a&e features
Mark S. King on new book and surviving HIV and meth
‘My Fabulous Disease’ writer chronicles experiences with humor, honesty
HIV/AIDS writer Mark S. King, a GLAAD- and National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association award-winning author of the popular blog My Fabulous Disease has published a new book out Sept. 1 that’s a compendium of the blog’s best pieces, as well as pieces he wrote well before the blog, back in the 1990s. Pre-order “My Fabulous Disease: Chronicles of a Gay Survivor” at marksking.com/marks-new-book. He’s appearing at the U.S. Conference on HIV/AIDS on Sept. 7 in D.C.
Diagnosed with HIV in 1985, Mark has taken a lifetime of ups and downs and turned them into a, well, fabulous collection of pithy, witty, often brutally honest and self-critical short essays on everything from how we gay men are so good at shaming and judging one another for all sorts of things to his gay brother’s tale of helping his lover, who was dying of AIDS, end his own life with a Seconal cocktail to what it was like starting his own gay erotic phone line in the 1980s to how he’s morphed into a total top who wants sex only a fraction as often as when he was young. The essays range from quite raw and painful to utterly hilarious. King has that perfect Oscar Wilde/Paul Lynde way with a quip: “I got The Clap so many times that I started calling it The Applause.” Or, marveling at how little sexual energy he has currently, at 62, compared to his youth, that these days, “10 minutes is a triumph of passion and stamina.”
I like Mark’s writing because he doesn’t shy away from examining aspects of himself that many of us gay men would rather look away from: His vanity, narcissism and need for attention. Things he’s done in the past that have hurt people, including family members and lovers. Even what he sees as his own manipulativeness in seducing a 30-year-old man when he was 15 — this in an age when we would almost unanimously agree that all the responsibility for a statutory-rape situation lies with the legal adult, not the child.
TIM MURPHY: Mark, thanks for talking to me. So, you and your husband Michael, a federal healthcare worker, live in Atlanta, yes?
MARK S. KING: As we speak, I’m surrounded by boxes because we’re moving in a few days from an apartment in Midtown to a home in North Decatur. Michael’s currently holed up in his home office and he doesn’t come out until after five.
MURPHY: What’s a typical day like for you?
KING: My cat Henry wakes me up around 6:30 a.m., but fortunately Michael feeds him breakfast and starts the coffee, so I can sleep longer. I stumble out around 7 a.m., have my coffee and look at my emails. Or sometimes, if I’m writing something, if the solution I’ve been looking for occurs to me around 6:30 a.m., I’m at the keyboard making it work even before I have coffee. If I’m in the zone like that, I can forget to have breakfast. But then I have my go-to daily conversations with usually two out of three people: my brother, Dick, who’s gay and lives in Shreveport, La., with [TheBody.com writer] Charles Sanchez, and with my friend Lynn.
Then I go to the gym to work on any part of my body that is visible in a tank top. As long as my chest is bigger than my stomach, I’m fine. I play racquetball, so that takes care of the legs. Things like calves, you either have them or you don’t. I know I should be doing yoga and stretching and working on what they call your core, whatever that is. At some point as I age it’s going to be more important to be able to bend over and pick things up, not lift a large weight above my head.
MURPHY: Do you do steroids?
KING: I have—I don’t any more. Testosterone is not steroids.
MURPHY: Oh, I know. Why no more steroids?
KING: Age, and the fact that they can damage your liver and kidneys. It’s also true that taking testosterone has made my prostate the size of a grapefruit, but I haven’t stopped that.
MURPHY: When you first went on testosterone, did you notice changes in your mood, libido and strength?
KING: Yes, all those things. I take it because it works. I’ve been on it for 20 years … when I’m not working out, I deflate like a balloon. I feel like the Grindr hookup that doesn’t look like his pictures.
MURPHY: What do you do the rest of the day and night?
KING: Play with my cats and write a little bit. I sound like a man of leisure, and I kind of am. After Michael finishes work, we cook dinner. I’m a much better cook than I was when I met him.
MURPHY: Mark, you grew up Louisiana?
KING: My dad was an Air Force officer so we lived all over the place, but when he retired when I was in fifth grade—I’m the youngest of six—we moved to Louisiana.
MURPHY: When did you start writing?
KING: I wrote silly little stories when I was a kid, and then when I went to work for an AIDS agency in 1986, [the now defunct] L.A. Shanti, it was growing so fast that I became the media guy, the one writing the newsletter and press releases. But it’s only been in the last 20 years that I’ve really been able to identify as a writer. The turning point was when I started writing My Fabulous Disease consistently. Prior to that, I’d write columns for Frontiers and then send them to different gay papers around the country who would print them.
