Listen, I get it! We are all doing our own thing. . . outreach, prevention, testing and much more. Kudos to all of you who are getting their hands in the mix of the work that is necessary to care for those living with HIV/AIDS and necessary to educate those not living with HIV/AIDS to prevent contracting this virus and other STI's / STD's as well as to combat stigma and to get tested!

On a serious note. . . I hear the following being repeated a lot (in fact I hear myself saying this too) . . . "UGH! Why, why, why is HIV/AIDS conversation swept under the rug? Why is no one talking about it anymore? Why has our nation. . . why has the world gone quiet on this epidemic?" And then we point the finger of blame. . .

So, rather than being one of the cooks in the kitchen complaining about the problem by pointing a finger, I have decided to team up with five other incredible HIV/AIDS activists/advocates to begin a global trend setting Twitter initiative and our vision is to reignite the conversation of HIV/AIDS: HashTag HIV: Let's Trend Until the End. Reality is, I need to point the finger back on myself, because I have not been much of a team player, because for too long I was doing my own thing. It is time for me to make a change and become a team player and that change starts right now and I hope you will follow.

Many of you probably know who we are: There is me - Daniel Bauer (escape artist and founder of LivingPozitively.com), Robert Breining (Founder and Host of Poz I Am Radio / Social Network), Jeromy Dunn (Founder of PozitivelySpeaking.com and Co-host, Poz I Am Radio), Mitch Knapp (HIV Activist in the rural south), Aaron Matthew Laxton (YouTube super-star and founder of My HIV Journey), and Kevin Maloney (Founder of Rise Up to HIV and an employee at Community Access National Network

So what's #HIV: Let's Trend Until the End all about: We believe as a team that millions and millions of people are using Twitter to quickly disseminate information about the hottest topics people are talking about! We believe that together, as a community, we can set #HIV, #AIDS as a Twitter trend catapulting awareness back to the top of conversation around the world!

So here's where you come in. . . it's time to become a team player. During the week of the International AIDS Conference (July 22-27, 2012 in Washington, DC) we are asking everyone with a Twitter account to consistently and frequently use the hashtags: #HIV #AIDS and #IAC in all your Tweets. If you do not have a Twitter account, maybe it's time to get one, even if it's just for the purpose of helping to set the trend. You can simply go to www.twitter.com and sign up!

The HashTagHIV Team will be Tweeting from now on (and forever) to help set this trend. . . so please follow @HashTagHIV to get the latest information, updates and stats about how we are doing! Also, please, please add yourself to the HashTag HIV Facebook event to let the world know you and/or your organization is signing up as a team player!

Reality is we [six guys] can't do this alone. YOU. . . YOUR ORGANIZATION. .. YOUR FRIENDS are going to be the key elements of making this CAMPAIGN A SUCCESS!

So TEAMWORK - ACTIVATE! Let's Set the Trend!!!!  Together we will reignite the conversation about #HIV #AIDS!

I am Daniel, and I am living pozitively! Thank you for following my blog.

HIV-positive New York magician and public speaker Daniel Bauer was interviewed by PositiveLIte.com’ Bob Leahy in September 2011 here.   Read about his upcoming New York show Beyond Belief here 

This article by  Paul Aguirre-Livingston  first appeared in The GridTO.  Republished with permission.  

This year marks the 31st anniversary of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The issue, we know, is multi-dimensional and complicated. Even within my lifetime, the way we talk about it has changed from fear and self-loathing (riddled with homophobia) to far-reaching global advocacy tinged with optimistic complacency. On Saturday night, the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research (CANFAR) dispatched its Young Professional Council to Airship 37 to host the second annual Our Future Without AIDS fundraiser. The volunteer-based organization was created in 2010 to bridge the gap between seasoned donors and the impressionable, to remind us why we need to keep talking about this, even if it means appealing to the pleasure principle of partying.

