The Comfort of Our Loving Chosen Family

I have, by some measure of recklessness or sheer geographic fidgeting, inhabited eight U.S. cities. Birmingham, New Orleans, Fort Lauderdale, even a brief, sun-drenched pause in West Hollywood—a restless itinerary born of work, longing, or my desperate, repeated need to push the reset button. I am now, for the sixth time, back in Birmingham, where the cycle first began, a prodigal son without a parable, merely a habit.

This itinerancy—this compulsive crisscrossing of the American landscape also included countless fundraisers and the Sisyphean work of HIV/AIDS advocacy—has left me with a staggering collection of human contacts. Acquaintances, yes. Friends, certainly. But, most importantly, it has forged a chosen family of a size and tenacity that defies mere listing in a digital Rolodex.

My path, as I’ve chronicled in various unflinching accounts, has traced the dizzying heights of the acme and the devastating depths of the nadir. And through all of it, from the ecstasy to the sheer, unblinking horror, I have walked with these few, this steadfast, close chosen family.

The Birmingham Contingent

To return to this Southern city—to the origin point of my adult consciousness—is to settle, finally, into the loving bosom of men I have known for forty years. Forty years. It is a terrifying testament to human endurance, if nothing else. We are the brotherhood I once wrote of—the crew who traveled, absurdly, to Savannah in a Winnebago to watch the river succumb to a green dye job.

The history is untidy: there was the sleeping together—and the dating that curdled into something better. It was during this early time when I met my first partner, whom I quickly designated "Also John"—my No. 1. I first saw him at Basics, sitting at the bar in these cute orange gym shorts. I soon recognized he was also my cashier at the local supermarket. Within a week, I mustered the courage to ask him on a date. “Wanta go to dinner on Monday?” “Sure!” he replied. I don’t recall where we ate, but he stayed over with me that first night—and never left. Two years later we still lived together. It was both our first try at a loving relationship. But because we lost many of the men just older than us—the couples that might have been role models for us—we used the only examples we had: our parents, straight couples. Unfortunately, both of us had come from very bumpy family origins, so… 

But three years after we met, we remained loving friends as he went off to Texas to get his Masters. To this day, "Also John" is the closest thing I have to a brother—and I have a biological brother, mind you. We’ll get to the topic of how biological families have often failed a generation of gay men.

"Also John" remains my stalwart constant.

Many of us who had early encounters took the best of the salvageable material—the friendship—and continued. And in that continuation, we stumbled upon a profound clarity. The confusion—the sexual possibility—was relegated to the past. What remained was a companionship that was more than friendship; it was a commitment, a deliberate act of loving companionship. We cooked, we gathered, we watched the comforting, synthetic glow of The Golden Girls—a strange, surrogate domesticity.

Intimacy Without Fear

Then there is Atlanta, where the 1996 Olympics seemed to inadvertently sow the seeds for another grouping, sixteen strong, constant companions. This was the moment—between the cautious cultural visibility of My So-Called Life and Ellen, and the seismic shift in medical progress—that the world, and we ourselves, dared to believe we could be comfortable again. 

We had, by this time, matured. We were comfortable with man-on-man intimacy—and I do not speak of sex, but of brotherly closeness. A gathering for a film meant bodies piled upon a sofa—a casual, tactile acceptance. There was no fear that a head on a shoulder would be mistaken for a preamble. It was simply the evidence of the bond.

It was this very intimacy, this effortless being, that led to the farce we called Gays and Grays Mother’s Day Weekend. Eight of us, realizing we had become the collectively chosen child of a beloved mother (what a grotesque, beautiful trope!), coordinated the arrival of our matriarchs. A cocktail party, a dinner. The wine flowed—the great grease of truth—and the dam broke.

The Education of Mothers

One of the mothers, with a disarming directness, asked the necessary question: “So are you all one another’s ‘play things’?”

The collective eye-roll from the eight of us—the Oh, Mom—was immediate, instinctive. But another mother interrupted: “No. I truly want to know the answer to that question.”

Ever the educator, I took a stab at the defining. “We are all friends. Most of us have a ‘special friend’ in this group, but the rest of us are simply friends.”

A second mother cut through the semantic clutter. “My ‘friends’ and I do not routinely hug and kiss when we greet and when we part.”

A friend countered: “Point taken. But I suppose, in that way, we are merely a large Italian family. We love one another, and we love showing it.”

Then, the final, surgical question: “So none of you have ever slept together—except with your special friend?”

The silence was the kind you could bottle and sell as an existential threat. A shared, shamed look among the sons. Then, a sudden, thunderous laughter. “We are not saying some of us have not slept together over the years, but still…”

“Hmm,” a mother observed. “The man you bring home to me, you call ‘your friend.’ You call all of them ‘your friends.’ Pardon my confusion.”

I jumped in, offering a compromise: “Let us agree to use the designation ‘significant other’—a term we grant men with whom we have lived and who we have managed to endure for more than a year.”

They nodded. They seemed to find relief in the structure. But if the mothers were to define us, it seemed only fair that we should test their accuracy. "Turnabout is fair play," I announced, turning to my own mother. "Given that designation, can you name my ‘significant others?’"

Once we reached eight or ten cries of “Mom, I never dated him!” or “Mom, do you recall me living with him?”—the volume rising with the wine—we all had to agree that communication had failed us all over the years.

Yet, I still break into a cold sweat when I imagine what my mother might have been thinking for all those years.

The Choice of Lifestyle

Years earlier, my mother had lamented, “I just can’t reconcile why you chose this lifestyle.” For years, I had diminished her, insisting this was no choice; one does not choose attraction. The argument, a well-worn piece of theater, flared up again during a twelve-hour drive to visit my lesbian sister.

Suddenly, she stopped the performance: “John, you’ve mistaken my meaning. Honey, I know you didn’t choose whether or not to be fey—attracted to men. That is ridiculous. You can’t choose that.”

She leaned into the silence of the car.

“The lifestyle I’m disappointed you chose was one of isolation—living apart from the family. You moved off to the City, spending time with those people we didn’t know—and in questionable places. You turned your back on your family—as if we were no longer good enough.”

She offered an example: “I had an uncle who ‘wasn’t the marrying kind.’ We all knew. He lived near my parents. He played his part in the family—babysitting, helping when someone was sick. Not doing that—not living as part of our family. That was the choice.”

I sat with it—disappointed that the misunderstanding had existed for so long.

“First,” I finally said, “I am sorry. You are right. I misunderstood you.” But then, the defense of a generation. “Mom, your uncle lived a lonely, isolated life. Would you have wished that on me? I had no interest in being cast in a supporting role. I would have been miserable.”

“So many men like me have made the same ‘choice’ I’ve made—because we can. Because our biological families couldn’t, or wouldn't, understand—or love us as we are. So, we sought out happiness—love—with like-minded people, in a community we built for ourselves. In that sense, yes, I chose this lifestyle. But it was the only chance I had to love and be loved.”

Our Clan of Handwavers

This was our mission. This was the fate of a generation, beginning in the mid-twentieth century and accelerated, execrated, by the AIDS pandemic. We were forced to create our own families. We made a large, caring brotherhood, within which we created smaller, essential, loving chosen families.

As we age, the peace of mind is immeasurable. We are there for one another. We know one another more deeply than many of us know our own family of origin. We accept, embrace, support. When I was homeless, I had a home. When I was hungry, I had a meal. When I found success, my chosen family was there, cheering me on. Unconditional. Loving.

The brotherhood is now an international scattering of Facebook feeds—the New York friends, the Philly friends, the New Orleans Boys. The intimacy of proximity is replaced by the necessary infrastructure of social media.

But most vital are the chosen families. The local, daily support system. Our rides or die—the grammar matters less than the conviction.