Of all the editors I ever worked with, Bonnie Goldman, who founded [the HIV/AIDS site] TheBody, challenged me the most. “Why are you saying it this way?” she’d ask. She told me that the more warts, faults and doubts I revealed, the more I’d draw people in. She really worked for me and asked me to write a blog for TheBody.
It was after Bonnie left TheBody that I started My Fabulous Disease. I’d actually started it as a website to promote my first book, “A Place Like This,” and my web designer told me to blog on that page to keep it fresh and bring people to it. For a long time, I had to keep telling myself, “If you continue to build it, they will come.” Now, in a good month, I’ll get 100,000 hits. I’ll also share my content with HIV Plus, Poz—it doesn’t matter.
MURPHY: One thing I like about your writing is that you are ruthlessly honest. What’s been one good and one bad outcome of that?
KING: Certainly I felt good about writing about addiction. I wrote a piece about a relapse I had when I was still dealing with its fallout. That felt good because I suffer, as many of us do, with imposter syndrome. I’d think, “If they only saw behind the curtain, that I struggle with drug addiction and have ruined relationships and have all sorts of wreckage in my wake, then they wouldn’t like me anymore.” So to have been able to write that piece only days after coming to—some might say it’s dangerous to write about such a thing so soon, but my writing is my therapy, my way of sorting out my own feelings. So I wrote it and then pressed the button.
MURPHY: In your book, you have several pieces written about a decade ago or more about how we gay men tend to shame one another—how HIV-negative men shame positive men by using phrases like “drug- and disease-free” or “clean” and “you be, too,” or how older HIV survivors shame younger gay men for having tons of sex without condoms now that PrEP is available. Do you think in the years since you published those pieces, we’ve become a less shaming community overall?
KING: You’re right, I wrote a lot of that when social media and hook-up apps were inflaming various stigmas. Gay men are remarkably good at shaming our own—we’ve been shamed so much that we’ve developed claws of our own. I haven’t been on hook-up apps the last ten years, so I can only go by conversations I have, which make me think that stigma is alleviating a little bit. But these things are generational. We were raised for decades in mortal fear of sex, which is a really powerful emotion that doesn’t just go away with a scientific breakthrough like U=U [undetectable = untransmittable, the now-proven fact that people with HIV on meds with undetectable viral load cannot transmit HIV sexually] or PrEP.
(Continues at thecaftanchronicles.substack.com)
a&e features
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
‘A Night at the Disco’ features interviews with Donna Summer, Debbie Harry, more
If you’re a fan of 1970s-era dance music, don’t miss the irresistible new book by Christian John Wikane and Alice Harris, “A Night at the Disco,” which revisits more than 90 interviews conducted with some of the biggest names in pop culture.
“A Night at the Disco” (ACC Art Books) was published on March 24, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It celebrates more than 100 artists who sparked a phenomenon in dance music from 1970-1979 and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Donna Summer to Debbie Harry.
Lost City Books (2467 18th St., N.W.) will welcome author Christian John Wikane for a book signing and conversation about “A Night at the Disco” on Thursday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Details at lostcitybookstore.com. Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore (11 E. 33rd St.) )will also host a Q&A with the author on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Details at theivybookshop.com.
Below is an excerpt from “A Night at the Disco.”
“I’ll let in anyone who looks like they’ll make things fun.” Steve Rubell is guiding a New York Times reporter through Studio 54 as resident DJ Richie Kaczor dazzles the crowd with records by CHIC, Odyssey, and T-Connection. “Disco, that’s where the happy people go,” The Trammps sing as dancers spin and twirl underneath tubes of flashing lights. Seven months since Rubell and co-owner Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 in April 1977, it’s welcomed untold numbers of “happy people” … at least those lucky enough to pass through the doors.
“We were part of the chosen few,” says André De Shields, who immortalized the title role in The Wiz on Broadway at the time. “We could show up at Studio 54 and the doorman at the velvet stanchion would look over everyone and point to us from The Wiz to come in, that kind of thing.” As the lead vocalist in the GRAMMY-nominated Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose debut modernized big band sophistication for the discothèques, Cory Daye had carte blanche in the club. “The energy was like a New Year’s Eve party every night,” she says. “I would go up to the mezzanine and watch the mechanical light pillars go up and down, metallic confetti falling from the ceiling, the spoon and the moon. I was so fascinated and enamored by it.