“Do you wanna go to the art room and be, like, classy?” asked one guy as he whizzed past us in the drink ticket line. With the event held in a stark white hangar, the young and the philanthropic gathered for modest amusement. Red lanterns were strung from above, with light to match; a good-times vibe all around. It was a fundraising initiative, and a damn good one at that, helmed by a multimedia-art silent auction. (With works starting at $10 and maxing out around $400, the auction would have been especially ideal for first-time buyers. And yet it was a shame to see so few red dots.) All the revelry was accented with photo-booth funz, a cupcake and cookie station, Parts & Labour catering, and a Sade tune or two. (Oh, is that Rick Mercer?) And drinks—another white wine, please—to cushion the reality of what we’re all fighting for: hope.

I regret to wonder how many people in that room whom I know to be straight (or those whom I will unflinchingly assume to identify as so, due to overheard complaints from all the single straight girls about the lack of “hot guys”) have actually had real intersections with experiences surrounding HIV/AIDS. How many of them have had the virus knowingly coursing through the veins of a partner next to them? Or held their friend’s hand after a former partner had finally disclosed to them, after numerous encounters, that he was, in fact, HIV positive? Or worried themselves sick in an anonymous clinic waiting room because what if I contracted the virus and how could I have been so careless? How many of them have actually been tested? Maybe that’s not important. But, also, it is. And regardless of motive and experience, showing up and showing support is indisputably invaluable.

That night alone, it was estimated 1,125 people would die from AIDS. I feel guilty because I keep thinking this is a fashion event and just… thank someone for the signs, for writing the statistics on the walls and flashing them on flat screen televisions: There are 34 million people living with HIV worldwide, and 65,000 of them are in Canada. Still, you can buy a $20 cake pop—or seven—and win a big grand prize. It’s about fundraising, so that’s okay, even if the empty donation cans serve as mere table decorations. And it’s also okay if all you want to do is cry. Cry for the man who cried with you because he couldn’t live with himself if he put you at risk. Cry for those who are having sex right this second because four people under the age of 25 become HIV-positive every minute. Cry because more twentysomethings show up to a condo opening than to this thing.

But what’s the right way to talk about HIV and how do we keep talking about it effectively? What are the issues that surround the realities in a time when, yes, 65,000 Canadians are living with HIV… but how many of those are new infections and how many of those are individuals living longer? It took years to remove the various stigmas from my own thoughts. During my formative online jaunts, I would instantly block/ignore someone who, upon my inquiry, didn’t hesitate to honestly disclose. Somewhere along the way, I changed the way I looked at the situation: What if it was the reverse? Would I want to be loved or feared? Hated or pitied? My fear turned into questions; my questions reinforced the need to be informed and protected. To get tested regularly. To not use infection as yet another reason to divide us.

But when half of our grade nine students incorrectly believe there is a cure for AIDS, are government sexual-education programs failing the very generation CANFAR hopes to reach? Are we sending the right messages when condomless (“bareback”) porn is on the rise? Or are we being hypocrites? And yet one must ultimately account for an element of personal choice and consequence (if it’s laced with honesty), and pass up ascending to a moral high ground. Fact is, there are still glaring holes in the messages sent to men who have sex with men, especially those who might not even identify as gay (those married or on the DL, for example).

Make no mistake: There is no gay/straight divide when it comes to HIV/AIDS. We are all affected. But while the virus may not discriminate, we are not equal. Gay men are still at the highest risk, and that needs to be addressed. Perhaps the way I feel most strongly connected to a proverbial gay ancestry is through the crisis. The epidemic. The fear. The truth. The fact that I’ve been ignorant and unfair and unsure. I’m not shy about admitting that I’m human, that I’m animal. That I’ve been young, and naïve, and made mistakes. That I’ve been repentant. And scared. That I’ve judged and been judged. That I’ve prayed. That I have had unprotected sex a grand total of two times in 12 years and was publicly shamed for admitting so and accused of sending the wrong messages. But no, I’m not stupid. And that’s why we need to remove any sort of lingering feelings of humiliation, and why organizations like CANFAR continue to encourage such discourse.

 Are you still listening?

