative would total $670 million.

Carl Schmid, Executive Director of the

10

• MAY 2021

mary bowman arts in activism award

T

he first recipient of the Mary Bowman Arts in Activism Award is Ima Fatima Diawara of Los Angeles, whose passion and work shares the spirit of Mary Bowman, using art and activism to raise greater awareness about bigotry, stigma and social justice, particularly around the issue of HIV/AIDS. Ms. Diawara is an Afro-Latinx multimedia visual artist and performer. Her creativity explores truth through poeticism, movement, and narrative. Learn more about Ms. Diawara and sample some of her work at imadiawara.com.

The National AIDS Memorial and ViiV Healthcare created the Mary Bowman Arts in Activism Award to honor poet, advocate, and young PLHIV Mary Bowman, who died in May

art by Farah Jeune for ViiV Healthcare Ima Fatima Diawara photo courtesy National AIDS Memorial

Ima Fatima Diawara

$41M HOPWA funding opportunity

O

n April 21, 2021, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of HIV/AIDS Housing announced the release of a new Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) through the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program. HUD is making $41 million available to states, local governments, and non-profits for housing assistance and supportive services for low-income people living with HIV and their families, as part of the “Housing as an Intervention to Fight AIDS” NOFO. The funds will enable

MAY 2021 •

2019 at the age of thirty.

The $5,000 award was created to support one young artivist (twenty-seven years of age or younger) each year who exemplifies Mary’s passion for the arts as the vehicle for their own HIV/ AIDS community activism and expression.

Mary Bowman [A&U, August 2016] was born with HIV. She used her art to explore and document the experience of living with HIV and losing her mother to AIDS. As a young, proud, out woman of color, Mary used her voice to speak up for the next generation of people living with HIV, particularly advocating for other young people. For Mary, the arts gave her the platform and voice to channel her creative energy. She also served as an ambassador for the U.S. Department of Health’s Office of Women’s Health for its Women and Girls HIV/ AIDS Awareness Day, appeared in PSAs for National Women & Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day PSAs, worked at an HIV/AIDS organization focused on women, and performed at the XIX International AIDS Conference, AIDSWatch (receiving a Positive Leadership Award from the advocacy initiative in 2015), and DIVAS Simply

Singing!, among other events and conferences.

To learn more about Mary, log on to https:// www.aidsmemorial.org/post/mary-bowman.

Artivists who would like to be considered for the Mary Bowman Arts in Activism Award can apply here: https:// scholarsapp.com/scholarship/mary-bowman-arts-in-activism-award. The deadline is July 15, 2021.

communities selected through the NOFO process to implement new, innovative housing projects as an effective structural intervention aimed at ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Housing instability has been a major issue in the lives many people living with HIV since the beginning of the pandemic. Research has shown that stable housing contributes significantly to getting and keeping HIV patients on effective treatment.

This new release of funds marks the first time in five years that HUD has been able to fund new HOPWA grants. The funds will enable HIV housing providers to make meaningful contributions towards ending the HIV epidemic efforts already underway in their communities.

“We know safe, stable housing is critical for persons living with HIV to best manage their health,”

said HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge in an HIV.gov press release. “This funding will support communities in ensuring our neighbors are able to access housing alongside medical services. We cannot end the HIV/AIDS epidemic without support for housing.”

HUD published a pre-application webcast on or before April 30, 2021, for anyone interested in applying for this new HOPWA funding opportunity.

More information on the webcast will be provided through the HUD.gov HOPWA mailing list. To sign up for the mailing list, please visit the HUD.gov HOPWA mailing list subscription page.

To read the complete Notice of Funding Opportunity, log on to https://bit.ly/2QZtT8p.

—Reporting by Hank Trout

11

by Ruby Comer

Seth Sikes

Portraits by Dan Fortune

12

Ruby illustration by Davidd Batalon; photo by The Gingerb3ardmen

C

OVID-19 got your panties in a bunch?

Read on, uptight reader.

Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Lena Horne, Bernadette Peters, and Liza Minnelli. What do all these icons have in common? Seth Sikes!

Thirty-seven year old Seth, who resembles more of a high schooler than an adult man (how does he preserve that youth?!), found his niche when he began singing these diva’s tunes.

At eighteen Seth’s journey began taking him from his hometown of Paris, Texas, to Circle in the Square Conservatory in New York City.

Two years later he landed an acting part in an off-Broadway show, which unfortunately closed in two weeks. He then focused on directing, working himself up from assistant director of regional theater to Broadway.

A decade passed and Seth missed performing. Though he was always melodious, when Seth sang it would be strictly pop or musical theater, which he learned was not the best for him. Then Grandma Ninny pressed him to sing standards such as “Stormy Weather,” “The Man That Got Away,” and “I’m in Love Again.” Eureka.

The tunes were a cozy fit and exhilarating.

Seth pieced together a cabaret act, appearing at Feinstein’s 54 Below (in the basement of the former ultimate discothèque Studio 54), and made the rounds on the nightclub circuit, most of them sellouts. Some of his concerts are tribute shows to these classic dames. Checkout YouTube for a front-row seat!

Born out of COVID ennui, Seth has taken his talent to producing and starring in his own musical videos. Lucky us. Last summer he was living on Fire Island and was going bonkers, so he created.

The lavish vids (on YouTube) are meticulously produced, spicy, and pure delight.

Seth is having fun and we get to whistle with him! Watching them is similar to licking a creamsicle. You want to savor it. (It should be mentioned that Seth collaborates on his vids

• MAY 2021

MAY 2021 •

and gracious. Seth resembles a young comic book hero, think Toby Maguire, Tom Holland, or even Christopher Reeves. I review Seth’s life and, like a superhero, he’s waiting to don that suit and fly in the big league.

in the Streisand roster, I believe. Name the AIDS-themed film that touched you the most.

Definitely…Longtime Companion, Ruby. I haven’t seen it in a long time, but it always makes me weep. [He takes a beat.] I also love The Hours.

Ruby Comer: Happy to see you! [As Seth nods and greets, I fleetingly peek behind him.

There’s an enormous bookcase overflowing with mostly novels, but I espy a whole shelf dedicated to Judy Garland biographies.] So… besides boredom, Seth, what in nilly-willy sparked those Fire Island videos?!

Seth Sikes: [He sports a broad Pepsodent smile.] I would bounce around the island humming Judy songs, thinking, “Oh wouldn’t it be funny to write one about, say, the ferry?” I love writing parody lyrics, so I sat down and wrote a parody of “The Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe,” except it’s all about the Fire Island Ferry instead of a train. Then I thought: I’ve got an iPhone and lots of time, so let’s try to make this into a music video. After the popularity of the first few, the ideas just kept pouring out of me, and I got better at them——I think!

Outstanding. Tell me how you first heard about HIV. My first memory, Ruby, was in third grade when teachers warned us to never touch the blood of another student.

You did, brother. Pow! Okay comrade, tell this aging beauty how you keep that complexion of yours so freshly-dewed?

I think 2020 has aged me several years, Ruby [Seth lets out a trail of giggles]! I really don’t do anything because I don’t know where to begin! But when I saw my mom over the holiday, she asked if I wanted some Botox for Christmas!

That’s cute. I like your mom already! I mean, who doesn’t need a nip and tuck now and then? [All of a sudden I rattle off finger by finger...] Okay Mister, name your favorite Streisand, Garland, and Minnelli films.

[He ticks off almost instantaneously] Garland: Summer Stock. Minnelli: Cabaret. Streisand: What’s Up, Doc? Three glorious and dazzling films! I love What’s Up, Doc ?——it’s highly underrated

Hmmm, okay. That’s quite a visual. Were you taught about HIV prevention in your Texas high school?

We were taught about a variety of STDs, but not in much detail. I think it was only one or two classes while I was in middle school. The specter of HIV and AIDS seemed like a distant, far-off threat. In Texas I think they were more concerned with pregnancy prevention in our sex ed courses.

That sounds, unfortunately, pretty normal.

How old were you when you first tested for HIV? Nineteen. [He glances over his shoulder as if he might have heard a din.]

How did the test come about and where did you have it performed?

I dated a boy who showed me the ropes.

[He tugs at a strand of his silky, bubbly chocolate-with-cream hair.] He connected me with Dr. Stephen Dillon, a gay doctor in Chelsea. “A very cruise-y waiting room,” my friend said. This was before rapid testing, so you had to wait for a phone call. Even if you didn’t think there was any chance you’d caught it, waiting for the call was always anxiety inducing.

Oh gee, yes!

Then the doctor called me. “Seth Sikes? It’s Dr. Dillon, and I have your test results.” My heart rate went insane.

Oh god, yes. Dreadful. [Seth props his elbow

13

web photos courtesy S. Sikes

with Tony-award winning lyricist Lisa Lambert, and for Seth, Judy Garland remains his foremost inspiration.)

Two faves of mine are “Howdy Neighbor,” a parody of Judy Garland’s famous ditty in Summer Stock, and “Mask of Many Colors” (yes, about the pandemic) a send-up from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. One media comment lauded, “Your voice is a clarion from heaven, Seth.”

In concert you can expect a very dapper handsome clean-cut guy, at times sporting a tux.

In Seth’s lavish pithy videos, he’s still stylish but in many of them, the shirt, and sometimes the pants, come off. Hummm, yes, but it’s done with complete taste and there’s no nudity. Darnit.

Speaking of naked, being a proud New Yorker, Seth is an avid advocate for Broadway Cares and has attended many of their annual fundraiser, Broadway Bares-- where it’s not only “hats-off” night, if you get my drift.

In March, Seth appeared in an all star-studded streaming bash celebrating the legendary Liza Minnelli on her seventy-fifth birthday. He performed one of the entertainer’s all time dazzling hits, “Ring Them Bells,” but with a sweet sensational twist! Watch here: https://youtu.be/n8kMgAGJjTk. Also in March, to mark the one year anniversary of Broadway’s closure due to COVID, Seth released a new music video, “Home,” a tune from the musical Minsky’s. All proceeds go to Broadway Cares, which still, after more than thirty years, continues to help those afflicted with life-threatening diseases, including HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. (Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/-N-R5EmkvBM. Donate to Broadway Cares: https://donate. broadwaycares.org/sethsikeshome.)