“When a certain song came on, the people would just rush to the dance floor. There was no contact dancing — the hustle was pretty much on its way out — but it was just an amazing experience to see all the cultures together. It was a fusion of cultures, which described my life and my band, so I was right at home there.”
“Studio 54 was the place,” adds Linda Clifford. “Crazy parties. If you could think it, you would see it. It was like a circus. Just an amazing place to be. I worked 54 so many times. It was like a second home to me. The people there treated me so well. The crowd always seemed to enjoy my show. I always had a good time with them. That was the most important thing: making sure that they had fun.”
Well before Studio 54 opened, disco had become a business juggernaut. “A four billion dollar market and still growing,” Billboard announced in February 1977, with dance music offering more variety than ever. “There is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat, but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable,” Tom Moulton told the magazine. In the clubs, records by veteran artists like Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees were mixed in with a range of new acts like Grace Jones, Boney M., and The Ritchie Family, while everyone from ABBA to Marvin Gaye scored number one pop hits with songs that had club-centric storylines.
Beyond the charts, disco itself remained as idiosyncratic as ever, especially on several productions by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, whose studio creations, El Coco (“Let’s Get It Together,” “Cocomotion”) and Le Pamplemousse (“Le Spank”), joined their own “Lust” from Seven Deadly Sins (1977) among the most tantalizing releases on AVI Records. Rinder & Lewis also produced acts for the newly hatched Butterfly Records in Los Angeles, where Saint Tropez (“On a Rien à Perdre”) and Tuxedo Junction (“Moonlight Serenade”) reflected the duo’s high gloss sound, spanning everything from European sophistication to a more literal translation of the ’40s sensibilities popularized by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
12-inch singles had also grown as the preferred format to approximate the club music experience at home. Nearly a year after Atlantic Records introduced its series of promotional 12-inch singles for DJs, New York-based Salsoul Records released the industry’s first commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, in May 1976. A year later, T.K. Records was the first label to certify a gold record for a 12-inch single when Peter Brown’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” tallied one million sales.— Christian John Wikane
(From “A Night at the Disco” by Alice Harris & Christian John Wikane. Published by ACC Art Books.)
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Award-winning D.C. chef reaching new culinary heights
Anthony Jones of Marcus DC competing on ‘Top Chef’
In Anthony Jones’s kitchen, all sorts of flags fly, including his own. Executive chef at award-winning restaurant Marcus DC, Jones has reached culinary heights (James Beard Award semifinalist for Emerging Chef, anyone?), yet he’s just getting started.
Briefly stepping away from his award-winning station, Jones took a moment under a different set of lights. Recently, he temporarily gave up his post at the restaurant for a starring small-screen slot on the latest season of “Top Chef,” which debuted in March. (The show airs weekly on Bravo and Peacock).
Before his strategic slice-and-dice competition, however, Jones, who identifies as gay, draws from his deep DMV roots. In the years before “Top Chef” and the top chef spot at Marcus, he was born and raised in Sunderland, Md., in southern Maryland, near the Chesapeake.
Early memories were steeped in afternoons on boats with his dad bonding over fishing, and wandering the garden of his great-grandparents spread with fresh vegetables and a few hogs. “It was Southern, old-school ethics and upbringing,” he said. “Family and food went hand in hand.” Weekends meant grabbing bushels of crabs, dad and grandma would cook and crack them. Family members would host fish fries for extra cash. In this seafood-heavy youth, Jones managed time to sneak in episodes of the “OG” Japanese “Iron Chef” show, which helped inspire him to pursue a career in the kitchen.
Jones moved to D.C. after graduating from college, ending up at lauded Restaurant Eve, and met famed chef Marcus Samuelson, who brought him to Miami to be part of the opening team for Red Rooster Overtown. After three years, Jones moved back to D.C., where he ran Dirty Habit, reinventing and reimagining the menu, integrating West African flavors and ingredients.
Samuelson, however, wouldn’t let a talent like Jones stay away for too long. Pulling Jones back into his orbit, Samuelson elevated Jones to help him open his namesake restaurant Marcus DC, which has been named a top-five restaurant by the Washington Post. Since then, Jones has been nominated as a semifinalist for the RAMMYs Rising Culinary Star in 2026 and won the Eater DC’s Rising Chef award in 2025.
Samuelson’s Marcus is a tour de force interpreting the Black Diaspora on the plate, from the American South to West Africa, along with his signature “Swedopian” touches. Yet it’s Jones who has deeply informed the plate, elevating his own story to date. Marcus DC is primarily a seafood restaurant, which serves Jones well.