“You can’t imagine,” says Mark Mahoney, the chair of CANFAR’s Young Professional Council, when he explains that the night will blow their initial goal to raise $40,000 “out of the water.” He’s right. You probably can’t imagine. Medical advancements have shielded me—and the majority of the younger, privileged gay community—from the reality of actually saying goodbye to our friends in rapid succession. But it hasn’t made us immune. And for that, we need to be cognizant. And when you imagine it—because, especially if you’re gay and young and horny and sexually active, you will—let me tell you: The psychological effects will linger. Those thoughts will unwillingly live within the partners you surround yourself with, and reside in the corners of a community that’s more incestuous than we’d all like to admit. Because I remember the message from day one. Because the questions lasts longer than a 30-minute episode of Girls and run deeper than any and every fucking Google search for “the stuff that gets up around the sides of condoms.” (Kudos, though, on condoms.) And just because there is little risk, doesn’t mean there is no risk. And you can do everything in your goddamn power to be as safe as you possibly can, but even then…?

By half past midnight, the mood lightens. People have shown up, bought art. Donated. Gotten drunk. Grabbed free condoms (but why no lube?). Some may rest assured that they’ve done their part for another year, or at least until World AIDS Day in December. Drake and Rihanna’s “Take Care” fills the ever-expanding white space in between: “I’ve loved, and I’ve lost,” is the last thing I hear before wandering back out into the darkness.

Donations to support HIV and AIDS research can be made on CANFAR’s official website.

Contact Paul on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/pliving) and/or his personal website (http://pliving.me).

 

This article first appeared in Bob’s other blog on The Body, which you can find here. 

Not everyone knows this but I used to be a banker.  I wore a three-piece suit and tie every day, and poured over statistics and reports and numbers and, well just bleh stuff, on the fifty-second floor of an ivory (no, stainless-steel and glass clad) tower in the financial district of downtown Toronto.  Not corner office, yet, but close to that. I had a fancy title and a lovely view, but my head was down all day, both literally and figuratively,  so I seldom looked up to enjoy it.

When I was diagnosed on a late afternoon in September 1993, having slipped out of my office but not my suit to get the news, everything changed.  It was traumatic, of course, particularly in those days when you had scant years to live. I didn’t want to die and I was an emotional mess. Inside I was in turmoil, outwards it was all about keeping up appearances. That meant telling nobody but my partner, going in to work every day and pretending I was OK.  I didn’t have Kaposi’s Sarcoma but otherwise it was all very Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, at least the first thirty minutes of that flick, before he got fired.

But an uber-stressful job like that takes its toll. For six months I watched my CD4 numbers plummet. I wasn’t feeling well and I didn’t know what to do. Telling my boss in this bastion of conservatism – they  had no idea that I was gay, even - didn’t seem to be an option.  I was stumped. So I just carried on pouring over numbers, like bankers in ivory towers do, meanwhile ignoring my own numbers.

I’ve told this story many times, but it was actually seeing Philadelphia that sent a major attitude adjustment my way.  In the movie, Tom Hanks, bless him, finally stood up to be counted - and so did I.  Summoning up strength one day, I went to the Bank’s health unit, told them that I had been diagnosed six months ago and, despite appearances, was drowning in worry.  And the universe didn’t stop; rather it went in to high gear. “We’ll take care of anything. You don’t have to go back to work.  We can tell your boss the reason, or not, it’s your choice.  Do you need support? If you want to talk to a psychiatrist, we can arrange that.  We have short term disability, you should take that and then we can talk long term disability options.”

The process was all so easy. I never set foot in my office again.

With disability issues taken care of, I went on a disclosure rampage and told everybody but the mailman I had HIV. Wait, I think I even told the mailman. Anyway, it felt remarkably good. And – bonus - leaving work saw my health improve, and my  numbers edge  up.  So, feeling good again, I decided that while I had all this time on my hands,  I would volunteer at the local AIDS agency.  What a slippery path that was . . . .

Three piece suit and tie were exchanged for black T-shirt, Levi 501s and Doc Martens, an ensemble de rigueur for activists of the day, while conveying a previously missing butchness to my catalogue of looks.  It felt good too working at the ASO, answering phones and directing traffic at the front desk. I felt important for the first time in a long time.

That was 1994. The rest is s history.  I now find myself not counting numbers in a bank tower, but dissecting reports on semen, syphilis and undetectable viral load.  Gay men’s sexual health has become my beat.  In fact I know more about semen than most sex club owners.