Some of Seth’s friends are living with HIV, and some of his older friends lived in the eighties and nineties during the terror of AIDS. Seth feels a passionate connection to them and when they tell him their stories of friends dying, it becomes an all-too crushing reality. It tragically hits home for him, grieving over the loss of countless talented people.

A tad more insight into the boy, oops, man…Coming out at eighteen, when he moved to the Big Apple, his then celebrity crush was Ryan Phillippe, and the first Broadway show he attended was Les Miserables.

Mister Sikes was smitten with the stage during the second grade when he played the Scarecrow in a stage production of The Wizard of Oz. He self-describes himself as, well,….Lush.

On a Sunday eve at 5 p.m. on the West Coast, and 8 p.m. on the East Coast, Seth and I do a Zoomer from his Hell’s Kitchen pad. The entertainer is chipper, animated,

on the desk and cups his fist to support his chin.] …and what’s the best thing about living in Hell’s Kitchen?

It’s a great gay neighborhood, but frankly I don’t go to gay bars much, certainly not now. I love being near Broadway, the Theater District, and near all the creative types who live here. [He winks and then dons a sly grin.]…

Cruising on Ninth Avenue ain’t a bad feature either.

Oh, really? Okay. Didn’t know. Speaking of cruising…share about another sexy venture, attending Broadway Bares.

I used to attend every year! It was a highlight, something to look forward to. It was always on a Sunday, and I remember being hung-over at work on Mondays. The shows were sexy and fun, and it was incredible to see all the boys in the crowd, so many from the theatre industry.

A stirring night most undeniably.

There usually are no seats, as it sells out. [He clears his throat, wedging himself closer to the computer.] I’m short, so I couldn’t always see the stage well. Instead, I would focus on the “low hanging fruit” all around me. [Seth laughs merrily.] Those were some great nights. It brought a tear to my eye to see so many people volunteering and spending money to help cure a disease. I can’t wait to go again when live entertainment returns.

From your mouth to God’s——or whomever’s——ears! How have you kept sane during COVID, especially since all your gigs got cancelled?

I’m not sure that I have kept sane! I’m a fiction addict, so I’ve always craved alone time to read. However, the terror of March and April kept me in such an anxious state that I could hardly focus on a book——or focus on anything, really. With the help of wine [he gulps comically] I was able to focus more on movies, so I started to watch all classic movies that I hadn’t seen on Roger Ebert’s and AFI’s best lists. Then in May I relocated to Fire Island Pines for the entire summer, where life was much better than it had been in my apartment.

Then the creativity began to flow. [He nods vigorously then bends over to pick a pencil that dropped to the floor. In his brief absence, I see two black and white stills of Judy Garland hanging on the wall.]

Fascinating poses of Judy [I point to them as Seth looks around at the photographs].

Oh! I recently obtained them from an auction of Liza Minnelli memorabilia.

Kudos to you. Have you had the opportunity to meet any of these divas whose songs you sing?

I met Liza three or four times. The first time I was left alone with her for about five minutes outside a stage door. It was the only time I’ve ever been truly starstruck. Imagine…you’re alone with one of your idols, and you can’t even speak! [He pauses to shake his head as if in disbelief and then rolls his eyes.] I later regretted not jumping in the car with her when her driver arrived.

That would be fun, huh?! I did that once with Bette Midler…years ago. Have any of them attended your concerts?

None of them have…yet….but one can dream!

Of course! One must dream——always. What goes through your mind when you hear stories of your friends losing so many of their friends years ago?!

I’ve always had a strange emotional reaction to their stories when I hear about their loss due to AIDS. The idea of losing so many friends at once, of living in terror that you would be the next…it just hits home in too close a way. [He’s pensive, as he cocks his noggin off to the side. I lose him to the Twilight Zone for a minute.]

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Seth Sikes parodies Beauty and the Beast.

• MAY 2021

Oh sorry, Ruby. [His voice quivers.] I mourn the loss of so many theater talents from that time——and so many artists. [He halts.] Now we’re in another health crisis, and you see how quickly the world reacts when it’s not mainly gay people dying. [I sigh. Seth becomes silent then quietly utters] Ruby, it’s really just too awful to think about any of this for too long….[With that, he struggles to inhale, exhaling with a distressing sigh. Just then, raindrops appear on Seth’s apartment window.]

Like me, I know you can’t get enough of this gifted guy, so book your seat for his upcoming show at Feinstein’s/54 Below on Wednesday, October 20 at 7 p.m. in his latest show, Seth Sikes Sings the ‘20s.

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.

MAY 2021 •

15

ART & UNDERSTANDING

viewfinder

by Chael Needle

ANATOMY OF AN ISSUE

How One Pharmacy Responds to HIV Care • Queerskins Creator Illya Szilak

Sixty-Four Pages of Who We Are & Who We Can Become

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or the first time in a year, I visited a museum. They have been open for a few months, but I have been closed to the idea. Though I have been eager to return to the Noguchi Museum or to MoMA to view my favorite painting, Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World, I have tried to stay safe during lockdown Now that I am vaccinated, I do feel safer.

My roommate had secured Free Friday tickets, timed for 3:45 p.m., and so we donned our masks, took the train into Manhattan and visited the Morgan Library and Museum to see the David Hockney exhibit, “Drawing from Life.”

As I have mostly seen Hockney’s paintings (and a mesmerizing video installation at the deYoung in San Francisco), I was intrigued to see the artist’s approach to this genre. It was worth the trip.

Drawings of five of Hockney’s portrait subjects, charting changes over time and uses of different media, composed the core of the exhibit. Whether Polaroid collages or pastels, the works introduce the viewer to David himself as a young artist, his mother, Laura Hockney, textile designer Celia Birtwell, friend and former curator Gregory Evans, and printmaker Maurice Payne.

I left, feeling as if I had had brief conversations with each of the subjects, the representative aspects of each person emerging over the course of a lifetime of sitting for Hockney: Gregory’s soulful gaze, Celia’s recurring sartorial choices——vibrant patterns and a love of the floral, Maurice never smiling, or, rather, never looking like he is smiling.

Recently, as I have been looking through old issues of A&U for this column, I came across one issue that stood out for its A&U-ness, one issue that resounded with the magazine’s representative aspects, which are probably more easily detected across years of issues like one of Hockney’s subjects. But in January 2013 (Issue 219), across sixty-four pages of HIV/AIDS advocacy, A&U’s core components all come together in a stunning, coherent whole.

Like Hockney has done in his drawings, allow me to define and celebrate in the same moment.

It may seem like an exercise in navel-gazing—— let’s look at our own magazine!——but allow me this walk down memory lane as we mark thirty years of publication, for I am not talking about the magazine as an object but as a space where writers, photographers, artists, editors, and advocates come together in an act of collaboration.

It becomes something like the organizations we featured in the issue (AIDS Foundation Chicago,

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JANUARY 2013 • ISSUE 219 • AmERIcA’S AIDS mAgAzINE Dancers Responding to AIDS, the Keith Haring Foundation, Planned Uniting Vision & Voice Cameras4Change Uses Parenthood of New York Visual Media to Help City, and The Elizabeth Empower Others Taylor AIDS Foundation): a collective of Sin Vergüenza AltaMed Creates a individuals all working Telenovela to Reach Out on the same cause. to Latino Communities Let’s start with the plus writing. A&U has always Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco • been fortunate to Painter Frank Moore • feature stellar writing.

Advocate Aaron Laxton Yes, we offer poetry, fiction, and drama that engages and educates readers about the realities of living with or caring for someone with HIV/AIDS, but we also offer well-crafted Makes New Designs on AIDS Awareness reportage, op-eds, and nonfiction pieces that do not shy away from the same incisiveness we expect from a work of literature. The magazine offers a slate of solid and absorbing writing from our editors real and imaginary: “I survived 1994, the wildfire and regular contributors and this issue includes of Kaposi’s sarcoma, the jungle of catheters, the David Waggoner, Dann Dulin, Chael Needle, tidal waves of Vinblastine and Vincristine, names Chip Alfred, Lester Strong, V. Anderson, Angela of wild girls, and the volcanic heat of radiaLeroux-Lindsey, Larry Buhl, Justin B. Terry-Smith, tion——I fought a global cataclysm. Miraculously, and Patricia Nell Warren. What I mean by “solid a phosporescent chemical deity, I walked out of and absorbing,” which may sound rather plain St. Paul’s Hospital to hide in a building on the as compliments go, is that the writing is never East Side of Vancouver, and end my days. My showy. The writing is never about the writeveryday life was studying, learning to work in er-as-writer. No matter how strong the writer is, community in Vancouver and in national AIDS and these writers are undoubtedly strong, the organizations, doing some public radio (no one writers are always writing in the service of an advocate, or AIDS service organization, or an idea could see my disfiguring KS), and writing a PhD thesis, a petulant swan song. Oddly, in my efforts that needs more clarity. to retreat, I often seemed to accomplish the opIn this issue, for example, columnist Chuck posite and it was during this period that I made Willman tackles his experiences as a long-term long-lasting friends.” survivor to give us a pep talk about accepting Both writers are living with HIV/AIDS and whatever emotions we feel and interrupting the speak their own truths, without censoring their stigma heaped upon us: “We’re struggling to thoughts or feelings. And when we interview stay healthy, stay afloat, stay sane, and stay alive. others, we strive to represent advocates, without We’re NOT ‘whining’! There’s a difference, and editorial interference so that their ideas can we’re doing the best we can.” shine through to the readers. In this issue, Ruby In “Giving It Raw: How to Live with AIDS for Comer spoke to advocate Michael Beck, who 25 Years,” a piece drawn from his essays, Francisdiscussed his career in AIDS fundraising, most co Ibáñez-Carrasco traces a journey from Chile to Canada, stepping stones across continents, both recently at Cycle for a Cause. Chip Alfred caught

Mondo Guerra

$3.95 USA • $4.95 CANADA

• MAY 2021

up with Aaron Laxton (engagingly photographed by Sean Black), who had started utilizing YouTube in an early instance of social media-driven AIDS activism to get the word out about HIV criminalization, serodifferent relationships, and stigma, among many other issues. In closing, he told A&U: “At the end of my life whenever that may be, I want to be known as a person who effected change and made others’ lives better. If that has occurred, then I will know I’ve done something great.” And Chael Needle spoke with photographer Cate Cameron about an organization she helped launch, Cameras4Change, and her own photo series, “Ghosts & Dreams: Water, Women & HIV,” which offered beautiful portraits of individuals using their power to effect changes for themselves, families, and communities. Cameron described the complexity she tried to convey: “I do try to show a balance because I did see so much beauty and so much dignity and so much creativity and striving for better in all of the places that I’ve worked in. I think that I always try to show that, yes, there’s a lot of challenge, there’s a lot of difficulty in many, many places, and a lot of suffering, but there’s also so much beauty in these places as well and in these lives and in these people.”

