UNPAVED moves between worlds — between past and future, between shadow and possibility, between life and death. It is the story of a man who chose questions over certainty, wonder over comfort, and nature over predictability.
UNPAVED is what happens when you take a road less traveled.
Sunsets, Stucco, and Scoundrels... These Are the Days of Sarasota Realtors' Lives.
THE ART OF UN-DYING:
A 33-Year Middle Finger to HIV, AIDS and Haters.
The thing about surviving is that only now—thirty-three years into HIV, fifteen years past active addiction, and on the far side of the most public death spirals—can I comfortably sit with myself and understand, without excusing, the choices that brought me here.
Despite myself, and despite my own tenacious appetite for self-destruction, I am still here.
I should have taken a left at Albuquerque.
I lay beneath the stars near the Rio Grande, Counting regrets like coins dropped in the sand. A man of motion, hitching truth to roads, Chasing the idea of home, not the house. From Texas Route 90 I watched the border stretch, The sky a velvet vault that told no lies.
When we Rise.., and Fall: three men who changed the world — and me.
One created the first medical cannabis dispensary in the world — the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club. Another created the LGBT rainbow pride flag. A third created the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
They housed me. Fed me. Nurtured me. Guided me. One of them betrayed me
QUEER
As I stepped behind Ryan to nibble on his ear, a gust of wind blew through the flat—carrying salted air mixed with eucalyptus as I moved to his neck.
“Someone grab it!” Alain commanded from the kitchen.
The wind picked up a long strip of brightly dyed pink fabric—making it dance toward the big bay windows.
“I’ve got it!” James yelled as he…
Burningman
I could feel the energy of the moment in my bones—in my blood—spreading throughout my body.
Here on the playa, beside the fire, I could taste the metallic taste of IV antibiotics on my tongue—I remembered how afraid I was to die.
Looking at the bottle of AZT in my hand—a ball and chain like no other—I threw it in. After a moment the flames turned unearthly shades of green, blue, and yellow and shot higher, touching the Man's hand as it started to rise. The heat, the smoke, the ritual was simultaneously putting me into a trance and waking me up reborn.
I closed my eyes and started to feel the THUMP THUMP THUMP of my brothers and sisters. It sure beat the stuttering, lonely pings of the hospital's heart monitor. I pushed deeper into the rhythm, my skin slick, my lungs finally—violently—alive with smoke and salt.
A Southern Gothic Triptych
I. The night the lights went out in Joy — An Introduction to Violence.
II. Kissing cousin’s — An Introduction to Sex.
III. Tent Revivals, Talking in tongues, and the Rapture — An Introduction to God
The River and the Pulpit
I didn’t choose the family by the river, but I did choose the ones who see me as sunrise, not shadow. Who love like water—constant, soft on the edges, able to reshape everything.
My Uncle Chuck
There were four of us boys in that house by the Guyandotte.
Three were my uncles— still kids, really. One of them gay.
His name was Chuck. Still in high school when he was murdered.