I lied, I wrote a post here this morning saying it’d be my last for the weekend. Here I am though, more awake, feeling less fogged up from a cold, and on top of it all, finding myself with some extra time in my very expensive boutique hotel here in Montreal.

This is just for one night for some meetings and I fly back tomorrow. Sometimes I joke with negative friends, “Now don’t be going out and getting this just because I manage to pull it off so glamorously! Many have tried only to be disappointed.”

That’s always my disclaimer. In fact, once, a long time ago, a friend came to my place just after going for his test result. He was still stressed and I couldn’t tell which way it went.

Sitting beside me he looks at me, very seriously and says, “I went and it came back….and it was negative.”

Because I couldn’t believe how serious he was still about it, I consollingly put my hand on his knee and said, “You know, “A,” it’s ok, It’s not for everyone. Not everyone cam pull it as gracefully as I can. It takes a lot of work to make this effortless, it’s probably best this way.”

“A” had this look and then suddenly smiled. Unfortunately a few years later he did find himself to be positive, but it wasn’t me who welcomed him in to the club on that one.

For me, fighting against stigma has meant using humour. I have my blog, I joke about the AIDS star status system and how, and write how I became the Kathy Griffin of AIDS on my Blog, Acid Reflux Presents: My Life on the AIDS D-List.”

This is my way of just being myself, shocking people, and more or less thumbing my nose at anyone who wants to define me as “diseased, dirty, unclean” etc etc. By writing so openly and laughing at my life, I feel as if I’ve taken the power away from people like that.

This is the voice that I’ve created over the years. It’s kind of in your face, well a lot. I hope to provoke, and I even hope to make some feel uncomfortable.

I hated the acronym AIDS so f’ing much. I’d correct someone who suggested that I had “AIDS” in .5 of second and they’d never do it again. But now here I am throwing it around. Suddenly I’m not so bogged down by the word. I don’t have it, well, I did for about three weeks when my CD4 went below 200, but then it went up again and I went to being the average positive. Maybe I could still qualify as “poz, depraved and undetectable” skipping the healthy adj. all together.

This week I’ve been feeling not well, edgy, and well pretty cranky. It’s probably been obvious. But at least a 24 hour trip to a boutique hotel in Montreal for one day of meetings out to give my back my glamour card and boost my spirits.

I’m not sure the point of this post was, but what the hell.

Maybe it is, “What do you do to cope? These have been some of the ways I have, what about you?