The magnitude of the change I’ve undergone never escapes me.

But it’s not just how I spend my time. HIV affects how we think, how we value our lives and those of others, how we decide what is important to us – and what isn’t.  I’m not talking about spending every day as if it was  our last; that’s way too trite, but in the old days, we all said it anyway , like we should all just go to Disney Land, to see Mickey one last time. No, it’s all about an appreciation of what matters that comes from personal trauma

This comes in many colours, of course. My version was wanting to make the best of my life, to make a contribution, to make sure my obituary didn’t just include couch surfing, or being a good flower arranger. I wanted, I guess, to make my mark.

I suppose that’s why I plunged in to AIDS work back then. I was driven to start blogging too. That was in 2003 and I became quite obsessive about it, blogging each day, every day, in order to establish a record of my life.  Self centered though that may have been, it was good for me.  I gained confidence, a voice and an audience.  Look at my LiveJournal blog and you’ll see 2.652 journal entries, which attracted a total of 96,506 comments – forty something a post!

I rattled on about everything in those days - my dogs, my home (then a farm in rural Ontario), my friends, my fascination with American Idol – and HIV.  I wrote a lot about HIV.  It was my little project to educate the world about what living with HIV, a pretty normal gay guy living a pretty normal life, looked like.

All this time, I kept looking over my shoulder at the guy in the three-piece suit working on the 52^nd floor, next to the corner office, who even his secretary didn’t know was gay, yet alone poz.

Fast forward a few years, and I am the Editor of PositiveLite.com, a changed man again, with close tabs on a fast-growing news/blogging empire.  But I’m also still a details guy. Today I did indeed spend hours studying semen - not of the real, sticky in your hand variety, but research related to semen and viral load.  You have to know a lot about semen to go there.  I do.  Call me a semen expert, if you like.

I like this kind of stuff though.  Often, I’m interpreting research in ways that others can understand, all the while putting, I suppose, my personal spin on it. We all do it in the news business.  We get good at recognizing the spin of others too. So besides being a semen expert, I’ve become a spin doctor, thanks to HIV.

Thanks to HIV, I also know a fair bit about social media now too, and how it can work for you.  I bet my colleagues back on the 52^nd floor don’t even know what a tweet is!

I’ve also learned to have opinions – some would say I’m opinionated, and there may be truth in that.  I have opinions on everything, including who will win American Idol. That assertiveness that I did not have in the bank comes directly from the HIV thing, and from wanting, I suppose, to be somebody.

With it too comes respect, at least in theory.  I like to think there are some out there who respect me, even if they are just my three beloved dogs – Dudley, Dougall and Peggy. Well, at least one of those respects me, two on a good day. I’ll write about that another day for I feel the pets in our lives are truly important to people living with HIV who have them.

You’ll note that most (all?) of these changes I’ve mentioned are positive things. So yes, I’m part of the HIV gang – we must be dreadfully annoying at times – who continually point out how HIV has changed us for the better.  This must confound prevention experts who would rather we bemoan how awful are our HIV-riddled lives.  And let’s be clear; it’s no picnic for many.  For some of us though, the lucky ones, HIV has been a good thing.  It’s shaken us up.  It’s made us smell the daisies.  (Or is that roses, I can’t remember, but no matter.)  It’s made us make something of our lives.

Anyway, time to get back to my semen studies. Until next time . . . 

In the Summer of 2008, I received a curious package from Bonnie Goldman, the editor of TheBody.com. Inside was a Flip video camera, what was then a new-fangled device that allowed you to take video footage with a camera the size of a pack of cigarettes.

It came with a simple note. “I think you should try this,” it said.

How did she know? I wondered. I had never mentioned to her that I once taped a special for my newborn niece, back when video cameras were the size of footballs and editing consisted of painstakingly recording segments from one VCR to another. “Carly’s Video” consisted of magic tricks, songs and a dramatic reading of “Yurtle the Turtle.”

And yet, Bonnie had the notion that I might have some fun documenting my life as a gay man living with HIV. Immediately, I bought editing software online and started to learn it. But I had my doubts.

