Yay! More Blood Samples!

I’ve had it with giving blood samples. I’m squeamish about needles under the best of circumstances, although I smile bravely and don’t make a fuss when they’re rquired. It’s a bit harder now knowing that those samples really mean something. I had more blood drawn today, about two weeks after the last batch, so that my doctor can start to plot curves for my viral load and T-cell counts.

The thought that two weeks may show a change, for better or worse, is chilling. It doesn’t help much to think about how much worse I’ve felt lately, just from the constant stress of all this hulaballoo. I’m sure it’s not helping me much to be so wound up, so lethargic.

But I smile bravely and don’t make a fuss, even though I’d really like to.

Backdated

I’m writing this post on December 1, 2024: World AIDS Day, and about 25 years or so since contracting HIV. I don’t know exactly when that happened. My doctor informed me of the situation on March 12, 2001, a week after I went in for a routine physical made possible by having a full-time job with health insurance for the first time in a few years. The initial battery of tests suggest I had seroconverted perhaps a year or two before that.

I also don’t know how it happened, specifically. Inferring from the timeline, some contextual cues, and my own recollection of the times when I let my guard down, I can at least guess with some accuracy who the vector of transmission had been.

Continue reading “Backdated”

When It Rains It Pours

I finally told my depression to go fuck itself and went back out into the world this weekend, and what did I find? New friends, friendly old flings, ex-quasi-boyfriends, former Regians turned fellow Brooklyn homos, new pals with blogs, sexy ex-junkies, cheerleaders, punk rock fags, a former classmate who’s become a popular drag king, flirtations and brief kisses, flirtations that went nowhere, lots of coffee, bad ideas that are even worse in practice, frigid strolls, and the news that one of my closest friends has cancer, and another is probably going to die from the cancer she’s been battling.

No wonder I feel so overwhelmed when late-winter gloom and the mean reds set in, robbing me of all the energy I need to deal with everyday life.

Bon Jour!

Notes from France:

  • French keyboards are absolutely maddening. This is my excuse for any subsequent typos.
  • When I first got here, I had to wander through a planeload of French Marines also arriving at the airport. Deeeeeeeeee-licious. What may be delicious is the food, but I’m not sure because I’ve been having terrible indigestion, making it hard for me to eat.
  • I am able to read more French than I thought, but I am able to speak much less. This language barrier is especially frustrating when handsome Frenchmen are whispering dirty propositions in your ear, but you are unable to decipher them. Luckily, not all forms or social interaction require much talking.
  • This is a very, very cruisy city. Like, out of control. It’s also kinda dirty and graffitti-covered, which is a very welcome surprise. I like seeing signs of life like that.
  • As much as I am used to turning corners and seeing surprises in New York City, it’s a very different thing when I turn corners here and see glorious architecture that I’ve studied for years. Even the regular buildings here have beautiful, enviable massing and proportions.
  • Versailles is a beautiful obscenity, but it totally lacks passion. It certainly doesn’t lack lavish splendor, though. I would have revolted because of it, too. And I’m a wuss.
  • My hotel is a block away from a gaudy neon stretch of strip clubs, peepshow theaters, and faux-scandalous cabarets like the Moulin Rouge. The most glamorous whores I have ever seen wander the side streets and the taxi-dancer bars: They are plump, saggy, made up like paintings, and dressed in cheap cocktail dresses and fur coats. I completely love them. Very Toulouse-Lautrec, even in this day and age.

The Paw

I am such a procrastinating bastard. I must go get my laundry so I can start packing so I can get the hell out of this country, but I can’t seem to tear myself away from perusing the cute punk rock boys at the Make Out Club. I am officially on my way to becoming a lech.

Not as bad as this guy who was bothering me while I was out last night, though. Dude just wouldn’t take a fucking hint, or even a polite but firm “no.” After walking past me at one point and not bothering to stare at anything but my crotch, he comes up to me with some corny line, which I gently rebuffed. Then he does it again ten minutes later! And then he walks by me with some other corny line and paws my crotch. so I grab his arm, move it, give him a dirty look and walk away. Then he comes up to me whispering more cornball, canned-porn-movie shit. This is repeated about a half-dozen times over the course of the evening, and I’m getting more and more pissed off all the time. After a while, he tries to apologize and say that he recognized me from Pratt yadda yadda yadda (I think he was in one of the more bullshit required classes that I dropped) and he just wanted me to be cool and relax since I looked so tense. since “no thanks” and “no, I don’t want to chat” and “leave me the fuck alone” didn’t work yet, I wasn’t too shocked that he didn’t quite the get the point of “I’m not tense, I’m just fucking irritated.” What a pain.

Fancy Restaurants and Dank Basements

I also meant to mention a few things spotted during the trip to San Francisco that were actually about New York.

First, I was thumbing through the in-flight rag on the American plane, and came across a gushing profile of Williamsburg, of all places. It’s not bad enough that Bedford Ave. is already clogged with hipsters, or that The Real World may be coming here next year, but now hordes of tourists are being encouraged to cross the river and go slumming. Mark my words, it won’t be long before they open a Marriott there. Sheesh! I’m glad I live off in the boonies, where it’s still more ghetto.

Second, I was looking at this beautiful coffee-table book about the photography of James Bidgood, and I was startled to learn that Bidgood met Bobby Kendall, and quite a few of his other models, at a place called Club 82. Apparently, this was quite the swinging joint in its day, with cabaret shows and go-go boys and all manner of decadence. I even discovered that Blondie played there back in the early ’80s. As fellow connoisseurs of contemporary homo East Village sleaze know, this place is still kicking and is still good for a thrill or two, but it’s a far cry now from its more flamboyant past. I love discovering ghosts like this in places that I know around the city. Reading books like Low Life (by fellow Regis alum Luc sante) and Gay New York clued me in to all sorts of colorful tidbits about parts of the city that have fascinating, racy histories that would really put the wind up your skirts.

