Ramblings of An Aging Gay Guy

The ending of this holiday leaves me feeling indescribable sadness.  It is as if I feel all of the world’s loneliness and all of the world’s loss.  It isn’t even just because of the recent shooting in Newtown, CT.  It is a sadness in how American culture has turned out: something that is BIG, BIG news today, is forgotten tomorrow.  Already, not even two weeks after the school shooting, you can hardly find a single news article on the subject. What happened to everyone’s passion?  Did it, too, die like those children? The school shooting is really just the latest symptom of an apathetic American society.  Every single day children die from hunger, yet there is no call to arms.  Every day there are shootings, yet they leave no impression on the collective psyche.  Every day people still die from HIV and AIDS, yet to find a news story on anything HIV related is like looking in a field for a 4-leaf clover. I know New Years is a few days off; and I kno...

So it is with a bit of sadness that I enter the tail end of this holiday season.  I just began antidepressant medications as well as cognitive therapy, but I have only just begun down that road.   I received a “Poor” rating on my annual review, so I am still trying to digest that.  The feeling I have now is almost like the feelings I had when I was first diagnosed with HIV.   As such, identifying this new challenge and marrying it to a trauma in my past is somehow magnifying my negative feelings.   The feelings of sadness and depression.  The directionless.  The confusion about how to make things better for myself while maintaining my dignity.   I have never, ever been a kiss-ass kind of person and I believe that has gotten me in trouble more than once.  I literally, physically can not bring myself to do or say those things needed to kiss-ass and get ahead.  I deeply dislike those that play the kiss-ass game.  Thus, my failure ...

So the tragedy yesterday at Sandy Hook Elementary on Newtown, Connecticut has had me going through a variety of emotions that I have not felt since 9/11 or when I was first diagnosed with HIV.   No...I take that back.  The degree of emotions I felt yesterday went far down below the level of heartsickness than either 9/11 or my HIV diagnosis.  I mean, who kills their mother and then makes a conscious decision to go kill the most innocent of our society?  Who does that and why? Unfortunately, there will probably never be an answer to those questions, which in itself is another tragedy in a long list of sadness in these past 24 hours.   What I do know for sure is that we as a society can never ever go back to the way things were before.  There must now be a definitive and actionable movement towards a society where guns no longer are freely available.   We must move towards a fuller awareness of mental illness and also lobby ...

Opening Yourself Up by Jason McDonald                 I don’t believe there is a greater sign of trust than when you tell someone you have HIV.  Stigma still runs rampant, especially within the gay community, especially in the workplace.  Stigma exists wherever there is ignorance and apathy.                 When I worked for the corporate office of a worldwide hotel chain (one who is known by a big red M), I was newly diagnosed with HIV and naïve about what that meant.  I was treading new waters and learning as I went along.  In my ignorance, I believed in all the rainbows and lollipop idealism that people mostly had your best interests at heart.  I felt like I was the same person and so therefore I never once fathomed my diagnosis would make someone uncomfortable.        ...

Keep Your Nasty Germs to Yourself!  by Jason McDonald There is nothing more annoying than working with someone insists on coming to work sick.  Even more annoying is when that sick person coughs and sneezes behind you all day long .  You can’t help but to imagine all of their airborne germs shooting past you unseen, but yet felt.  Everything seems fine for the day, but then…later…you feel it.  Your throat starts to tickle, and then you sneeze…a small kitten sneeze at first, but eventually your sneezes lift you from your seat.  Your stomach makes that gurgling, watery noise.  You feel flushed and hot.  Your nose and chest fill up with fluid.  It has happened – your coworker has gotten you sick. My fear is not that I will infect you, but that you will infect me .  Having HIV doesn’t mean I get sick more often, but it does mean that it takes me longer to recover from the flu or other such illness.    Sadly, peo...

                I am ashamed to admit that I, like so many gay men, buried their head in the sand when it came to HIV.  Like many in the gay community, I too had become fatigued with hearing about safe sex, HIV, AID, etc.  I subconsciously but purposely avoided taking an HIV test because I wanted to live the illusion that my IV meth use and the activity that goes along with that lifestyle would have no consequences to my health.  And HIV was the unspoken pink elephant in the room amongst modern gay guys.  The only time HIV was ever mentioned was when gossip and speculation over someone’s status became the topic of the moment.                   The nine days between my HIV test and the results was time spent in a sort of limbo.  Life felt like it was on hold pending my test results.  I spent th...