I think back to those fundraiser dance parties. Our little Atlanta family became known, affectionately, as “The Clan of the Handwavers.” You could spot us, on any crowded floor, amidst the sea of bare chests. We were dancing, only and always with our family, our hands thrown into the air, waving in time to the music—a gesture of pure, unadulterated celebration of our family, the deliberate, necessary family we built for ourselves.

The Long After: Survival's Unexpected Gift

Today, December 1st, is World AIDS Day. It is a day dedicated to remembrance, education, and the ongoing fight against HIV/AIDS. For many survivors, including myself, it is a day of complex reflection on the unexpected longevity we now share. It is in this spirit of reflection that I publish "The Long After: Survival's Unexpected Gift." This narrative explores the new frontier of life after the initial crisis, where the gift of survival brings with it its own set of challenges and profound meanings. This essay is the newest installment in a series on my blog that chronicles my personal journey through the epidemic and beyond. If you are new to my story, I invite you to explore the arc of my experience by reading the previous essays: "Love and Intimacy in the Shadow of AIDS," "The Fabulous 5000," "The Fiddler's Bill," "Part I: A Caring Brotherhood," and "Part II: Prince Charlie." On this significant day, may we remember those who paved the way for this survival, honor the resilience of the community, and commit to carrying the story forward.

I was, from the start, marked as 'different.' Sometimes adults used words like 'precocious,' or perhaps, 'pretty boy.' The latter was a fleeting, but perhaps necessary, truth—one that vanished as I grew older, leaving me merely common and gangly. This resulting lack of conventional appeal would become, I realize now, my first layer of defense. This early sense of difference, coupled with the death of my father, forged the necessary psychological distance—the essential preparation that allowed me to stand back and merely observe the coming calamity.

My older sister was also a study in difference; her sequence of relationships with women later confirmed what we had always, with a knowing silence, presumed. And at fourteen, my mother, who had perfected the art of strategic parental detachment, allowed me to spend Christmas Eve with her and her partner. That evening, my sister and her partner took me to a bar—Belle Watling's on 21st Street. It was my introduction to the life. The notable absence of women suggested, even to my limited intellect, that this was not a place to discuss needlepoint. I devoured it: the kind gentlemen who offered free drinks, the lighted dance floor. I was utterly captivated by the simple fact of the place, operating then without the slightest comprehension that this very gathering was already endangered.

I was, of course, entirely lacking in self-awareness. I hadn't yet reconciled myself to the truth that I was one of them. Nor was I the sort of youth men noticed: a hundred and twenty pounds at graduation, cursed with unmanageable, mouse-colored hair that seemed to defy both gravity and grooming. A truly compelling package indeed.

The move was 1982. I left home for Birmingham, attending UAB and attempting the role of 'young gay man.' By chance—or perhaps by the gravitational pull of the inevitable—I settled at The Claridge on Southside. Once grand, the building was then merely old, serving as a comfortable, aging repository for retired women and a rising number of gay men and artists.

I was granted proximity to the community before I ever dared to participate sexually. Looking back, decades later, the irony is stark. The very qualities that kept me tentative, quiet, and withdrawn—that simple, crippling lack of conventional appeal—may have been the unintended gift that saved my life. I was present at the party, yet shielded from the immediate consequence. The simple truth: I was saved by my own early failure to attract.

The Price of Witness

The news arrived in 1984 under the grimly polite, sterile pseudonym of GRID—Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. As if a new technical acronym could somehow sanitize a terrifying extinction. We heard reports of men disappearing in New York and San Francisco, but for a gay man in Birmingham, geography provided a temporary, foolish buffer. It was the mention of Atlanta that finally pierced the illusion, confirming the nearness of the physical threat.

The threat quickly became a personal imperative. I knew I had to submit to "the test." A good lesbian friend, displaying a solidarity that outpaced the compassion of the world, drove me to the county health department. Accepting the need and agreeing to the test was torture - but the true psychological violence was waiting for the results. Ten days. A mandatory follow-up appointment to receive the results in person, as if the news required a formal, official witness.

I was negative. My initial impulse—a ridiculous cheer—was swiftly replaced by the recognition that one doesn’t celebrate a victory in a game of chance. I could identify no moral or behavioral difference between my conduct and that of the men who received the opposite verdict. It was a statistical lottery, and my success felt like an accidental insult to the dead. And the trauma of the test never lessened; I submitted myself every six months as a kind of panicked, ritualistic observance.

The weight of the community’s despair became suddenly palpable at a New Year’s Eve party in 1986. After the obligatory, sentimental midnight kisses, the room broke into an unsettling, collective weeping—a truly dramatic finish to the year. I asked a close friend about the sudden, theatrical grief. He said, plainly, "Because not all of us thought we would live to see the end of this year—and some of us might not see the end of the next." It was then he began pointing them out: friends I had known for years, men who were already marked with a terrible secret I had been utterly oblivious to. The depth of that earlier unawareness—the sheer, functional blindness I required to maintain my life—is the detail that disturbs me still. By the end of 1988, four of the men I had embraced that night were gone.

This reality demanded a posture of action. My volunteer work at Birmingham AIDS Outreach (BAO), beginning in 1986, quickly transitioned from simple compassion into a structured, analytical engagement. The distance between observer and participant dissolved, but it was replaced by the need for strategic authority. By 1987, I was asked to serve on the board of directors, and by 1989, this activism formalized into a profession, launching my career as an HIV/AIDS corporate and social entrepreneur. This was the crucible where my professional expertise was forged in the heat of constant loss. The work became the necessary defense—a deliberate attempt to impose order and analysis upon the chaos I was increasingly expected to explain. Art, Ambition, Ascent

As I matured, attempting to form the character I felt I needed to be, I was compelled to offer a deeper solace, an escape from the unrelenting mathematics of death. My official work was to impose analytical structure; my parallel, and perhaps slightly more grandiose mission, became to impose an inconvenient beauty.

In 1989, while a graduate student, a sanctuary through music took hold. A few friends and I began the Birmingham Community Men's Choir. This was not a frivolous pursuit—though the notion of twenty-one men forming a choir during an apocalypse was certainly absurd—it was a deliberate, communal intervention against isolation. Our debut concert was merely the thrilling icing on the cake; the meat of it, the “cake” was the sense of community we had constructed. For two years, the choir offered a crucial support system, expressing joy and defiance through art, and laying the foundation for future groups.

My eight years as a student at UAB—a span that netted a bizarre collection of degrees—was, rather, the sustained, deeply intellectual strategy of creative student loan deferment. This dual existence finally ended when recruiters arrived from Caremark.

I was hired, and the move was to New Orleans—a chance to finally afford life and make a living helping my community. Meeting my Prince Charming—my No. 2 partner, Charlie—was the perfect opportunity to move and push the reset button. Having been shielded by my earlier lack of appeal, I now embraced the inverse: a commitment to an ideal.

My move began a mindful and deliberate focus on continuous emotional enlightenment, self-awareness, more relational maturity, and a relentless pursuit of physical improvement. The goal was simple: to be better, to do better.

I was brought in at Caremark to address a critical challenge: translating compassionate care for people with AIDS into an efficient corporate model. My unique experience was leveraged to achieve a commercial solution. I was designated a strategic innovator and corporate entrepreneur, tasked with developing a profitable business model out of what had been treated as simple devastation. The true revolution was the design of comfortable, welcoming community spaces, which managed the impossible feat of simultaneously optimizing nursing resources and creating a more dignified service. I was pleased to prove that compassion, when properly managed, could be profitable. The Architecture of Illusion

My professional arc carried me through Atlanta and eventually to South Florida, culminating in a settlement in South Beach—a perfect, overheated distillation of the inflection point the pandemic had reached.

