Shit (Spanko) Girls Say

A couple weeks ago, I was introduced to Shit Girls Say and it was full of win. It's funny because it's so true (which is a phrase I'm pretty sure is on the list) and I catch myself saying those things all the time, even though I don't see myself as a typical girl. Being an incorrigible spanko, I've been compiling a similar list of things that spanko bottom girls say. The majority of this is based on stuff that HeatherFeather, Naomi and I say to each other and to our respective tops. 

I present to you, the first installment of "Shit (Spanko) Girls Say."

"That really hurt!"

"Why are you so mean?!"

"He totally murdered me!"

"I can't believe I bought this!"

"Will you take a picture of my butt?"

"No! Not that!"

"Hey, let's go look at hairbrushes."

"I can't believe you would do that!"

"You tricked me!"

"That looks mean."

"You could spank someone with that!"

"Do we have any lotion?"

"I'm still shaking!"

"I need a hug."

"Woah, this is really heavy."

"You said we were done!"

"Are you spanking me again tonight?"

"If we do that, then we're gonna get caught!" 

"Not there!"

"That's the inside of my thigh!"

"Way to throw me under the bus."

"I'm in so much trouble, so I wanted to talk to you before I get killed."

"What is that even MADE OF?"

"Unacceptable!"

"Do I have to?"

"I need new panties."

"She looked awkward. I wonder if she's a spanko, too."

"This is really flexible."

"He looked at me funny. I'm pretty sure he knows."

"Can you still see marks on me?"

"Do we have an ice pack?"

"It was totally not my fault."

"That's where the tip of it hit me."

"I can't sleep. I need a spanking."

"Look at all my tears!"

"I WISH that would break!"

"Do you think you could spank someone with a bird perch?"

"Are you still sore, too?"

"When you were a kid, did you look it up in the dictionary?" 

"OMG, I felt that way, too!"

"Do we have time to go to the kitchen section?"

"Do you really want to buy that?"

"I'm using arnica, do you want some?"

"Then he told me to... actually, I can't repeat that. Ugh."

"It was too horrible for words!"

"It's bulletproof. It can't break. I'm stuck with it."

"He wouldn't do that... would he?!"

"It was seriously like I was on fire."

"Quit exaggerating! It was only like, 20 strokes!"

"Awww, you poor thing!"

"Ugh, I hate saying that word."

"Does my butt look good at this angle?"

"Someone's here. Talk vanilla!"

"I wish I marked more!"

"I wish I didn't mark so much!"

"He's so horrible! I love him!"

"What are we going to tell them it's for if they ask?"

"I cried SO HARD."

"I like your butt better than mine."

"I want that, but I'm scared."

"He uses that on you?!"

"I didn't even get a warm up!"

"Wait! What are you doing?!"

"I'm not ready yet!"

"I can hardly sit."

"I kept waking up because I rolled over."

"It's been so long since I got spanked! I'm dying!"

"Wanna see my welts?"

"Grab something else, I don't want to just buy this."

"Let's go to the bathroom so I can show you what happened."

"Then he was like 'Go get the hairbrush' and I died." 

"Bye! Been nice knowin' ya!"

"Then his voice got all low and serious..."

"If you're a wuss then I don't know what I am."

"We have different definitions of 'bad.'"

"It was not as bad as I expected."

"It was way worse than I thought it would be."

"But what if he does?!"

"Sorry I'm being like this. I haven't been spanked in weeks!"

"Sorry, I was in the corner."

"Ugh, she cries fake."

"I wish she would close her legs while getting spanked."

"Did you see that one guy's hands?"

"We have time to go to Bed, Bath and Beyond still."

"I can't decide if I'm excited or terrified."

"He wanted to have sex with me. Ew."

"My panties came all the way off and now I can't find them."

"I'm sick. You can't spank me."

"What was that for?!"

"I thought it was never going to be over!"

"One sec, I have to make a sandwich."

"I don't want to ask for it though."

"I hope no one could hear me."

"That's a regular thing to say, right? Not a spanking thing?"

"He's into sensation play, though."

"I could just really use a good spanking right now."

"Have you ever seen a bruise look like this before?"

"I'm hiding this."

"Can you take paddles through Airport Security?"

"I'm really sore."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I want him to spank me with it."

"Want to hear something horrible that happened?"

"Okay, we have an hour. We can get it done before he gets home."

"I like getting spanked with you!"

"He has a good rhythm."

"He'd make a good top."

"I have no sense of self preservation."

