Angels

I started writing this blog 18 months ago on Thanksgiving. The growth I've experienced since then has been gargantuan. The love (of myself) that I've gained, the heartbreak that has been inflicted on me by people I've trust have equally made me a better person.

For the first time in two years, I can honestly say that I'm proud of myself. I work for the "Best Company to Work For" (at least that's what they tell you). I went from having a viral load of almost 1 million and a CD4 count of 8 to being HIV undetectable and out of the AIDS diagnosis.

That didn't come without struggles. My skin reacted so violently to immune reconstitution I had acne and masking that transformed my appearance into something I could barely stand seeing in the mirror. I had sleepless nights back home in the midwest job hunting before relocating to California to start my life over.

Start over. Funny I say that because I've been here just six months and I'm ready to do it again. It's time. I've been searching for my peace, how to

When You're Strange

The Doors are such an iconic band. From their awesome music catalog with liberating messages that saved lives and made babies during the peace and sexual revolution in the 1960's and 70's to the life and death of their troubled and beautiful lead singer, Jim Morrison, they're forever etched in history as one of the greatest bands.

I was first introduced to the band as a boy in elementary school when I heard their classic, "People Are Strange", while watching the 1980's horror classic The Lost Boys with my mother. She always had a knack for introducing my siblings and I to iconic films and artists from the 80's. She lived her early adult life in that time period and the music, film and culture has transcended time barriers and still remains relevant today. I'll always thank her for that.

Regarding this piece, I just feel fucking strange. Some days I think it's all in my head, but most days it's so evident that it can be proven scientifically.

I try not to let things alter my mood and stress impact my outlook, but like most people, that can be hard.

This month I realized that 3 months in I don't like my job. It's the number one place to work according to every revered publication and has great benefits, but at the end of the day I'm not certain it's a great fit.

I experienced a honeymoon phase with the Bay Area, the natural beauty, the "newness" and finally landing some gay friends, but all of those feelings are sailing away.

The truth is, I have a job where I work 10-12 hours a day and commute 3 to 4 hours on top of that. I can go a whole day and not see one person that looks like me and the guys here aren't into black men, black men included.

So when you're dark skinned, HIV positive and living in the Bay, you're essentially the epitome of Ellison's best work.

Reacting to that I found myself doing things I would never do before and connecting with people out of desperation that I probably wouldn't elsewhere.

I started hanging out with an escort and as we all know, birds of a feather flock together. So I started his line of work. I didn't need the money, but I was connecting with him as another gay black man in the area. I wasn't having sex voluntarily so I figured what the hell.

That ended up biting me in the ass, socially. This week two guys that I met online, a fat one I never had any real interest in in the Bay and a "sexually liberated" one that discovered me on xtube that lives in LA that I'll refer to as "smooches" due to his ass tattoos, both attacked me for being an escort. Called me fake, a liar, moral-less and one even said he was disgusted by me.

Well I'll let "Smooches" and the overweight guy go on with their lives. Truthfully one I just wanted sex from, he's a Beyonce stan (hate those) and the other just isn't physically attractive and his personality, needy and aggressive, just makes it worse.

Yeah, I was one of the Lost Boys myself, out here putting a price on my body, but what the hell. How long was I supposed to go without any sex? If I can't get it for free, why not get paid for it?

Moving along, I found myself becoming increasingly more isolated today. A friend of mine is visiting from Chicago this weekend and I couldn't hang out with him because after going to have sex with this guy I met on jack'd that turned out to be married, he and his spouse, who I both fucked, moved here from Atlanta where they met, for work.

Imagine that? Two guys meeting in Atlanta, falling in love and getting married. Take that haters!

I was traveling to visit my friend when I got into a collision this morning that totaled my car. I walked away with minor injuries and no car, so naturally I was in a bad mood today.

Between chubster, smooches, my job and this accident, I just want to go away. Somewhere. Not sure where.

A place where people accept young men with HIV and melanin in their skin as human beings. A place where I don't have to change my value system to fit in like in DC. A place where I can get lost. A place where I can be free.

I think I know where that is, I had the feeling once and I've been chasing it since.

One day I'm hoping to take a bite out of the Big Apple again. Until then faces will keep coming out of the rain and people will continue to forget my name.

- CGN

Weekend Inspiration: Fighting Words by Charles M. Smith

A couple of weeks ago, a guy here in the Bay Area gave me a book titled, Fighting Words, by Charles M. Smith. It's a collection of essays noting the struggles of gay black men and even though the book had many essays from the 1980's and early 90's, many of the issues from family abuse, unrequited love to acceptance still plague our community today.

Too Beautiful For Words

I've always been the kinda guy, that's had a lot to say. I say the things that are on my mind, but you hushed my mouth and stilled me

Welcome to Heartbreak

If there's an appropriate day to write this, each second is of the essence.