By this time, I had acquired my No. 3 partner, or 'significant other'—a designation we grant men with whom we have lived and who we have managed to endure for more than a year. More crucially, he was my second consecutive partner who was positive, making us what the public health apparatus referred to with such cold precision: a sero-discordant couple.

I had made myself into a study in conscious, desperate re-design. I was spending up to two hours daily building a physical appearance that, by all external metrics, was the very physical ideal of a gay man. This ideal was confirmed during our travels to social and fundraising events. Yet, when I looked in the mirror, the triumph was never complete. I still saw that skinny kid with the mouse-colored hair. The attention, which I both relished and relied upon, was internally befuddling; the performance was flawless, but the validation felt empty.

Simultaneously, my professional reputation was expanding exponentially. I was supporting the growth of the first nation-wide chain of community-based HIV/AIDS specialty pharmacies, routinely traveling to 32 of the largest US cities. In these places, I was not merely a corporate representative; I met frequently with local HIV/AIDS community organizations, sharing best practices and cultivating a network of leaders. I was thus becoming a recognized expert—a key node in a national network of knowledge—setting myself up as an authority across the country.

My partner and I had built strong careers and friendships in South Beach. Yet, for years, so many gay men with an AIDS diagnosis had moved there to simply empty their bank accounts and die on the dance floor. This was a collective, final performance—a way to face death not with quiet despair, but by imposing a sense of dramatic control onto their fate. They were composing their own exits. Then, in 1995, science intervened: HAART arrived. Suddenly, the men who had executed a perfect, final plan didn't die. They were left, instead, with the bewildering, anti-climactic necessity of a future without a plan.

In response, I co-founded and led a critical, grassroots organization, South Beach AIDS Project. This was work of profound, necessary cynicism. We were building a localized safety net for individuals who were supposed to be dead, who were only now transitioning to longer, far more productive lives. It was the ultimate, satisfying bureaucratic challenge: creating infrastructure for the undead.

I meticulously built this infrastructure and personal empire—the career, the physique, the status—to master the crisis. But a monument built this high is, by definition, engineered for a long and catastrophic fall The Inevitability of the Fall

It was this dizzying altitude—It was this dizzying altitude—this feeling of having mastered my appearance, my career, and the crisis itself—that ultimately betrayed me. The six years leading up to the year 2000 had been an exercise in absolute corporate mastery. I was on the deck of the boat, secure in the illusion of my own analytical, self-made safety.

But it was my own ego—the intoxicating high, the illusion of safety, and shared by my 4th partner—that led us to embark on an Albee-esque experiment: attempting to regain some of the emotional and physical intimacy that fifteen years of epidemic had forced us to deny ourselves.

And then, in June 2000, the analytical distance shattered. I was called away from an executive committee meeting. On the other end of the line was my No. 4, delivering a simple, formal sentence: "I'm positive." My mind, that marvelous instrument of denial, immediately processed it as his issue—an issue I, the expert, would support him through.

It took weeks—a profound, almost ridiculous failure of self-awareness—to finally submit to ja test, citing a naïve "abundance of caution." A few days later, I returned for the inevitable verdict. My doctor, a good friend and a veteran of this long war, had the terrible chore of saying the words: "John, I’m sorry to say you’re positive." The ability to breathe left me immediately.

I had only shared the situation with one close friend, who made me promise to meet him for lunch immediately after the results. I met him there, consciously avoiding eye contact as we sat. After a pregnant pause, he said, simply, "So..."

"I'm gonna be fine," I said.

The response was everything: the confirmation of the result, delivered with an obligatory, feeble hope. For so many years, I had stood firmly on the deck, managing the logistics, throwing lifesavers to friends and strangers. Now, I found myself in those same dark, murky waters, an ‘expert’ floundering for a lifesaver myself. The Year of Necessary Seclusion

The year following the verdict was a period of profound psychological collapse disguised as quiet integration. I, who had stood in lecterns and educated hundreds, was now positive. The irony was so dense, so crushing, that it was nearly incapacitating. I gave myself a year—a calculated, necessary seclusion—to integrate this catastrophic shift, aided only by anti-depressants and a regrettable increase in drinking. I had to mourn my status, mourn the safety I’d lost, and mourn the men whose silence I could finally understand.

The landscape of a positive diagnosis is a terra incognita every person must navigate alone, yet its contours are tragically familiar. Some pivot from shock to resolve; others are arrested by a crippling denial. My path was an unwelcome apprenticeship in grief. It wasn't merely for the health I'd lost, but a profound, almost primal grieving of innocence. The foundational bedrock of my life—the unspoken assumption of safety and continuity—had been pulverized. Grief was less an emotion and more a persistent, uninvited inhabitant.

The challenge was not to get over it, but to find a way to cohabitate with this truth, slowly teaching myself that the only viable path to joy was through radical ownership and open integration of this new, unalterable self.

After a year of wrestling with fear, depression, and the internalized shame, I had gained the confidence to be outwardly, authentically okay. I devised the strategy of the Twelve: the individuals who would be most wounded by a second-hand announcement. I bought the plane tickets and scheduled the talks to occur over a single week. The conclusion of my disclosure was always the same: "Having been given this news myself by too many friends, I understand the weight it can carry. But I would ask that you please don’t talk to anyone about this until next Monday." By that following Monday, I had spoken to all twelve.

Everyone, bar one, responded with the compassion I had desperately hoped for. The exception was a physician, a friend, who began to yell: "How could you be so STUPID!? Of all people! I expected more from you! You've let us all down!" I simply stood and walked out. His outburst had only articulated the internal shame I had spent a year trying to suppress.

But his outburst, once survived, served as a final release. A sense of freedom, even power, came from that radical act of disclosure. The process of accepting, integrating, and finally embracing my new life meant knowing the whole world could know, and that I would, authentically, be fine. A Medication Labyrinth

The profound psychological resolution of my seclusion—the hard-won peace with my status—did not, of course, align with the medical reality. My physician now delivered the next, equally absurd truth: the current orthodoxy dictated I wait. My body was still robust, but I, the man compelled to action and analytical control, was now told to do nothing.

I was forced into an insane, internal negotiation with my own mortality: to wait until my body's innate defenses were visibly failing, to welcome the biological metrics of my own decline. This anxiety was compounded by the memory of the early years, having watched too many friends suffer through the debilitating toxicity of first AZT and the nascent HAART cocktails. It was this fear of poison, not a lack of commitment, that compelled me to agree to hold off on treatment.

Behaviorally, the shift was simple: after years of strictly practiced safer sex, abstinence during the year of disclosure was an easy, even necessary asceticism. But beyond that year, maintaining intimacy required maneuvering the moral minefield of self-disclosure. My own moral imperative—to only be intimate after honest disclosure from both—meant that every potential connection involved revealing a part of the self I had just fought so hard to integrate.

Two years into my diagnosis, the medical consensus shifted, and my doctor and I agreed it was time to start HAART. Now, the challenge was logistical. I, the corporate strategist who designed efficient care models, faced the bewildering inefficiency of my own treatment. I realized the ingredient was less important than the dosing schedule. Adherence, the single greatest predictor of success, demanded a protocol I could take just once a day.

This medication hunt was no easy feat. In the early 2000s, effective therapy required four or five medications in combination, yet few offered the once-a-day dosing I prioritized. I was, effectively, painted into a corner over the course of those first five years—a relentless search for a therapy that was effective, tolerable, and offered the best chance at lifelong adherence.

But fate wasn’t done. In June 2002, I lost my job, and subsequently I lost everything—my car, most of my belongings, and eventually my home. I was homeless. I extended my health insurance through COBRA, but when I met that limit, my coverage lapsed and I could no longer afford healthcare. For over two years, I went untreated and my health faltered. Ironically, the instability of being unhoused along with the associated mental and emotional paralysis made it almost impossible for me to engage supportive organizations like those I had pioneered years before.