"That's not even safe!"

"I'm getting a doctor's note about that."

"It just wasn't a good scene."

"He's just not mean enough."

"That was WAY TOO MEAN."

"I think I have a blister."

"You're never doing that again, right?"

"Are these panties too slutty for spanking?"

"Yeah, but she's into like, bondage and wax play and stuff."

"I can't believe you said that to him!"

"This scene could use a spanking."

"You know whose butt her butt looks like?"

"Sometimes I just want to be around spankos, you know?"

"Hit HER with it now!"

"I can hardly fit my butt in my jeans, it's so swollen." 

"That's not aftercare, that's torture!"

"I'm not done crying yet."

"I wish I was snarky like you."

"I'm just way too good."

"Awww, he did that because he loves you!"

"I don't want to pick."

"Okay! I'm doing it! You don't need to get the cane!"

"He was being really mean about it. It was so cute."

"You're not spanking me again, are you?"

"Seeing that hurt ME!"

"You're so red! I'm jealous!"

"I changed my mind! I don't want another!"

"Do you have time to spank me before work?"

"Am I walking funny?"

"Not the thighs!"

"Wait, you're not really going to do that, are you?"

"That really, really hurt!" 

This is the entire collection for tonight. Feel free to add to the list in the comments section, giving it your particular brand of spanko flare :D

Malignus' Birthday, My Thighs and Other Fun Stuff

Merry Christmas, everyone! I'm on holiday until the 3rd, which means that I'll hopefully get a lot written and stored for your enjoyment in the coming weeks. I hope everyone has been enjoying whatever they celebrated.

For my, celebrations began with Malignus' birthday on the 22nd. HeatherFeather and I had a bunch of fun preparing things: we blew up a billion black and red balloons and filled the house with them, got him some gifts and a cake and made a most delicious dinner. The cake was pretty much the best part, though: it's so him:

You can see from this photo that another spoon was obtained. That was from HeatherFeather, with the condition that only I get hit with it. Because, you know, THAT'S fair. The spoon is from the same series as Warren, and the couple of whacks I got with it make it obvious that it isn't going to be my best friend. 

On the right side of the table, you'll see a tube of Capzasin that I bought out of my own free will. Don't freak out. I'm not insane, I promise.

Well, maybe a little. Or it's just that whole thing with the lack of self preservation.

Doing that meant a lot for me in terms of submission, because I hate it pretty much more than any other thing. Just say the word and my face gets sad (the other night, I got scrunchy faced over the word "capsized" in a video game :P). That said, I've been trying to strike a balance between enjoying the fear that comes with partnering with a sadist and knowing that what happens to me is largely outside of my control and not getting irrationally terrified of anything and creating undue anxiety for myself. My feelings towards Capzasin were way too far over onto the side of irrational fear, and it seemed like an appropriate and beautiful thing to do to give up my protesting and indulgence of fear and take solace in not having control. I even ASKED FOR IT the other night, although I did a horribly pathetic job of it. I was snuggling after a spanking and I wanted to ask, even though I really, really did not want to receive it, just because I wanted to be able to accept it and be relaxed about it. I kept sighing as I tried to and failed, and after prompting I finally got the question out in that dumb, quiet, monotone voice. He said no, which made me incredibly happy. Usually getting myself psyched up over something and having it not happen is displeasing, but this worked out well. I'm hoping that next time it comes up, I'll be able to remember my active part in things and that doing so will allow me to move more easily into submission. Hopefully someday soon, I'll be able to ask for unpleasant things in a voice that gives the seriousness due to the situation (that is, not being excessively nonchalant) but which isn't "um   uh    excuse me could I please... have that thing?" 

I know that some people think that's torture-horrible and should never be done, but it's important to remember that, like a lot of things that are truly unpleasant, (like my nylon cane, or my lexan paddle, or thigh spanking at all) it serves a purpose within my relationship and I have, despite my dislike of it, I get something quite noteworthy from it in terms of submission. 

Anyway, on Malignus' birthday he gave us his birthday spankings. I was always pretty sure that those were supposed to be kind of light and fun, but Malignus gave HeatherFeather and I his with an acrylic cane. >_< It was fun, however, because it was the first time that HeatherFeather and I got spanked side by side, and that made the experience far more enjoyable. He did, however, hit me really, really hard 30 times (29 for his birthday, and 1 on my thighs because I said I was "fine" at the end when Heather asked instead of talking about how sore I was :P). 

