HIV Superstar!!

I was on a billboard. I was on a billboard for AHF as one of the new faces of HIV. Smiling and Healthy and Muscular, I was part of their campaign designed to reach out to the increasingly relevant African American demographic. On buses, billboards, and magazines all over the city next to big red block letters that read “AIDS Healthcare Foundation”, there was my face staring me down with Xerox green malevolent eyes that seemed to say, “Hey, remember me? We have AIDS.” And then he - me - it - would continue down Santa Monica blvd; gleefully hanging off the side of a # 4 bus, broadcasting my face, his face, our face to the rest of the world. I had officially gone viral. (Get it, gone viral?)

I’d be having coffee at Starbucks in West Hollywood; writing in my leather-bound notebook - looking all intellectual and datable; and a cute chubby redheaded stranger in a form-fitting bright blue t-shirt would come up to me and introduce himself: “Hi I’m Mark!” and just as I would begin to imagine our wedding pictures and create lists of names for our little curly haired mixed race children, he would add “Sorry to interrupt, but are you that guy with AIDS?” And heartbroken I would put on a bright polite smile and say “Yup, that’s me: the guy with AIDS; nice to meet you.”

It was like that episode of “Friends” where Joey gets an add campaign for “STD Awareness” and all of sudden the sexiest guy in the world has no sex appeal at all because everyone thinks he has herpes or syphilis or gonorrhea; and so the shenanigans ensue as he’s desperately trying to explain to everyone and anyone that will listen that he’s an actor and that it’s not real…. “I don’t have an STD!!” he screams… Cue the laugh track and go to commercial. Accept for me there is no laugh track; this is real. I do have an STD; in fact I have THE STD; I have AIDS - and like it or not, I’m that Guy.

One of the 10 x 10,000 foot wide billboards with its all white backgrounds and all black faces stood on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax across from Sony Studios where my best friend works as a DVD distribution executive. She’s all cool and unflappable like Ralph Machio with Double D’s; or a diminutive James Dean - dressed in a black tie, white shirt, and matching black sweater vest and wingtip shoes; always leaning to one side with a cigarette, like the first lesbian to grace the cover of GQ. She’s what you would call a butch dike badass; but while my smiling face was floating across from her warm wood corner office, I would get daily pictures on my cell phone of her gesticulating like Donald Duck in a happy tantrum, or pointing out the window like a two year old at a balloon, or grinning like an idiot as she bragged at a gaggle of well dressed unimpressed co-workers: “That’s my best friend on that billboard out there. Yeah Him - The black guy with AIDS!”   

My mother carried copies of the add that she tore out of the LA Weekly. She kept them tucked away it in her favorite lime green pocket book, and if by accident she would come across one, pull it out, and like a magician in a magic act - TA DAH!! - She’d present it to startled waitresses while we ate burgers and fried macaroni cheese balls at the Cheesecake Factory at the Grove. “That’s my son” She’d say in her southern Baptist drawl pushing the crumpled paper into their face “Isn’t he handsome? I’m so proud of him… He has AIDS.” And the waitress would blush and nod. “Would you like more diet coke mam?”

I was an HIV Superstar!

That year AHF the largest AIDS medical care provider in the nation asked me to march in the Los Angeles Pride Parade. Their was a huge float, and music, and an army of about a hundred other little infected marchers… but they put me in the front about 30 paces ahead of everyone else - holding a banner of the add which had become a billboard, with my face on it; and wearing a t-shirt that read “Stay Negative” with the invisible postscript, “Because it’s already to late for me.” And I smiled and twirled and screamed my HIV pride to the masses, because I’m that guy… the one with AIDS: The Beautiful green eyed black guy living and thriving despite those three little letters: H. I. V.

I was on a fucking Billboard and I don’t care who knows it! 

So imagine my surprise when I found my tongue sticking when I met Juvy. Juvy is a five foot two inch Phillipina Jehovah’s Witness: with long black hair and round little librarian glasses that remind me of Velma from Scooby doo. She is warm and soft spoken and kind, with that bright up-beat optimistic energy that true believers always seem to have.  And every time I go to pay my rent, I pull up a chair and talk shop: Jesus talk like you wouldn’t believe. 1 Corinthians 13:13; Galatians 5:22; the mysterious lands East of Eden where Cain found his wife; the complex relationship between Job; The Devil, and God; and the scriptural passages in Mathew and Mark that hint at the idea that everyone may already be saved.  We go on like that for hours: intricate intellectual stories of salvation, magical imagery, and metaphysical poetry that most people barely understand let alone, care about. But here we speak the same language.  And let the record state that that bitch knows her shit. Not the bullshit watered down diarrhea they preach from the pulpit, but the real shit you find in the bible. The real “Love thy neighbor,” “According to thy own faith let it be.” shit! I love her. She’s just the landlord’s assistant, but because of her my rent was lowered to satisfy my section 8 requirement.  The section 8 that I have because I have AIDS. Did I mention that I have AIDS? It’s kind of my thing; I was even on a billboard.

