#and calling my partner to inform him (tearfully) that i would be driving home

[daddy-socrates]

nvm it was moved to next week

im an EXTROVERT why am i REHEARSING how to INTRODUCE MYSELF at this event ive been looking forward to for DAYS

[prccinct]

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Logan thrummed his fingers against the edge of his desk. It was a standard question, one repeated to him by relatives and teachers alike. But Logan, aged seven, squirmed in his seat with his arm waving above his head. He was desperate to be called upon to answer. When his teacher asked, he proudly chirped back the same answer he always had, with a grin too wide for his face. “Batman, just like my dad.”

It always drew a chorus of whispers and oooohs from his classmates. A smattering of giggles, an eye roll from his teacher.

“There are no such thing as superheroes.” A girl sneered from across the table.

“But he is! He fights bad guys like Batman. And he drives fast in his own car. And, and, and! He even works with Alfred! But he isn’t a butler. He’s the coolest. And he even has a uniform too, with all the badges and   ”

“Logan.” His teacher interjected gently. “Your father is a detective, isn’t he?”

“I guess that’s what some people call him. But I call him Batman. It’s a way cooler name than Major Crimes Detective.”

“Just stay here, bud.”

“But I don’t want to go to camp.” Logan sulked, dropping the duffel bag he had slung over his shoulder onto the concrete with a soft thud. Whilst the other Fourth graders tearfully parted with their parents for the week, Logan was adamant that camp wasn’t where kids like him went. First of all, only one parent had come to drop him off. Only one parent was ever in the picture, for as long as he could remember. His dad was everything he wanted to be when he grew up. A hero.

“Every kid goes to camp, Logan. It’s fun.”

“But why can’t I just go to work with you?” Logan couldn’t help the way his voice shook, or the way the tears glistened in his eyes.

His father smiled at him, so warmly, it made him more resolute to keep the tears at bay. Logan curled his fists by his sides and blinked the tears back. He squeezed his eyes shut, refusing to give up.

That was when he felt the frames settle on his face. Far too large for him, slipping off his nose. But his dad’s aviators didn’t need to fit. His eyes blinked open, small tears sliding down his cheeks as his fingers held them in place against his face.

“So no one can see you cry.” His dad said with a smile and a ruffle of his hair.

Logan couldn’t help but smile.

A week at camp passed in a blink of an eye. Though, tinges of homesickness did strike at night. He warded them away, bundled in blankets in his bunk, tears hidden under the covers with his aviators in his hands.

But he practically bounced off the bus that arrived back at school. He waved goodbyes to his friends who were collected by their parents. He couldn’t spot his dad amongst the crowds of parents. Late. It wasn’t unheard of, especially with a job as demanding as a detective. So Logan settled on the curb, eyes cast toward the street, waiting to see the familiar patrol car. Maybe his dad would even flash his lights. Fingers curled around the arms of his aviators, Logan waited, passing the time by deciding which stories he’d tell his dad first.

An hour passed.

By this time, only his teachers were left waiting with him. Not a single patrol car had passed.

Two hours.

They had called his home, his dad’s mobile, with no answer. Dusk was setting in, and Logan shivered as the warmth of the day receded.

At three hours, he had been taken into the reception of the school. Calls being made every 10 minutes to his dad’s contact numbers, with no response. His teacher had stayed by his side, listening attentively as Logan began telling the camp stories he was eager to tell his dad. Legs swinging, knees bouncing, hair still a mess from falling asleep on the bus.

Finally, a call was returned. Logan eyed his teacher as she answered the call.

“Yes, is he in? I’m with his son, Logan.”

A long pause.

Logan caught the minute crease that formed on her brow. The way she sat straighter. And the way her eyes fell on him. Like she was shocked.

“But he has been at school camp this week.”

Another pause.

His legs stopped swinging. His knees stopped bouncing.

“I see. Thank you.”

The call ended and Logan stared at her, waiting for her to relay the information. But he could tell she was nervous, from her posture to her hesitation and nervous smile. He truly was his father’s son.

“Logan. Is there anyone else who can pick you up? Your mom? How about any grandparents?”

“But where is my dad?”