A few minutes later, I somehow got myself into a situation where I had the front of my thighs caned. He'd done it to another one of my friends one time, but never to me (although he'd hit me there with Jenny and lots of times with his hand) and the other day he hit HeatherFeather there twice. Heather had told me to ask him to do it to me, and because I have NO SENSE OF SELF PRESERVATION WHATSOEVER and will always say "Okay!" to something horrible that Malignus wants to do to me for "fun" I agreed and asked him to. 

Holy cow, that hurts. The first two were pretty bad, and then I was matched with Heather. Then he asked me if I wanted as many as he'd given my other friend, and I said yes. The next two made me sob. It was incredibly hard to have what was happening be right in front of me: the psychological factor is 99 percent of things for me, and the sight and sound of an implement in motion have been known to make me gasp or cry out even if they never hit me. Knowing that those strokes were destined for a very sensitive part of my body was incrediscary. When those two were done, he asked me if I wanted one more, so I'd have done more than everyone else, which is just mean, because he knew that there's no way I could say no to that. I had a hard time submitting to that last one, though, especially when he tapped it between two existing welts. I had to hide my face in a pillow. I was disappointed in myself for not being particularly submissive for the last stroke, but I know I'll have other chances and I can just use that as a push to be awesome in the future.

The marks looked like this when it was over: 

That brown bruise is from where he hit me on the inner thigh with a "squirt" cane from Cane-iac a week or so earlier. 

The next day, it "bloomed" and looked a lot worse... on one side, that is:

The side where the cane ended was incredibly more sore than the "near" side, which healed up quite nicely. The feeling of unevenness was really weird and awkward. It bothered me so much that I asked Malignus to even things out, but he refused because it amused him on a sadistic level.

I really, really enjoy being a vessel for sadism. I can enjoy playing with tops who are not sadistic as long as they truly love spanking, but there is really nothing that warms my heart more than knowing that something is horrible simply for the purpose of his enjoyment. I know that I sometimes whine and pout about the agony, but it makes me feel loved and it makes me feel like I'm being unabashedly myself. On Christmas Eve, Malignus hit me with a dishtowel (seriously!) in such a way that it made me cry. The absurdity of it was funny, and he was very, very pleased with himself and as I was crying, I felt very loved and like something was extremely right. It's a very hard thing for me to articulate, so I'll work on it for another time.

By the end of the week, HeatherFeather had left our apartment, not to return for some time, we celebrated Christmas together and then, on Christmas Day, I flew out to visit my remaining family of origin. I'll be here until next Tuesday. I had a hard time leaving, because I find my family of origin stressful, it's a difficult time for them right now to begin with and because, quite frankly, I don't like leaving Malignus. I am taking a lot of comfort in the fact that when the week is over, I'm going home to him instead of it being that I visit him for a week and then leave. I imagine that coming back after the trip is going to make it feel even more home-like to me, and that's a very nice idea.

My cousin was recently engaged, but she's spending the holidays apart from her fiance, as they're both with their families of origin in different states. She showed off her ring at the dinner table and talked about how she liked having something that came from him and showed his love for her on her body and how it made her never feel without him. While everyone was saying "awww," I silently lifted the hem of my skirt and gently poked at the welts and bruises on the front of my thigh ;).

Spankoanxiety

I'm a pretty confident girl, right?

Back-tracking through the stories I've told on this blog, I've been photographed topless in Manhattan in the winter, done my first spanking video as a model, traveled to San Francisco to attend the Folsom Street Fair, shot with several other spanking production companies, gotten hot wax poured on me, a needle shoved into my body and cups full of suction on my back and moved across the country.

My image appears in various states of undress and bruisedness quite a few places on the internet. I'm perfectly acceptable showing a lot of sides of myself in photographic form.

Publicly, I'm as okay with being this girl:

As I am being this girl:

Or even sometimes this girl: 

So it gets hard for me to admit that sometimes, talking about things terrifies me. Sometimes I get a lot of anxiety. Well, you might say, that's normal. Everyone gets anxious from time to time. You're in a new place, at a new job, making new friends... of course you're going to get nervous about these things. 

The sad (for me) part is, those aren't the things that are making me anxious. Spanking is.

It isn't that I've gone away from spanking, or lost interest, or any of those strange things that supposedly happen to people from time to time. I've always had this feeling, ever since I was a little girl and I began thinking about spanking. The butterflies in my stomach. The shakiness in my hands when I think about it. The flush on my face when I say the word. The dumb, monotone voice that comes out of my mouth when I try to bring the topic of spanking up when it wasn't already, even when among people I trust the most. 

