Way Back When?

Here's something new. I've decided to horrify or delight you (you pick) with some pictures that no one has seen for decades. This picture is me from a production of The Lion In Winter, where I played King Phillip. Oh, she loved her faux fur collar and big puffy sleeves.

This was when I still lived in Western New York, and according to the bio in the program, I was a student at SUNYBuffalo at the time, which would make this about 1982-83 or there about. Here is the Wikipedia description of the King Phillip character from the play:

(Male, 18) He has been King of France for three years. He is not initially as accomplished as Henry in manipulating people, but seems to acquire greater skills at this during the play. He is impressive and handsome without being pretty.

I have always loved this play, and if you ever get the chance to see the movie version, it's wonderful, with exceptional performances by Peter O'Toole and Katie Hepburn. It was nominated for 7 Academy awards including Best Picture.

The reason I even have the scrapbook out is because I'm trying to decide if I should join the lemmings going over the cliff and get a Facebook account. I recently found a Facebook page dedicated to my upcoming 30th High School reunion, but I can't decide if I want to go or even to contact the Facebook page with my info. And then just the other day I stumbled across a Facebook page dedicated to a nightclub revue called Bravo Broadway that I appeared in during my early 20's. The cast rotated in and out periodically as did the band members, and I occasionally look back on those days with a wince and a smile.

Part of me wants to reach out and re-connect, even if only through The Internets, with some people, but part of me is afraid to find out just how much, and how many of them, I really don't remember.

6 Interviews And 8 Lbs. Later ...

I still don't have a full time job but my clothes fit very well.

Oleta Adams - Live

Just because I felt like it. This is music kids, and what the nice lady is doing is called singing. You know what you don't hear? That damn tinny ringing underneath from the auto-tune. Oleta don't need no friggin' auto-tune. Learn it.

New Study: HIV+ Life Expectancy

Two European studies presented at a recent Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections seem to show that recently diagnosed HIV patients, as well as those with high CD4 counts when beginning treatment, can probably expect normal to near-normal life expectancies.

I'm paraphrasing wildly, and you can read the whole article here, but in essence they are claiming that people who have been diagnosed later than 1998, don't have other issues like IV drug use and failure to adhere to treatment, and are able to begin treatment before their T-Cell counts drop severely below 500 can pretty much expect to live as long as anybody else.

Barring falling air-conditioners and runaway buses.

Work, Bitch

Compared to what I've been living through in January and February, my phone is ringing off the hook. I had a job interview on Monday that was horrible. The rude fucker actually took two phone calls while we were meeting and stifled a yawn right in my face while I was answering a question. I swear, the next interviewer that answers his phone after asking me something is going to get his Crackberry snatched out of his hand and hurled in to a wall. Not that it will get me a job but I doubt he'll ever do it again.

Yesterday I had a much better interview that I am hopeful about, and I have another set for tomorrow afternoon. They are both part-time, temp work doing parties and events which is what I'm doing now, but if I have to string together two part-time jobs to make one full work week, well then I'll count myself lucky versus all the people who still can't get any work at all.

And just this afternoon I got a schedule of bookings for next week for my current temp job and I'm booked every day next week except Sunday.

It will be nice to make some good money.

UPDATE: Holy crap! I don't know what changed but I now have two more interviews set up for the next few days. That makes 5 in one week. Up from zero for months now. Months.

When It Hits 180 Sell!

Let's not sugar-coat things, in the three years since I got sober I have also got fat. I only gained about 5 lbs. after I quit smoking (8 years ago!!), but I put on a full 25lbs. (more or less) after I quit drinking. And that is why you stopped seeing my in my next-to nothing pictures, because there was soooo much more of me to see, and the internets are already chock full of pictures of flabby, middle-aged pervs.

Now, I was really thin in my early twenties, and barely cracked 150 when I was drinking and started seeing Dr.'s and getting weighed fairly regularly. After I got sober, I was too preoccupied (at first) to notice that the scale was inching higher and higher. Once I did notice, I kind of thought "fuck it, I have no vices left, leave me be with my ice cream". That attitude quickly extended to entire loaves of garlic bread. And cookies. And all manner of sugary goodness. As well as 1/2 a pound of pasta.

And you can see where this is going and how, can't you? But I did finally start to panic when I crossed the 175 mark and was spending time flirting with 178. 180 was lurking just around the corner and considering the most I had weighed up till then was 160 pounds right after high school, 180 lbs. felt like the point of no return.

True to form I always push things right to the edge, almost daring fate to take a disastrous turn, only to pull back at the last minute. And it appears that my ever-expanding waistline is no exception. Right around the beginning of February I went back on the South Beach diet, and by my birthday I had lost about 5 lbs. Tonight at the gym I crossed back over the 170 mark and came up around 168 or so.

