Being negative

Things are going mightily well. I'm almost frightened. Pitches and speeches going ok. I'm finally over that illness I brought back from California. I got my tax refund check in the mail. The chicken little inside of me is wondering when the sky's going to come falling down.



In truth, I was terribly worried something was wrong. I had for a while not been feeling well, then I got some sort of strange infection. I went to the doctors who insisted I have blood tests done, syphilis, chlamydia, Hepatitis, and the first HIV test I've had in four years! I sort of knew it would be ok - my sex life is hardly prolific and seldom seedy. Mostly vanilla, although I'm happy to note that in at least one case it was French vanilla. But waiting for HIV results are perhaps some of the strangest times one will ever spend. I was alternately surprised how easy it was to forget about it, and how easily it crept up behind me to shake and rattle my nerves.



After two weeks of not being able to get out of work to follow up with the doctors, I decided to ring and see what the test results were. I stood in the stairwell of the office, my voice audibly shaking, to find out if the sometimes seemingly impending storm was going to engulf me. It was a brave / stupid moment. Was I really going to have to break down in the stairwell of the office if something really was wrong?



Luckily, it wasn't. Not perhaps just luckily, but maybe reassuringly, yet probably more realistically lucky. Everything was negative.



Negative.



I was surprised at how surprising the words and the feeling of surprise were.



Had I somehow been resigned to the possibility of becoming HIV positive -- though, not likely given my sex life of pillow hugging and daydreaming -- even though I hadn't had unsafe sex, or shared needles or had a blood transfusion? Would it have been less scary a verdict than in the early years of my so-called gay life in San Francisco when AIDS was still cutting a wide swathe through the gay community and the papers were filled with pictures of those who fell victim to it? I remember the chillling habit of skipping the second-half of the Bay Area Times for fear of what? Knowing there was a human face to the epidemic? Wondering if one of them was a former lover? It's most likely that someone in my sexual past is and was HIV positive.



That should be chilling. But now that people I know live with the virus was it somehow less ominous than it was? Was some irrational inner self surprised that one could be gay and 36 and HIV-negative?



And is it that irrational inner self that sets one on the road to complacency? That's more scary sometimes than the eventuality itself. Why resign oneself to the surrender when simple acts of vigilance can pre-empt the battle?



So I'm going to be relieved and celebrate for a moment. Then I'm going to realise that whilst I've been lucky, others haven't been. It's still an epidemic of shocking violence and strength, and we let it fester and rage in quiet corners of our social consciousness. Has AIDS become the quiet secret, or the troubles of a continent 'over there'? Do we still know that it has a very human face? Had I succumbed to the American habit of belittling disease and disdaining the weakness it brought? When did I actually start to think the storm was retreating? Because people stopped dying or just because there weren't pictures in the back of the gay papers filled with the dead?



So now, and hopefully for a time, I live. And I'm going to be positively grateful for being negative but I'm going to try to remember not to forget the power of being negative.

Nice one ...

We won the pitch and the talk went well, so regardless of the weather it's going to be a lovely weekend.

I'm giving a speech at a Bima event tonight and I've not yet finished it and I'm, instead, emailing and having coffee and whatnot. We finished a big pitch for BT yesterday and I'm knackered and not feeling either clever or insightful so it's a struggle. I really want to go home and nap for the day and not be preparing to trade bon mots with a panel of people likely to rip apart the proposed talk that my predecessor created and which I'm obligated to defend.



The nice thing about it, however, is that it's historical in perspective so I've had a good root through some of my very earliest websites. They're so simple and innocent and uncomplicated and still somehow smart and effective. They also remind me of the heady days of the Web (when my friends, by the way, were embarrassed of my job) and when somehow a motley crew of people created an industry out of a medium. Pure stupid luck that I was there and that Doris and Clancy and Organic thought it made sense for me to be part of it. It didn't make me rich. Never made me famous. Probably made me fat, bald, and permanently stressed, but it made a decent living for an art history major and got me to London so I should be, and am, grateful.

Noteworthy

The Guardian publishes the list of 50 must-see events this Spring. Yes, I know it includes Coldplay, but it's still interesting. I'm most interested in Kauzo Ishiguro's new novel and Caravaggio: The Final Years at the National Gallery.



PVRBlog reviews the new products at the Consumer Electronics Show.