By 2010, my medical condition, treatment regime, and emotional state were all stable - and all I wanted was to live a life without HIV/AIDS as the focus—a necessity born of sheer, exhausting survival. For the first time since 1990, I asked for a job that had NOTHING to do with the disease. Yet, the commitment to social good remained. My roles shifted to the government sector, tackling the complexities of integrated care models—developing and scaling continuity across the entire ecosystem of pharma, patient, provider, and payer. My success in fixing these systems was, I realized, made better, sharper, and more compassionate because of my intimate, personal experience as a patient and consumer within that very broken system. The Complexity of Survival

You live long enough, and you earn the right to the absurd. The terrifying urgency of the early years has given way to managed entropy—a state of existence that, by the time you're 60, is pleasantly rote. Life is good and stable, except, of course, for the predictable decay of the machine and the logistical nightmare of its maintenance. Even the isolation of COVID became just another variable to manage.

The body, having survived the plague, now wages a silent, private war on a dozen fronts. The side effects of the virus's history and the necessary interventions manifest as a litany of insults: failing eyesight, teeth, and joints; dropping testosterone, thyroid; high cholesterol and blood pressure—and, to top it off, hay fever! To be a compliant patient is no longer a virtue; it is a full-time, six-sigma management project. One requires a dedicated spreadsheet merely to keep pace with the sheer volume of medications and their refill dates. And God help the person who finds they have no refills or that an annual prior authorization is required. The system demands so much effort that I’m not sure how I have time left to simply live. I realize the life I saved by passively observing the plague now requires my full, relentless engagement merely to endure the cure.

But this is the final, cynical truth of survival: this suffocating logistics has become life. My own fortune—the good insurance, the stable career, the sheer administrative capability to navigate this labyrinth—only throws the harsh truth of the system into stark relief. Not everyone is fully insured or capable of managing this overwhelming complexity. For them, things are skipped, doses are missed, and conditions are left untreated. The gratitude I feel is inextricably linked to my profound understanding of the injustice. It is this failure of the system, this monstrous administrative burden, that drives my desire to comprehend and assist those who are not so fortunate.

The Final Metamorphosis

And then, you're 63. The body, having survived the plague and endured the bureaucratic war, demands a final, crucial adaptation. The furious pace of my younger life—long runs, weekend races, the heavy lifting aimed at looking buff—has given way to the necessary compromises of longevity: a daily quick two-mile walk, light lifting, stretching, and the gentle, ironic discipline of "chill yoga." But the life, despite the modifications, is still well-lived.

As I age, I find a shift in my emotional architecture. I like to say I'm becoming more "fragile," if only to observe the startled expression it provokes, but the truth is a creeping sensitivity. Whether part and parcel of the aging process or a mere reflection of the anxious times we all inhabit, challenges with anxiety have quietly asserted themselves. But alas, as always, we find a way forward.

This final chapter of transformation is defined by acceptance: of my diagnosis, my age, and the sheer complexity of my personal history. I have comfortably settled into the identity of a (tongue-in-cheek) well-dressed, somewhat erudite older gay man.

If I have learned anything over the years, it is the ability of a human to grow—not just change, but to become something more. So I embrace my new life with excitement. I no longer live in the image of the young ideal, but as a proud elder statesman. I have always listened closely to my gay elders, because they forged the way for me. I try to use their lives—their works—as a guiding light. Who knows what adventures or perils wait around the corner. For now, I am hopeful - but a bit cynical. And, considering everything, can you blame me?

Love and Intimacy in the Shadow of AIDS

On Saturday night at Belles, before the drag show, they'd play a slow song. One song. A chance for couples to touch, to be intimate. So many of my friends hated it. "Why would they bring everyone down for a stupid slow dance? No one wants to touch when they dance," they’d complain.

But to me, the moment was an aching reminder of what many of us as young gay men had never experienced—life without the shame of intimacy - and life without a looming expiration date. My mind goes back to the Sylvester hit "One Night Only." In that moment, the lyrics, originally meant as an anthem of a fleeting free-love culture, actually articulated a more disturbing unspoken truth for us:

“In the morning this feeling will be gone / It has no chance going on / Something so right has got no chance to live / So let's forget about chances / It's one night I can give.”

As gay men in the 1980s, we believed our days were numbered. Sex was a game of chance, a spin of the Russian Roulette cylinder. Friends were dying around us, and no one truly understood the cause, only the brutal, inevitable consequence.

Our fear was sometimes strikingly reinforced by the mainstream, straight world. On October 17th, 1989, just before I met my 2nd partner, I was watching coverage of the San Francisco earthquake aftermath. As the footage showed the destruction, a young child looked up at his mother with teary eyes and asked, "Momma—why does God let this happen?" Without hesitation, she replied: “It’s God’s wrath on the queers for infecting the World with AIDS.”

She froze, realizing the daggers I was staring into her. She had consciously given voice to the societal verdict: gay men were dirty, unnatural, and our sexuality was a biological contamination. The public health mandate to use condoms was not just a medical recommendation; it was, for us, a life sentence of penance. Straight couples could risk intimacy for love; we were mandated to risk only our lives if we sought connection outside of a latex sheath. And we felt we had no choice but to buy into the narrative. We were indoctrinated to believe that sex without barriers was shameful, an admission of our own inherently "dirty" nature.

I Was Given a Choice

That same month, I met Charlie in New Orleans. We found ourselves on the floor of a walk-in closet in my shared hotel room—a private space carved out of necessity. Before we were intimate, he disclosed: “I need you to know I’m positive.”

It was a profound, terrifying act of honesty. Though I acted cool, my mind was screaming. After eight years spent in mortal fear of this specter, I had been given the choice. I nodded yes. And we did what the authorities told us—a sterile, cautious, protected intimacy. The greatest act of human connection had been reduced to a series of administrative tasks conducted in a crawl space.

Charlie became my 2nd partner, and my first sero-discordant relationship. His honesty gave me choice, but it did not grant me ease. I was never madly in love; I’m not sure I knew how to be, how to overcome the trauma and indoctrination of the 80s and truly let someone in. We loved each other, but the truth beneath the surface was far more pragmatic. I remember I would say to him, “I love you. Today.” The unstated half of that truth was always: Don’t book a vacation we might not live to see.

The Suffocation of Love

By 1992, I was an HIV activist and educator, and I had met partner No. 3, Tom, who was also positive. Perhaps I embraced these relationships to wear them like a badge of honor - showing everyone that I could practice what I preached. But with Tom, I also began learning how to truly love and be loved. And, in a way, we did. We fell in love. But there was always something between us - a hesitance. And my meticulous diligence was also always there. I was exacting when it came to our protection practices, sometimes even wearing latex gloves, and always, always, immediately jumping into a scolding hot shower—a ritual of purification that symbolized the need to wash away the risk and the shame immediately after the act of love.

I could tell Tom craved intimacy. He wanted a touch that was passionate and carefree, not painstakingly planned or transactional. But I, ever the Boy Scout, didn’t—couldn't—give him what he most wanted. Consequently, I felt more and more inadequate. 

And we never talked about any of it. Not once. So, the emotional cost of our adherence to the rules began to precipitate our downfall.

Over time, our relationship was suffocated by what was not said. We traveled across Europe, from Switzerland to Prague, hoping a holiday would heal us. Instead, we spent days in silence, then argued, and then returned to silence. On the flight home, we didn’t even want our arms to touch on the armrest between our seats. The fear and the constant vigilance had successfully frozen our emotional connection. I left less than a week after we arrived home. Another relationship fallen to the weight of the burden and our adherence to the cruel rules we’d been given.