“I’m not sure, Logan. But I think it’s best if-” “But he’s still coming, right? If I go now, he’ll think I’m missing.” “I promise, we’ll keep calling, but we need someone to come and take you home for now.”

Logan paused. Maybe his dad was on an important case.

“We could call my grandma?” “I think that would be best.”

His grandparents had come to collect him soon after. He had always loved his time in their house, usually long afternoons full of playing detective with grandma, and being snuck lollies by grandpa.

But this evening was different, the mood more tense. He didn’t have to play detective to know something was wrong. Particularly when he was put to bed in the guest bedroom, his grandma evading all his questions about his dad.

Like a good detective, he knew that good intel formed the base of a strong case. His dad had taught him that. So, he tiptoed out of his bed, catching sight of the lights still on down the hall, in his grandparent’s bedroom.

He approached the closed door as silently as he could, before pressing his ear to the door.

“   But it’s not his fault! It’s unfair to him.”

“I know   ”

“That bastard   ”

“   I know.”

“He left his son at a bus stop!”

He could hear his grandma faintly crying through the door.

“What are we supposed to do? We can’t raise him, we’re   “ “We have no other choice, my love. We have to try.”

Logan backed away from the door. Perhaps good intel was a burden.

Back in the bed, buried under the covers, his eyes flooded with tears that couldn’t be held back, no matter how hard he tried.

Logan refused to believe it. His dad was good. His dad loved him. They were the inseparable duo, partners in solving crime.

Fingers trembled as they held his father’s glasses in his hands, and cried.

‘Missing’ was the word that was used to describe the case.

A missing person’s case.

His dad, missing.

But Logan knew it was far more than simply missing. The way his grandma didn’t even act like she expected her son-in-law to return. There was something they weren’t telling him.

He needed to know, if he was going to solve the case. To find his dad. And he refused to give up.

He’d ask questions to the detectives he knew, ones who came to visit him occasionally. He took notes in a spiral bound book, the back of his maths book. It had become his official investigation book, like one he had seen his dad use. Every single detective had said “we’re still looking”. But how could a whole team of detectives, looking, not find him? They were looking in the wrong places, he had deduced.

He held out hope that if he himself couldn’t find his dad, his dad, the best detective there was, would find his way back to him. At least, that’s what he’d tell his grandparents, as they watched him spend hours waiting by windows, looking for the flashes of red and blue lights that would prove him right.

Logan was fourteen when his grandmother fell ill. She wasn’t quick to tell him, but it wasn’t long until the pseudo-detective out the pieces together.

Perhaps some mysteries were best left unsolved.

Another person slowly left his life. Her mind went slowly. Some days were better than others, but it wasn’t long until she wasn’t there at all. At least he got to say goodbye.

His grandfather, distraught and frail in his own old age, had to be moved into a retirement home.

“FUCK YOU TOO.”

“THAT’S IT. GET OUT.”

Logan slammed the wire door behind him. It rattled in its hinges, holding back the seething woman behind him.

“You have no where to go because no one wanted you. You’ll be back and you’ll be sorry!” She screamed after him. But he paid no mind. Seventeen and in his third foster home, he couldn’t stay in that house any longer.

They all treated him like he was damaged, like he was deluded and didn’t know what was best for himself. They limited his freedom, setting curfews and ridiculous rules for someone as independent as him. Not to mention the way they all told him his endless pursuit to find his father pointless. A waste of time. Obsessive. That his father had left him at that bus stop and he was probably a dirty cop. That he’d be dead by now.

He couldn’t listen to their lies anymore. They didn’t know his father.

Logan shoved his fists in the pockets of his jacket, aviators on, as he marched away back onto the streets.

[naivelocus]

Feature: America’s Hidden H.I.V. Epidemic

The community’s awakening came in 1991, when Magic Johnson tearfully announced, “Because of the H.I.V. virus I have obtained, I will have to retire from the Lakers today,” and warned, “It can happen to anyone.” By 1994, AIDS had become the No. 1 killer of all African-Americans ages 25 to 44. The virus was 16 times as common in black women as in their white counterparts — and the gap would widen over the next few years. I was an editor at Essence in 1994 when the magazine’s editor in chief, Susan L. Taylor, insisted that we shine a light on the disturbing increase of H.I.V. among African-American women by putting Rae Lewis Thornton, a Chicago woman who described herself as “young, educated, drug-free and dying of AIDS,” on the cover.