In our cover story interview, Lester Strong chatted with fashion designer and HIV advocate Mondo Guerra, who shared how he learned that instantaneous empowerment is cut from whole cloth; when living with HIV/ AIDS, resilience is not seamless and involves conversations with your doctor and with yourself: “HIV is such an emotional issue.

There are good days and there are bad days.

But even when you’re feeling healthy, it takes a lot to continue to be proactive about your health. I realized my life was being taken away from me, and it was happening because I was allowing HIV to define who I was. I needed to start setting goals again, not just goals for my health but goals for my creative life. That was the day things started to change.”

The artistry of Mondo is matched by the artistry of one of our brilliant photographers, Stephen Churchill Downes. The shoot captures the seriousness and the playful humor of Mondo, and it points to the power of art to convey the many different moods and moments within advocacy. This is what

MAY 2021 •

Mondo Guerra, photographed by Stephen Churchill Downes for the January 2013 issue

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we try to spotlight in A&U: the often radically diverse paths to the same goals of healthcare access for all, an end to HIV criminalization, Cate Cameron photo series (clockwise from top left): Casey Kasoma, Mapalo, Zambia, 2009: self-determined empowerment, freedom "One of the first women I photographed in Zambia, Casey is a grandmother of six and a widfrom need, understanding what it is to ower who has seen the death of her own children due to HIV. She struggles daily to find small live with HIV/AIDS, to name a few. amounts of money to purchases just enough food and oil to cook a daily meal."; Nyakwere Art can be a vehicle for positive tranformative change. Cultural activism Market, Sandu River, Rift Valley, Kenya, 2010: "Walking down to the river with her laundry and cannot do the work that direct actions a pail for drinking water, a woman smiles as her children follow along. Even though they are do——it doesn’t have the immediacy or close to a river, treatment of water for drinking is necessary to avoid illness."; Ennedy, School the impact of putting one’s body on the Teacher, Mandia, Zambia, 2009: "Ennedy, a school teacher, lives on the Zambezi River which line, but it should not be dismissed. Art is fraught with crocodiles that claim dozens of people collecting water every year. Although a can often reach a multitude of individufresh water source, the water caused diarrhea that killed her eighteen month old daughter." als, whether they are in Paris, France, or

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• MAY 2021

Frank Moore, Lullaby, 1997, oil on canvas on featherboard with red pine frame, 50 x 65 inches (127 x 165.1 cm.). Courtesy Gesso Foundation and Sperone Westwater, New York

Paris, Texas, whether it’s today or two years from now, across ethnicities and gender expressions, across serostatuses. It can organize consciousness-raising in a different way.

Art, of course, is part of A&U’s DNA. In the January 2013 issue, we offered a review of HIV-themed movies to watch before Oscar night, an interview with Illya Szilak and her multimedia novel about a gay man living with AIDS, Queerskins, and a look at a telenovela, Sin Vergüenza, that explores HIV and its impact on a Latino family. In our Gallery, which is featured in every issue, Angela Leroux-Lindsey discussed the paintings of Frank Moore, whose works were in a new solo exhibit. Before he died in 2002 of AIDS-related causes, Moore not only participated in actions as an activist and initiatives as a member of the Visual AIDS Artist Caucus, including the Red Ribbon Project and the nonprofit’s The Archive Project, but he produced artwork after artwork that explored nature and environmental exploitation, the toxicity of pharmaceuticals (and the toxicity of capitalism and the healthcare industry), the circus that can be the medical arena, and the poetics of being a patient. In this last aspect, take a look at Lullaby (pictured), with its snowflake-sprinkled patient’s bed, empty but for tiny buffalo, a gentle American landscape, with the promise of preservation near extinction. The lullaby is also a wake-up call.

Moore’s works still hold power today. As do the words of the writers and adovocates and the images of the photography within the pages of A&U, January 2013. All become time capsules, with seeds to be planted for future sustenance.

Chael Needle is celebrating twenty-one years at A&U.

MAY 2021 •

19

ANbraver, louder,GRIER Editors Hank Trout & Chael Needle Discuss a New Documentary About Artist & Writer David Wojnarowicz

Wojnarowicz director Chris McKim

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photo by Patrick McPheron

T

he title of this documentary, Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker is perfectly aligned with the artist’s ethos of resisting politeness and saying what needs to be said. F**k You F*ggot F**ker is the title of one of David Wojnarowicz’ paintings and the sexual epithet comes from a homophobic slur that he found on a piece of paper, discarded on the street. In Wojnarowicz’ hands, it becomes a reclamation——defusing oppressive words by exposing them and creating art out of them.

Using the artist’s journals, cassette recordings, phone messages, street recordings, photos and super 8 films, the director, Chris McKim, has created a documentary that has the same energy and visual punch as a Wojnarowicz painting. Current interviews with people in his circle——from his brother Steven to gallerists Gracie Mansion and Sur Rodney Sur [A&U, February 2019], from artist/collaborator Marion Scemama to Stephen Koch, the Peter Hujar archive director——add a wealth of information and insight about David the artist, the writer, the friend, the lover, the activist. Early on, he flees with his mother to escape his abusive father, living in Hell’s Kitchen, and then living on the streets, working as a hustler. He struggles at first as an artist and writer but then gains recognition through the East Village art scene explosion. We see his relationship with photographer Peter Hujar morph from lover to friend (Fran Lebowitz, a friend, describe them as father and son). We see his experiments in art, helping to create with Mike Bidlo a space for artists in a decaying building on Pier 34. The documentary covers his other artistic collaborations, his relationships with his siblings, his stint in a band, and his contributions to AIDS activism——the viewer swims in a murky and swift-moving Hudson River of images and words, kept afloat

by David’s persistence to create.

The documentary ends with lover Tom Rauffenbart and others visiting a recent Whitney exhibit devoted to Wojnarowicz’ work, “David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night.” It’s odd to see Wojnarowicz’ work in the sparkly-new Whitney, near a boutique interpretation of the Meatpacking District and the revamped Hudson piers, a short subway ride from the gentrified East Village. And while this type of wealth has always existed, it has not yet swallowed up the power of Wojnarowicz’ voice. It is reminiscent of something Wojnarowicz says in the documentary, as he compares himself to Hujar, who had the “same desperate and at times confused outlook but minus the one seed of hope that I have in me.”

Produced by WOW Doc & World of Wonder’s Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey, the documentary received special jury recognition at 2020 DOC NYC for Best Use of Archival Materials and was an Official Selection at 2020 Tribeca Film Festival and 2020 HOT DOCS. The movie’s distributor is Kino Lorber.

To honor the film and the works of David Wojnarowicz, A&U editors Hank Trout and Chael Needle corresponded by email to create this dialogue.

• MAY 2021

Hank Trout: So, we both watched the new documentary Fuck You Faggot Fucker about artist, activist, and provocateur David Wojnarowicz. I really enjoyed it. Even though I’ve researched and written about Wojnarowicz, I learned a good bit about him that I didn’t know. For instance, I didn’t know about 3 Teens Kill 4, the punk rock band he fronted. Also, I didn’t know that he was the creator of the slogan, “If I die of AIDS, forget burial, just dump my body on the steps of the F.D.A.” I knew about the slogan, of course, and had seen photos of the jacket he wrote it on for an ACT UP demonstration, but didn’t know that Wojnarowicz created it. I also learned more about his pre-AIDS art and activism.

Chael Needle: The documentary seems thoroughly researched and the interviews with his colleagues, family members and collaborators are priceless. I learned a good bit about him, too, including how he drew on his life experiences and circumstances to create art. The film connects the dots between his life and creative output in a way that made it all make sense. It is pretty impressive that Wojnarowicz excelled both as a visual artist and a writer——that combination seems to be a rarity and I don’t think I ever fully appreciated that.

HT: I, too, was surprised by his writing. I’ve encountered his writing in the texts that he used in his artwork, like “Untitled (One day this kid...)” and some of his later works, and I knew about his controversial essay for the exhibit “Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing” exhibit that got him into trouble with the NEA. But other than that, I knew nothing about his writing.

You mentioned the interviews with colleagues etc.

The director, Chris McKim, made some very interesting and effective choices. Most of what we hear is Wojnarowicz’ own voice. The interviews are all conducted off camera. We sometimes see photos of the speakers (most memorably the portraits that Peter Hujar took), but we never see them speaking, we hear their voices in the background——McKim doesn’t distract us with cutting away to a “talking head.” He keeps the attention on Wojnarowicz and his work, where it should be. McKim seems to recognize the power in Wojnarowicz’ voice, especially when he’s angry.

CN: Yes, allowing viewers to hear Wojnarowicz’ voice was a great choice by McKim; it almost becomes narration. Hearing his anger in the moment is important; it’s not the composed voice of someone being interviewed and looking back at those years. But I also noted the frustration in his voice—his work represents his life experiences and is “political” because others have politicized gay and lesbian sexuality, economic insecurity, and access to healthcare. I was heartened to see that he didn’t silo these issues but understood how all were connected.

So many thinkers and activists and writers were lost to AIDS. I don’t think we can ever measure the loss.

HT: I remember that many artists who responded to the AIDS pandemic were criticized for making their art

MAY 2021 •

David Wojnarowicz, Fuck You Faggot Fucker, 1984 © Estate of David Wojnarowicz.