A Reckoning and a Reclaimed Future

By the time I met my No. 4, we had both reached a breaking point. We had grown to resent a life lived without true intimacy, without the easy abandon straight couples took for granted. The need for true connection, paired with an understandable ego—a rebellion against our second-tier sentence—led us to embark on a shared, Albee-esque experiment. We would reclaim the emotional and physical intimacy that fifteen years of epidemic had forced us to deny.

It was freeing: to touch someone and be resolute in the decision not to fear. We tested twice, six months apart, sharing our negative results each time. No more relegation. We committed, and we were intimate. That’s the way it should be, right?

Then, in June 2000, he called. “I’m positive.”

I immediately shifted into caretaker mode. It took weeks for me to finally submit to a test for myself. When my doctor, a long-time friend, turned to me with tears in his eyes and said, “John, I’m sorry to say you’re positive,” I held my breath for a moment. The only words I could muster were: "Well, fuck..."

This wasn't resignation; it was the final, devastating exhale after fifteen years of holding my breath against a specter. I had fallen, not through carelessness, but through the desperate, conscious act of rebellion against the societal sentence—the psychic toll of years without true, unburdened intimacy. The tragic irony was complete. I had finally achieved the "normal" life I craved, but it came with the virus I had spent half my life dodging.

The pain of that fall did not define the end of my story. Today, two decades later, the narrative is entirely different. I am living well, and happy for 10 years with partner No. 6, Sean. A sustained, true connection that felt impossible in the early days. We have been granted the unexpected gift of longevity, the very thing that felt cruel to even discuss when Charlie and I spoke of love, "Today."

The scientific establishment’s early messages, though necessary for survival, broke a generation’s heart. But the revolution has finally arrived. The advent of Undetectable means Untransmittable (U=U) and PrEP has done what decades of sermons and shame could not: it has restored parity and equity. The next generation of gay men need not be sentenced to a life of emotional freezing or transactional intimacy. The moral judgment has been stripped away by science. The fear that suffocated us—that mandated a second-tier existence—is finally obsolete. 

30 - 60 - 90

The quiet is here with us, for now. It’s the silence of her exhaustion, 93 years deep. I am with the woman who has married four and buried four, as well as a daughter—a sentence that should belong to mythology, not a mother.

And I often wake hearing the echoes of that Sound.

Recently, we had a birthday. A confluence of numbers. A cosmic joke. My partner, Sean (No. 6), was thirty. I was sixty. My mother, ninety. Three lives, three stories orbiting the same sun, separated by three decades—yet, strangely overlapping. With a dark humor I appreciate, she sometimes calls our conversations "30-60-90."

She spoke vaguely of her life at thirty, what it meant at sixty, and now 90. My life now, at sixty, feels like a distorted overlay of her early years—the struggle, the seeking. Yet, I look at her now—and see the omens of my own ninety. And we both live vicariously and learn so much from Sean’s fresh perspective at thirty.

30

In her 30s, my mother was consumed by efforts to keep her family safe—consumed by holding it all together—protecting her children from the chaos. As mothers have done through history, the peace offering to my father was another child. A new start. I was the decade child, the desperate flourish, the attempt to patch the tarnish. But I was a precocious, effete almost alien child who only drew my father’s silence and indifference.

She drew me in closer. Consciously. She filled the void he carved. Later, she’d ask, eyes wide and bewildered, "Did I make you?" As if love could be the engine of difference. “No,” I said. “I was born different. I was the foreign object already in your womb.”

In 1970, I heard the cry for the first time—is cry the right word? What does one call that sound? That sound that starts so deep inside—a low-frequency moan born of the pain of inconsolable loss that crescendos into this blood curdling primal scream. Over the years, I would become far too familiar with this sound—as well as my subsequent failure to sooth or comfort her in those immediate moments to follow.

We had all lived for years with my fathers alcohol abuse—but this time he left his mark. Suicide by gun, leaving himself for my mother to find. Suicide. It was an act of terror, perpetrated against his wife—his children—his family. How did she manage? How did she find a way forward?

She remarried within months. A new, hopeful future that was still never to be. And eleven years later, cruel karma visited again. I was with her when she lost her second husband—and again the Sound—the heart-wrenching sound of profound loss. That day, there was mourning in the evening.

In my thirties, after the loss of so many of my close friends to the pandemic, I similarly began my work to start anew—to transform and grow. But then the diagnosis—and the dark years when I became homeless. A period during which it seemed I had lost everything—everything except a mother’s loving support. I not only found myself with debts to pay, physical and psychic—but I had to atone.

When I met Sean, my No. 6, we openly discussed the implications of a 30-year age gap. My goal became to “gay it forward”—to share as much of my experience as I could - maybe to ease his path. And he has such wisdom of recent youth to share—secrets of negotiating an ever faster changing world.  The pace of change exerts its centrifugal forces that would seemingly fling us all into oblivion. But then Sean is there to ground us - challenge us to adapt.

60

Now I am sixty. I have had six partners. She has had 4 husbands. We are our constant.

The bond intensified through my own tragic losses and through her subsequent grief. The third and fourth husbands—gone. And then my sister. For the third and fourth time, I had to endure that Sound—the sound I had grown to dread—and again there was mourning in the evening. Yet, as always, she rose again and moved forward -  buttressed by her faith, her family and friends. For many years now, they are the framework of her life well-lived.

People say we are unnaturally close. But would they if they knew? If they thought about it?

My life in my sixties is defined by this honour—to lovingly support her. 

The script: When my mother was this age—sixty—she moved in with her own mother to care for her in her final, independent months. The role, the setting, the deep, exhausting purpose: it was all predetermined. I am simply fulfilling the destiny she forged.

At 63, my body, having survived the plague and endured the bureaucratic war, demands a crucial adaptation. The furious pace of my younger life has given way to the necessary compromises. But I, too, enjoy a life well-lived.

Sean, my mother and I now also share a shift in our emotional architecture. I like to say I'm becoming more "delicate," but the truth is a creeping sensitivity, an assertion of anxiety. And my mother seems so much more fragile—she openly worries in a way I’ve never seen in her. Sean sometimes seems pushed beyond the breaking point. But alas, as always, we find a way forward.

I have comfortably settled into the identity of a (tongue-in-cheek) well-dressed, somewhat erudite older gay man. I'm happily in my 10th year with my partner, No. 6. I often remark to Sean, in defense of my actions or choices: "You'll see when you're 60." He just shrugs. It's like he can’t—or won’t—consider the idea, much less accept it as a defense. He lives in the fierce present. But I, bound by memory, am always looking forward and back.

90

Now she is ninety. My partner is thirty. And I am sixty. Combined, a full life spectrum.

I look at her and I have premonitions of my own decline. She describes to us what it is like to be ninety—the age when most all the people she's loved are gone. The joy and the darkness that comes from reflecting back on a life full of unspeakable horrors, profound love, happiness and growth—but with recognition of how few days are left for her - and the acceptance of the sheer complexity of her history.

But what remains is the sound, that terrible, echoing Sound.

I started the blog, John's Dura Mater Blog, because I needed a defense. A philosophical scaffolding to help me understand and express the wonder that is her legacy of endurance and resilience.

I am her son. I am the observer and the participant.

Albee wrote: "Writers have this schizophrenic ability to both participate in their lives and, at the same time, observe themselves participating in their lives."

If I have learned anything from her over the years, it is the human’s ability to grow—not just change, not merely become something else, but to become something more. 

Sean and I are similar in that we cherished the example set for us by our elders - those who forged the way for us.

That’s what this is. This is my attempt to observe my mother, who married four and buried four, who filled the empty space, who loved me fiercely through the chaos. I am finally in the first row, not just watching, but holding the space around the sorrow, waiting for that inevitable moment when that sound will one day be mine.

