Being gay is how I am. It is my identity in the world. It is a type of soulful construction with personal, social, spiritual and sexual meanings—- noun and verb for mindfulness’ sake and a lived presence of experience and depth. As a native Philadelphian, I have watched the community evolve and have played an active role in that emergence. From the early days of gay consciousness raising and pot-lucks to being an organizer of THE ELDER INITIATIVE, a GLBTQ horizon which is shedding light on gay senior needs and visibility.

Professionally, I am an educator with degrees and recognitions, ulcers and a strong sense of testicular fortitude, along with a love of creativity and humor. Painting, zentangles, and photography are on going projects which are instrumental in my being a gay man, along with my loving boyfriend of the past nine years.

It wasn’t till my mid twenties that I started to change. But it was more of adapting to changing circumstances than any big change on my part. I had started working at a hospital in the city. Gay men were actually visible and reasonably well accepted. I could see that there was truth in the philosophy that coming out made things better. While trying to work up the courage to come out a coworker of mine beat me to it, he started telling people at work that he was gay. I followed in his wake, coming out was made easier.

Being out of the closet at work was a total nonevent from my employer and coworker’s point of view. But it wasn’t for me. I was happier. However, being gay did influence me to move from the lab I had started in and become the lead technologist of the clinical Flow Cytometry lab. Flow Cytometry was a brand new expensive technology that was floundering because there was nothing at the time that could not be done more cheaply by other means. Then it became the gold standard for doing CD4 counts for people with HIV. In part moving into this lab was my way of giving back to the community. Over the years Cytometry has expanded wildly, so now CD4 counts are only a small part of what we do. Since then I’ve moved onto a basic research Cytometry lab.