There wasn’t anything particularly special about my life, I complained to her in a phone call to her New York office. And a lot of it, like my ongoing struggle with drug addiction, was downright seedy.

 “Tell the truth,” she said. “The more honest you are, the better it will be.”

I trusted her judgment. In my writing for TheBody over the previous years, Bonnie had always demanded the best of me. We regularly debated topics and my approach to my written pieces, and anything that sounded too easy, that contained more platitudes than honest emotion, was questioned. The same would hold true for the video episodes that I quickly began producing.

In September of 2008, “My Fabulous Disease” premiered on TheBody.com. The first episode was an introduction to my life, and already I was being playful with the camera and the potential of video. It concluded with the mantra that Bonnie had instilled in me. “I can’t promise this will always be entertaining,” I said. “But I can promise I will always be honest. So. Let’s see what happens…”

Since then, plenty has happened. When I spent time in Michigan caring for a brother dying of cancer, the camera was there. When I was treated for facial lipoatrophy by getting injections of facial filler, I brought the camera. For everything from my thoughts on barebacking to touring a gay sex club to drug relapses to HIV criminalization to the international AIDS conference in Vienna, I documented everything using the inventive gift sent to me by Bonnie Goldman.

When Bonnie left TheBody a few years ago, I missed her counsel and her friendship. She was maddeningly hard to reach in the two years after, and I wondered if our friendship had been purely professional.

And then the news, in January of 2011, that Bonnie had died after a long struggle with cancer. She had fought it privately, and I felt ashamed for having wanted more contact during what was clearly a difficult time.

Only now, more than a year after her passing, am I finally writing about her death, something so deeply felt I haven’t found the words. I am searching for them still. Life keeps showing up. New people populate it, projects come and go, video episodes of My Fabulous Disease are made. And it has been too long since I have said her name out loud. Bonnie. Bonnie Goldman.

We all come across things, tokens from a person, from a life we treasured but has faded from view. A photograph on a shelf that we pass in the hallway. A shirt in the closet. A book. A recipe.

A broken video camera that has outlived its purpose, that I cannot bear to throw away.

This article first appeared on Mark's blog, My Fabulous Disease.

The month of August went from one lazy hot day to the next. I had gone to the beach a few times. I was also invited  to join my friend and her family on a trip they make each year to the Izu Peninsula. It was such a great feeling being in a family setting with such good friends and their kids. We did lots of snorkeling in the ocean. The water was so clear you could see all kinds of fish and plant life.

It was the first time to be away from my home since being diagnosed, and I worried about staying on schedule with my meds. My friend knew my situation and said she too had to take pills every day, and she would help me to stay on track.

It was a great trip for me and it was so nice to have a change of scenery. 

September had arrived and I was excited about the tweetUp coming up. But this month had taken on new meaning for me.  I couldn't help  thinking how sick I was a year ago, not knowing the full extent of my  illness. Such a year, but I had come so far!  I had returned to health and had put on twenty pounds.

Many nights I would reflect on my past situation and felt compelled to write about it. I would have gone to my twitter friend @viraloadwarrior for advice, but he had stopped tweeting and I couldn’t get hold of him. He wrote for Positive Lite.com and I thought maybe I could tell my story there. Another good friend from there was @WayneB54.  Wayne really grabbed my attention when on Fathers Day I tweeted "Happy Fathers Day!" and he was the first to reply back with "Thanks son!"  It threw me for a loop because in real life my fathers name is Wayne, last initial "B."

He was very supportive of the idea of writing, so I contacted two other guys I knew were with PositiveLite.com, Bob and Brian. They  replied back with the go ahead to write my first draft.

I'm not sure if I was expecting such great support of, but now felt like I really should do it. But the more I thought about it, the more I didn't want to do it. These were painful memories.

In any event, the tweetUp was coming up and it made for a convenient distraction. I had got a reservation for holding it in Shibuya  at RED.  I told the manager maybe around ten people. He was fine with my vagueness, since he was a friend. People started tweeting back and forth about it and Frank (left, with Brian)  would refer some of the twitter people to me for details. Kim too was on board about promoting it and, needless to say, my followers on twitter were growing. I was getting really excited about all the people that were taking an interest in it.