Courtesy of the Estate and P.P.O.W

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David Wojnarowicz, Untitled, 1988-89. © Estate of David Wojnarowicz. Courtesy of the Estate and P.P.O.W “too political,” ignoring the fact that it was (and remains) impossible to write about the pandemic during the 1980s and ‘90s without being political. So much of the devastation of the pandemic in those first twenty years was the direct, foreseeable result of our government’s and politicians’ insanely inadequate, bigoted responses to it. And the censorship of that art was definitely politically motivated. I was glad to see that Wojnarowicz recognized that he was just one more of the artists, including Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, whose work was condemned by the likes of Jesse Helms and Dana Rohrabacher in the halls of Congress and litigated in courthouses.

Wojnarowicz wasn’t the first to write and make art about the kind of intersectionality you mentioned, but he certainly understood it. He encapsulated it pretty well when he said, “When I was told that I’d contracted the

22

virus, it didn’t take me long to realize that I’d contracted a diseased society as well.” As he battled the disease, he also battled poverty, prejudice, lack of healthcare——it’s no wonder his writing and art are often so confrontational.

Just look at the title of this documentary, taken from one of his exhibits.

Fuck You Faggot Fucker is not a title designed to draw people in!

CN: No, it’s not! I interpret the title as the documentary’s creative forces making it clear that they see the importance of standing alongside Wojnarowicz, shoulder to shoulder. Like David’s art and writings, the title is not ready-made for Netflix.

This reminds me——I found his critique of the limits of capitalism and art as commodity refreshing. These days everyone has a “brand.” It made me pause and remember that not everyone can be made as accessible as • MAY 2021

Keith Haring, a contemporary of Wojnarowicz who also responded to AIDS. Today, Haring’s “radiant baby” seems ubiquitous——posters, coffee cups, T-shirts——while Wojnarowicz’s “burning man” would be anathema to the mass market. So, here I want to celebrate the artist/ writer who is important and powerful and engaging, but who will most likely always be marginalized.

HT: His stinging critique of the “art world” feels both old and new.

That is, “outsiders” to the art world have always complained about commercialism and a lack of support from the established art world, and still do. Wojnarowicz’ disdain for the established art world can be seen in his nonchalant response to being included in the 1985 Whitney Biennial with Jasper Johns, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin and others. I wonder what he would have thought of the Whitney’s retrospective “History Keeps Me Awake at Night” from a couple years ago. And talk about an anti-capitalism

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Burning House), 1982. © Estate of David Wojnarowicz.

Courtesy of the Estate and P.P.O.W

critique! When the Mnuchins (parents of the last administration’s Secretary of the Treasury) commissioned him to create an art installation in their basement, he filled the place with the nastiest, filthiest trash he could find!

How perfect!

It’s sad that the East Village art scene explosion of the early 1980s lasted for such a short time. Wojnarowicz mounted his first solo exhibition in 1983 and sold well, and continued selling; small, experimental galleries popped up all over the East Village. But by 1987, the East Village art scene was in its death throes——at Wojnarowicz’ solo show that year, nothing sold. That had to be devastating for the artist, especially coming as it did so soon after the death from AIDS of his collaborator and sometime boyfriend, Peter Hujar.

CN: He may have been devastated. Perhaps Peter Hujar, who had weathered the ups and downs of an art career, advised him from the start in this regard. Wojnarowicz must have been heartened that a week after he gave his exhibit introduction speech at the Illinois State University-Normal an ACT UP chapter was formed on campus. Whatever his success in the art world, he effected positive transformative change in society through his activism. Do you think the documentary speaks to today’s audiences? If so, how?

HT: I think it speaks very powerfully to today’s LGBTQ and HIV communities, especially to any queer artists who are creating transgressive art and struggling to find an audience (and buyers) for that art, and to activists who may need to be reminded of the power of storming St. Patrick’s Cathedral and putting our bodies on the line in the streets. The film also made me want to know more about Wojnarowicz’ relationships with Peter Hujar and then with Tom Rauffenbart; I suspect that those relationships would yield really fascinating, complicated love stories. Mostly, for me, the film is a study of passion born out of desperation, a passion to create, a passion to live——and that is something that all of us who spent the 1980s and ‘90s fighting for our lives can easily relate to. Even though Wojnarowicz has been dead nearly thirty years, his art and his life can still inspire us to be braver, louder, angrier.

Log on to kinomarquee.com to find out how to watch the documentary: https://bit.ly/2Sc39Bv. Hank Trout and Chael Needle have worked together as editors at A&U for five years and counting.

MAY 2021 •

23

My Best Ally Is...

Artist Carlos Aponte Lends His Creative Talents to the Zero H o m o p h o b i a / Zero Transphobia C a m p a i g n s

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he United States——indeed, the world——has wrestled with the effects of homophobia and transphobia for centuries. We’ve been legislated against by governments, condemned to hell by religious leaders, laughed at by politicians, abandoned by our families and friends, ostracized from our communities by stigma, and too often attacked, beaten, bloodied, or even murdered by violent bigots. None of this is new.

Over the past four decades, those who oppose us have used HIV and AIDS as an excuse to intensify their homophobic and transphobic attacks, as evidenced by the increase in gay-bashing and other attacks on LGBTQ people in the 1980s and beyond. In recent years, those attacks have spiked again, particularly in communities of color, and especially brutally with the murder of transwomen in the U.S. and abroad.

Stepping up to combat this surge in homophobia and transphobia, particularly in Latino communities, the Latino Commission on AIDS (LCA) launched the Zero Homophobia and Zero Transphobia Campaigns in 2019.

Leandro Rodriguez, MBA, the Vice President of Programs at LCA and Founder of the Oasis LGBTS Wellness Center in New York City, told A&U, “The Zero campaigns started in 2019 as a result of many structural barriers and attacks that our LGBTQIA+ faced. By 2019, we saw an increase in suicides, suicidal tendencies, and mental health

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photo by Alexi Lubomirski

by Hank Trout

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needs in our LGBTQIA+ youth, due to bullying and harassment. We had a terrifying increase of almost fifty-plus attacks and deaths of transgender women of color in the U.S., including Puerto Rico. And all of this came after the terrible mass shooting at PULSE as we saw forty-nine of our own killed. [A]nd our LGBTQIA+ identity was completely erased from the 2020 census.”

He also cited the growing number of state legislatures eager to eradicate or criminalize the transgender experience and to embrace harmful “conversion therapy” policies.

“This is a national crisis,” he continued, “that must be addressed from all perspectives; socially, institutionally and governmentally.”

Research has shown that homophobia and transphobia create structural barriers to receiving adequate, appropriate healthcare, especially for LGBTQ patients who are living with HIV. Even if one finds a culturally competent healthcare provider, which is especially difficult for Latino trans women and men, the effects of homophobia can keep one from seeking care. “If one feels shame of who they are (internalized homophobia) and feel guilty (internalized oppression) for practicing their sexuality,” Rodriguez said, “one can develop patterns of depression, fall into low self-esteem, and just not develop the honest and transparent relationship one should develop with their healthcare provider.

In addition, if the healthcare institution is not culturally competent, responsive, and sensible, and doesn’t have clear guidelines and policies in place, members of the LGBTQ community can shut down waiting to access healthcare. For our Latino LGBTQIA+ this is intensified because they must navigate different cultural nuances, like language and processes. If these barriers are not addressed, as one internalizes homophobia, one can then be susceptible to risky behaviors that can jeopardize one’s health.”

Although homophobia and transphobia stem from multiple causes (outmoded gender roles, religious bigotry, etc.), “The root is fear,” Rodriguez told A&U. “Irrational fear that has been internalized and passed down from generation to generation. When you are Latino and LGBTQI+, oftentimes, one has to navigate multiple identities, and within that navigation it is difficult to identify a source of support and pillar that can help one navigate the paradigms that oftentimes perpetuate in our Latino culture.”

Finding that pillar of support——an ally——can be difficult, even in the most loving families. But an ally can have a big impact on the lives of LGBTQIA+ people. Research shows that those LGBTQIA+ members who have supportive families and communities have greater self-esteem and resilience and are at a lower risk of negative outcomes like depression, hopelessness, and substance abuse. They are also much less likely to engage in behaviors with a • MAY 2021

high risk of HIV transmission. The Zero Homophobia Campaign is an initiative to create awareness about the negative effects of homophobia in society, particularly in the Hispanic community. It aims to create discussion and action at different levels, such as schools, houses of worships, workplaces, healthcare settings, and most importantly, family.

The theme of this year’s Campaigns is “My Best Ally Is …” which will allow LGBTQIA+ community members to identify their best ally — that special person who empowers them to be the best version of themself. The weeklong series of events will gather activists and allies from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, as well as from Chile and China, for discussions of the effect of homophobia on healthcare outcomes. Interested parties can visit websites listed below to find the complete agenda. On May 17 at 1:00 p.m., the campaign will kick off with a panel discussion and continue with more intimate conversations with key activists and allies. People are invited to share a picture of themselves with their chosen ally. Zero Transphobia’s week is slated for November 15–20, 2021.

To help spread the word, the folks behind the Zero Campaigns turned to noted artist, author, and fashion illustrator Carlos Aponte to design posters for use in the “My Best Ally Is…” campaign. An artist, designer, and author born in New York and raised in Puerto Rico, Aponte’s fashion illustrations have been featured in Laird Borelli’s “Fashion Illustration Next”, Bil Donovan’s “Advanced Fashion Drawing”, Tony Glenville’s “The New Icons of Fashion Illustration”, and Richard Kilroy’s “Menswear Illustration”. His gallery shows have included exhibits at the Brooklyn Library, Gallery Hanahou, the Society of Illustrators, and Three Square Studio, among others. His clients include The New Yorker, Coca-Cola, Target, the Washington Post, The New York Times, Elle, and Bergdorf. His first children book, A Season to Bee, was published in 2017 by Penguin. Carlos is currently a faculty member at the Fashion Institute of Technology. He lives in Jersey City with his partner, Christopher.

“Before I define myself as Puerto Rican, gay, mixed, artist, or anything that frames my sex, passions, or personality, I am a human being first”, said Carlos Aponte in a prepared statement. “As humans, we all have universal rights, and I’m an ally not only of the LGBTQIA+ but to every being on this planet who follows the path of love and acceptance.”