The Fabulous 5000

The Costume

The Fall of 1992. My life was framed by the twinkling, lighted marquee of the Fabulous Fox Theater. I lived at The Ponce, a grand, pretentious old high-rise on an avenue named for the Spanish explorer's endless, foolish search for eternal youth. I was dating—or rather, serially seeing, a fetching young graphic designer. But there were no attachments, no sitting still. My commitment was to the appointed rounds, the relentless, necessary attendance and support for the next fundraiser. So, I was off again.

It was time for my annual pilgrimage with friends to the Halloween New Orleans fundraiser supporting Project Lazarus. The theme this year was Dungeons and Drag Queens. At the Friday reception, in passing, I was introduced to a small group who had traveled down from Manhattan. They seemed nice enough—but carried an East Coast certainty.

On Saturday, the performance began. I was off to the warehouse party, fully armored. I donned my denim, black leather vest and biker cap—the full Tom of Finland theater, a hyper-masculine fantasy I inhabited. This was the forming ‘Ideal’ I had consciously designed to replace the insecure college kid I had been only years earlier. The party was a chaotic mass; running into anyone twice was an absurdity. But I did. I saw the group from Manhattan. Trying to remain in character, I maneuvered toward him. He was dressed in black army boots, a short kilt, no shirt, and a troll doll wig—a brilliant, chaotic signal of defiance that blew apart the entire theme. I introduced myself. He replied, with a bored economy, "Yes, I'm Tom—we met last night," turned on his heel, and walked away. A clear rejection, delivered with the casual brutality of a New York traffic light.

Later at The Pub, we simply nodded in recognition of each other. But upstairs just off the dance floor, around two in the morning, as the crowd had thinned, I found him standing next to me at the bar—both of us watching the light show and the few remaining dancers. 

Our eyes met. I said, simply, "It's late."

He replied, "Yes."

"Want to go home with me?" I asked, cutting through the noise.

He looked back at the dance floor, his face obscured by the strobe light, and paused. "I think I'll walk around a while longer," he said, making the decision itself the object of high drama. "But if we're both still here—in twenty minutes, maybe."

We were. And we did. So off we rode on my motorbike, me in my leather, and him, in contrast, in a troll wig and a school skirt.

The next morning, a friend asked, "So, who’s the guy with the chest from here to here?" motioning from far right to far left. "My guest for the weekend," I replied, already trying to minimize the man who had just blown a hole through my carefully controlled life. Tom was to become my third partner; the second partner I'd met at the Halloween New Orleans party, and the second HIV-positive man to enter my life.

The Approaching Storm

Soon, I was back in Atlanta and my life of work, gym, the Armory. And Tom, back to his life in the Big Apple. We talked often by phone. I even visited him for a short weekend, but the gravitational pull had begun. In March, he announced he was planning a move to Coral Gables. He asked if I would like him to stop through Atlanta for a visit. I agreed, the theatrical staging of fate now complete.

That Friday, the fetching young man I had been seeing on occasion asked what we would do for the weekend. "I have a friend visiting, so I won't see you until next Tuesday."

He replied: "A friend? Or a 'Friend'?"

"That shouldn't be your concern," was my clipped reply.

On Friday afternoon, Tom arrived in a moving truck packed with his belongings. We found parking for it then had a nice dinner and evening together.

The storm began on Friday, March 12, 1993. Over the weekend, Atlanta was hit with over two feet of snow. The Blizzard of '93. The truck, too expensive to let sit, was unpacked and returned. Tom never left. And I never saw my fetching young man on Tuesday—in fact, we didn't speak for years. The hand of fate had decisively swept through.

Swissvale Paradise

After several months in Atlanta, my professional career, that engine of my personal transformation, transferred me to South Florida, so my No. 3 and I moved. A picturesque three-bedroom cottage in Victoria Park with a yard full of mature mango trees. Outwardly, we seemed set to become the new "it" couple in the Fort Lauderdale gay community. We also traveled relentlessly, connecting with old friends, meeting new ones—Mardi Gras, New Orleans; Pensacola on Memorial Day; Black Party, New York; and most importantly, White Party and Winter Party in Miami. But we struggled together in those first years—fits and starts, ups and downs—so the allure of life on the Beach began calling us.

We moved again to a little four-plex, The Swissvale, just off Lincoln Road Mall in South Beach. We both loved the sun, the beach, the slower daily pace of it. We thrived together and grew more and more in love. We made the perfect home for ourselves. I met and befriended many of Tom's friends and his family. And my family and friends loved Tom. My mom, a woman who had seen her share in life’s parade, would simply say: "Tom's a character. I don't think I've ever known anyone quite like him." And neither had I.

Our group of friends and acquaintances, often beautiful, successful, talented men—a well-curated constellation of egos and expense accounts—were eventually dubbed "The Fabulous 5000." A number, we joked, that represented the minimum social velocity required just to stay in orbit. It seemed we were all everywhere—all at once. Wherever there was a gay event, a fundraiser: Gay Ski Week, Hotlanta River Raft Race, Black and Blue Ball.

Orbital Decay

We rode that wave for a few years, but then I began to recognize things were changing. 

The very scaffolding of the caring brotherhood we had invested in since our youth was rotting from the inside. Many of the well-meaning, necessary fundraisers of the mid-80s had simply evolved into something hollow. As more people overdosed, habitually fueling themselves with substances just to ride—or desperately cling to the top of—that relentless calendar of dance parties, the circuit became toxic. Many of us had grown to taste the bitter tinge beneath the enjoyment. It was the antithesis of everything we had once envisioned to honor our lost friends and support ASOs.

The altitude was unsustainable. The ground seemed to drop away and I felt more and more severed from the real world. The ‘Ideal’ I was chasing became a lead weight.

The performance was relentless. Yet, in the mirror, I still saw the pathetic skinny kid with the mouse-colored hair. The validation was a crushing, bewildering void.

I had retreated from intimacy, hiding behind the travel and parties and my curated persona. In doing so, I had allowed my partnership with Tom—the first man I ever truly loved—to wither and fracture, just like the very community that had birthed it. The performative male, center stage was blinded by the footlights. The man I had constructed seemed incapable of sustaining the love I needed most. 

I broke things off with Tom. It was a failure of self-awareness so complete, I didn't recognize its magnitude until years later. The inevitable break-down and clean-up of the theater set had begun. 

Back I went to Atlanta—my boomerang city, my place of comfort. I didn't know it then, but the descent had only just begun.

The Fiddler’s Bill

The Parable, Redacted

A long time ago, a grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing. A wretched thing, laboring away in the heat, an ant passed by, hauling a great, miserable ear of corn.

“Why not come and dance with me?” asked the grasshopper. Dance. As if life were a mere costume ball.

“I am collecting food for the winter,” said the ant. “And I recommend you do the same.”

“Why bother about winter? It is summer, and we have plenty of food.”

The ant, of course, went on its way. Continuing. Always continuing.

When the winter came, the ground was a white, hard joke. The grasshopper had no food. So he went to the ant. “What shall I do? I have no food!”

The ant replied. And the ant, always the moralist, always the damned keeper of the ledger, said something unforgivable about frolicking. About toiling. About singing and dancing while others worked.

And the grasshopper, naturally, had to go hungry.

A Charmed Life

Charmed. That was the word, wasn't it? Favored. A darling of the Universe, and didn’t I know it. Felt it, deep down, like a congenital condition. Worked hard, mind you. Started in a hospital the legal minute I could, a full-time gig while still in high school—a kind of fastidious, sober little teen, counting my pennies and my sins. Which were few.

And then… Birmingham. The world got larger, the colors louder. “Life’s a banquet and most poor souls are starving. Learn to live a little.” said my own Mama Rose.  It was an invitation, really. A theatrical staging of possibility. I worked through college—full-time, sometimes a few part-time gigs stitched together.

