During those nightmare years at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, I started to notice a pattern. It wasn’t a pattern of sickness or death—it was a pattern of survival, even of quality of life.

Every person I knew with AIDS who somehow lived two, three, sometimes five years longer than expected had one thing in common: their attitude. Their approach to life—and to living with AIDS— was relentlessly positive. At times it seemed irrational, even illogical, but it was undeniably real.

In this episode, I share how I first learned, then lost, and ultimately relearned a positive approach to my health. After 25 years of severe HIV-related illness, I have my life back—and I owe it all to a positive attitude.

OSWC Community Care Backpack fundraiser:

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In this episode I recall how the members of the LGBTQ+ community tried to prevent me from saving the lives of gay men with AIDS, how we finally got federal legislation to pay for HIV medication as well as how and why i finally left Utah for good.

This is a very humorous story of how I strongarmed the Utah State Legislature into paying for HIV/AIDS medication during the intensely homophobic Bush years.

Even though all my friends in the Democratic minority made it clear to me that I had a snowball's chance of hell of succeeding.

I wasn't so sure my goals were quite that unattainable. I had one very powerful tool most democratic politicians in Utah did not possess, NEPOTISM!

When the Mormons in Utah saw the way my Russian Mother was raising me they rolled their eyes and called her "That Crazy Foreign Woman." Mum was always the smartest, best educated, best looking and by far the best dressed person in every room. She looked like Ava Gardener with curly black hair and stunning blue eyes. Women hated her and men were terrified of her. Everyone from our cousin the governor on down knew her well enough to admire and fear her.

For a woman in misogynistic Mormondom, in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, my mum accomplished some truly amazing things. She taught me life wasn't about conformity. It was about discovering who you are and learning to love the person you are meant to be, no matter how eccentric, different or even gay.

As an adult, armed with the lessons my mum taught me, I found that quirky, somewhat eccentric individual I am and a world where people appreciated me for who I am. Though to be perfectly honest, during my childhood I often wondered if this mythical world really existed.

Most westerners think the end of Communism was the end of the story, but it wasn't, not for me, not for the Russians I loved and I left behind.

This episode is about the perils and pleasures of being gay in the Soviet Union and post communist Russia, the necessity of dealing with the KGB, particularly as a gay man, and the day to day realities of survival in the violent chaos that was Russia at that time.

This story is about that frazzled time in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the murders of my family, my boyfriend and my best friend. I realized it was finally time for me to leave Moscow defeated and alone. I finally understood the only way to honor the Russians I loved, both living and dead, was to leave them behind. Someone had to live the happy, contented life they could only ever dream of.

In this episode I compare Trumps successful tactics to Hitler during his early years as Chancellor of Germany.