The anxiety reaches its peak when I'm in a situation where I might get spanked, and it increases in intensity as it becomes more and more obvious that a spanking is imminent. Generally speaking, though, the anxiety goes away simply by exiting the situation or, more enjoyably, by getting the spanking and having the release that's associated with it. The spanking hurts and more often than not makes me cry, and I get rid of all the anxiety which built up as I was anticipating it. 

This is the main reason that listening to someone else get a spanking makes me anxious (and why I tend to do dishes or bathe when someone else is getting a spanking so that I don't hear it): because the spanking is real and I have to face the reality of the fact that I'm a spanko, that this thing which sounds scary is the thing that I like and that this is all real. These are all things that I generally try to celebrate, but even with my happiness, just create a nervous, sick feeling in me. When it's someone else getting the spanking and not me, I don't get the release that goes along with it, and the stress just stays in my body. 

Despite the fact that I'm a spanking model, I can't really watch spanking videos. They make me too nervous and uncomfortable. Having it real and happening in front of me without any connection to me makes me feel scared and pathetic. When I've watched my own videos to try to learn what I'm doing well, or when I've watched videos to learn about the companies that I want to shoot with, I often end up peeking at the screen through my hands, like a little kid watching a horror movie. I almost always end up turning the sound down extremely low. 

Why don't I ever talk about this? Because I'm embarrassed by how embarrassed I am about spanking. Generally speaking, it's easier to just take a deep breath and talk about it than to admit that I have these insecurities. Besides, what kind of spanking model can't even say the word "spanking" when sitting alone in a house where all the residents are spankos who scene together, and spanking is so much a part of our daily life that the wooden spoons in the kitchen are marked with "Cooking only- no spanking!" What kind of person spends six years getting spanked with hairbrushes, yet when asking her roommate to borrow one refers to it as "the thing you use to brush hair" out of discomfort saying the word? I'm supposed to be a pro at asking for spankings, yet when I try to these days, my voice either cracks or gets all monotone and my eyes get big and probably very sad or desperate looking. Somedays, I sit around thinking about getting spanked for over an hour without mustering the courage to bring it up. Sometimes, I honestly believe that if I hadn't run into SF in the library and then creeped his stuff and discovered his spanko tendencies, that I would have died unspanked because I'd never get up the courage to find a partner, which seems pretty likely when you realize that I spent FIVE YEARS perving spanking sites before I made my first contribution to one.

Still, I've usually corrected my spankoanxiety with a simple trick: getting spanked. A good, hard spanking (and yes, I'm blushing as I type this) reminds me of all the things that I get out of a spanking, makes me feel safe and gives me a sense of belonging and gives me a channel for the stress that being a spanko causes me. There are other things that help, too: getting validation from the spanking community that I'm an accepted part of it and that they're all okay and therefore I'm okay has always helped. Being on fetlife, blogging and modeling have boosted my spankoconfidence immensely. 

But right now, I've been so anxious about spanking that I have a hard time getting through a blog post about it, which is just dumb. I'm not being judged by anyone, I'm having awesome spanking adventures and my life is wonderful. Like all things, the anxiety will come and go, I'm sure, until I figure out how to correct it entirely. In the mean time, I'll just be squaring my shoulders and being very glad that my readers can't see me blushing as I type this stuff. :D

Does anyone else have this problem? How do you deal with it? Do share. I could use tips :P

Good Spanking :D

I was looking through the front page of my blog and I discovered something extremely unsettling: there were no photos of my butt on it! Fortunately, I have the ability to fix that :P.

Please enjoy these sample frames from my shoot with Chelsea Pfeiffer. The videos and photosets appear on Good Spanking: you can find me right on the front page. You should all be able to recognize my butt by now, right? I really recommend that you go check it out: it was a lot of fun to shoot, and it's one of the videos that has the strongest representation of me as myself, since it's a reality shoot where I'm not playing a character. I love scenes (and videos) like that: you start with two spankos. I'm a bottom, he or she is a top, and therefore, there's a spanking. Thinking about it makes me want to be over a lap right now (oh wait, that's always the case, isn't it?)

Or over an ottoman. That works too. Bare bottomed and over SOMETHING, please!

I kind of made fun of that blue, light plastic paddle... until I got spanked with it. Super stingy. Yikes!

That paddle hurt. A lot.

See my scrunchy face?!