I had been writing about AIDS in the black community since the mid-’80s but had never seen anything like the coordinated efforts that started in the late ’90s, when civil rights groups, politicians, clergy, fraternities and sororities and celebrities stepped up to encourage testing and distribute prevention information. All the major black publications collaborated in a highly visible campaign to spotlight the disease as a major health crisis. Black churches created AIDS ministries and offered H.I.V. testing — and the number of congregations participating in the Black Church Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS ballooned to more than 10,000.

During the 2004 election, the PBS journalist Gwen Ifill brought the issue to the mainstream stage as the moderator for the vice-presidential debate. She asked the candidates Dick Cheney and John Edwards what they planned to do to end the spread of H.I.V./AIDS — “not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country” — among black women. Cheney replied that he was not aware of the numbers, while Edwards spent more than a minute discussing AIDS in Africa. In 2006, I attended the International AIDS Conference in Toronto with a delegation of black journalists, civil rights leaders, government officials, politicians and celebrities, including the singer Sheryl Lee Ralph, Representatives Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Julian Bond, chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., who famously announced, “Now is the time for us to face the fact that AIDS has become a black disease.”

Most of the lock-step mobilization efforts focused on preventing the disease in black women, who, for the most part, were contracting the virus through sex with male partners. Though the C.D.C. and other agencies offered plenty of alarming statistics confirming the high and growing numbers of H.I.V. cases and deaths among black women, there was a lack of empirical evidence to clearly explain why the rates were so high. Experts in academia and government researchers tried to unravel a knotted tangle of factors: Women were contracting the virus from bisexual men; higher rates of sexually transmitted infections among black women facilitated the spread of H.I.V.; socioeconomic issues drove up the rates of all disease. The lack of research to create a coherent explanation was further confounded by a reluctance on the part of some scientists and activists to perpetuate the dangerous myth of black women as sexually promiscuous — another holdover from slavery.

Given the confusion, it was simplest to latch onto the most provocative idea: that black gay men, who we knew were also contracting H.I.V. in high numbers, provided a “bridge to infection” to black heterosexual women, a phrase I first heard from researchers at a medical conference. As the theory went, closeted black gay men were using women as unsuspecting “cover girls” to hide their sexuality and then infecting them with H.I.V. In my reporting for both The Times and Essence, I found no shortage of anecdotal accounts of H.I.V.-positive women who were infected by male partners who had been having sex with other men in secret. As a black lesbian myself, I understood the stigma, shame and fear that could drive black gay men to create seemingly straight lives while sleeping with men — and end up unwittingly infecting their female partners with H.I.V. This idea made a certain amount of sense in the frustrating absence of scientific data.

In retrospect, the high rate of H.I.V. infection among African-American women was a result of a complicated combination of all these factors, as well as the reality that after decades of denial and neglect, the viral load piled up in black communities, making any unprotected sexual encounter with anyone a potential “bridge to infection.” But two decades ago, in the midst of a very scary, fast-growing epidemic, the down-low brother became the AIDS boogeyman. I first heard about the “D.L.” from J.L. King, an author and self-proclaimed sex educator whom I interviewed in 2001. He had just warned a rapt audience of health care providers and H.I.V. educators at an AIDS conference in Washington: “I sleep with men, but I am not bisexual, and I am certainly not gay. I am not going to your clinics, I am not going to read your brochures, I am not going to get tested. I assure you that none of the brothers on the down low like me are paying the least bit of attention to anything you have to say.”

King’s subsequent 2004 book, “On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of Straight Black Men Who Sleep With Men,” appeared on the New York Times best-seller list for a number of weeks and spawned two “Oprah” shows, an episode of “Law & Order S.V.U.,” a BET documentary, a sequel by King and another book by his ex-wife. Ta-Nehisi Coates jumped into the fray in a 2007 essay for Slate that questioned why the myth of the “on-the-down-low brother” refused to die, referencing a controversial 2003 cover story in this magazine by a white writer who went into the scene to uncover closeted black men who lead double lives.