Aponte’s posters exemplify the artist’s signature use of bold, simplistic lines and just one or two colors to make powerful, bright, eye-catching images. He uses simple shapes in his visual storytelling, using tape him to create bold, abstract portraits, often of African-American or Latinx cultural figures. With “My best ally is…” emblazoned on each, the Zero Homophobia Campaign posters are meant to provoke conversations about finding or being an ally to the LGBTQ community. Noted Rodriguez: “We want to uplift those allies that have stood with us, for us, in our journeys. We believe that to eradicate homophobia and transphobia we need allies that can take the message where we can’t take it. It is from within that we can move to a world of acceptance and love.”

Despite the ongoing spike in homophobic and transphobic violence, Rodriguez sees some hope for LGBTQ youth, especially Latino LGBTQ youth.

Despite cultural and religious strictures, and in spite of rampant toxic masculinity, “there are also spaces where Latino family have embraced diversity and are a great support system to our LGBTQIA+ folks. And that is because the thriving force in these families is not fear, but love. Our Zero Homophobia and Zero Transphobia campaigns aim to elicit from the individual an empowerment response to move the community and to advocate for policies that bring awareness, education and acceptance.”

To read more about the artist Carlos Aponte and his work, log on to: www. carlosaponteeditions.com.

To learn more about the Zero Homophobia and Zero Transphobia Campaigns and how to participate, log on to either www.hispanicnet.org or www.latinoaids.org.

Hank Trout interviewed Sister Roma for this month’s cover story.

APRIL 2021 •

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The World’s Most Photographed Nun Sister Roma of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Fights HIV & Stigma

by Hank Trout Photographed Exclusively for A&U by Saul Bromberger & Sandra Hoover Photography

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Her full name, of course, is Sister There’s No Place Like Rome. he inspiration for the name she donned when she joined the San Francisco Order of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in 1987 was “The Wizard of Oz meets the Pope.” The reference to Judy Garland is obvious. “And when you think about it, the Pope is the ultimate ‘man behind the curtain,’ orchestrating the pomp and circumstance of organized religion, which is all just smoke and mirrors.” But why “Sister Roma” instead of her full name?

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the hands of my father.”

Her mother fled her physically abusive husband, “escaped with nothing except me in her arms and the clothes on her back,” and began relying on her grandparents and family. Still, Sister Roma said, “I recall a wonderful childhood. Growing up I had a vivid imagination, I loved to read, and watch Saturday morning cartoons. I liked school, listening to music and playing with dolls and spent summers camping in the beautiful state parks of Western Michigan. We didn’t have a lot of money, but I always thought we were rich. I never wanted for anything, least of all love.”

Like all young gay kids, Sister Roma felt… different. “I knew I was a boy and born male but at the same time I always had this subconscious realization that I was also female. Today they call you gender fluid; back then they called you fairy, fruit, or queer. However, I was never ‘bullied,’ especially by today’s standards.” There were behind-the-back snickers and laughs, of course, but “I honestly did not give a damn.”

When Roma was twenty, her mother surreptitiously read her diary (“which was really more of a journal of my sexploits”). The shock and her mother’s reaction nearly broke the relationship, but they have since mended it. “When I announced I was moving to San Francisco [in 1985] she was devastated but also 100% supportive. She always told me she would love me forever, no matter what, she just didn’t want me to wear women’s clothes or die alone. So far we are 0 for 2.”

The year 1985 was as auspicious for the San Francisco drag scene as it was for Roma. Shortly after moving here, she and three friends formed “The Cheerleaders from Hell” and showed up at softball games to cheer on the team sponsored by the Eagle, San Francisco’s renowned leather bar, “when the Eagle was still very ‘Old Guard,’ so not all of them were thrilled with these preppy Castro Queens coming to cheer them on, but the crowd loved us.” One of the “Cheerleaders,” Norman (aka Sister Luscious Lashes), prodded the reluctant newcomer, “‘Why don’t you just try the makeup?’ I never had any desire to drag in my life, and imitating a Sister was totally against the rules, but Norman and I were never ones for rules.” Norman showed her how to apply the white face and Roma took it from there. “It wasn’t a glamorous makeover as much as it was warpaint, but I thought I looked AMAZING. Before going to the game, we went to the Patio Cafe in the Castro, which was the hottest spot to be for Sunday brunch. I distinctly remember picking up the knife and holding it at the perfect angle just to stare at my reflection. I felt comfortable, gorgeous, giddy, flirtatious… I felt alive. And I was hooked.”

From the “Cheerleaders” to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence was an easy kick-step. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an Order of queer and trans “nuns” devoted to community service, ministry and outreach to those on the edges, and to promoting human rights, respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment, first appeared in San Francisco in 1979. Using humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit, The Sisters have gone global with their mission to promulgate universal joy, expiate stigmatic guilt and serve the community, with Houses all across the U.S. and worldwide. They have raised millions of dollars for HIV/AIDS-related and other community charities.

“At first I was attracted to the shocking makeup and outrageous theatrics of the Sisters,” Sister Roma told A&U, “but the more I learned about their rich history of activism, especially their pioneering work around HIV/AIDS education and prevention, the more I realized this was a life calling.” She described what can truly be called an epiphany: “I felt like my head and heart exploded. I realized that I cared about my community. I was ready to fight for civil rights and prepared to be of service to help those in need.

Even though I was raised Catholic, and attended four years at a private Catholic College, it took the Sisters to awaken #MyNameIs protest at Facebook Headquarters, Menlo Park, in me a spiritual connection with the universe like I’d never California, 2015 known before.”

photo courtesy Sister Roma

“

he shortened version of my name happened quickly in 1988,” Sister Roma told A&U. “I had been a fully professed sister for only about one year when the controversial film The Last Temptation of a Christ came out. Christian extremists were infuriated over the movie’s depiction of Christ and were protesting theaters that showed it.” The Sisters showed up to counter-protest. And “To promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt.”

“We went in full nun drag, sending Bible-wielding Christians into a rage and creating a media blitz,” Sister Roma recalled. “This was my first real demonstration and I had never come face-to-face with an angry mob before.” In the middle of the chaotic demonstration, a reporter from the Los Angeles Times “shoved a mic in my face and asked me ‘How does it feel to know that the way you are dressed, mocking nuns, and the very fact that you are here, is an insult to these people and a desecration to the Catholic Church?’ And I replied, ‘Nothing I can do in my short lifetime can compare to the oppression and pain caused by the Catholic Church.’”

That quotation made its way into the next edition of the Times, but the reporter shortened “Sister There’s No Place Like Rome” to “Sister No Place.”

“The Sisters and I were proud I made the L.A. Times my first time out, but ‘Sister No Place?’ Dana [aka Sister Dana Van Iquity] said ‘Oh no, honey. We’re gonna have to work on that name. We’ll call you Roma.’”

We’ll call her Roma. Sister Roma, one of the of most outspoken and dearly beloved members of the infamous Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence, “the most photographed nun in the world,” is recognized around the globe as an activist, fundraiser, public speaker, Master of Ceremonies, and glamorous icon. Since taking her vows she has been on the front lines in the war against HIV and AIDS as an educator, activist and fundraiser, helping to raise over $1 million for the LGBTQ global community.

Sister Roma was elected San Francisco Pride Community Grand Marshal in 2012 and was voted both San Francisco’s Most Notable Drag Queen and Best Activist in the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s 2016 Best of the Bay issue. Known not only for her outrageously glamorous makeup but her raucous humor, she has served as Master of Ceremonies on the main stages of SF Pride, Folsom Street Fair, Castro Street Fair, and Easter in the Park, where she hosts the infamous Hunky Jesus Contest. Before COVID-19, she traveled the U.S. speaking at rallies and hosting events. She has hosted similar events in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, and was an honored guest of Pride in Shanghai, China, and Grand Marshal of Prague Pride in the Czech Republic.

Not bad for a young gay kid born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in late 1962, whose birth parents surrendered her at birth to the nuns at a Catholic adoption agency (“The irony,” she said, “is not lost on me.”). “One of my very first memories is crawling on my hands and knees to stare into the revolving wheel that changed the color of our silver tinsel Christmas tree——don’t judge——it was the sixties and tinsel trees were all the rage.” She also remembers “crying in my highchair watching my mother cower in fear, backed up against the wall in our kitchen, suffering abuse at

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She continued, “It was the Sisters’ pragmatic and passionate response to HIV/AIDS that really sealed the deal. There was still a lot to learn about the virus, and AIDS paranoia was very real in San Francisco in the mid-80s.

People became visibly ill, displaying sudden and dramatic weight loss, fatigue, and were often covered in bright purple lesions caused by Kaposi’s sarcoma. People with AIDS frequently lost their jobs, their homes, their family and friends. The stigma and fear caused many people to be afraid to touch someone who was suffering from AIDS, but not the Sisters. We would venture into the hospices, the local AIDS wards, and the gay bars, to sit and talk with those afflicted with the disease. More often than not, they would ask for a hug, and the Sisters always said yes.”

One of the first projects that Sister Roma took on in addition to her HIV/AIDS education and stigma work, was the “Stop The Violence Campaign.” The year 1989 had seen an increase in violent anti-LGBTQ hate crimes in the Castro District and around Dolores Park——“and it pissed me off. I wanted to raise awareness in our community and at the same time provide them with a ‘safe place’ to go if they needed help.” And so she turned on her computer, designed a poster with a pink triangle that read STOP THE VIOLENCE, and distributed them to store-front merchants throughout the Castro district and beyond. If the business agreed to act as a place of refuge during an emergency, it got a second poster that read SAFE PLACE. Roma and other Sisters filmed a PSA about safety that was shown locally, and began distributing whistles in the neighborhood. “To this very day you will see these posters in storefronts around the Castro and see us out on patrol distributing safety information and whistles,” she said. “I’m very proud of it.”

Another campaign that Roma is rightfully proud of is #MyNameIs, her 2014 attack on Facebook’s arcane “real name” policy.

