Indholdsfortegnelse for September - October 2020 i The Advocate

YOU WOULD THINK that after almost a decade of writing about my experiences with HIV, I would run out of things to say. And in some ways, I have. My sex life isn’t as salacious and being married with a child doesn’t really prompt conversations about HIV quite like my single years did. But just when I think I’m fresh out of experiences relating to HIV, a pandemic comes along. In short, the HIV-positive experience in a COVID-19 world is pretty confusing. Some experts on the more conservative spectrum of HIV science consider an undetectable person to be at a greater risk of COVID fatality. Others consider an otherwise healthy person with HIV to be at no greater risk because of their status. And there has even been anecdotal evidence…

MUNA MUNA is the queer band of the past, present, and future, just waiting for the world to catch on. The group’s 2017 single “I Know a Place” was instantly hailed as a gay anthem — a call to escape onto the dance floor where disappointment or fear or heartbreak doesn’t matter, just love. Considering lead vocalist Katie Gavin’s many songs about girls and Naomi McPherson coming out as nonbinary, the band knows the practice of dance floor escapism well. Following up the critically acclaimed 2019 confessional album Saves the World, MUNA just released “Bodies,” the trio’s latest collaboration with the Knocks, a song that is a nostalgic yearning for the carefree summers of the past. And it’s timely and relatable while much of the country isolates. The verses bottle…

From cartoonist, illustrator, and storyteller Aliza Layne, Beetle & the Hollowbones is a wonderful new graphic novel for readers under 13. Revolving around young teens teaming together to save both the local mall – and a friend in the process – in Layne’s hands the story unfolds with vivid color schemes and delightful and expressive characters. Beetle features the genre’s typical fare with magic and supernatural elements, and lessons learned while the kids save the day. There’s even a long-overdue kiss between two teens discovering they are in love. What is refreshingly different, though, is the casual manner in which Beetle & the Hollowbones normalizes and affirms queer kids, gender fluidity, and ethnic diversity. The story revolves around the protagonist Beetle and her efforts to balance teen life with the…

English former professional soccer player, Thomas Beattie, rang in Pride month this year by coming out as gay, becoming the third male professional player in British sports history to come out after Justin Fashanu in 1990 and Robbie Rogers in 2013, and only the second professional soccer player from the United Kingdom to come out. Beattie led a victorious career in soccer before sustaining a serious head injury in 2015, which forced him to end his playing career early. Now a successful entrepreneur, he is the cofounder of several companies based in Asia, the U.S., and the U.K. Born in Yorkshire, England, his sports talents were apparent at an early age as he competed in track and field, swimming, tennis, and soccer (or what he and his fellow Brits call…

“Call you tomorrow,” the ennui-laden Harold tells his host, Michael, as he leaves his birthday party, where they’ve engaged in vicious parlor games that would make Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ’s George and Martha blanch. The line is, of course, from Mart Crowley’s 1968 play The Boys in the Band, about a friend group of gay men who drink, smoke, snipe, and parry in a single evening. They even get in some dancing and laughing as they air dirty laundry as Harold arrives late to his party. The latest iteration of Crowley’s landmark text is the upcoming Netflix film produced by Ryan Murphy, helmed by legendary theater director Joe Mantello, who directed the 2018 Broadway production that famously starred a cast of only out queer men. Since he wrote…

In the 2016 election, approximately 100 million people did not vote. Currently, one out of five LGBTQ+ adults are not registered to vote. In the 2018 midterms, youth voter turnout had a historic high of only 35 percent. These facts, now boldly displayed on the Drag Out The Vote website (DragOutTheVote2020.org), were shocking and disheartening to the organization’s founder, Jackie Huba, when she first learned of them. But rather than sending the successful marketing executive into a deep depression, the disturbing statistics actually lit a fire in Huba to set forth and try to change them. But how? Well, with drag of course. “It started with Jaremi Carey — obviously Phi Phi O’Hara from Drag Race,” recalls Huba of first meeting the performer back in 2012, while she was doing…

When Transparent debuted in 2014, there were no television shows that centered on the trans experience. Even in 2020, there’s only one currently airing, FX’s Pose. At the time, Amazon’s marketing department did not want to advertise a depiction of Maura, the out transgender woman originated by Jeffrey Tambor. Instead, it wanted to depict her closeted persona, Mort. “Amazon wanted Mort because they were afraid people wouldn’t know what to do with an image of Maura,” creator Joey Soloway says. Amazon would “spring” Maura as a surprise in the show, Soloway was told, “as if being trans wasn’t fantastic, as if being trans wasn’t magical, as if being trans wasn’t the most exciting thing that you could ever want to see on a billboard.” While trans representation is still abysmal…

“What a blessing it is to be together with someone who you love,” Erasure’s legendary vocalist Andy Bell exclaims. It’s early July, a few months into a global pandemic, and Bell is stuck quarantining an ocean away from the man he loves. Still, his zest for life and love is palpable via a Zoom call with The Advocate. And 34 years after Erasure’s first album was released, the group’s infectious energy pops in Bell’s vocals and Vince Clarke’s singular synth style on their latest album, The Neon, released in late August. While Bell and Clarke (who was with Depeche Mode and Yaz before Erasure) wrote the songs, which conjure both nostalgia and hope, in the summer of 2019, its release in 2020 is timely. Meanwhile, Bell, who’s in London while…