But guess who doesn’t know this? Juvy doesn’t - Because I haven’t told her - And she’s asked…  “So Corey, why do you have Section 8? Don’t you have to have a disability? You look so healthy.” And instead of putting my hand on my hip and flipping my imaginary blond wig to one side and proclaiming in my best gay boy voice. “Bitch I’m on a motherfucking Billboard!” I giggle, throw my eyes hard against the office carpet floor and say something cute like you’d think I was too pretty to be on disability huh?”  Or blush demurely and hide truth with more truth. “I am very blessed.  I have” I pause, “a disease that a few years ago brought me very close to death; if you would have seen me at that time in my life you wouldn’t have recognized me; and so now, most of my time and energy is spent just trying to keep myself from going back there…” and suddenly there is gravity in the room. Suddenly there is atmosphere, silence, and shame in the room. My thoughts are revolving around themselves; there is a vacuum of space where my fearlessness used to be; and in the air there are dust particles of things left unsaid brushing softly against our multi-ethnic skin.  And she nods, touches my hand, and never brings it up again. Because this she understands: Miracles and resurrections have become the fabric of our conversations. Being stricken by a tragic and incurable decease and three years later having no visible signs of such a horrible and unspeakable plague is nothing I would ever have to explain to her: Those are things that are synonymous with God, and Grace, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  But what I can’t seem to articulate, and what I don’t think I would able to defend, is how one gets to be celebrated on a billboard just for being an addict and a whore; and letting hundreds of men fuck him bareback in a bathhouse downtown… So instead I change the subject, tell a joke, and begin another round of conversations about forgiveness and prayer and the origins of original sin.

What happens if you fall in love with a writer?

Lots of things might happen. That’s the thing about writers. They’re unpredictable. They might bring you eggs in bed for breakfast, or they might all but ignore you for days. They might bring you eggs in bed at three in the morning. Or they might wake you up for sex at three in the morning. Or make love at four in the afternoon. They might not sleep at all. Or they might sleep right through the alarm and forget to get you up for work. Or call you home from work to kill a spider. Or refuse to speak to you after finding out you’ve never seen To Kill A Mockingbird. Or spend the last of the rent money on five kinds of soap. Or sell your textbooks for cash halfway through the semester. Or leave you love notes in your pockets. Or wash you pants with Post-It notes in the pockets so your laundry comes out covered in bits of wet paper. They might cry if the Post-It notes are unread all over your pants. It’s an unpredictable life.

But what happens if a writer falls in love with you?

This is a little more predictable. You will find your hemp necklace with the glass mushroom pendant around the neck of someone at a bus stop in a short story. Your favorite shoes will mysteriously disappear, and show up in a poem. The watch you always wear, the watch you own but never wear, the fact that you’ve never worn a watch: they suddenly belong to characters you’ve never known. And yet they’re you. They’re not you; they’re someone else entirely, but they toss their hair like you. They use the same colloquialisms as you. They scratch their nose when they lie like you. Sometimes they will be narrators; sometimes protagonists, sometimes villains. Sometimes they will be nobodies, an unimportant, static prop. This might amuse you at first. Or confuse you. You might be bewildered when books turn into mirrors. You might try to see yourself how your beloved writer sees you when you read a poem about someone who has your middle name or prose about someone who has never seen To Kill A Mockingbird. These poems and novels and short stories, they will scatter into the wind. You will wonder if you’re wandering through the pages of some story you’ve never even read. There’s no way to know. And no way to erase it. Even if you leave, a part of you will always be left behind. 

If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die. 

(Source: karenfelloutofbedagain, via coitusandcopouts)

The Magic

Behind his back they use to say that he was magic; that his mother and father made a deal with one of the lower demons to have a child - A beautiful child; A blond haired blue eyed child - A boy – A beautiful boy:  A boy with broad shoulders, a brilliant smile, a noble spirit, and the steel tongued charisma of his mother - A boy that women would want and that men would envy. And he was that; except for the color. The boy was born black: The color of secret contracts; signatures in ink; and sex in backrooms. But he was beautiful… and popular… and brilliant… and everything else his parents had bargained for; but no matter how hard he tried, he could not hide the magic.  It danced around him like a song. It was in his blood.  His wrists and hips moved like they had no bones. When he spoke you could hear whispers of secret sacred lisping languages. And he had gifts that were ungodly, unnatural, and lovely: Eyes the color of absinthe and jade, lips that tasted of cinnamon and syrup, and the affectations of a princess in a parade. He covered everywhere he went with a dust that sparkled like diamonds in starlight; it made him shine like lemonade on a summer day, like something more than human.