For me it was more than just a tweetUp.  It was me celebrating my health. It was me returning to a social life with new friends. It was me thinking of a bad day one year ago in September and it was me making a choice not to let that memory bring me down.

About that time, the company that fired me for having HIV, contacted me about returning on a temporary basis. The teachers were not so keen on the person they found to replace me and  they all wanted me back, once a week, for teaching some of the little kids in the morning  and two after school kids in the afternoon. It was an awkward request. I had much bitterness after they had let me go, but over the course of a year a lot of those feelings had gone. I knew the extra money would help so I took them up on it.

It was strange at first but I soon snapped back into teacher mode.

The day before the Shibuya tweetup I went to RED to update the manager.  I told him I thought the number might be over ten now but less than twenty. He seemed not too concerned and told me we could have the whole area around the bar.

The next day, I wanted to get there early to greet people as they arrived.  Most people stayed on their feet, going from one group and conversation to the next. It was a great social atmosphere. First there were ten, then twenty, and before the night ended we had over thirty people. It was so great to meet so many new people and forge new friendships. There was such a buzz of people visiting it was hard to hear at times.

I felt so excited at the success of the tweetUp.  Many peoplesaud that it was one of the best ones they had ever attended. One twitter friend called @Locohama even wrote about it the next day and posted a video.  The prospect of doing another was already being talked about for around Halloween.

Before I could think about that I knew I wanted to start writing my story. At first I thought I could do it in just one article for PositiveLite.com. However the more I worked on an outline the larger the story got. I was talking about a year’s worth of stories, and this being my final installment, I can say many were never shared.

I was doing so well at the time with my health, mental frame of mind, new friends, etc., that I was finding it difficult to go back and remember much that had happened in that year.  I would write a few sentences and then need to put it down and catch my breath. I wanted my story to be about the people I met, the support I received from family and friends, and how God carried me threw it.

I have met so many great people through this chapter of my life. I am not sure I would change anything. To the people here on twitter and at PositiveLite.com, you have all been truly awesome. You have my forever grateful heart, respect, and prayers.

Thank you!

One final point: I struggled a bit with how to start Part One, and as dorky as it sounded to me, I began to write...

"Pt,1 My first year with HIV . . . I'm just your everyday guy, I'd like to think."

Editior’s Note. Brian, it's been a delight to work with you on this series. We’ve all learned so much along the way, us about Japan, you about grammar. (Kidding). But honestly it’s been a real treat to see you blossom while responding to adversity in such an open and endearing manner.  From all of us here at PositiveLite.com, we send much  love across the miles.

A to B is a short line. But in my first year with HIV, I feel as if I went through the whole alphabet to get to where I am today. And you know what? No regrets and I wouldn't change a thing. I am the man I am today because of the people I've met since my diagnoses. Here through PositiveLite.com, twitter, family, and God.

It was the morning of the narration workshop and I was up early and excited, becauseI was going to meet new some people, face to face, that I had met through Twitter. 

I arrived at the station early. It was a hot summer morning and I decided to go to a coffee shop to avoid the heat. I could see the station entrance from where I was sitting, able to see any others waiting around for Kim, organizer the workshop.

When I could see that some people had arrived including Kim, I ran out  to where everyone was standing. Kim was just as I had imagined her to be, very warm and welcoming, and she thanked me for coming. I soon started to introduce myself to the others as Brian, and thought I should then say "Shochusucker", from twitter. I was surprised at some blank stares I was getting. I had followed all, but not everyone had followed back. Two followers knew me right away, though - one, a girl from the east coast of the states named Jenny and a guy from Canada named Remi.

We were soon off to the place where the workshop was to be, about ten minutes' walk away. I was hot and longing for air-conditioning. We all sat down on sofas and chairs arranged in a circle. I felt at any moment that someone was going to say, "Hi! My name is so and so, and I'm an alcoholic."

The leader of the group was introduced by Kim. We all introduced ourselves and shared any narration jobs we might have done. I said I had done a few jobs. 