I've been on the most restrictive part of the SB diet -Phase 1, for three weeks. No bread, no pasta, no rice, no fruit, lots of protein and tons of green leafy things. I'm supposed to move in to Phase 2 this week, but considering I aim to lose 8 more pounds I am reluctant to do so. I couldn't stand having eggs for breakfast one more day so I switched to a bran muffin (fiber) and I added yogurt to my lunch and an apple for fruit the last two days. That is all Phase 2 food but I don't feel it's a problem since I still haven't had any pasta or bread. At all. And the french fries, although missed, aren't really a problem, but I do find that I miss my dear friends pizza and ice cream. My beloved ice cream.

How I long for you...

Have Some Numbers, Make It Last

Tuesday morning doctor's appointment was a follow up to my labs. I find myself faced with a dilemma. And I don't think I will be posting or talking about my lab results any more. Unless something happens worth talking about. You see I'm about as healthy as a person can get, and I have been for some time.

Everything in my blood work came back normal. Liver function, kidney function, red blood cells, white blood cells - normal normal check and check. The iron supplements are keeping my hereditary anemia in check. My cholesterol HDL/LDL is wonderful, my blood pressure is textbook. I'm not at risk for diabetes.

I've lost 6 pounds (intentionally) and while I'm shooting for 15lbs. total I will be happy when I get to 10.

My viral load is undetectable, and has been for almost four years. My T-Cell count is now 1053. Which is pretty fuckin' high.

And what I'm feeling lately when it comes to HIV, while not complacency, is a sense that I've fought the good fight. And won for now. I'm not proposing that I discontinue my quarterly labs, nor make any changes to my current drug regimen. I will continue to keep my appointments.

I just feel like I don't want to talk about it any more.

It's almost as if my identity, my sense of self, has been wrapped up in my being HIV+. But the fact is, or facts are, if you want to base it on my blood work, that I am absolutely fine, and I have been for quite some time. I dare say I know more about my health, the current state of how my body is functioning, than a lot of the people now reading this.

I don't walk around thinking that the lump behind my earlobe is a tumor. I don't worry that the lower back pain I get is some sort of Lifetime Television for Women spinal cancer. When I catch a cold I think it's just a cold and I know I will get better. I get a flu shot every winter because I don't want the flu. I'm not afraid I'll end up with PCP. I don't believe that writing this post will somehow rain death and illness upon my house.

Because I'm not sick. I'm not.

But I spent the first few years after my diagnosis thinking of myself as sick, and I guess I was. Unfortunately it sort of stuck, or I did. But now I'm better. And now I find myself thinking of the future, of where I want to go, what I want to do next. And I don't want to think of it, or accomplish it, or conquer it or even begin the next chapter as someone who is ill.

I'm just me. A middle aged HIV+ gay guy who is just fine. Maybe better than fine.

Thank you.

You Go Lady!

Johnny Weir holds a press conference in Vancouver following some ugly remarks made by Quebec sportscasters calling him a "bad example" and stating that he "should pass a gender test".



And then there's this:

Gym Etiquette

The NY Times runs a complaint box column, basically an Op-Ed area for the masses, which typically just ends up to be a place were one New Yorker complains about the behavior of other New Yorkers, and then hundreds of other New Yorkers write in to second that complaint, take the opposing viewpoint, or point out other things that other New Yorkers do to drive them crazy.

Last week the subject was the clusterfuck that gym noobs, typically found in large quantities every January and February, cause for those of us who work out on a more regular basis, and have been for years. I've written before about the phenomenon, complete with brand new gym "outfits" instead of clothes, along with matching sneakers. You can spot a gym neophyte that won't be around past March if he or she is working out with makeup and/or jewelry on.

The article is pretty typical, along with an accompanying piece about the proliferation of people that insist on updating their twitter feed, or worse (IMO) making phone calls in the locker room.

What I found most amusing, as always, were the comments from the rest of New York, most of whom had an entire other litany of complaints, as well as those who basically begged for tolerance and patience, as gym novices be given the time and instruction to, you know, get off the phone and get the hell out of the way.

But there was one gem amongst all the other "Me too's":

Guys who put their shod feet on benches in the locker room to tie their laces. How witless can you get?

"Shod?" "laces?" "witless?" - where does this guy work out? A 19th century YMCA? And what is the objection/obsession I've discovered peeving New Yorkers about sneakers touching seating areas? There was a similar outburst when a subway rider was recently ticketed for putting his feet up in a car at 2:30am. People passed right over the outrage the article meant to invoke and went on and on about how filthy and nasty it is to put your sneaker on a seat. I wouldn't think twice about putting my foot on a bench in the locker room to tie my sneaker. Would you? Am I missing something?

Or is this another case where, in a city of 9 million people, someone will always be pissed off about something?

Meanwhile ... I'm having some serious connectivity issues, and I got Verizon on the phone to test my line. While at first he was claiming that everything was A-OK, my insistence that it most assuredly was not led him to run another diagnostic, which revealed that it's a miracle I can even post this blog piece. A repairman is coming on Wednesday so hopefully I'll be zipping along The Internets in a day or so.

One Year Closer To A Dirt Nap

If you haven't got me a present yet I would really like one of these.