This question understandably has had an evolution to it. I think when I was younger it was about seeking the freedom of loving and being intimate with anyone your choosing– not bounded by gender or person. Obviously my preference was other men, but being gay/queer was about seeing beyond that binary. In many ways, that’s still very true, however– I think as we move forward equality in larger strides than in past decades we’re challenged to re-examine that notion. To me as I turn to my 30’s and we face the blow back to the 2016 elections –we must remember more than ever our truth– and further more the importance of living more authentically than ever before. That is the spirit of being queer to me. That power is so incredible and so mighty that we have granted ourselves that right and freedom. Let us never let that go.

When I learned about my own HIV+ diagnosis in 2013, that was understandably a trying time. I found that my own generation and (sometimes) community was the most judgmental, and that shocked me. It was often other males in their 20s that were the harshest critics. Responses of stigma to overall apathy or an inability to relate, were common. Often I was met with silence or confusion in those cases, which mostly revealed an uneducated youth who largely believed that HIV is not a huge modern day risk. And to be honest, I suppose I felt the same at one point, so I can’t blame them. My diagnosis came right before the popularity and availability of PrEP– and sometimes I think of that reality and it’s painful. Painful to know that I was short an opportunity to avoid the life long health battle that is now in front of me with the reminder that there are no promises in life. Though in that silver lining, there has been the upmost clarity. I can think of a landscape that was once perhaps shrouded in 5 mile visibility– but now I live seeing this unlimited horizon. I’ve never known the gift of being able to see clearly in every direction, and as time weather’s on i’m realizing what an extraordinary gift that’s become. HIV/AIDS gave me that.

I came out in seventh grade, but not exactly by choice. Remember that show on MTV titled Undressed? I loved it. It was the first time beyond porn where I personally had access to seeing two men together on screen– But unlike porn, there was intimacy and vulnerability. I used to tape various scenes of this show on VHS to re-watch later– in which my mother eventually found when she mistakenly put on thinking it was last week’s episode of American Idol that she taped. wrong.
She called me down from my room to ask me what this was, to which I felt I couldn’t lie, so when I told her she simply cried and thanked me for being brave in telling her. I love this story.

(The gay/queer community in San Francisco is) Enchanting, I like to think of it like the novel “Tramps Like Us.”

I graduated from high school the same year that the first documented cases of AIDS were reported. This added an extra layer of fear and shame to my coming out. In the early years nobody knew exactly how it was contracted, so every sexual encounter was a potential death trip. My response was to drink a lot, do a lot of drugs, and have a lot of mostly unsafe sex. I think a lot of us back then assumed we were going to die soon, so we might as well have fun while we could. Carpe fucking diem. I was on a path of self-destruction which eventually landed me in rehab. There are many reasons that so many gay men development alcohol and drug dependency problems, but for me shame and internalized homophobia were the original demons. Later on, survivor guilt and PTSD were the extra ingredients that drove me over the edge. After a couple of stints in the psych ward and three trips to rehab, I finally started to feel comfortable in my own skin.

Since I moved to San Francisco over twenty years ago, the city and the gay community have changed dramatically. I arrived in the middle of the Plague Years, during which a huge portion of my generation of gay men were wiped out. Anybody who survived, either positive or negative, will bear the scars of those years and that loss forever. When protease inhibitors appeared in the mid-90’s, AIDS was no longer an automatic death sentence. Some long-term survivors have been HIV-positive for decades.

Social media has changed everything. Grindr and similar apps have revolutionized the way that gay men connect. While cruising the bars was once the primary means of connection, now with only a few clicks and swipes you can have fresh meat delivered to your doorstep in a matter of minutes. And PrEP has changed the way gay men have sex. Barebacking is the only way to go for a lot of guys these days, especially the younger ones who weren’t around for the plague.