Keith Boykin, a former Clinton White House aide, became so incensed by the down-low hysteria that he wrote a 2005 best-selling book, “Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies and Denial in Black America.” “Because the whole down-low story was doing a disservice to the black gay community and creating a racially troubling narrative that black men who have sex with men were villains, I felt I had to step in and correct the record,” said Boykin, a CNN commentator who teaches at Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies. “I think the near-decade-long obsession with the down low diverted our attention into what was really a side issue.”

In 2010, after Oprah Winfrey ran her second show about the down low, again featuring King, Dr. David J. Malebranche, a black physician and one of the country’s foremost experts on H.I.V. and black gay and bisexual men, wrote a heartfelt open letter to the talk-show host. “We are not all self-loathing, secretive, unprotected-sex-having, disease-ridden liars,” Malebranche wrote. He posted the letter on Oprah’s website, and after it was removed, posted it on his own Facebook page. People all over the world shared the post, and it received hundreds of comments.

Photo Justin Huff at Grace House in April, beside a makeshift graveyard that holds the cremated remains of some 35 residents. Credit Ruddy Roye for The New York Times

In the end, the organized H.I.V. outreach and education that proved successful to black women never translated to black gay men — and the excessive focus on the down low sucked away critical time, energy and resources. Between 2005 and 2014, new H.I.V. diagnoses among African-American women plummeted 42 percent, though the number of new infections remains unconscionably high — 16 times as high as that of white women. During the same time period, the number of new H.I.V. cases among young African-American gay and bisexual men surged by 87 percent.

On Wednesday evenings once a month, Sturdevant runs an H.I.V./AIDS support group in a stark conference room near the State Capitol in Jackson. The meetings end promptly at 7:30 p.m., so the dozen or so young men can race home to watch “Empire.” Sturdevant began October’s gathering with a prayer. “Hold hands and bow your heads — and take off that hat,” he said to Tommy Brown, who had rushed in from his job at Popeyes. The willowy young man snatched off his baseball cap, embroidered with the fast-food chain’s red-and-orange logo, and lowered his head. “Gracious God, we want to thank you once again for the unity that we have here, Lord,” Sturdevant intoned in his gravelly baritone. “Thank you for showing us how to love each other and love ourselves. We ask that you bring more people in that need somebody to talk to. That need the laughter. That need the understanding.”

As the men settled into their seats, Sturdevant asked them to go around and “check in.” Jermerious Buckley, watchful behind black rectangular glasses, with no sign of the makeup and colorful pumps he wore on weekends at Metro, told the group, “I’m doing a whole lot better.” Last year, he said, “Daddy,” as he called Sturdevant, had pulled him back from the dead, after he had shrunk to 85 pounds, his arms covered with Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions, his kidneys failing. He felt like a “zombie,” he said, too weak and hopeless to bother with his meds. Now Buckley thought he was finally strong enough to get back onto the pageant circuit where he competed. From his phone, he pulled up a picture of himself as “Akeelah,” unrecognizable in a shimmery white body-hugging gown and towering wig. “November in New Orleans — y’all wish me luck,” he said.

The group turned toward Benjamin Jennings, who wore a serious expression, with a shock of long hair in dreadlocks flipped to the side. When he said it was his first time there, everyone clapped. “I was diagnosed July 8 of this year, and my goal is to learn everything that I can about this thing,” said Jennings, 21, talking in a tumble of words as he pulled at his cropped T-shirt. “The first person I told was my mom. Thank God — I am so lucky to have her in my life.” He paused, looking into the faces of the men around the table and speaking more slowly. “I used to keep my feelings bottled up, but then I started opening my mouth on it,” he said. “I did everything to prevent this disease, but because of one slip-up I have it. Now I want to help anyone I can in any type of way. My goal is to not to let anyone judge me or let this disease own me.”