HELP PROTECT YOUR HEALTH. There is no cure for HIV, but find out how treatment helps make it possible to live a healthier life. A HEALTHIER LIFE CAN START WITH HIV TREATMENT. It’s important to start HIV treatment as soon as possible and stick with it. When you do, it helps stop the damage HIV causes. Plus, doctors and scientists have found that it can help reduce the risk of some infections, certain cancers, and even AIDS. TREATMENT HELPS PREVENT THE SPREAD OF HIV. If you’re living with HIV, a major goal is to get your viral load to undetectable. This means that there is so little virus in the blood that a test can’t measure it. How can you get to and stay undetectable? By taking HIV treatment every…

THE CANNABIS INDUSTRY had been smoking hot at the start of 2020. A grassroots wave of decriminalization in multiple states was providing new opportunities for a slew of entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on untapped markets. The LGBTQ+ community is notably represented amongst cannabis trailblazers. Now they are adjusting their approaches to repond to the changing marketplace. Andrea Brooks is the co-owner of Sava, a one-stop online shop for THC- and CBD-based products in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sava (GetSava.com) caters to both the medicinal and recreational market with its webstore and delivery service. Brooks describes herself as a serial entrepreneur, but it was a lifealtering experience that led her to the cannabis industry. “I had an injury in 2010 and it affected my spine, which then led me to…

BL SHIRELLE SPOKE with me on the phone in the middle of June, right before the release of her new album, Assata Troi, which came out on Juneteenth. A few weeks after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, it was impossible to start our conversation anywhere else. “It’s a tumultuous time,” she told me, describing the scene in Philadelphia — a mix of peaceful protesting and ATMs on fire, brutal accidents caught on tape, the deaths of young activists. But the violence, for Shirelle, is just a symptom of the illness. “Structural racism is so deeply ingrained in the country — it’s literally how the country became what it is. There’s never been an America without it.” Since 2018, Shirelle (left) has been the deputy director of…

As production in Hollywood was stalled amid the pandemic and there was a scramble to determine how best to get TV shows back up and running, in July, the Syfy series Wynonna Earp was among one of the first shows to get back to work to finish shooting its hard-fought fourth season. Early in 2019, with tenuous funding for the fourth season, its fate was was up in the air. Devoted fans of the supernatural series kicked off the #FightForWynonna campaign, which included electronic billboards in Times Square that emphasized their love for the series. When the TV industry at large shut down in March, it was another blow for Wynonna Earp, which had just begun production on season 4. It’s not surprising that the pioneering series was among the…

Michael Alago has always taken good notes. Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., the wide-eyed gay Puerto Rican perennially carried a copy of The Village Voice. It was his bible, and he used it to navigate around the city as bubbling punk and heavy metal scenes were starting to flourish. In the 1970s, the young visionary spent his nights at clubs, at metal concerts, or hobnobbing with bands like The Damned, Dead Boys, or Cherry Vanilla, and began journaling about his experiences. Decades of introspection lead Alago to write his new autobiography, I Am Michael Alago: Breathing Music, Signing Metallica, and Beating Death. A 2017 film about his life, Who the Fuck Is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago, is streaming on Netflix. In both projects, Alago documents his…

The man behind the boys is finally getting the respect he deserves. Some of it has come posthumously for Mart Crowley, the author of The Boys in the Band, who died in March at age 84, but he lived to see much of it. He saw his most famous play finally get a Broadway production and win a Tony Award (for Best Revival of a Play), and he knew that a Netflix film, with the full 2018 Broadway cast, all of whom are out, was in the works. The film will be released September 30, so his groudbreaking work will reach new audiences. There have been, of course, countless regional and community theater productions of Boys since its initial off-Broadway run, which began in 1968, and it was made into…

In Noah’s Arc: The Rona Chronicles, Noah (Darryl Stephens) and Wade (Jensen Atwood) share a romantic slow dance…with masks on. Welcome to making TV during a pandemic. In normal times, show reunions can be tricky. However, a pandemic makes a physical regathering almost impossible without health risks. Patrik-Ian Polk, creator of the groundbreaking Black LGBTQ+ series, got creative. He brought his 15th-anniversary reunion into the world of the pandemic, allowing cast members to Zoom into their storylines. The couple’s scenes were shot by a “scant” crew observing pandemic guidelines. Challenges arose. Stephens expressed anxiety about being maskless around his scene partner. So Polk “tried to make masks a part of the aesthetic, but it still felt odd to me.” At one point, Wade, awaiting results of a COVID-19 test, wears…

After months of lockdown, hotels are reopening and incorporating big changes to the way they operate in order to make your stay safe and relaxing. From big chains like Marriott to boutique hotels like the Betsy in Miami Beach, the industry is doing everything in its power to assure a safe experience for their guests and staff. Here’s a quick guide to what changes you can expect. Improving resort safety in the face of a global pandemic starts with planning for social distancing in all public spaces (via signage and rearrangement of furniture), masking staff, and employing deep cleaning throughout the property. But the changes don’t stop there. Many venues are reducing contact between staff and travelers, offering virtual check-ins and allowing guests to opt out of staff entering their…