Chelsea really laid into me with the strap. For such a small woman, she really packs a punch! :D

Adventures Part 3! (Final Segment)

When we left Colorado Springs, we were done with the most exciting segment of our adventures. There were no more friends to visit between there and my new home in South Dakota, and we had to cross the worst state ever: Wyoming.

If I have any readers who live in Wyoming, I apologize for hating your state, but I really, really do. And I understand how you feel getting your state hated on, because I am originally from New Jersey and pretty much no one likes New Jersey. But I have to say, Jersey is eighty five million times better than Wyoming. You know why? Because there are things in New Jersey.

There is NOTHING in Wyoming. We couldn't play the Alphabet Game, because there weren't even signs to get letters off of. I decided that it was the capsaicin of states: horrible agony, and you have no idea when it's going to end.

Like all things awful, though, our trip through Wyoming did eventually end. We spent a night in Nebraska at a hotel, and then finished up the our driving the next day. From there, I got to work settling into my new life. It hasn't been entirely easy, although it is quite simple, but it *has* been entirely rewarding.

I know this is incredibly late, but Malignus, HeatherFeather and I had our first Thanksgiving together. I made a turkey that was full of epic win:

as well as additional stuffing, rolls, mashed potatoes (which HeatherFeather made), pan gravy, asparagus, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and peach pie. I made the pie crusts from scratch without a rolling pin, because I'm a total BAMF.

It was a delicious day, and I am truly thankful for my new life, for all the support my friends from coast to coast and beyond have given me, for the internet spanking community, for an amazing sister like HeatherFeather, and, of course, for Malignus. I have an amazing created family, a man I love and who loves me in return, a plethora of amazing friends all around the world, a home, safety, a job and food. I get to spend my free time with people I love doing things that I enjoy, learning, enriching others lives and getting my bottom thoroughly reddened. Basically, I have everything a spanko girl could want, and I really, really appreciate it. <3

Anyway, not to be upstaged by my culinary delights, Malignus made a turkey of his own (on my inner thigh):

The drawing was done by HeatherFeather, for Malignus does not draw cute animals, even when agony is involved :P.
I swear, when he hits me this way, I could probably go to a palm reader and have his fortune told by the marks on my thighs. It's kind of fascinating. And horrible. Horribly fascinating? Why not? :P

Now that I feel like I've finally gotten caught up on all the interesting or fun stuff which has happened recently AND been mushy, I can return to my regularly scheduled programing, so expect frequent updates with thought provoking insights and photos of my butt!

Adventures Part 2!

Well, after my rather somber post the other day, it's time to return to my adventures and stories. I hope everyone missed me :P.

Anyway, on to the rest of my trip!

We left Los Angeles directly from Threshold and drove to Las Vegas. It was a sad departure, but I was excited to be on the road to new places, to meet new people and to start my new life.

We arrived in Vegas fairly late and ended up going to bed fairly early. I still find staying in hotels exciting, and this was by far the nicest one I'd ever been in.

Don't I look cozy?

We spent the next day on the strip, which was full of win. We walked around trying to see everything we possibly could from what seems like dawn to dusk. When we were finished, the bottoms of my feet were bruised.

Aren't we the best ever? 

There wasn't a ton of spanking during the Vegas portion of the trip: we were busy, I was still extremely emotional from moving and a few other things made it not ideal. However, when HeatherFeather and I were waiting around for Malignus in front of one of those places where they fill your face in a photo, we came across this:

We both turned neon red, but for the first time ever, I was able to keep looking at something spanking related in a public, vanilla setting. I guess the reaction has gone from wanting to throw up to having fits of giggles, which is what HeatherFeather and I end up doing every time we look at kitchen stores. :P

From Vegas, we drove to Salt Lake to visit a good friend and her family there. We were in a vanilla, family setting, so there was extremely little spanking conversation going on, but when we did steal away for a moment as "just grown ups" we giggled even more than usual. Salt Lake City was incredibly beautiful and very, very dry. The three of us weren't used to the elevation, and I kept getting nose bleeds >_<. Also, my friend there has pretty much the greatest children I've ever, ever met. Just saying.

Utah is pretty!

I was sad that I didn't realize that lea lives in SLC until after I was about to head out, because it would have been awesome to meet up with her.

From Utah, we drove to Colorado Springs, where I visited with Naomi. I absolutely adore Naomi. She's one of the best people ever. We had a bunch of fun, and she took really beautiful photos of the three of us at Garden of the Gods.

I <3 HeatherFeather! Photo by Naomi.