The bias that black gay and bisexual men still face poisons the H.I.V. picture in Mississippi and throughout the South. In 2016, Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi signed HB 1523, the Protecting Freedom of Conscience From Government Discrimination Act, one of the country’s most sweeping and repressive anti-L.G.B.T. laws. Though currently blocked by federal court and under appeal, the legislation, if allowed to proceed, would allow churches, religious charities and private businesses to deny services in a broad variety of contexts to L.G.B.T. people.

Many say rejection feels most acute and painful from the institution that should offer sanctuary and support: the black church. Individual congregations, religious organizations and clerics have made strides in openness and acceptance, but in general the black church remains largely absent from and often hostile toward the L.G.B.T. community. An African-American pastor in Jackson, the Rev. Edward James of Bertha Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, became a cringe-worthy symbol of homophobia in December 2014 for his protest against same-sex marriage equality. News outlets and social-media accounts shared a photo of him in his clerical robe, holding a sign that read: “Marriage is one man and one woman. Anything else is a perversion,” next to a horse clad in a white wedding dress. “The church is someplace to go for release and spiritual comfort, but the church is actually fearful for me,” said Buckley, who, growing up, attended Baptist services with his grandmother in the delta. “Now I stay at home on Sunday. It’s too hard.”

All too often, when people living with H.I.V. in Jackson lack the support of their families, community and the church, they end up in Grace House, a homeless facility on a sleepy block in the midtown section of the city. A cluster of four suburban-looking houses, Grace House originally functioned as a hospice, where the sick came to die. Now that the infected are living longer — and the numbers of gay and bisexual men with the virus continue to creep up — more and more young men are seeking shelter.

Until recently, Justin Huff, a former Jackson State student, shared a room on the second floor of Grace House’s main facility. He was infected with H.I.V. a year and a half ago, when a man he met on Jack’d sexually assaulted him. He received his diagnosis just after his 21st-birthday celebration. “I was throwing up and couldn’t eat anything for a few days; I thought it was from the drinking,” Huff said. “When I went to the doctor, he was like, if I hadn’t made it in the next two days, I would’ve been dead.”

Frightened and overwhelmed, he eventually landed on the doorstep of Grace House. “I couldn’t believe I was living in a shelter,” said Huff, who is now couch-surfing, applying for jobs at fast-food outlets and retail shops and attending Sturdevant’s support group, determined to stay healthy. “I felt like I had no one. Off and on, I got tired of living, because all I was doing was basically dying trying to stay alive.”

Photo The corner of Farish & Cohea Streets in Jackson. Credit Ruddy Roye for The New York Times

Behind Grace House is a small, quiet makeshift graveyard that holds the cremated remains of 35 or so residents whose families did not pick up their bodies after they died. Ceramic angels, pieces of glasswork and other mementos left by friends in memory of the deceased dot the patch of earth at the base of a pecan tree. Stacey Howard, 47, the director of programs, remembers one of the last people buried there, a young man who was H.I.V.-positive and addicted to crack, who had lived off and on at Grace House before he was found dead on the street in the spring of 2016.

“They had him at the local funeral home and were getting ready to turn his body over to the state, because no one would claim his remains,” Howard explained as she leaned against the tree. “We got in touch with his family, who didn’t want anything to do with him but at least signed the paperwork. I think it’s part of our responsibility that when someone in our community passes away, we give them the dignity of a place to rest.”

On a late, lazy Sunday afternoon in early April, Sturdevant, in cutoff fatigues and a white tank top stained with barbecue sauce stretched over his generous belly, was flipping chicken and rib tips on his grill. He had gathered his family — nearly two dozen sons and daughters, some related by blood, most not — to his house in South Jackson for a family barbecue. His daughter Tenisha, who had moved in with her two children in November, handed off 6-month-old Kory Cedric to her father. Sturdevant nuzzled his grandson’s chubby cheek before passing him to one of his unrelated “sons,” Cord, who lifted the laughing baby high over his head.

