Before I dive into the new blog whole hog, perhaps I should provide a bit of an introduction. To have some sense of context for the ideas I present in this blog, I think you, Dear Reader, should have some sense of who I am as a thinker, as an activist and as a human being. 

Actually, the trinity of self-descriptors I usually employ is “writer, raconteur and bon vivant.” I have long had a deep affection for storytellers, starting with my sweet, loving, perfectly imperfect father, who was a powerful storyteller of the first order. Of all the stories we tell, perhaps none is so important as the stories we tell about ourselves. It should come as no surprise that one of the central motifs of so much in Queer fiction takes the form of the “coming out” story. 

Coming out stories often function as a critical pivot in the development of our unique,  individual identities – the story of who we are, when let go and break with the demands and expectations of hetero-domination – be that from biological family, the Church or society at large. 

For now, though, I will save my coming out story for another time, and speak through the lens of the cultural context that helped shape my identity. I find that the older I get the more aware I become of generational factors and how the culture of my youth and young adulthood informed my sense of self. 

I’m a Gen-x’er – a child of the 1980s – of Ronald Reagan, Madonna, the Golden Girls and the Cosby Show – and of course the AIDS pandemic. Someone who came of age in the 1990s, when Queer Nation and ACT-UP were grabbing headlines and challenging the complacency of mainstream LGBT activism. They were also  the sex panic years when some prominent voices within the Queer community contributed to a “sex panic” ethos that demonized sexual promiscuity and further stigmatized people living with AIDS. It was, in many ways, a terrifying time to come into one’s sexuality. 

I remember seeing Gaetan Dugas (the infamous, erroneously named “Patient Zero” in Randy Shilts’s AIDS expose And The Band Played On) plastered across People Magazine with a headline that said something like “the man who brought AIDS to North America.” And my first thought was “wow, he’s hot.” And that was followed by terror at the thought that would surely have slept with “the man who brought AIDS to North America” if had had the chance. For the record, Mr. Dugas did NOT bring AIDS to North America, and shame on Mr. Shilts for making that gay brother a global pariah. 

My response to this volatile admixture of sexuality  and activism, fear and desire, moved in different sometimes conflicting directions. On the one hand, I found the righteous anger and  raw power of direct action activism as embodied by ACT-UP and Queer Nation exhilarating. On the other hand, I was a rather genteel, people-pleasing, Son of the South, whose natural inclination was work within the system to effect change. So I founded a chapter of ACT-UP in Dallas, but also embarked on a career as an “AIDS professional” that spanned 30+ years. 

My AIDS-related work ran the gamut from being federal HIV prevention grants monitor and reviewing HIV-related grant applications for the CDC, to doing HIV prevention research for the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) and direct service helping to connect guys recently diagnosed with HIV to health care services and social support. 

Outside my professional work in the AIDS field, social activism has also played a large role in my sense of self.  From my ACT-UP activism in the 1990s to joining the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in San Francisco in 2009, to my current involvement with the Radical Faeries of Texas, Queer political and social activism has been a defining characteristic of my life. 

Finally, another thread that has been consistently woven through my life journey and that has significantly shaped my identity is story telling. My days as student journalist gave me my first taste of the power of the pen. I went on to work as a technical writer related to HIV prevention and grant writing, and later to essays that I have penned regarding Queer culture over the years, as well as a lifetime of journal writing. Story telling has been a vital outlet for self-expression and my most consistent (and perhaps most effective) modality of self-care.

And so that pattern continues as I launch Speaking Queerly – a forum for sharing thoughts on all things Queer: politics and philosophy, culture and community, health and wellness, activism and entertainment. I hope this brief primer on how I see myself and my life experience provides some useful context for the various writings you’ll find on this blog.