Roma’s ire was raised when Facebook froze her account until she could provide a legal I.D. to prove her “real name.” “When it happened to me, I tried to contact Facebook, which is literally impossible, so I went to Twitter and tweeted ‘Tell @Facebook that their ‘real name’ policy is unfair and discriminatory. #MyNameIsRoma.’ The next day the tweet had gone viral and local [television station] CBS5 came to my office to interview me about the situation.” Within days, Sister Roma’s #MyNameIs campaign became international headline news. With that notoriety came messages from others around the world who had been locked out of their Facebook accounts for using a “fake name.” “I’m talking about heart-wrenching stories from domestic violence survivors, schoolteachers, authors, mental health workers, trans youth, burlesque performers, law enforcement officials, this was a huge problem.” A planned protest at Facebook headquarters produced several meetings with “high-ranking security officials and decision-makers” in the company. Although the campaign won some concessions from the tech giant, “’Fake name’ reporting still happens, but it does feel like it’s not as bad as it was in 2014,” Roma said. “So it’s not really a ‘YAY,’ more of a ‘meh.’”

Worse than a “meh” has been the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Sisters’ ability to raise money for the many AIDS-related and other community-based groups which it helps to fund with grants. Their biggest yearly fundraiser, Easter in the Park with the Sisters, which usually attracts 10,000 people and generates the seed money for their community grants, was canceled in 2020 and, frankly, looks doubtful for 2021.

But, as if performing a resurrection, Sister Roma said, “We are exploring new opportunities to raise money and stay involved [now that] all in-person events, bars, nightclubs and restaurants have been basically shut down since March. But, as you know, this is not our first pandemic. Virtual shows are the new reality as drag queens flock to Twitch and host drag bingo on Zoom. A group of nightlife promoters and performers started the SF Queer Nightlife Fund and host weekly t-dances on Twitch to raise money for the community. My friend Carlton has turned the Powerhouse [a popular South of Market leather bar/cruise spot] into a food bank. D’Arcy Drollinger at Oasis made national news for her revolutionary Meals On Heels, where drag queens deliver dinner and a drag show, curbside. You cannot keep our community down.”

It makes sense that Sister Roma, of the Order whose mission statement is “To promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt,” would feel optimistic about 2021. “Despite the dumpster fire that was 2020,” she told A&U, “I remain in good spirits and stay very busy.” After listing seven or eight things that she is working on simultaneously, she continued, “For the most part I stayed home, but I did make an exception for a BLM protest, feeding the homeless at Thanksgiving, and some street ministry/ trash detail with the Sisters’ Squeaky Clean Gutter Queens. Of course, I stay as socially distant as possible and always wear a mask. It’s important to get some exercise, some sunlight, and some human interaction. If you can combine it with community service, even better. To be honest, I’m content and cozy at home. There’s no need to hang out with friends indoors, have a random hookup, go to a club, or travel to a circuit party. To get coronavirus now, when vaccines are going into arms, would be so tragic. Honestly, we are so close!”

And, as Sister Roma reminds us, this is not our first pandemic.

Follow Sister Roma on social media: Facebook/SisterRoma;Twitter: @SisterRoma; IG: @Sister_Roma.

For more information about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, visit: thesisters.org.

Thank you to The Academy San Francisco for allowing us to photograph in this wonderful space. For more information, log on to: www.academy-sf.com.

For more information about Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover, visit: http://saul-sandraphoto.com. Follow them on Twitter: @ saulsandra.

Hank Trout's past cover stories for A&U have included activists Cleve Jones, Ken Jones and Billie Cooper.

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• MAY 2021

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Stock photo with model.

ACCESS TO CARE

by Chael Needle

lifeguide

FIRST, DO NO HARM

An Arkansas Law & the Potential Derailing of Transgender Healthcare

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he state of Arkansas excludes individuals from healthcare, openly, directly, legally. With the passage of Act 626, youth of transgender experience under the age of eighteen are banned from gender-affirming healthcare.

Healthcare professionals are prohibited from providing “gender transition procedures to any individual under eighteen (18) years of age” nor refer “any individual under eighteen (18) years of age to any healthcare professional for gender transition procedures.” The law also denies public funding and public/private health insurers from supporting gender-affirming care, which includes prescribing puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones, or performing gender-affirming surgeries.

The denial of healthcare is focused on children but arguably the law aims to dissaude adult individuals and healthcare providers from even considering gender-affirming surgery: “It is of grave concern to the General Assembly that the medical community is allowing individuals who experience distress at identifying with their biological sex to be subjects of irreversible and drastic nongenital gender reassignment surgery and irreversible, permanently sterilizing genital gender reassignment surgery, despite the lack of studies showing that the benefits of such extreme interventions outweigh the risks; and [t]he risks of gender transition procedures far outweigh any benefit at this stage of clinical study on these procedures.”

This is a blatant denial of scientific evidence. Many studies have shown the exact opposite [e.g., “Young Adult Psychological Outcome After Puberty Suppression and Gender Reassignment” by Annelou L.C. de Vries et al in Pediatrics October 2014, 134 (4); and “Chest Reconstruction and Chest Dysphoria in Transmasculine Minors and Young Adults: Comparisons of Nonsurgical and Postsurgical Cohorts” by Johanna Olson-Kennedy, MD et al in JAMA Pediatr. 2018;172(5)].

While this issue is not directly related to HIV care, it does speak to the panoply of difficulties faced by people of transgender experience in engaging in healthcare (see, for example, the 2016 survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality, which compiled responses from almost 28,000 participants on a variety of issues, including healthcare). The codification of a healthcare barrier is the complete opposite of “first, do no harm.”

A&U talked to Amida Care President and CEO Doug Wirth about the issue of healthcare access for people of transgender experience.

Chael Needle: Arkansas became the first state to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth under the age of eighteen. In your estimation, does this ban exploit the legal limitation of children to make healthcare decisions about their own health? Do children have greater autonomy in

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states like New York?

Doug Wirth: This ban absolutely exploits the legal limitation of children to access medically necessary, gender-affirming healthcare.

This bigoted law stigmatizes an already-vulnerable population and sends a damaging message to transgender and gender non-conforming youth that they are unworthy of the care they need to live authentically.

In New York, children do indeed have greater autonomy. As of 2020, for example, New York allows trans youth to correct the gender designation on their birth certificates, which updated a previous law that only included those over the age of eighteen. I am proud to say that New York has been a beacon for the LGBTQ community and is a national leader in gender-affirming care and services.

The name of the bill, which then became an act, uses extremely biased language to say the least: Save Adolescents from Experimentation.

And its acronym, SAFE, raises the specter of many well-established stereotypes used against people of transgender experience (bathroom bills, for example). How does your organization understand gender-affirming care for clients of transgender experience?

Gender-affirming care is vital and leads to better health outcomes, including fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which disproportionately impacts the transgender community. Amida Care is proud to help our transgender members access the full continuum of transgender health services. Our high-touch model of care successfully engages our members in health services, including HIV prevention and treatment.

Amida Care has more than 750 transgender members who are HIV-negative, and as many as 25% are accessing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a powerful HIV prevention tool. We have also had tremendous success helping our members of transgender experience who are living with HIV become virally suppressed or undetectable, meaning that they are unable to sexually transmit HIV to others. Of our more than 1,800 transgender members, over 60% are living with HIV, and 80% of them are undetectable.

Many of the discussions in A&U center around engaging (mostly adult) people living with HIV/AIDS in care and the difficulties for clients to find healthcare spaces that they trust, that affirm their identity, that empower them, and so on. What are the potential effects of actively disengaging children from healthcare?

Transgender youth are already more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. It is heartbreaking and alarming to see laws pass that codify discrimination and exacerbate health risks. To add to this problem by barring access to healthcare at an early age is simply unconscionable.

As Amida Care detailed in our report Breaking Barriers to Transgender Health Care, barriers to accessing healthcare and discriminatory laws like this have very real, devastating consequences.

According to recent surveys, 1 in 4 transgender respondents reported having to teach healthcare professionals about transgender care, 28% report having been harassed in a doctor’s office, and nearly 25% avoided seeing a doctor out of fear that they would be mistreated.

For communities that are deeply affected by HIV, we need to do more to ensure that all healthcare practitioners, from primary care to hospital staff, are trained and wellequipped to offer culturally competent care.

Briefly, how does Amida Care strive for health equity?

Amida Care strongly advocates to dismantle racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, and all forms of discrimination so that people can access the healthcare they need.

We are the largest Medicaid Special Needs Health Plan (SNP) in New York State, and we’re proud to have a long history of helping the transgender community access high-quality, gender-affirming healthcare. The COVID-19 crisis has reaffirmed the urgent need to create a more equitable health care system. We need to break down systemic barriers that keep healthcare out of reach for many in the transgender community, including violence, lack of employment opportunities, housing instability, food insecurity, and discrimination.

We know that services and care are better when we listen first. We work closely with our members and surround them with a dedicated integrated care team of providers, social workers, health navigators, behavioral health specialists and a designated health home. Amida Care also works with community-based organizations to help members access support for housing, employment, and legal issues.

Chael Needle writes the Art & Understanding column for A&U. • MAY 2021

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FROM SURVIVING TO THRIVING

Financial Moves & Mindset Shifts to Create a Secure Future

I

n the August 2020 issue, Chris and Anita were featured as they navigated the tumultuous waters of a pandemic-related income loss. At the time, Anita, who had been a stay-at-home parent, reentered the work force stocking shelves at a local supermarket after learning that her husband had lost his job vending at a large concert and sporting event arena. When COVID-19 struck, it annihilated Chris’s entire industry, and they both anticipated it would be among the last to return.

Both the Coronavirus Recession and The Great Recession have taught us that economic downturns can have longevity. The first priority is to increase the distance between your family and financial disaster. Having endured the financial crisis of the previous decade, Chris and Anita have long since learned this lesson and immediately took appropriate steps. Anita’s new position produced less income that Chris’s had, resulting in a $700 per month burn rate, which is significantly less than it would have been had she not acted so quickly, but still a concerning number. Chris is a natural born saver and the couple had built up a four-month emergency savings through frugality and careful budgeting. The unexpected is exactly what emergency savings is for, though with the duration of the crisis being uncertain, the next

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priority is to protect your savings. Fortunately, as soon as Chris received unemployment, that burn rate was reduced to zero. Moreover, they didn’t have to worry about any lapse in insurance coverage, as this family of three was receiving coverage through the Oregon Health Plan. Additionally, Chris already uses CAREAssist (Oregon’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program) to ensure access to his medications. Through financial agility this family has insolated themselves from the harsh financial turmoil of the current economic environment.

