TMI
Many anniversaries of ranting and raging
by Jim Pickett
It’s sort of hard to believe that 10 years ago I wrote my first piece– “I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can”— for Positively Aware.
I am sitting here looking back at all the columns I’ve written and I have to say, and, ya know, without even reading them, just looking over the titles, I feel a little embarrassed, a bit over-exposed, and a lot TMI. It’s like—DAMN, PICKETT! Have you no shame? Is there nothing you won’t run off at the mouth—or the keyboard—about? And can we talk opinionated? How many things can you go off about?
And now you are referring to yourself in the third person—can any one human being be more insufferable?
I blame it all on Associate Editor Enid Vázquez—and you can too. I first met Enid (affectionately known to me as “La Vaca”) at a 1999 community forum on barebacking that was held at a local Chicago bathhouse with the very queer (not in a good way) name of The Unicorn Club (since morphed into Steamworks). I was a speaker on the panel representing the opposition… stridently against the mere idea of barebacking, taking a very hard line, Nancy Reagan approach. Yep, that was me. I had been on meds for a couple of years by then and was nauseated, poopy and very, very cranky. How could anyone be so stupid and selfish and insane as to want to bring on that kind of misery to themselves?
My thoughts and opinions on this topic, like so much else, have evolved over time, thank Goddess. And while I wouldn’t say I am a bareback advocate, I also am not a histrionic finger-wagging judge and jury on the issue anymore. There are other things for me to be cranky about. I totally get why people don’t want to use condoms—it is natural sex after all—and I totally get that unlike the bad and dirty fags, the royal we doesn’t go ballistic on heterosexuals pushing baby carriages for the raw juicy bareback sex they obviously engaged in. I mean, I only go off on people with baby carriages if they are ramming into me with those annoying double-wides. Then all bets are off, baby.
So, back to La Vaca. I suppose it was the obnoxious spouting off that attracted her to me. Birds of a feather. She approached me after the forum was over and gushed over my writing (for a local gay rag) and said I should think about writing something for Positively Aware. I did, and have kept on doing ever since. Thanks for inviting me into the flock, Enid!
Thank you for allowing me to be an advocate, an educator, a scared little boy, an angry queen, a horndog, and a bitch.And thanks, Positively Aware. Thank you for allowing me to write about anything and everything. Thanks for letting me go off on World Vision for being homophobic, say “no more” to red ribbons, share my HIV coming out story to my family, complain about getting fat, and chronicle my first marathon. Thanks for letting me talk about sexual encounters at AIDS conferences and bathhouses, about stopping my meds, about re-starting my meds, about how it sucks to have HIV, and about how it doesn’t suck to have HIV.
Thank you for providing me a soap box from which I have been both adored, and despised.
Thanks for letting me go after the hands that feed this publication—namely the pharmaceutical industry—when I thought they deserved it.
Danke for letting me detail how I shit my culottes on a summer day in the D.C. metro.
I’m ever grateful for the times I have been able to write about one of my obsessions—vaginal and rectal microbicides.
Thank you for giving me this bully pulpit to go after the purveyors of a phony cure for meth abuse (Prometa), and to draw attention to the abhorrent inequalities faced globally by gay men and men who have sex with men with regard to the genocidal lack of HIV/AIDS prevention services.
Thanks for not editing out the “fucks” and the “shits” and other vulgarities that regularly pepper my rantings.
Gracias for allowing me to process the schizophrenic ride that is HIV, highs and lows, the rage, the delight, the hopes, and the fears… sometimes colliding in one column.
Thank you for allowing me to tell my story these last 10 years, with all its inconsistencies and flip-flopping. Thanks for allowing me to be a patient and an activist, to be mentally ill and spiritually engaged, to be in love and so outta love, and back in love again. Thank you for giving me the space to breathe, to vent, to argue, and persuade. And to cry. I only hope readers of this column got as much out of all of this as I have.
Thank you for allowing me to be an advocate, an educator, a scared little boy, an angry queen, a horndog, and a bitch. Most of all, thank you for letting me be a big, messy, contradictory human being, and to have it all on record for anyone and everyone to witness.
Not! (LOL)
Here’s to another 10?
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