22
GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
September 27, 1996
HIV CLINICAL TRIAL
HIV+ men and women who are at least 18 years of age are needed to participate in a research study that will evaluate itraconazole (Sporanox®), a medication used to treat fungal infections. Your CD4 count must be less than 300 to be eligible for this study.
Intravenous (IV) itraconazole (for seven days) will be compared with 4 weeks of oral itraconazole.
• Three separate stays of (2-3 days each) are
required over the course of this 5 1/2 week study, in addition to outpatient visits. Transportation to Pittsburgh will be provided.
• Participants will be compensated up to $1,250.00.
Novum Pharmaceutical Research invites you to contact us regarding this and other clinical trials for those living with HIV and AIDS.
For further information, please call:
1-800-881-8871 or 1-800-756-5227
All calls are confidential. There is no obligation if you call.
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EVENINGS OUT
B-Boy love, the second time
Continued from previous page
nity. If you're looking to come home, my advice to you would be to look inside your heart for that home, because home is where the heart is. God granted you only one life, and he doesn't want you to live it in silence.
More of us should come out of the closet, and I hope novels like B-Boy Blues and 2nd Time Around help in that process, particularly for gentlemen like Raheim, who don't even identify as gay or bisexual, but are searching and looking to move on.
There's also the issue of the camaraderie and the brotherhood that we as same-genderloving men of African descent can and do share, and should share more often. I think this is very apparent in the two novels because of how Raheim tries to fit into
Mitchell's world. It's very difficult for him; it's something new, and he needs to try to
juxtapose all that he
has been taught and conditioned to believe about homosexuals a person he still does not believe he is with the love
man, and that's fine. We need to acknowledge those individuals who think the way [Raheim] does, because they're greater in number than we think.
You mentioned recently in an article in the Philadelphia Daily News that you don't want to date a "B-boy" and that you're married to your work. Do you plan on seriously dating anyone in the near future?
Well, it's not that I don't want to date a Bboy. If a gentleman comes along who has integrity, self-respect, an awareness of self and dignity, and is of African descent or of color, I would most certainly date him, even if he were a B-boy.
At the present time I'm still married to my work, and if that person came along at this moment, I just would not have the time to
"
Some of us need to stop being "arm-chair revolutionaries,' always complaining about what they don't see and complaining about what E. Lynn and I don't write about. They need to write about it themselves.
he feels for this man and the desire and need he has to be loved in his world.
Mitchell helps him in that process by being rather patient and understanding. I don't think that we as men of African descent give each other the benefit of that doubt as often as we should, but we give the benefit of the doubt to white folks. The lessons do abound in both novels, and I hope that people heed them because we're really a community in need, and only we can fulfill and answer those needs.
Do you think that having people coming out of the closet will help create a “black gay climate" and, more importantly, what kind of climate should be created?
Well, I think that the climate that should be created should be one in which [blacks] are comfortable in being who they want to be, and not buckling under the pressure that so many of us have.
I think that one of the main problems that African-American gay and bisexual men and other men of color have is this whole idea that just because white people who are samegender-loving folks call themselves gay or lesbian, then that means that we should too. I think that's very important, because black and white people live in totally different worlds in this society, and we're conditioned to believe and live our lives in different ways. We're also conditioned to expect different things from ourselves and each other and because of that, it's very dangerous for us to assume that. And even for white people, there's a problem with labels.
In the search for your sexual identity, you decide that these terms do not best describe who you are or that no term could possibly describe, as Raheim says, his love for this
devote to him. I'm
finishing [a third novel] right now, [so] I'm not so much in the market for a husband. But if that gentleman were to come along today or tomorrow or next week, there would have to be some drastic changes made in my life to fit him in. I think it's in God's plan, and if [a husband] has not shown up, it's because there's work to be done first.
I'm sure that there are probably as many closeted African-American writers as there are 'out' African-American writers. You're an openly gay African-American writer just as E. Lynn Harris and Keith Boykin and others are. What advice would you give those African-American writers that aren't out?
I would hope that they would come out and share their stories and experiences with all of us, because we certainly do need them. I've heard many people say that there's a "black gay literary renaissance" happening because there's E. Lynn, and there's Derek Scott, and there are a couple of anthologies that have been released in the past year by, about and for [African-Americans].
A few novelists and a couple of anthologies does not a black gay literary renaissance make, and I think that some of us need to stop being so complacent about this issue and about the documention of our lives. Only we can do it only we know the color, only we know the nuances, only we know the 'flava,' and only we can put it down on paper.
Some of us need to stop being "arm-chair revolutionaries,” always complaining about what they don't see and complaining about what E. Lynn and I don't write about. They need to write about it themselves. There should certainly be more of us out here so that folks can point to and say, 'He told my story,' because that's a very important and powerful thing. I sincerely hope that people are inspired by what we have created and what we will continue to create, and [begin to] create themselves.
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