It's his birthday. He would've been 25. It's been a rather trying week and I was putting some lotion on this new tattoo I got in the bathroom at work when I got the text from my aunt. It was a plea to celebrate his life.

Reading the words of the text was painful. Thinking about his face is painful. Thinking about how his departure from my life nine years ago after nine months of suffering in a hospital is painful. The burial the day before my 16th birthday. The beginning of my search for myself, which has been nothing short of an odyssey until this point, has been rather painful.

Last weekend and a dinner table full of friends, mostly new, one old that I used to fuck (yes one of the few that actually reminded in my life after) were having a discussion about love. How it was defined, how we all experienced it and what we seek from it.

Some wanted a monogamous partnership, others experienced infatuation and connection. At the end of the dinner after realizing I sounded rather bitter because I had never experienced the sort of whimsical, romantic love talked about in Nick Sparks movies, songs from the '70's and legendary novels that have stood the test of time; it hit me. What I got from love was loss.

I define love as more than attraction and partnership. Love is eternal, it engulfs you and when you share it with someone you need it like your brain needs oxygen to function. After a few moments of without oxygen, even with the constant flow of blood to the brain, as the levels drop, it decays and ceases to function.

It's a rather morbid way to view my experience right now, but I know that's what has happened. People have come into my life and brought me nothing to sustain my spirit. I look back and found myself giving to others and when it was reciprocated, I didn't know how to receive it because the loss of love has damaged me to the point where I cannot process it's return.

It's not that I don't want to accept it, I can't recognize it to see, feel or taste it anymore. Maybe it's a defense mechanism because I believe loves is something that runs so deep between two people that it kills a part of each other if the other were to ever leave. Maybe it's because no one loves like I do, so when people outside of my closest family members tell me they love me I cannot return the sentiment.

The truth is nine years I learned what it was like to have my heartbroken; my world shattered. That's a pain that has, like love, endured the test of time. If I plan on living I cannot experience that pain again.

I can accept that I'm a broken person that is doing my best to overcome my disability, but if I ever get that kind of love from someone that I didn't grow with and develop an authentic understanding with, then I'm going to be a vegetable in this game.

Until someone comes along and shows me that they are committed to breathing the life into my blood that I lost almost a decade ago, I guess I'm going to be stuck in this vegetable state for the long haul.

- CGN

Iris

It's a cheesy 90's song with a message that's far too obvious to be clever, but Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls, ironically featured in the film City of Angels, really connects to this next post.

The fact is I don't want the world to see me, because I don't think that they'd understand.

The world, in this instance, would have to be a guy named "SEM".

"SEM" is a grad student, PROUD black gay man and an advocate for the use of PrEP, the preventative measure to protect against HIV transmission for the fortunate ones of us that are still negative, but want to play with the rest of us.

The reason I'm writing a post about "SEM" isn't because we had some sexual encounter; I didn't expose him to my tainted bodily fluids. The last night of the HIV conference in San Diego last month, I spoke with him on the phone about a few of my frustrations with being gay and black.

Now you're probably wondering why I decided to talk on the phone with someone I have never met and barely know about something so personal and raw, but it's because of how he presented himself of social media. He's intelligent, opinionated, informed and passionate about the subject.

In many ways, I want to be passionate and proud to be black and gay myself. So I decided to take a chance and lay it on him why I haven't been feeling the sentiments about my sexuality that he and his friends do.

In the typical pattern of tragedy with my life, I was wrong.

Not only did he not understand where I was coming from, he took anecdotal evidence from my blog and what I was presented on a former facebook page, despite having access to my authentic and more reserved one, to describe my situation as a calamity brought on myself by no one other than myself.

He told me that the reason that men consistently used me for sex was because I subconsciously wanted it. By talking about sex so candidly and freely, I invited it.

Additionally, I had no room to feel upset about my state of affairs because in fact, I AM NOT comfortable with my "true self" and living "in my truth".

He actually said the words, "you mean to tell me that you are comfortable living in your truth?"

Now the way I typed that may read as a gentle and honest questions, but his tone was filled with a bias and reluctance to listen to anything I was trying to convey to him. I was dismissed.

He even told me that I should care about PrEP and what it means to a community that was left me on the outside. I was infuriated.

I wasn't angry because he was telling me some truth that I was unwilling to accept, I was angry because despite telling him my story, and my experience, he didn't care.

With all of his education, experience and exposure to the community, he didn't care that I found out my status when my CD4 count was 8. He didn't care that my experience living in a transient, hypersexual city like Washington where men drive their behaviors underground and have risky sex contributed to my infection, my feelings of low self worth and overall dissatisfaction with my community.

He just didn't care and to make it worse, he let it be known that he didn't care.

His words were like daggers to the most sensitive places on my body. When I got off the phone with him that Sunday night, after staying up past my "bedtime". I cried.