Because we were at a spanko house, I got a couple of good, hard spankings, which did wonders for my mood. Additionally, Malignus proved the point that he can make ANYTHING hurt by spanking us with my feather duster and making it actually painful. That's ridiculous! It's covered in FEATHERS. >_<

One night, while we were driving back to Naomi's place from having visited someone in Bolder, Malignus fell asleep in the car and HeatherFeather, Naomi and I started sharing Spanko Stories. We talked about how we first discovered our desires, the way that they haunted us as children, times when we got "caught" and how people reacted, the embarrassing things that we did to try to act out or cope with the things we wanted and the deep, dark feeling that there was something horribly wrong with us for the things that we wanted. I know that all spankos go through the same thing, but there was something amazing about being in the flesh with two other girls who lived through the same sort of thing as I did when I was young and knowing that now, the three of us have a happy life where we are able to enjoy getting our bottoms bared and thoroughly spanked by men that we care for and respect. Being in the company of hard-wired spankos is truly magical for me. I really do equate it to going to Hogwarts or Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters or something like that. There's a whole secret world out there, where we are normal and get to celebrate the things that were previously a source of shame. Driving in that car with the man I love asleep next to me and two girls who I truly love like sisters, I felt a sense of comfort and love that I've rarely come to allow myself to feel. It was an amazing moment.

Adventures will continue tomorrow (for real!)
<3

International AIDS Day

I know that there's been an interruption to my regularly scheduled posting recently. It's been a time consuming process getting adjusted to my new life, and I had a few difficult things happen which made the process of creating stability more difficult than it would previously have been. As a result, I withdrew from writing things for publication for a spell.

I've written very vaguely before about the presence of HIV/AIDS in my life. While my HIV status is negative, I have known people with HIV/AIDS and been very close to them for the entirety of my life.
Today is International AIDS Day. Since this day last year, two people I knew died of AIDS. First was a girl who I was not particularly close friends with, but who taught me a considerable amount in both life and death. You can read about the ending of her life here if you use fetlife.

A few weeks ago, while I was in the process of my cross-country move, my elder brother also died of AIDS. He became infected with HIV due to IV drug use when he was a teen and passed away a few months shy of his twenty eighth birthday. While his health had been touch and go for several years, he was in excellent health when I left Los Angeles. He went into the hospital due to excessive sleepiness and inability to stay awake while I was driving to Salt Lake City. I texted him that night with great concern and he told me that he was fine and would be home soon. By the next day, a viral infection had swept through his body and his weakened immune system could do nothing to defend against it. He was seen by a hospice nurse by the end of that night and passed away several days later.

I was able to have a final conversation with him while he was still conscious, during which he told me that he was alright with dying, that he loved me very much, and that he was proud of me for the woman I've become. I told him that he had always been a great source of inspiration for me and that he was one of the most admirable men I've known.

The past few weeks since his death have been extremely difficult for me because the death was so removed from me: I was unable to be with him when he ceased to exist or to see his body and his memorial service won't be held for another several months. It took me a lot of work to believe that he was really dead, to know it in my bones and be alright with it. I think I'm there now, and if not, I'm very nearly. I'm perky and happy and enjoying my life here, making sandwiches and getting spanked. I'm having fun with HeatherFeather and Malignus and making new friends in my new community. The world is full of potential right now. There's terror in the idea that my brother will never again be just a phone call away, but there's also happiness in the fact that he won't suffer from his horrible illness again and in the simple fact that I had the joy of knowing and loving him. He was ready to die and unafraid. So few get that privilege.

I've been keeping this information to myself to prevent it from seeming like I was seeking attention, to avoid platitudes of comfort and to simply not focus on the dark and the terrible, but today seemed like a good time to let everyone know.

Please remember to know your HIV status and to practice Universal Precaution when dealing with blood, semen, vaginal fluid, breast milk and other body fluids which may be tainted with one of the above (for example, saliva from a mouth with an open wound). Use clean needles and wrap it before you tap it. Seek medical attention if you believe that you've been exposed. Educate the people in your community about HIV prevention.

Additionally, remember to fight HIV, not people with HIV. There are a myriad of situations in which HIV is transmitted and it isn't a disease that suggests that someone is a bad person. Anyone can get HIV. It's hard to remember just what that means until you're burying someone you love.

I'm proud of the lives which were lived by my friends who have been killed by this disease despite their illness, and I have great hope for a future where medical advances and education lessen the impact that it has on our world.