In 1990, I got the call. My dream job. And a ten-year, corporate and social tour de force began. Entrepreneur. Advocate. Adventurer. It was more than merely living; it was performance. And I danced the dance. Oh, god, I danced. Never keeping in mind, you see, that the fiddler is never an altruist. The fiddler must always be paid.

The rise was meteoric. Upward and onward. No safety net—who needed one? I worked hard, I played harder. Tomorrow was a concept for lesser men. A tedious, distant whisper.

August, 2002: The Curtain Falls

Tuesday. Minnetonka called.

“John—I need to see you. Where can we meet tomorrow around 11a?”

The blood rushed from my face. Where does it go? Does it just… abandon you? 

Severed? Me? The arrogance of it! Don't they know who I am? This is how I'm to be treated? After all I’ve done for them!? 

Two years. Only two years since the diagnosis—two years of silently hiding the wound beneath an Ermenegildo Zegna suit. I had a three-bedroom apartment in Midtown Atlanta. A new Volvo, leased. A pied-à-terre in New York City. A casual $5,000 in credit card debt. And thirty-four dollars. $34.00 in the bank.

Denial is a warm, thick blanket. I wrapped myself in it. Severance. Retirement account. I'm nowhere near retirement. It was a liquidity problem, nothing more. A temporary inconvenience.

December. Sold the car. March. The first yard sale. The endless, degrading series of yard sales. The art, the furniture, the china, the crystal—all reduced to price tags and sold for pennies on the dollar. And it was the ants—the careful, prepared friends—who came to collect, buying up my history for their own meager winter stores. But they were just following the script. 

The irony, a particularly vicious little joke: my cheap New York rent-control bedroom was my remaining anchor.

To some, my decision seemed counter intuitive, but to me it was clear. Give up the Atlanta apartment. The car. Pay the credit cards with the retirement savings - and move to New York. 

I was such a lemishke.

The Winter

New York. Low cost of living. A little money. But the job search. The applications, the interviews, the sheer, endless zero. Position eliminated. Company bankrupt. Always a twist of the knife.

And then, COBRA ran out. The money followed. And then, the HAART therapy. The medicine. Gone.

After helping so many—why couldn't I seek out help? Pride? Denial? Shame? They are a trinity of poisons.

By the end of 2003, there was only one word left: nothing. I had nothing. No prospects. I was numb. 

Lying in bed for days, the television a constant, mocking static. Staring at a ceiling that didn't care.

Then Mom called. Holidays. Come home.

I told her I couldn't. No money. No job.

She didn't lecture. She didn't moralize. She guided me. Pack a bag. Go to the airport. A ticket back to Birmingham awaited. Grace. A sudden, stunning theatrical lifeline thrown to an actor who’d forgotten his lines.

Home. Gifted a car. Stay. Stay here. The friend, the renovation, the subcontractors. He fed me. A new kind of work: managing the minutiae of someone else's stability.

The Fiddler Is Paid

Atlanta again. Another attempt. But the meds—gone for over a year—the body, it protests. It remembers. It begins to falter.

Another friend. Another reprieve. But the universe demands its dramatic tension. He finds the man of his dreams. I must move out.

The morning he told me—the same morning I woke to find the IRS had frozen my bank account. The retirement savings. The taxes I hadn't paid.

Like a biblical plague, and I was a modern, pathetic Job. 

Three years severed. Two years off the meds. 

But I was still moving. Stalking the hiring manager for a national pharmacy company.

I drove overnight. Florida. Slept in the car. Washed up in a gas station men’s room—the final, humiliating ablution of the fallen god.

She met me for breakfast. I made my case. She said, “You had me at hello.”

The job is yours.

Miami. An apartment. The first provider visit. The meds. The healing. Physical. Emotional. Spiritual.

I was back. But this time… this time, I was the ant. The consummate planner. Saving for tomorrow. 

Hoping for the best. Planning - with a fierce, quiet vengeance - for the worst. This trial by fire forged a new me. Taught me humility. Taught me gratitude. And most importantly: to never take the gifts of today and the promise of tomorrow for granted. The curtain closes. The house lights come up. And the fiddler, at long last, has been paid.

On Being Well-dressed and Erudite

 

Part I: A Caring Brotherhood

The Road to New Orleans

Hospice—the word itself carried a clean, clinical finality. In the late 80s in Birmingham, my volunteer work was in private homes, a relentless, solitary march against the inevitable. But I had seen another structure of necessity take hold in other cities: the group home. These weren't mere medical facilities; they were built as a direct answer to injustice. Too often, the residents were men who had been abandoned—rejected by partners, cast out by family. They were there because they had nowhere else to fall.

It was this heartbreaking, yet righteous, resistance that fueled us. The development of AIDS hospices seemed almost coincidental across various U.S. metro areas, but the first with which I became directly involved was Lazarus House in the Faubourg Marigny. The name itself—Lazarus—carried a terrible irony. The biblical figure was raised from the dead, restored to life. We, on the other hand, were building homes for men who were already marked for death. But perhaps the effort was not for the restoration of life, but in the restoration of dignity when life had been stripped away.

This heartbreaking necessity drove us. We were not isolated; our struggle was a shared map drawn across the entire South, city by city.

At AIDS Service Organization (ASO) fundraisers in other cities across the South, we became known as the Men of Birmingham—or MOB. Groups of friends from across the South recognized our attendance, contributions and our distinct group dynamic with these names—like the New Orleans Boys (or NOB), and the Boys of Atlanta (BOA). Most all of us were just scraping by, working shifts for gasoline and cocktail money, but groups of us traveled to support the charitable efforts of the others.

This particular year, my blue, 1976 4-door Volvo station wagon, a hearse-like vessel, became my chariot of righteous absurdity. New Orleans, French Quarter; seven men, one hotel room, trading the floor for the walk-in closet, just to be present at Halloween New Orleans to benefit Project Lazarus.

Our hand-made Trojan soldier costumes took us weeks to make - cutting vinyl, burning fingers with hot glue guns. They were extravagant, not because they were beautiful, but because they were so well-coordinated – and witty. This year's double entendre, "Play It Safe—Take a Trojan to Bed!", pinned onto our breastplates, was our offering—a plea, a joke, and a challenge all at once.

Friends and I were not just raising money for the cause in Birmingham; we were investing in the brotherhood. A tireless commitment to the broader development of the ASO’s around the South. The success of Halloween New Orleans—now over four decades strong and still supporting men and women living with HIV/AIDS—was our collective, yearly proof that the effort, the sacrifice, was valid. It was our crusade.

The Warehouse Costume Party

I was now twenty-something, a kid who had fled to Birmingham years before at 19, just to learn the rudimentary mechanics of being a gay man. But New Orleans, with its intoxicating blend of European decay and decadent lifestyle, was all at once a shock to the system, and fascinating! The scale of the Saturday night costume party, held in the massive, echoing warehouse on the Mississippi, was the physical manifestation of a world I only faintly grasped. It was a mass of humanity, yes, but a mass with a singular mission—to meet, to remember, and to fund the necessary structures of survival.

My previous existence had been mostly defined by the borders of Alabama. My mind, my empathy, my self-awareness—it was all localized. But here, shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of men from Atlanta, Houston, Miami, New York – and places I’d never heard of – the map of my life abruptly, profoundly, broadened. This was where the brotherhood lived. The shared experience, the dark humor, the tireless commitment that transcended our state lines. It was a baptism in a new, necessary kind of belonging. It changed me; it forced the realization that I had a place in the world far beyond the confines I had known.

And then, in the midst of this overwhelming, collective roar, our eyes connected.

He stood in clean linen, a stark, quiet contrast to my ludicrous helmet and vinyl skirt. The noise of the three thousand men and women, the music, the laughter—it all receded, becoming a distant hum. Charlie. 

It began with a look, a small, knowing upturn of a lip, in a costume-filled warehouse. He simply said with a twinkle in his eyes - "A Trojan. I like the branding."