Time is a force of its own when considering matters of economic uncertainty. So long as Chris continues to receive unemployment, his family’s monthly budgetary needs are being met. But eventually, unemployment runs out and the critical question becomes how can we utilize this time and all available resources to propel ourselves forward?

The couple’s growing concern over the future of Chris’s once thriving industry inspired a career shift. Anita’s mother is a medical coder and had been discussing with them the possibility of mentoring Chris through a career transition into her industry. Since this had already been under consideration, Chris jumped at the opportunity to kick-start a new career and utilized his family’s first round of stimulus to enroll in a course. Chris

and Anita were no longer viewing this unemployment compensation as a survival tool, but rather as an opportunity. This key mindset shift has been the vital piece in transforming this family’s outlook on both the status quo and future.

With each financial resource we’re given, we must ask ourselves, “How can this tool be used as an opportunity to thrive?”

The couple decided to fully embrace this new role reversal.

Anita was able to train in other non-customer facing positions at work allowing her to limit exposure to COVID-19, and also pick up extra shifts. Meanwhile, their daughter’s school finally reopened, so after taking her to school, Chris could spend the majority of his day studying.Chris and Anita had resolved to emerge from this financial crisis stronger and more secure than they had been previously.

Unfortunately, they ran into multiple snags when Chris’s unemployment ran out before the next extension had been granted. In each occurrence (December 2020 and March 2021), he experienced a one-week lapse in unemployment benefits which also triggered a reverification process creating further processing delays. They were able to bridge this income gap using funds from the third round of stimulus checks that were issued when the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 was signed into law on March 11, 2021.

This plan provided Americans with further relief by expanding unemployment benefits through Labor Day including a $300 weekly supplement.

The news of his unemployment extension came just as he sat for and passed the examination, licensing him as a medical coder. Now Chris will be able to utilize the next several months of this expanded unemployment benefit while he secures employment in his new career path, one that will almost immediately double his family’s income.

In the current economic environment, there are numerous hurdles to overcome, and the first is one of survival. But like Chris, we all deserve the opportunity to financially thrive in this life and owe it to ourselves to work toward the future we want to create.

Alacias Enger is a performing artist, writer, and educator. She lives with her partner in New York City, and is the founder of blogs “Sense with Cents” and “Travel Cents.” Follow her on Twitter @sense_w_cents.

• MAY 2021

BO OKS BOOKS

Love Don't Need a Reason The Life & Music of Michael Callen

by Matthew J. Jones Punctum Books

W

hen Michael Callen took the stage at AIDS Walk San Francisco in 1988, a hush fell over the crowd of thousands of walkers in Golden Gate Park.

For most of us (except for the lucky few who had bought his 1987 album Purple Heart), this was the first time we heard the heart-wrenching anthem he composed with Peter Allen and Marsha Malamet, “Love Don’t Need a Reason.”

When he finished the last note of the last cvhorus,

Love don’t need a reason Love is never a crime And love is all we have for now What we don’t have is time all of Sharon Meadow filled with the sound of quiet crying——and then thunderous applause.

Now, some thirty-four years later, comes the biography that Michael Callen deserves. Matthew J. Jones’ Love Don’t Need a Reason is a thoroughly researched, richly detailed, and loving portrait of Callen as a queer music pioneer, a prolific writer, and an indefatigable AIDS activist.

Born on April 11, 1955, in Batesville, Indiana, to a deeply religious middle-class family. The second of three children, Michael displayed musical precocity early on, often waking his family in the middle of the night with very loud chords on the family’s Hammond organ, developing his falsetto by singing along with Julie Andrews, and, after catching Streisand’s “Color Me Barbra” television special, emulating La Streisand incessantly. (He saw in Streisand a “fellow ugly-duckling who would one day rise to stardom as a singer,” an aspiration he shared.) And of course, growing up an effeminate queer boy in 1950s–60s Indiana, Michael endured years of bullying, slurs, and physical attacks in school. His music-making was his respite.

When he moved to New York City, Michael eagerly threw himself headlong into the hedonistic 1970s heyday of queer sexual liberation——in the parks, in the bookstores, in Times Square t-rooms, in the bars and sex clubs. A self-proclaimed insatiable bottom “slut” (his term), Michael estimated at one point (before his HIV diagnosis) that he had had some 3,000 completely anonymous sexual encounters just since moving to New York. And he had no plans to alter that behavior.

Until he was diagnosed with AIDS in late 1982, that is. As a

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patient of the legendary Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, Michael subscribed to Sonnabend’s theory that AIDS was caused by multiple factors, including but not solely HIV. Working with Sonnabend and others, Michael wrote “How to Have Sex in a Pandemic: One Approach,” the first “safer sex” instruction pamphlet for queer men. Although he clashed with just about every other AIDS activist and organization in New York, he pushed on, writing op-eds for The New York Native and other publications, speaking at AIDS conferences, putting himself out there as an “AIDS poster boy,” and always——even after KS lesions appeared on his lungs——using that angelic tenor to inspire, uplift, and provoke other young queers to take better care of themselves.

One of the things I enjoyed most about this biography is the serious attention that Jones gives to Michael as a pioneer of queer music.

Both in solo appearances and with his two music groups, Lowlife and The Flirtations, Michael brought radical queer thought to his lyrics. His legacy as a queer musician and as a ferocious AIDS advocate has now been memorialized in this loving and lovely biography.

—Hank Trout

• MAY 2021

The Storm: One Voice from the AIDS Generation

by Christopher Zyda Rare Bird Books

W

hen we think of long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS, we likely think of people who were diagnosed with HIV before the advent of effective antiretroviral treatments but managed somehow to survive long enough to take advantage of those treatments. But we must remember, always, that our HIV-negative friends and families and co-workers experienced the same losses, the same chaos and terror, the same all-consuming grief. They are long-term survivors too. And their stories are an important thread in the fabric of AIDS history.

One such story comes to us via a new memoir by Christopher Zyda called The Storm: One Voice from the AIDS Generation. Zyda’s story, his personal “storm,” starts in the early 1980s, just as the AIDS pandemic begins to dawn. Zyda, a clean-cut, devoutly Roman Catholic, ambitious young man with a BA in English Literature, is living in his native Los Angeles, an aspiring writer with visions of astounding success writing books, plays, tv and movie scripts. He meets and falls in love with Stephen, a very successful Yale-trained lawyer twelve years his senior, and the two begin building a life together.

In 1986, Stephen begins showing signs of having AIDS. For reasons of vanity and fear of his parents’ learning that he is gay (neither man has come out to his parents), Stephen refuses to get tested. One night he collapses and nearly dies in a hospital in La Jolla. Diagnosis: AIDS. Fearing that he too has contracted the virus, and realizing that he needs to take care of Stephen, Zyda gives up his writing aspirations, gets an MBA in Business from UCLA, and works his way into a very lucrative position in the finance department at The Disney Company. (Eventually, he would manage their $4 billion investment portfolio.) Stephen’s mother moves into their house to care for Stephen while Zyda is at work during weekdays. After several months of this arrangement, tensions tighten, anger erupts, words and glass bowls are thrown. When Stephen dies, the real trauma begins.

I won’t divulge any more of what happens. It’s unnecessary.

Besides, if you are also a long-term survivor, you can finish the script from memory. I daresay that most of us who were around at that time have dealt with fallen friends’ homophobic families, and so that part of Zyda’s memoir will feel awfully familiar.

If I have any complaints about Zyda’s memoir, they are “writerly” complaints, really minor, and might not bother other readers.

(Footnotes? In a memoir? Really? Also, don’t tell the reader “In this memoir, I’m going to reference certain songs that will help the reader remember the time,” just do it.) Zyda has given us a heartfilled, tear-soaked, well-worn tale worth telling and reading. I’m very glad we have this testimony from an HIV-negative long-term survivor. The fabric of our history has one more bright thread in it.

—H.T. Hank Trout writes the column For the Long Run for A&U.

MAY 2021 •

continues on page 44

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Culture of AIDS continued from page 41

SPOT LIGHT SPOTLIGHT Tim Dlugos: New York Diary David Trinidad, Editor Sibling Rivalry Press

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une 3, 1976 “My intention in starting this is to keep it going——the last time I began a diary was when I went into Brothers [The Christian Brothers], so this must really be a bigger move than I think.”

So begins Tim Dlugos’s first entry in this short but deeply revealing diary of six months of his life written after his first move to New York City, from Washington, D.C.——a move in which he would continue to make new friends, boyfriends, lovers, and other poets, as well as sustain close friendships he already had. Diaries can be a Janus-faced conundrum: a contract written in invisible ink, which asks the writer to reveal himself, and the reader to believe what is written. Yet, diaries can also be masks; allowing a persona that Socrates spoke of: ‘Be as you wish to seem.’ But here is Tim, completely open, unmasked, honest (for some, to a fault), and one can believe every entry. We can very be thankful to David Trinidad, and Sibling Rivalry Press for giving us this account in Tim’s own words, of a poet who was so open to every experience he could pack in, at a time when he absorbed, engaged, pondered, protested, gossiped, wrestled with demons, and continued what would grow into his powerful, impactful poetry that we still, so thankfully, have today.

Tim began writing poetry in 1970, then just twenty years old. Thirty years after his death from AIDS, on December 3, 1990, Tim Dlugos remains one of the most beloved of gay poets. Often associated with the New York School of poets, Tim’s work did find community there, but his poetry also stood alone, a voice that was becoming its own even as he questioned it, and the poetry community in general.

The many voices of Tim are all here; the poet of the bright and hearty laugh as he engaged in gatherings with his seemingly inexhaustible number of friends and lovers (many life-long); the man questioning his religious belief (and yet, to the end, sustained by it); boxing with desire and sexuality (always enjoying the fight as well as the joy). Here is the avid and constant reader (Ernst Cassirer, Ernest Becker, Henri Nouwen, Wilhelm Reich, Proust), the articulator, the seducer, the mentor, the solitary man and the man who always loved a crowded room. To be in Tim’s presences, if even for a short time, was to be in a magnetic force of intelligence, a rapier wit, and a vulnerability that he was never ashamed to show:

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• MAY 2021

June 10, 1976 “Much hot poop to transcribe tonight.” “Tonight I made my first literary enemy in DC.” June 15, 1976 “ . . . very upsetting letter from my mother, pressuring me to forget about writing as anything important. Thank God I’m away from their loving, ignorant opinions about the future of my life. I listened to A Chorus Line straight through, crying at half the songs; then I felt much better.”

