When he was diagnosed with HIV in 1985, Mark S. King had no counselor to comfort him or even recommend treatment. In those days, none existed. The delivery was a simple, sterile phone call from a doctor.
“I am so sorry. Your results are positive. Good luck” were the words that accompanied the results, the Atlanta resident recalls.
Credit: Courtesy of Mark S. King
Credit: Courtesy of Mark S. King
As a 24-year-old gay man then living in West Hollywood, California, he was painfully aware of friends and colleagues all around him getting sick. Receiving his own HIV-positive result was initially devastating. Although he wasn’t sure what his immediate future held, he was determined to make the most of every day after.
King, who is now 62, has not only managed to survive nearly four decades with what was once regarded as a death sentence — “through the luck of the draw, I never got sick” — he has flourished as an activist and a writer.
Credit: Courtesy of Mark S. King
Credit: Courtesy of Mark S. King
“My Fabulous Disease: Chronicles of a Gay Survivor (Ingram, 209 pages, $20),” his second memoir set for release on Friday, Sept. 1, is a collection of essays pulled from his acclaimed “My Fabulous Disease” blog and other publications. King will start a national book tour next week, with an Atlanta event coming in November, though the specific date and site aren’t final yet.
Atlanta has been King’s home base since 1993. Moving to the city was a huge leap of faith, especially since effective medicines still weren’t available and the chances of him dying, he surmised, were as strong then as they’d been when he was first diagnosed. Yet he took a chance on leaving Los Angeles.
Credit: Courtesy of Mark S. King
Credit: Courtesy of Mark S. King
“Here was an opportunity to lead a coalition of people living with HIV in Atlanta,” he said. “And it was me deciding I was not going to allow the virus to make huge life decisions for me: Why shouldn’t I get on with my life?”
He moved to Atlanta to become executive director of AIDS Survival Project. It was an activist organization, and King saw himself as an administrator who could keep the doors open and the programs strong. Although he was let go after less than two years, the opportunity made him realize where he fit in.
Within a year, he took a job at AID Atlanta, the city’s largest HIV/AIDS organization, as the director of education. And everything professionally took off from there.
Around the same time, he had started writing about life with HIV and realized that, too, could be his niche. His editor at a website called “The Body” suggested he start a blog. The only problem was, King had no idea what that meant. Yet he learned. His editor’s advice was to tell the truth and share snippets of his own life.
“The more you reveal about yourself, the more you’ll invite people in,” she told him, King recalls. That advice clicked, and “My Fabulous Disease” blog launched in 2003, with King whipping up stories about boyfriends, mistakes, sexual adventures and even his own drug addiction.
Credit: Darrell Snedeger
Credit: Darrell Snedeger
Not long after the blog began, he started to receive positive feedback from around the world. To this day, King keeps what he calls his rainy-day folder, containing emails and messages that thank him. One person said he hadn’t laughed since his HIV diagnosis until he read King’s blog. Another thanked him for helping understand a brother who died of AIDS.
“On days I am feeling low or wondering if I am having an impact, I can open them up,” King said.
“My Fabulous Disease” won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Blog in 2020. King was also named LGBTQ Journalist of the Year that year by NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists.
Ironically, the memoir contains only one section that is entirely devoted to HIV. Another, a personal favorite of King’s called “Once, When We Were Heroes,” reflects back on those early days of the disease, when town hall meetings replaced the gay community’s tea dances.
The rest of the book runs the gamut from family, sex, being gay, being in love, celebrities and coming out, all with King’s noted sense of humor. “I wanted all of that to live under the covers,” he said.
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
In one section, the author remembers being young and new in Los Angeles and having actor Rock Hudson over for a game of Trivial Pursuit, while another details a teenage King sneaking into a gay bar in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1977 and being drawn to Donna Summer’s music. His Southern family also comes into play, as they deal with a gay son and later with the same son’s husband.
One of King’s objectives with the memoir is ensuring that the story of what happened to his generation doesn’t fade away. After his HIV diagnosis, King told himself he wouldn’t let the disease steal his joy for another minute.
“I am going to live life with gratitude and happiness and a sense of humor, for a deep respect for what this disease has done to us and, more importantly, what our response has been.”
A younger gay generation — with pre-exposure medicine known as PrEP available — might not understand the 1980s and the generation of men who were lost as part of it.
“I say to them: This is your history, your lineage. This is a really great reason to feel proud of who you are because you come from a people who, in the face of great adversity and hatred, we created and we built and we ministered and we loved one another. And that is something to feel enormous pride about.”
Since 1993, King has moved away a number of times but always found his way back to Atlanta. As soon as it became clear in 2022 that his husband, Michael Mitchell, could work remotely, he knew the two would be moving back permanently from Baltimore.
“I have been intentional about living here,” King said. “And this is the last stop, baby.”