The challenge was delivered. My world was broadening. The personal work begins. The narrative of doing was over; the narrative of becoming had started.

Part II: Prince Charlie

The flowers arrived on a Tuesday. A dozen roses. They sat on my desk, bright red, an offense to the neutral institutional palette of my office. My colleagues, my friends, were as shocked as I was. I had never, in my life, received flowers. Not for anything. From anyone.

For years, I was the sort of man other men simply re-noticed. One hundred and thirty-five pounds, still torturing that same mouse-colored hair that defied all attempts at discipline. Not a compelling package. I was a year into my studies—MBA and Public Health—and had already survived four on-again, off-again years with my first significant other.  So, I knew the mechanics of love and relationships, but I had never been pursued. Certainly not by anyone like Charlie.

Charlie was the live embodiment of Prince Eric from Disney’s Little Mermaid - and in many ways, the gay ideal. I start my description with this, because Charlie was a so striking. Everyone immediately loved and adored him. 

Who could resist that smile, those sparkling blue eyes? 

I chose the metaphor of Prince for Charlie because that was the role closest to the one he occupied in New Orleans gay society. The community there had developed almost as a dark mirror image of the city’s high society—formal, hierarchical, and seemingly ancient. With his youth, charm and good looks, Charlie had become its favored son, adored by all its social arbiters.

It only helps explain why I was so gobsmacked to be pursued by him. At the time, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast seemed a more fitting metaphor for our pairing - this seemingly absurd match. But maybe, given the transformation I would soon undertake, it’s a perfect one.

The first night—before we became intimate—he took a quiet moment to tell me he was positive. It was an act of profound, terrifying honesty. It was his condition, but it became my choice. We dated long-distance for thirteen months, Birmingham to New Orleans, missing only two weekends.

I held my own against the upper crust of his society friends. I grew to be accepted, befriended. But probably because of the sheer, unlikely audacity of our match—my distinct lack of equal appearance and charm—many of his closest friends offered me their pity disguised as sympathy: “How tough it must be,” they’d voice, “to be the ‘other’... the one cursed to live in the shadow of the shining light that is Charlie.”

After over a year, Charlie asked me to move in with him in New Orleans. He had never lasted more than a few months with anyone. He had never lived with anyone. He had certainly never presented anyone for approval by the courts of New Orleans gay society. The acceptance felt like victory. Coincidentally, I had been recruited by Caremark for a job there, so the move was on.

I left Birmingham on December 6th, 1990. I left the deepest friendships I had ever known. I left my academic and professional careers. I left my volunteer work at Birmingham AIDS Outreach. I left it all to become “Charlie’s boyfriend.”

The challenge was accepted, but the reality was a sudden, icy shock. I hadn't fully considered the duties and responsibilities of this new role—and the profound loss of my own agency. I was meant to be an appendage, a mere extension of someone else, cast as a supporting character in Charlie's story. My world was indeed broadening, yet I was utterly miserable. Then, a clarity broke through the darkness: a single, decisive question. Could I possibly become the ideal myself, rather than simply being with the ideal? The choice became clear, and I made it almost overnight. I would map out my own journey, a transformation on my own terms.

So, on December 28th, 1990, I abruptly broke it off with Charlie. I’m certain he thought, It must just be a case of cold feet. Who could imagine that the partner he’d chosen—the one blessed to be with him—would ever leave? Never.

I signed a lease on a fourth-floor walk-up in the newly gentrified warehouse district. I lived there for eight months before accepting a transfer to Atlanta. I moved on to continue my adventure: another geographical and professional shift, another push of the reset button, a continuation to strive to become the gay ideal.

Of course, I soon heard Charlie was furious. He was embarrassed. Mortified. How could I have done this? How could anyone deny Charlie, turn their back and walk away, with all of New Orleans gay society watching? It was unforgivable.

Charlie was my number two. My second significant other, and my first sero-discordant relationship—a distinction that had surprisingly little to do with the flowering or demise of our relationship.

My personal and professional adventures carried me back through Atlanta and eventually to South Beach. By this time, I had acquired my third partner—and my second consecutive partner who was positive.

But I had become a study in conscious, desperate design. I was spending up to two hours daily building and finely tuning a physical appearance that, by most external metrics, was the very ideal of the gay man. This ideal seemed to be validated during our travels to social and fundraising events, a circuit that spanned the country, even internationally. Like in the Disney film, the ‘beast’ was now transforming to be a prince himself.

Then one evening my phone rang. Charlie's best friend was calling.

“John - I’m calling about Charlie. He’s in intensive care. Doctors don’t expect him to live through the weekend. He’s asking for you, John. He’s in and out of consciousness, but when he’s lucid he asks to see you - before it’s too late. Can you come?”

How could I not. I called the airline, booked a ticket and flew to New Orleans the next morning.

There I sat at his bedside. He was gaunt. One could hardly reconcile that the man in front of me was Prince Charlie. He looked so frail and vulnerable. There I sat for maybe an hour, holding his hand, before he woke and turned to look at me.

His voice was a whisper. He said, “John”... “John, I’m so glad you’re here.” “John - I don’t have long, you know.” “John - I just wanted to say - needed for you to know…”

He paused.

“John…” and then with a much clearer voice, he squeezed my hand and said, “I want you to know that I’ll never, ever forgive you for what you’ve done to me.”

I was shocked, even breathless for a second. Shaking my hand from his grip, I turned, left the room, went back to the airport and flew back to Miami. I was disappointed - and certainly angry, but maybe I also felt it was fair vengeance. The twist, of course, is that he didn’t die that weekend. His condition improved, and he went back to live at home.

And me? I was back in South Beach, enjoying my daily grind for another beautiful winter season on the Beach. 

In August, the phone rang - Charlie’s best friend again.

“John - I’m calling about Charlie. He’s in intensive care again. Doctors don’t expect him to live through the weekend. He’s asking for you, John. Can you come before it’s too late?”

I replied: “Call me when he dies. I’ll come to the funeral.”

Charlie died August 14, 1996.  

I attended his funeral - and met his parents for the first time.

A Full Life's Circle Drawn

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” T.S. Eliot, of course. A tidy little package for a complicated journey.

1982. The move. I arrived in Birmingham for UAB.  Attempting the tentative role of ‘young gay man,’ I was drawn by the inevitable to settle into The Claridge in what was then simply Southside. The building had once been grand; by the time I took up residence, it was merely old—a comfortable, aging repository for retired women, but also a rising tide of gay men and artists. A fitting stage, perhaps, for that first, dizzying exploration.

Now, at 63, I am back. Diagonal across the street from that first perch, a full life's circle drawn. The district now prefers the grander title of Highland Park, better reflecting its historic roots.

The avenue itself, Highland Avenue, built to endure, wears its history with a crumbling dignity. Its canopy of trees—proud veterans of the closing years of the 19th century—are aflame now in the Fall of the year. Shimmering yellow, golden, and red, they catch the pink and orange exhale of the sunset, a spectacle thrown back at the mountain by the low setting sun. And in comparison, it is the Autumn of my life, as well.

I am settling now into the curated quietude of my new iteration, the well-dressed, somewhat erudite older gay man. My residence is a beautiful, if stark, Brutalist tower, a sharp vertical contrast to the aged boulevard. Yet, its community is a soft landing. It's filled with lovely, caring, and interesting retirees—many of them gay men I’ve known lo these many years, now rich with shared adventures and travels.

The sidewalks here—wide, once grand—are cracked and buckled. And my joints, too, are making their objections known. We are both showing the signs of age, Highland Park and I. But there is a beautiful patina to it, a rich wear that speaks not of defeat, but of having endured, of having seen things.

I sit now, where I began, filled with gratitude, really seeing and knowing Highland Park for the first time.