June 26, 1976 “. . . Last night ended up at the tubs after sloppy performance of Henry V . . .had flawless sex——made love, really——with Jonathan Harris, an apprentice with ABT [American Ballet Theater], who was not exactly a stellar conversationalist after an hour of intense genital choreography . . . “.

July 5, 1976 “Finding it harder & harder to write here regularly—— . . . “.

September 2, 1976 “. . .Went to confession Tuesday——first time in 6 years. Felt good. Felt like expanding spiritual life——we’ll see if the resolve lasts. . . .”

Tim Dlugos, here, is a compendium of all that he was at this very important six months of his life, and all that he would become. The last entry in the diary is prescient: November 23, 1976 (last entry) “. . .Tomorrow to DC, so won’t be visiting here ’til after Thanksgiving. Am reading Yeats’s A Vision, and this time may learn something.”

And learn so much he did; his life a constant ‘vision’ of his own strength as well as frailty. In this Introduction, David Trinidad notes, “The New York that Tim captures in these pages is long gone. While it gives us a few precious glimpses of that lost world, his diary is a reminder of how quickly a world can disappear.” Yes, precious, but Tim and that world are not lost to us here, in this small window into the poet at one of the most important times of his life. The diaries did end, yet as Trinidad has said in the remarkable volume, A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos——”The poems became the diary.”

And this brief collection of entries from that too-brief “fast life” is a table full of welcome.

—Philip F. Clark Tim’s poems appeared in early issues of A&U. One of them, “Signs of Madness,” shows as much of Tim’s experience of AIDS, as it does the crazed world of that time.

Signs of Madness Recognizing strings of coincidence as having baleful or hermetic meaning, e.g. the fact that each of Ronald Wilson Reagan’s three names has

MAY 2021 •

six letters. Mark of the Apocalyptic Beast, languorous and toothless though it would have to be to fit that application.

Smelling burning flesh of sulphur, or a sweet antibiotic sweat that leaches into the sheets and pillows, like the smell my mother had when she was dying, or the one I suddenly developed in the weeks before I came down with AIDS. Muttering at motorists in other cars, hearing one’s voice pronounce unspoken imprecation.

Wanting to impose Islamic law for lapses of behavior or taste within the city limits.

Limiting one’s television fare to programs one recalls from childhood. Wanting to call childhood friends and ask them how they’re doing, how their lives have changed since junior high. Memorizing names of senators, bishops of the church, or nominees for Vice President from major parties, and reciting them at night to get to sleep.

Listing signs that all may be no more right in one’s mind than is right in the world, and feeling less anxiety from identifying symptoms in one’s thinking and behavior than comfort in the list’s existence and delight at having it called forth.

—Tim Dlugos, Art & Understanding, Fall 1991 (published in the Dlugos collections Powerless and A Fast Life)

If you would like to read the poetry of Tim Dlugos, seek out the Lambda Literary Award-winning A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos, edited by David Trinidad (Nightboat Books).

Philip F. Clark is Poetry Editor of A&U.

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O

A Calendar of Events

lifelines

n September 29-30, 2021, the Midwest LGBTQ Health Symposium 2021 (MLHS 2021), presented by Howard Brown Health’s Center for Education, Research and Advocacy, will gather healthcare professionals, educators, researchers, patients, community organizations, and advocates from across the country to share evidence-based practices and to engage in discussions around issues relating to the health of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities.

This year’s theme, “Community Informed Care is a Radical Act,” emphasizes the power of an alliance between healthcare professionals and the communities they serve. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the conference will be virtual again this year.

Keynote speakers already signed to appear include Dr. Juno Obedin-Maliver, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, as well as Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University School of Medicine; Miriam Yeung, Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum; Dr. Carlos Rodriguez-Diaz, community health scientist; and Marissa Miller, Founder and Executive Director of Trans Solutions Research and Resource Center.

Howard Brown Health’s Center for Education, Research and Advocacy (ERA) conducts community-based medical and behavioral research, cultivates responsive healthcare professionals, advances policies that affirm the lives of LGBTQ people and their families, and develops and disseminates community-driven, high-quality best practices in LGBTQ health.

For more information and to register for the symposium, log on to https://events.bizzabo.com/mlhs2021/page/1762020/about-mlhs.

MAY 2021 •

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IN MEMORIAM Irene Smith

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1946–2021

n the night of Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021, internationally acclaimed massage therapist Irene Smith died in San Francisco, California, after a battle with esophageal cancer. She was seventy-five years old.

A forty-two-year resident of San Francisco, Irene Lenora Smith was born on January 23, 1946, in Seattle, Washington; she was raised in Dallas, Texas, the niece of country and western superstar Hank Williams. After a ten-year apprenticeship with renowned Thanatologist Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Irene established her own massage therapy practice. She provided direct care and a sense of connection, intimacy, comfort, and relief to hundreds of people in their homes and hospitals, in hospices and skilled nursing facilities. As Director of the internationally acclaimed non-profit, Service Through Touch (1982–1999), Irene established massage programs for persons with AIDS worldwide.

Irene found her calling early in the 1980s during the rampant AIDS pandemic that ravaged the San Francisco community. At a time when most people, including many healthcare providers, were afraid of even touching someone with AIDS, Irene insisted upon touching and massaging the terminally ill in hospice care and at San Francisco General Hospital’s legendary Ward 5B [A&U, November 2019]. Two of her colleagues on Ward 5B, Alison Moed-Paolercio (Nurse Manager on the Ward) and Ed Wolf (volunteer caregiver) remembered Irene’s compassion and incredible demeanor. “She was a luminous presence who seemed to float rather than walk in a bubble of radiance and peace, quiet and strength,” Ms. Moed-Paolercio told A&U. “She developed a small cadre of others who, like her, came to bring a loving touch to ones the world thought untouchable. Privileged to be with her in her last weeks, we became close. I’d ask how I could help, and she’d say, ‘Just be there.’ As she had been, for so many.”

Mr. Wolf also remembered Irene fondly. “Her ability to touch people, physically and emotionally, was a powerful tool that she used wisely and well. People who are dying, especially those with AIDS, need touch as much as anyone else. Irene was able to provide that to patients on the AIDS Unit at San Francisco General, and also model ways to do it so that many others could do the same. Hers was a great light that will continue to be bright through the healing touch of others.”

In 2001 Irene founded Everflowing, an educational outreach program that teaches mindful touch as an integral component to end-of-life care. Irene taught healthcare professionals, caregivers, family members, and body workers tactile support skills for caring for the ill and dying. Her book, Massage in Hospice Care, An Everflowing Approach, and other educational materials have been utilized by institutions worldwide and continue to be available on her website, www.everflowing.org.

Susan Barber, Community Education Manager at Mission Hospice, worked closely with Irene for many years. “It’s hard to say just a little about Irene Smith,” she said. “I first

heard about Irene’s work at SF General ‘s AIDS Unit 5A at a Stephen Levine workshop in 1988. He spoke about a woman who refused to turn away from the suffering of the men in her community, [who] showed up to touch with mercy and awareness those whom others had turned away from in fear and pity. I met Irene ten years later when I called her to offer training to my then-nascent hospice volunteer program. Irene taught in every program I managed for the past twenty-three years. She always said YES whenever I asked her to teach or train.”

Gregg Cassin, the program director for the Shanti Project’s Honoring Our Experience group for long-term HIV/AIDS survivors, also remembered working with Irene. “Irene was such a lovely, special person. I remember being profoundly moved upon hearing that there was a woman who was doing massage for gay men with AIDS. Knowing Irene at such a vulnerable time was so healing. Fear and prejudice were the common reaction to a person with AIDS——yet here was a stranger in the Castro who touched and even held us.”

“I was not born in the 1980s. I had a life before that,” Irene once said, after overcoming alcohol and drug addiction. She reflected, “Don’t ever judge ANYONE. You have no idea what they might be capable of.”

Among the many awards and accolades that Irene received throughout her career, she most prized being the National AIDS Memorial Grove’s first Hall of Fame inductee for AIDS service.

Irene’s friend of more than forty years Thomas Sherwood knew her first as an upstairs neighbor. “One day we shared a cup of morning coffee on her deck,” he told A&U, “and she told me she had spent much of the night on Ward 5B at San Francisco General Hospital offering massage. I realized that while my roommate Chris and I were reading whatever we could find on the terrible disease, AIDS, Irene was offering herself to people, mostly young gay men who were dying. Thanks to her shining example, I soon became a volunteer myself.

“Irene was the first person to bridge the gap between people that only a combination of love and physical touch can offer,” Thomas said. “She offered her healing touch to hundreds of people and inspired thousands and thousands more. In the words of the Nobel Prize-winning Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold! Service was joy. I have never known anyone else whose life was so completely devoted to serving mankind. Thank you, Irene.”

A private memorial service will be held at the National AIDS Memorial Grove for those who cared so beautifully for Irene in her last two months. Information on an upcoming online memorial service will be found at https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/ irenesmithtouch.

—Hank Trout

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Hank Trout is a Senior Editor of A&U. • MAY 2021

photos courtesy of Trish Crawley

“Irene was the first person to bridge the gap between people that only a combination of love and physical touch can offer”

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

CALL 1-800-QUIT-NOW.

#CDCTips

HIV alone didn’t cause the clogged artery in my neck.

Smoking with HIV did.

Brian, age 45, California

TWO WAYS TREATMENT CAN HELP STOP HIV.

Starting HIV treatment as soon as possible and sticking with it every day helps you get to and stay undetectable. That means there is so little virus in the blood that a test can’t measure it.

And that’s a good thing, because:

BEING UNDETECTABLE HELPS STOP THE DAMAGE HIV CAUSES.

CURRENT RESEARCH SHOWS GETTING TO AND STAYING UNDETECTABLE PREVENTS THE SPREAD OF HIV THROUGH SEX.

There’s no cure for HIV, but if you stick with treatment, you can protect yourself and the people you care about. Talk to a healthcare provider and watch It’s Called Treatment as Prevention at YouTube.com/HelpStopTheVirus

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