Addictive: I normally despise Big Brother, but the rather genius move of putting Germaine Greer into the house with a bunch of youngsters who don't know who she is and a rather misognyst Horse Racing announcer makes Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother interesting watching. Last night's competition of being spun on a merry-go-round and made to crawl through filth for food made Germaine barf. Great television. And there's the delightful Jeremy Edwards who once smiled at me in the queue for the loo at Selfridges.

The roads I DID take

Happy new year.



Hope the holidays were fruitful and happy. And that the suffering of so many give us pause to consider how lucky we are to be alive.



Back to work after two weeks in California.



I drove to San Diego to see Kelly, Michael and little Sophie. She's an angel: curly hair and big brown eyes and a giggle everytime someone laughs. And it's clear she's very loved. Kelly and I had a date at a seaside restaurant while Michael worked. I was a bit nervous as we hadn't seen each other in years, but they fly by as moments when Kelly and I reconnect. She's a very important person in my life, and they're a lovely family. Her mother's dog, however, was the only animal I've ever wanted to kick hard. Yapping little hell dog it was.



Then to Palm Springs to be the only guest in a usually popular gay resort. It was creepily quiet, and my dreams of naked gods sunning themselves by the pool were dashed. I excited myself, instead, by a gorgeous drive through Joshua Tree National Park.



After that, three days in San Francisco seeing friends, shopping, eating more sushi than I should. Robert threw a cocktail party where I drank far too much vodka and vaguely remember how I got home (apologies to anyone I insulted, groped or mimicked.)



In Los Gatos after that, staying with my glamorous mother. Fit from working out and looking fabulous, she put me to shame, but is a glorious hostess. We ate dungeness crab and prime rib and enjoyed each other's company. Got chastised by my gran for living for so far away, but hope my mum knows I live here despite the distance, not because of it.



My father gave me a scanner for Christmas so I spent two days scanning over 400 family photos to preserve on CD and to share with my brother. There are comical photos of big hair, sideburns, bell bottoms and dear memories of what really was a happy childhood. I'll post the best (and worst) of these soon.



More importantly, I realised that I was a gorgeous child, and that somewhere under the fat and wrinkles is good bone structure.



Sadly, my uncle Emanuel passed away on Christmas Day. He was 90. I remember him as a very kind and charming man. Impeccable manners, always smiling. We shared a star sign and our birthdays were always celebrated together. We spent that week helping my aunt with funeral arrangements and I went to the vigil on my last night there. It meant I got to see a lot of my family I don't always see, but it also meant our family lost a very lovely member.



I flew back, arriving in New Year's and spent New Year's Eve in bed, but not before deciding:



To get healthy: use the gym and lose the weight, drink plenty of water, moisturise.



To achieve work / life balance and excel at both.



To organise my life and stop living in clutter and disorder. Organise my finances to start saving for a place to buy.



To publish something this year, and indulge Andy's conviction in my writing abilities.



To take better advantage of living in London.



To figure out how to be ready for and deserving of a relationship.



That's all. Nothing big.

The road I won't be taking

France is opening the tallest road bridge in the world. Reaching a height of 343 metres (1,125 ft) it carries cars over the river Tarn at 270 metres (835 ft). It was built to bypass a bottleneck at the town of Millau on the road from Paris to the Mediterranean. It sits just above the clouds on most days.



And I hope to never take it. I wonder if sometimes we overreach.



The roads I will be taking get me from London to San Francisco via San Diego and Palm Springs for the holidays.

Time goes by ...

How can it possibly be only 19 days to Christmas and 10 days before I leave for the US? I once heard there is a chemical in the brain that speeds the perception of time as one gets older, so that time 'goes by faster the older one gets'. Can anyone verify?



Went to see Akram Khan with Tim last week. I loved it. Dancing, Sufi singing and percussion, interesting little stories. The rest of the group seemed blase, but I enjoyed it. Except that I really had to pee and the amplified drumming was like a vice on my bladder ...



Watched both Kill Bill volumes 1 + 2 this weekend. I hadn't expected to like it, but I enjoyed the first one so much I went back to the video store to get the second volume. Also watched King Arthur which I thought much better than the reviews it got.



Reading Melvyn Bragg's The adventure of English. Part of me wishes I was listening to him read it out aloud in his famous BBC voice.



Kirsten and Andrew have put their house up for sale and will move to Perth, Australia if it sells. I'm not happy.