Gay-Hating Kooks

Are there any gay-hating kooks out there who read this site? Are any of you also pedophiles? If so, please, let me know so I can respond. My mother is very concerned that my visibility on the web may be making me a target. This wave of paranoia was prompted by an e-mail she received from my uncle, who found this site while searching for his last name and was very alarmed that there are pictures of my nieces and nephews to be found here. (Witness, if you will, the speed with which any presence of children on a site with gay content becomes associated with the threat of pedophilia.) Apparently, by acknowledging that I have a family who I love and choosing to share some of my expereriences with them with my small cadre of readers, any display of the children will send the many pedophiles who frequent my site into a stalking frenzy. And apparently when pedophiles are prowling the internet for children to abuse, their searches will bring them right here, from which they will be able to play detective and track down my nieces and nephews, despite the complete lack of information about them besides who their parents might be. Parents, I should mention, who have been pleased to see family pictures presented on the web in a loving context. Their parents also, presumably, are doing a damn good job of monitoring their children’s online activites, which are where the real risks would arise.

I have no sympathy or patience for anyone who would cause any harm to a child, particularly a child who I know and love. There are reasons I don’t include addresses for e-mail address for my nieces and nephews, or any other child who makes an appearance here. I think it’s a hysterical, knee-jerk reaction to assume that an image of a child immediately puts that child at risk. Where can the line be drawn? Should children be shrouded in public like Muslim women? Should they be banned from appearing in magazines, television, movies, sports? When does fear and concern require withdrawal from society?

On a final note, I’m pleased to say that after five years or so of publishing on the web, I have never been a focus for the attention of gay-hating kooks. I suppose there’s plenty of better fodder for their narrow agenda. I have, however, grown as a writer and a person and made countless wonderful friends. I have encouraged a few people to accept themselves and come out to their own family and friends, with great results. I have inspired a few people to indulge their own creative instincts. I’ve gotten an unflattering e-mail or two, but usually because someone disagreed with my opinion or didn’t get a joke. I haven’t seen any risks online that don’t exist for any person who engages in real-world society, but I have seen advantages that I would not have experienced otherwise.

A Little Plug

Eagle-eyed New Yorkers will be able to spot a picture of me on page 52 of the current issue of Time Out New York (the 1/25-2/1 issue, with the ski bunny on the cover). Nothing very glam, just an unflattering shot of me addressing the rapt crowd at the last group meeting of the Brooklyn LiveWork Coalition. It’s a great article, actually, with a broad discussion of the issues at stake with this whole crackdown on loft living here in Crooklyn.

It’s been something of a revelation for me to get so involved with this whole thing. I’ve been spending about 20 hours week (you know, during all that spare time when I’m not scoping or working full-time) donating time to the Coalition, and I even seem to have become part of the leadership. It’s a shock to me because this issue has so easily tapped into some real passions of mine, passions I never really know about. I always saw myself as very apolitical, never getting myself into much of a twist about anything. This time around I haven’t felt any doubt or any apathy. Unlike times when I was faced with gay rights issues or presidential elections or whatnot, I really feel charged about the way my neighbors and I are caught in the middle of this time of adaptation in New York. As the city government reacts to the way life in the city has adapted on its own, I’ve realized that I am actually part of a community here in a way I haven’t experienced before. I started out just making sure I wouldn’t get booted to the street, but as I’ve gotten to know my neighbors and other painters, sculptors, musicians, designers, photographers, entrepreneurs and such I’ve realized that I really give a shit about making sure that we all have a way to continue living in a way that lets us unite our work lives with our domestic lives, uniting what might otherwise be disparate parts of ourselves. Not to mention it would be damn hard to pay for both homes and studios where we could really work.

It’s a delicate balance the Coalition is after. We actually enjoy the mixed character of our neighborhoods, and we want to be able to continue working where we live. As much as we want to bring improvements to these neighborhoods, we don’t actually want to see them overdevelop in ways that make it impossible for us to stay, the way things have gone overboard in Soho and Tribeca. Even though North Williamsburg has exploded in recent years, it’s still a long way off from that kind of exclusivity. I think that’s one way that living in Brooklyn may always make things a little easier for us: No matter how much things transform over here, New York’s geography will still concentrate the money and the attention in Manhattan.

We’ll see, I suppose. In the meantime, I have some more meetings to prepare for…

Yes, I Like Cute Guys

I don’t know why, but yesterday’s posts about cute boys seems to have inspired a number of snarky comments from the peanut gallery. What? Did someone not get the press release about me being an ardent supporter of the man-man lovin’? It shouldn’t be such an eyebrow-raiser that I just get all teenage-girly and get wistful about the charms of cute boys once in a while. Time was I used to do that all the time in this journal. Maybe I need to start publishing monthly lists of current crushes again.

I guess it’s my own fault for being all serious and geeky and gripey for the last couple months, talking mostly about work and crisis and my emotions and other boring stuff. Y’all got used to that and forgot that Sparky loves him some lovin’!

Passing Glimpses

In defense of cute boys, though, they really are yummy. I was sitting across from a guy on the subway who was just adorable in an amiable, straight-boy sort of way. Big puppy-dog brown eyes, a sweet look on his face, knit hat, big coat, baggy khakis. We got off at the same stop and I was on the stairs behind him, and I noticed that he was wearing tennis socks with his sneakers, even though we had another snow storm this weekend. Those unexpected glimpses of his shapely ankles as he climbed the stairs were just the perfect detail to top it all off and make me all smiley.