The children could tell he was magic. They knew he could cast spells to make boys do things with boys that boys don’t do with other boys. He made boys feel like men; and made men feel like boys again, like some ancient Hindu dark skinned god of desire.  But they say in his heart he carried a curse. They say that if you kiss him your parents will find you dead in your bedroom covered in lesions and purple spots - smelling of your own shit with a note taped to your headboard that reads: “I’m sorry; I could not help who I loved.”

He walks the halls between 5^th and 6^th period like a character on a Primetime CW sitcom: dressed in his daddy’s money; beautiful and charming; colored in pink cardigans and Tiffany bracelets; and glowing like a faggot on fire.  They tell the new kids who are mesmerized and dumbstruck (and eager to not be alone), not to follow him. “Do not fall in love with him.” They say, “We think he is a fairy.  He is magic. There is poison in his blood; there is addiction in his touch; and we promise you, if you fall in love with him, you will not survive it.”

The End

The Dating Profile Of A Mad Man

So this is the story. I’m single at 35. I’m Gay, Christian, Kinky, Monogmouse Minded and a Bottom. I’m Black. I have a Genius I.Q. and an awful work ethic. I’m HIV positive and I use to be a meth addict. You can usually find all of this out after one conversation with me. I’m not very good with secrets or privacy; in fact honesty pours from lips like vomit from a drunk girl at a frat party.  Some say I’m fearless; smarter minds say it’s an “open” colored band-aid used to cover up my razor thin slowly bleeding insecurities. I say it’s a little bit of both. 

I see the world as a conceptual journey of metaphysical theory held together in physical form. This opens the door to more than a few spiritual and intellectual eccentricities. I’m bizarre: weird and undeniably queer; but it usually doesn’t bother me because I am not defined by the components that compose me, and I am rarely impressed by things like “fact,” “reality,” or how well one navigates this world because it’s all make-believe anyway. You and I are but figments of God’s imagination. And anything that is linear or tangible bores me.

But the thing about being strange is that there is a ten foot brick wall between you and everyone else. And when your thoughts are no longer digestible by the people around you, you begin to starve. Rewind – Scratch the record- Let’s start that sentence again: When your thoughts are no longer digestible by the masses around you, there is a full fledged fly-on-shit famine! And you become the only one sitting in a pink and purple room of white napkins and long-stem glassware, dining on shrimp cakes and Chinese broccoli with crispy pork. Mmmm… that shit is Delicious!

I’m not hungry on my side of the wall; there are all kinds of wonderful treats locked in the Wonka Factory. “Snozzberry!?  Who ever heard of a Snozzberry?!”

You see I like being crazy. I like being the strange guy in the corner writing circular scribbles on crumpled pieces of paper with broken bits of blue and yellow crayon. I like mumbling scripture in iambic pentameter after quantifying Plato’s and Kierkegaard’s notes into Tangent and Cosine. I’d like it even more if you knew what the Hell I was talking about - if you would hold my hand walking down the street and kiss me gently on the back of my neck while playing videogames in my bedroom. I would like it very much if your “I love you’s” came with a seat next to me in church; a traditional play of gender rolls where I pretended to be the pretty girl in a 1950’s porno movie; and the blind brave trust to say “yes” to me more often then you say “no”. 

If you’ll be brave enough to be the sane one in my bubbling Bunsen-burner laboratory of mad existential science, I would be yours forever. “Till death do us part.”  Or for as long and the Universe continues to expand.

But if not… I’m okay being alone.

I have a 9 inch big black dick that I masturbate on the regular. I have a box full of giant sized dildoes that get plenty of attention. I have a bible, and books, and a new puppy, and three BOMB ASS best friends, and the internet, and Socrates, and this guy named Jesus, and his dad: the creator of String Theory; Advance Applied Physics; and the Mass Acceleration Equation, and I have a laugh that makes strangers cross the street through on-coming traffic just to tell me how beautiful they think I am. Believe me; I’ll be fine. I’m an only child: I am thoroughly self-contained. My emotions are well ordered mechanics on a machine.  But I also have LOVE hand written in a secret language across my back, and I am seeking a compassionate witness.

Be my compassionate witness. And I will do my best to be yours.

I am not a Cylon. I am no the Messiah. I am not a self-actualized fully evolved human being. I’m a weirdo. I’m a dork. I am an Existential Geek. I’m the misfit girl with a cockney accent who wears too much make-up. I’m the goofy guy with vanity glasses who no one ever seems to get. But there is an order to my chaos - a brilliance hidden in the mess…. I just need you to listen long enough to figure out the code.