“Where I’m from is seafood heavy, and as I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve moved away from meat.” Veggies and fish are hero dishes. His own dish, Mel’s Crab Rice, was not only lauded by the Washington Post, but is framed by his youth carrying home the crustaceans from Mel’s crab truck. It’s a bowl of Carolina rice, layered with pickled okra, uni béarnaise, and crab. Jones also points to a dish on the opening menu, rockfish and brassica, paying respect to a landmark D.C. institution, Ben’s Chili Bowl. Jones reverse engineered a favorite bowl of chili that’s seafood instead of meat forward, leveraging octopus and rockfish along with different riffs of cauliflower: showing his intellectual, creative, and cultural sides.
While “Top Chef” is showing Jones’s spotlight side, he also lets his identity show at work. “In the kitchen, I make sure we’re inclusive. We don’t tolerate discrimination. Everyone that’s here should feel confident to express themselves. There are so many different flags in the kitchen.”
Jones says that he didn’t fully express his gay identity until fairly recently. He felt reluctant coming out to certain family members, “you’re scared to tell them about being different,” he says, and while that anxiety ate at him, “I’m lucky and fortunate to have unconditional love and that weight off my shoulders.”
Today, “I’m me all the time, Monday to Sunday. I’m honest with people, and my staff is honest with me.”
“Being a chef is hard,” he says, “and being a chef of color is even more difficult.”
Yet his LGBTQ identity is a juggling act, he says. “I need to keep that balance, because once someone finds out something about you, their opinion can change, whether you want it or not.”
Being on a whole season of TV cooking competition, however, might mean millions more might have an opinion of him (Jones has appeared on TV already, on an episode of “Chopped”). To prepare, he says, “I’ve just kept a level head. It’s just an honor to be on top chef with amazing people happy to be there.”
Plus, this season is set in the Carolinas, and Jones attended Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. “It’s a full story of my life, now a monumental moment for me.”
Jones also recently was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. “JBF has been a north star, a dream for so long. I always had this goal on my wall.”
Being at the top spot at Marcus DC, making waves through his accolades, and cooking on Bravo means that Jones is highly visible. “I think that if someone has a similar background to me, and can see our story, trajectory, and success, they can have more ability to be themselves. This is my goal.”
Back at Marcus, Jones has plenty up his chef’s white’s sleeves. A new spring menu is in the works. He’ll be launching a new tasting menu “dining experience,” he says, and has plans to work on more events and collaborations with chefs and friends to bring in new talent and share the culinary wealth.
a&e features
Introducing the Torchbearers Awards honoring queer, trans women and nonbinary people
Meet the Legends and Illuminators lighting new paths
The Torchbearers Awards are more than recognition—they are a continuation of legacy. They honor the quiet architects of progress in our community: those who organize, advocate, build, and protect, often without fanfare but always with purpose. Rooted in a belief in intentional recognition, this honor names those who carry our movements forward—those who make room for others, who remind us that change is both generational and generative. In a time marked by uncertainty and challenge, these leaders push forward with courage, clarity, and an unwavering commitment to expanding opportunity and equity.
This year’s honorees reflect the full breadth of our community, spanning generations, backgrounds, identities, and industries. From Legends, with decades of leadership and having created pathways for others, to Illuminators, who are lighting new paths with creativity and innovation, each Torchbearer represents the power of intergenerational leadership and the strength found in our diversity. They are organizers, advocates, artists, policy leaders, healers, and changemakers whose lived experiences shape a shared vision for equity and liberation.
This award is our love letter to queer and trans women and nonbinary people who carry the flame when it would be easier to let it dim. To those who consistently show up, who use their voice and visibility and stand firm, often without recognition, so that others may live more freely and fully. The Torchbearers Awards celebrates not just what has been done, but the enduring spirit, responsibility, and collective care that ensure the work continues, and that the flame is always passed forward.
