
… rampant. It’s a way to let others know you don’t have HIV nor are you looking for men who have it. It is bigoted and shockingly common language from a community that routinely suffers discrimination and misunderstanding. But as often the case with gay men and bigotry, the call is coming from inside the house. Clean in this context means you are better than and want nothing to do with someone who is dirty. Clean= no HIV. Dirty= HIV+. When you put it like that it sounds like a real dick thing to put on a dating app profile, right? O…
But we choose ourselves because there comes a point where to do otherwise feels unbearable. So we take the risk, make the leap, do the thing we think we cannot do. We transform, and to anyone who doesn’t know us at a soul level, it might look sudden or out of character. It might hurt feelings and change lives. But we do it anyway because we matter, too, and these are our lives happening here, and we get tired of living them for everyone but ourselves.