At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, I came across the Pandemic Archive Project, an online collection of COVID-inspired artwork curated by New Orleans visual artist Grey Cross. As I browsed his website, which encourages artists to “always approach [their] art with a warrior’s spirit and a saint’s heart,” I became fascinated by his artwork. And so, recently, I connected with the artist to talk more about his art making process, and about using art to help refocus the public’s attention on HIV and other crises defining everyday life. Grey Cross fell in love with New Orleans during his trip ..read more

Evelyn is a 36-year-old school teacher in New York City. She has been teaching for eight years and enjoys many benefits, including a pension, 401k, and a solid health insurance plan which she pairs with a copay program to keep her medical costs manageable. What is not so manageable is the volume of student loans Evelyn has found herself saddled with ever since completing her master’s degree. Like many Americans, Evelyn has pursued higher education with the understanding that it would be an insurance policy, ensuring her financial security. Little did she realize at the time that a hefty studen ..read more

I started volunteering at Cedar Sinai in 1991 in the AIDS Crisis Unit. Call it survivor’s guilt, call it my need to be the Angel of Mercy, or call it my way to take care of the friends and lovers I lost, healing those that could not be healed. I’d been volunteering for a few weeks and loving the experience. I could have been a damn good nurse. Shit, vomit, blood, bedsores—none of it affects me. I signed in for my third volunteer shift and Marie, the head nurse, a wonderful, portly women who proudly told me she’d turned sixty last week, pulled me aside and asked me for ..read more

He woke up. All the weight he had been carrying around had landed in his hands. It was the first thing he saw in the morning. His eyes opened and there were fat puffy hands, resting on his chest. Overnight, they decided to take flight. This was odd, especially since he was still a modern dancer; even at age fifty he performed, long body, slender fingers. He lifted his weight off the bed, as he did every morning, folding his body over, a slight breath to propel himself up, reaching for the glass of water that would slide the pills down his parched throat, but this morning it felt different. He ..read more

The answer always travels slowly. Ask the boxwood hedges, so full last week of clicking larvae they seemed to break into a kind of speech. Or the Rhizosphaera fungus working its way up the branches of the neighbor’s blue spruce, casting ruined needles down. I stare out at this half- dead tree and can’t tell if it’s raining: Trick of the light? Or just my failing eyes? The mourning doves nest higher every year, worrying fresh twigs into a new accommodation. Finches clamber and dart through their doomed home. The outcome’s inevitable—the host consumed by the smallest guest—but even though for no ..read more

CHARACTERS CLAIR HARWARD 26, fey, critical, and very, very angry MIKE HOWARD (nonspeaking role) 27, a bright eyed, eager young man (No matter how the action moves or where     the location changes, Mike is always present and sees nothing going on around him.) SHADES Flexible number/any sex/adults of any age playing all named roles; these are echoes reaching out from Clair’s life; they represent his past, his present, and what will never be PLACE Somewhere TIME Somewhen Brief Synopsis: In 1985, the Salt Lake City Tribune published a photo of Clair Harward, a young gay Mormon diag ..read more

Always and Forever, the long-classic summer song of the late 70’s, now a staple of easy listening stations, reminds me of how a long-standing relationship—Harold and mine—only gets better with time. It also reminds me of how an early HIV drug (AZT) has evolved into a powerhouse of new regimens (including injectable HIV drugs), including long-lasting medicine, that are getting us one step closer to a cure. Over the decades, these medications have made it possible for HIV/AIDS, which once was a death sentence, to become a chronic, but manageable disease, and, thus, make possible a treatment mira ..read more

His fingers move over the woven chair seat like a fiddler’s over his instrument.  Only in Mark Remaly’s case, he’s coaxing forth not music but story.  “I don’t consciously think about it,” explains the caner, who owns The Seat Weaver in Westfield, Massachusetts with his wife, Alice Flyte.  “But if I run my hands over a chair, I get the feel of it.” Just the day before, for instance, a customer brought a chair into the shop:  his hands came across some “dings” in its back, and he guessed that “a grandmother or somebody had pushed it into a sewing-machine for years and years ..read more

What’s Done in Darkness Living with HIV for the Long Run by John Francis Leonard I no longer care whether or not a prospective partner cares that I’m POZ. There, I said it, and it was sincerely said with great veracity and much weight. The reason why is simple enough on the surface. I am happy on my own. Truly. I’m no longer on a search for Mr. Right, or Mr. Right Now, for that matter. For my physical needs I have a man I love, but don’t answer to. I see him when I see him, and while I wish it were more often, I will not mess up a good thing. I’m accustomed to living on my own, a creature of m ..read more

Journey Through Darkness Award-winning, legally blind photographer Kurt Weston talks about his journey through the darkness of AIDS and related blindness, about art and activism by Alina Oswald In 2005, while browsing the web, I came across a writing-and-photography contest called Unfinished Works. Intrigued by the name, I followed the link only to discover a black-and-white photograph called The Last Light. It showed a man sitting in an armchair, with his back to a large window. The daylight flooding the room wrapped around his frail body like a cape. The reflection of the dim artificial ..read more