For the first time in a long time, I cried. It was also the first time someone made me cry. Not because they were right, but because they were wrong and didn't care enough to listen when I was as open I've ever been.

I felt betrayed. Betrayed by myself for being that open with someone and betrayed because of all the strangers I've opened up to for understanding, he was the first one I EXPECTED empathy from.

Over the past few weeks we've had a few exchanges via text and a phone call with his apology, but I don't forgive him and I never will. For my sanity, I have to learn from him. Learn the dangers of trusting someone based on their "experience".

It's like going to a doctor when you have an issue that was need to be treated and expecting the doctor to have open ears about your pain and they pull out a textbook and find a diagnosis that just doesn't work for you.

Only this doctor was for my own sanity.

He had my blog address, which I doubt he's ever read and probably never will, so I'm more than comfortable writing this here. I'm comfortable not only because I've told him how I felt, but I need to put it down in these words so I never forget.

In the words of the Goo Goo Dolls:

"I just want you to know who I am."

- CGN

3005...more like 2014

I love discovering new music; especially if the beats are mellow mixed with some singing and rapping (clearly Drake is my bae for life). However if you look at my iPhone you'll probably find that my music selection is pretty vacant of anything particularly "new".

Lots of Kanye, lots of Drake, lots of random mash ups, some U2, the best of Michael and even more of Prince. I like what I like, what can I say?

However since I moved out here I discovered that I have a new found appreciate for Childish Gambino. Not because of his lyrics, I actually don't know what he raps about, but his beats are cool. It also helps that I've picked up a massive marijuana habit since I moved Cali (how cliche of me).
*you didn't think I was really that cool did you? lol

Anyway, I write that to say that I found Childish in a more intimate setting that his Governor's Ball performance earlier this year, but with this guy I met out here in the Bay. I'll call him "hippie", because dammit I think that's what he is.

He's ivy league educated, has locs down to his ass, he's light skinned and slender and from the DMV.

Overall he's a chill dude. He knows a lot and has no issue letting you know how smart he is (notice I used the word smart not intelligent, although he no doubt is both).

We started off well, he met my cousin, we talked about the prison industrial complex, talked about Detroit, shared a bit of what we wanted out of life and agreed to hang out 1 on 1. He took me bar hopping around Oakland, we ended up back at his place where he cuddled with me and watched TV.

Dammit did it go down from there.

We met on jackd and I don't know what it is about me, my passive demeanor, my face or physical shape (damn this fat ass), but unless I explicitly state how I get down dudes always think I'm a bottom. So "Hippie" did too.

He ended up smoking me out and then subsequently trying to bang me out over and over again.  Now in my mind, I wasn't going for it so I didn't care either way and I was totally for continuing our friendship.

That's where my emotional intelligence took a hit. At no point did I take into account that my rejection of his attempts to "court" and fuck me came across like I was a tease or not interested.

Honestly I just didn't care. If you want sex out of me nowadays, you're going to have to work a hell of a lot harder than the lucky dudes before. If you want to top me? You might be waiting until 3005 for that to happen.

I did start to notice something change in him though. He became a little distant and when we would actually meet he just wouldn't say shit. We had awkward silences and man were they awkward. You could almost cut the tension in the air with a knife, I didn't get why but there was certainly an elephant in the room and I did not see it.

So as time passed and I've been out here two months, our "friendship" has virtually died. A few dry "how are you?" and "wyd" texts have led to nothing. We just don't talk. No hard feelings, but that's how the cookie crumbled.

It wasn't until I met up with this guy, after busting my ass to reconnect with him after this east coast married asshole duped me into tag teaming him, did I realize a pattern in DMV guys that "hippie" also had. He just isn't genuine.

Granted there were a few red flags. The fact that he is bisexual, he is so invested in the term queer, he confessed to me that he slept around for a long time with men and women, he even told me that he "realized his power" in friendships/relationships due to the fact that he is "good" at sex and has a big penis (here we go nigga).

He ran the same game of "let's be friends" on the bottom kat and ended up smashing and never calling again. Same old games guys used to play in DC. Lead you on to beleive that your relationship with them is more than what it is and more than what they actually want; sex.

Granted I don't mind the occassional NSA hookup, but it's the emotional invest that makes it so deceptive. It's like dude...just be honest.

It made me realize that there are some truly evil people in the world. Whatever happened to them to make them that way, they never addressed so they're just fucked up. The worst part about bad people is that they ruin good people.

It happened to me once and I damn sure won't project that on anyone else. I've made some serious progress in that arena, but I've still got some scars.

For me at least, I'm not going to scar anyone in my own healing process. So adios "hippie" and good luck finding yourself and whatever the hell you're looking for. I just won't be around until 3005 to find out, I'm dipping out in 2014.

- CGN