Sturdevant had gathered the crew to announce that he was taking a new job. He would be the manager of the SPOT — Safe Place Over Time — a new program located on the third floor of the Jackson Medical Mall in a former eyewear shop, funded by ViiV Healthcare, a pharmaceutical company that produces a dozen H.I.V. medications. He would continue to provide services and support for young gay and bisexual men and transgender women and still consult for My Brother’s Keeper. The new gig offered Sturdevant autonomy, but also $8,000 more per year. “I had to wait until after Christmas to get presents for the children and grandchildren,” he said, sipping cognac and Coke, ice cubes bouncing against the sides of a coffee mug, his cheeks rosy with cheer. “I always want to be able to take care of my family,” he added, “to be able to say, ‘Don’t worry; I got you.’ ”

Despite the persistent anti-L.G.B.T. stigma and entrenched social and economic issues that cling to the South, Sturdevant feels a complicated, bone-deep tie to the people and the place. When he encourages his “sons” and “daughters” to take care of themselves and others, he is echoing the love and acceptance he received from his own large family. After years of hiding, when he came out to his mother in his 20s, she told him, “I love you regardless.” When his family eventually found out that he was sick, his mother and sister drove up to where he was living in Memphis, along with six carloads of aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins. They tried to serve him plates laden with down-home food that he was too ill to eat and did their best to love him back to health. In the hospital, he finally admitted to his mother he had AIDS. “She told me, ‘Boy, you gonna be all right; God got you,’ ” he recalls, tearing up. In the end, they took him home. He moved back to his mother’s house in Metcalfe, with somebody from the sprawling network of nearly 100 family members always close by, until he recovered. “They saved my life, and I’ll never forget that,” he said.

Black gay and bisexual men and the organizations and activists that support them have come to the painful realization that the nation and society have failed them and that they must take care of themselves and one another. Their group names and slogans reflect a kind of defiant lift-as-we-climb self-reliance: My Brother’s Keeper; Us Helping Us in Washington; the Saving Ourselves Symposium that takes place in Jackson this week; Our People, Our Problem, Our Solution, the tag line of the Black AIDS Institute. Since last October, the young men in Sturdevant’s orbit have been supported by the fragile scaffolding that “Mr. Ced” has constructed around them and with them. Jordon has gained weight and is up and walking. Marq has promised to stay on his meds and has begun calling Sturdevant “Dad.” Benjamin Jennings has a new job as a corrections officer at a prison north of Jackson. Jermerious Buckley is “mother,” as he puts it, to six gay “children” of his own.

But even Sturdevant knows he can’t save everyone. A shadow passes over his face and his voice grows low when he talks about the one young man he couldn’t save. He remains haunted by him. A few years ago, a co-worker, Dot, suggested Sturdevant talk to a quiet fair-skinned man who was struggling with his H.I.V. diagnosis. “I told him my story and let him know, ‘You can do this, too,’ ” Sturdevant recalled. “He was in denial and very secretive, but still, he got into treatment and was doing good.”

But when Sturdevant saw him again in January 2016, he had stopped taking his meds and had taken a bad turn. “He was nothing but skin and bones,” Sturdevant said, looking down at his hands. “His eyes were bloodshot red. It almost looked like they were bleeding. We took him to the clinic, but the doctor said, ‘Get him to the hospital immediately.’ ”

For the next two months, Sturdevant and Dot kept a close eye on the young man, scolding, nagging and pleading with him to stay in treatment and to tell his family the truth so he would have someone to support him. On a Friday in March 2016, Sturdevant arranged to visit him and take medication to his house. But when he arrived, there was no answer. “I banged on the door, and then constantly called him all weekend,” Sturdevant said. “On Monday, they told me he had passed away.”

Sturdevant was devastated. Sometimes when he closes his eyes, he said, he still sees the smiling, fit and slender 27-year-old. “I felt like I had failed,” he said, choking up. “I kept thinking, He was going to get better, so how could this happen?” He took a breath, looking uncharacteristically tired, his eyes focused on a point off in the distance. “Listen, I know I can’t be there night and day for everyone. But at this point now, I feel like I can’t lose another young man to this disease.”

Linda Villarosa is the director of the journalism program at the City College of New York in Harlem and an assistant professor of media and communication arts. She is a former New York Times science editor and Essence magazine executive editor.

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A version of this article appears in print on June 11, 2017, on Page MM38 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: America’s Hidden H.I.V. Epidemic. Today's Paper|Subscribe

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