Co-Creators of the Torchbearers Awards: Shannon Alston, June Crenshaw, Heidi Ellis
Torchbearers Awards Advisory Board: Aditi Hardikar, Lesley Bryant, Jasmine Wilson-Bryant, Stephen Rutgers
ILLUMINATOR AWARDEES
- Representative Sharice Davids (she/her), (D, KS-03)
— U.S. House of Representatives - Greisa Martinez Rosas (she/her/ella)
— Executive Director, United We Dream - Paola Ramos (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Meagan A. Fitzgerald (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Jessica L. Lewis (she/her)
— Founder / Producer, Play Play DC - Savannah Wade (she/her)
— Founder, OAR Agency - Suhad Babaa (she/her)
— Filmmaker/ Former Executive Director of Just Vision - Ashlee Davis (she/her)
— Global Head of Inclusive Outcomes, Ancestry - Jazmine Hughes (she/her)
— Journalist and Former Editor at New York Times Magazine - Queen Adesuyi (they/she)
— Policy Advisor & Organizer, ReFrame Health & Justice - Michele Rayner, Esq. (she/her)
— Civil Rights Attorney, State Representative (Florida House of Representatives) - Gaby Vincent (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Jenny Nguyen (she/her)
— Founder & Owner, The Sports Bra - Denice Frohman (she/her)
— Independent Artist, Poet / Performer - Vida Rangel (she/her)
— Founder, Our Trans Capital - Roxanne Anderson (they/them)
— Executive Director, Our Space - Ann Marie Gothard (she/her)
— Co-Founder & President, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Diana Rodriquez (she/her)
— Co-Founder & CEO, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Wendi Cooper (she/her)
— Founder / Executive Director, Transcending Women - Toya Matthews (she/her)
— City of San Antonio, Texas - Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Charity Blackwell (she/her)
— Poet, LGBTQ Advocate & Community Leader - Wilhelmina Indermaur (she/her)
— Director of Communications, Tyler Clementi Foundation - Em Chadwick (she/her)
— CMO, For Them & Autostraddle - Kylo Freeman (they/he)
— CEO, For Them & Autostraddle
LEGEND AWARDEES
- Sheila Alexander-Reid (she/her)
— Executive Director, PHL Diversity, Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau - Cassandra Cantave Burton (she/her)
— Interim Director of Thought Leadership & Senior Research Advisor, AARP - leigh h. mosley (she/her)
— Photographer / Educator, PhotoFlo Photography - Jenn M. Jackson, PhD (they/them)
— Assistant Professor of Political Science; Author & Columnist, Syracuse University - Jordyn White (she/her)
— COO, Washington Prodigy / VP of Leadership Development & Research, HRC Foundation - AJ Hikes (they/them)
— Deputy Executive Director, ACLU - RaeShanda Lias (she/her)
— Digital Creator, RL Lockhart - Donna Payne-Hardy (she/her)
— Educator, EEO Specialist, Founder of NBJC, Former Leader at the Human Rights Campaign - Courtney R. Snowden (she/her)
— Principal, Blueprint Strategy Group - Gaye Adegbalola (she/her)
— Musician & Activist, Musician / Inductee of the Blues Hall of Fame - Cheryl A. Head (she/her)
— Independent Author, Novelist (Crime Fiction) - Letitia Gomez (she/her)
— The American LGBTQ+ Museum, Board Chair - Lynne Brown (she/her)
— Publisher, Washington Blade - Shay Franco-Clausen (She/Her/Ella/Queen)
— Political Strategist and Organizer - Melissa L. Bradley (she/her)
— Founder & Managing Partner, New Majority Ventures - Meghann Burke (she/her)
— Executive Director, NWSL Players Association - Victoria Kirby York, MPA (she/they)
— Director of Public Policy & Programs, National Black Justice Collective - Joli Angel Robinson (she/her)
— CEO, Center on Halsted - Jeannine Frisby LaRue (she/her)
— CEO, Moxie Strategies - Alice Wu (she/her)
— Film Director (Saving Face, The Half of It) / Screenwriter - Storme Webber (she/her)
— Interdisciplinary Artist / Educator, University of Washington - Kim Stone
— CEO of the Washington Spirit, Washington Spirit - Mickalene Thomas
— American Visual Artist, Mickalene Thomas Studio - Erika Lorshbough (any/they/she)
— Executive Director, interACT - J. Gia Loving (she/ella)
— Co-Executive Director, GSA Network
Calendar: April 10-16
BLUF leather social set for April 10 in Rehoboth
Celebrations of life planned for Sean Bartel
The ‘X’ returns to court
LGBTQ community explores arming up during heated political times
D.C. is the place for the Democratic Socialists of America
Trump budget would codify expanded global gag rule
Key lifestyle changes can help patients cope with diabetes
Man faces first S.C. ‘hate intimidation’ charge
Police mental health struggles gain growing attention
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Opinions5 days agoD.C. is the place for the Democratic Socialists of America
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District of Columbia5 days ago
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South Carolina5 days ago
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