We were then all handed some narration copy that we would read aloud. I scanned mine and was unsure how to say some of the technical words. The leader asked who wanted to go first and Jenny jumped right in. After she read we all clapped. She really did have a good sounding voice for such a job, and leader seemed impressed. The others went around one after each other and read. The leader would comment after each person while I sat there with a dumb smile on my face, enjoying every moment.

Before I knew it the leader of the group turned to me. I took a big drink of water and began - and this radio announcer-like voice came out of my mouth. It was like a 1970's game show host. I could feel my face fill with color. The last sentence came out like James Earl Jones giving a speech about baseball in Field of Dreams. My face went another shade of purple and I finished. All clapped and then the leader jumped in.

"I think that's how you might think it should sound. However it would be nice to hear it again in your own voice. Also don't inhale so loudly,  the mic picks up everything."

Everything he said was true and my ego had been deflated. The second time went much better, and I found just being myself worked well. The leader agreed.

We were asked to read something about Harry Potter, in character. I said it would be hard not to think of an English accent. Others agreed.  A guy named Graig from England and I both had similar ideas about doing an old man's voice. However it stripped our vocal chords and the two of us sat coughing and spluttering the rest of the workshop.

We were all having fun and before I realized it, it was time to go.

On the way back I walked with Remi. I had lived in Canada after college and wanted to talk to him more. He was surprised I knew his home province of New Brunswick. I told him I had lived in Langley near Vancouver and in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I also told him I could sing "O Canada". To my surprised he said he couldn't - in English, only in French. I told him I was a huge fan of The Rankin Family.

The summer went on with many hot days. I had bought a little kids pool to put on my balcony, dipping in it through the day to help cool down. I was getting rather dark-skinned. I asked my doctor if my meds would react well to sun exposure. He said yes.  My CD4 was also going up and up and he thougt the nebulizer was no longer needed.

August rolled around and I saw another tweetUp being discussed by two guys, Frank and Henry, in Ebisu.  It looked like Remi and Kim might be there too, also Simon from New Zealand, whom I always enjoyed on twitter.  I soon got the green light from Frank and Henry to come and join them.

The night of the tweetUp I was excited to meet all these people, but I also felt like I might be imposing on them.  It was a hot Tokyo night with high humidity. I found the place just fine and walked down a flight of stairs to where everyone was and introduced myself as Brian “the ShochuSucker” again.

Frank had a very nice demeanor and introduced me to all there. There were less than 10 people. Meeting Simon I got a good vibe;  he was a good soul and a true gentleman. Another guy from twitter, Matidone, had a big, fun personality and was a big talker. Meeting Henry I got the feeling that I was under scrutiny, figuring out what kind of character I might be: I ended up hanging with him. He was a very no-nonsense guy with, at times, a bit of a bark. At one point he said  how, when talking to someone, he looks them dead in the eye – and gave me the stare to make his point. I took a moment to look into his eyes and I could see this was a man with a big heart.

Remi showed up later and I was happy to meet him again.  Kim never showed. All of us had the gift of gab and the conversation was never dull. Simon was a bit more reserved than the rest of us, but when he had something to say it was honest and sincere and deserved our attention.

All of us were sharing stories and talking over each other throughout the night. However, Henry took the prize with the best story of shooting off a fire extinguisher at a bar down the street. He said the whole place had to clear out and ironically the fire department showed up too.  The visual in my head brought tears of laughter to my eyes.

Frank and I got on the subject of the March 11th earthquake, sharing our stories of where we were and our journey after that. So many had left Japan. I told him how I couldn't leave my friends. He shared about how he had put a group together, foreigners who wouldn't leave Japan. It was called "Gaijin Hero's." (Gaijin = Foreigner).  He asked if I wanted to join, and  I said, "Sure!"

Frank and I were already planning on doing another tweetUp the next month. I told him I had a place in mind called RED in Shibuya. He seemed keen on the location and told me to see if we could get it.

That night, I went to bed with a great feeling of new friendships made. I was soon off to dreamland. A Gaijin Hero. A man with new friends.

I closed my eyes and had visions of fire extinguishers dancing in my head!