Author Archives: JimArnoldLA

What would it be like to have gay sex without fear of HIV?

This article from New York Magazine on PrEP is probably my favorite of the many, many articles I’ve read on Truvada. What follows below are my thoughts on the idea of taking a PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) for HIV.

no one I know, but I’d kiss them.

In regards to that question in the title — I did have lots of unfearful sex as a young man, before 1981, in the few years between when I became old enough for sex but before AIDS and HIV arrived. Honestly, that was so long ago now (what is it, 35 years, all my subsequent adult years till now?) I really don’t remember what it was like.

Besides, at that point for me, there was still a lot of other fear around gay sex, specifically, the idea that it was wrong. It took, it seems, forever for me, personally, to get over those lies we were fed as kids. But when I finally did and was ready to embrace the kind of sex I was born to have, there was Mr. HIV and an entirely new set of rules, and especially, don’ts.

I continued to have sex during the AIDS years, but it was according to the safest guidelines possible and was always, always tinged with a great amount of fear. For the most part, it was never the feeling of giving yourself over totally to the moment of passion; it seemed there was always something lurking, and always something being held back.

I’m from the generation who lived through the 80s when every cold, every flu, every bump or red spot on your skin could be nothing or it could be the first sign that you were, in fact, dying.

So I greet this news of Truvada and PrEP with nothing short of astonishment. Color me shocked that marriage equality is now the law of the land, as it should be; I’m equally stunned that there’s such a thing as Truvada and it can be taken to actually PREVENT HIV infection.

I’m HIV negative. Do I take Truvada currently? No. Will I take it in the future? I’ve had some discussions with my doctor about it. There’s an insurance issue; it’s expensive. There’s possibly work-arounds for that, programs which make it cheaper or even free. She (my doctor) was more concerned about long term effects, and made the point that you have to gauge what makes the most sense for you at a certain point in time. I’m single, I don’t have a partner; I rarely date; it’s not the prettiest situation at the moment but it probably doesn’t make sense for me personally right now.

That all could change. What if I did suddenly have dates? (Hey, it could happen!) I would like to think I could have that freeing option, something that I did not have at 26, or at 30, at 35, at 40, at 45, at 50, at 55 and. . . well, you get my drift. I would like to know what it’s like to have sex without the fear of contracting HIV. It’s not a reality that I know.

a couple of other points:

A lot (often it seems the plurality) of the gay men in my age cohort in my location are HIV positive. Truvada would eliminate the HIV barrier that is always there between us, that elephant in the room.
There’s that part of me that wants to be uninhibited and spontaneous after decades of worry (as well as other issues that have negatively affected my sex life, specifically, prostate cancer and its treatment). Why can’t I have this? Please, please tell me why? The last quote in the article I linked to above was another question. It asked, simply, Why Should We Keep Punishing Ourselves?

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Life on the Gridline

Car Free Update: After two years and three months of living car free in Los Angeles, I’ve noticed a few things about my habits.

One of these is, I tend to live along gridlines. By that, I mean that the places that I frequent in my life — that are not walkable from where I live — are mostly along arterials, either bus or train public transportation routes (see our rapidly expanding metro train diagram to the left) or safe streets with bike lanes.

I guess it’s common sense; why people always say that wherever they put a light rail stop is a huge boon to a neighborhood. It’s convenience, right?

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So life is streamlined. I always go back to one of the first articles I read on Streetsblog which planted the seed that if you go car free in a city the geographic size of Los Angeles, you’re going to basically live in your neighborhood. For me currently this is Valley Village/Studio City/North Hollywood. Going to the far reaches of West Los Angeles or the beach is for special occasions or for that Uber/Lyft ride. I pretty much live a life centered in my neighborhood but bounded by the larger grid of Burbank Boulevard on the north, DTLA on the east, Beverly Boulevard on the south, and Robertson Boulevard on the west.

Funny, these boundaries are mostly where they’ve always been for me, for thirty plus years, I’ve lived a life pretty much bounded by Silver Lake on the east and West Hollywood in the west. I guess public transport has really opened up Downtown LA for me, because previously it was just such a traffic and parking nightmare I’d do anything to avoid it. Those days, quite nicely, are gone.

Changes to Van Nuys Flyaway, including a connection with the Orange Line (Finally!)

The Blogger at an Orange Line stop, waiting patiently.

NEW NOTE 4/14/19: Orange Line Stop for Flyaway was discontinued earlier this year, apparently. I rode by it today on a bike ride and the stop was overgrown and forlorn, even graffitied. This doesn’t surprise me, as nice as it was to have that option, it was still inconvenient. Wonder if the rise of rideshare (Lyft, Uber etc) really helped kill this? Sad, tho.

NOTE 11/12/15: This post was premature. Now this Orange Line/Flyaway connection is supposed to open in December, 2015. Here’s the link.

Okurrr, I read this nice post about something which should just be a no-brainer — connecting the Orange Line Bus (which traverses the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles) with the Van Nuys Flyaway Station for the express bus option to LAX.

So it says, basically, that Flyaway Buses will begin stopping at the Woodley Station on the Orange Line, which is about a mile south of the main Flyaway terminal at the Van Nuys Airport.

Why this makes sense: If you want people to take public transport to LAX Airport, don’t make them go southeast to downtown Los Angeles when the fracking airport is way over on the other side of town, southwest of them.

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Up to now, you had to go miles out of your way because that was the only easy option. Of course, you could take the Orange Line bus west and then wait for an additional local bus to make the one mile trip up to the Van Nuys Airport terminal or just schlep up the street with your bags. Neither of those options being very appetizing, right?

So congrats to Metro. I applaud this move to make our public transportation system just a little bit more friendly. It is little improvements like this which have added up over the years and greatly improved the experience of public transport in L.A.

I hope hope hope they keep to this October 1 timeframe! I have a flight from LAX on October 4, and that’s how I’ll get to the airport if it’s working. I’ll have to update.

Self-Publishing Update #3 KEPT

OK, so that’s the computer in my office, where I write. And up on the screen is the newly copyedited version of my novel (soon to be published!) Kept.

The copyeditor uses the “track changes” function in Word to suggest corrections or changes to me which I then have to either accept or deny. She’s a marvelous editor; I usually end up accepting all her suggestions because, quite frankly, she makes me a much better writer.

So that is the process for this week (and likely next): Get a new draft incorporating changes. Will that be ready to be published? Probably not quite, but closer.
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Tasks for this week include re-calculating the budget for this project, and thinking about cover concepts. Provocative, that’s my guide word.

In the meantime I’m also working on the marketing plan for this book, trying to time the launch (several months it looks like), while also working on plot details for the sequel to Benediction, which is my next project after Kept.

How Self-Publishing is Like the School Bully

images OK so a blog generator came up with this title for me. (Kind of fun, though I rolled my eyes initially.) Deep in the process of self-publishing novel #3, so I figured I’d play along:

He’s big — it does seem everyone has a book in them and is self-publishing it. Here’s a state of the industry report from the beginning of the year.
He’s an enigma. It’s very hard to know just what will find an audience (or “sell”) and what won’t. We know there are popular genres (like romance and fantasy) and one subject American readers never seem to tire of is vampires. So writing a vampire book for young women would seem to be a good strategy, for instance.
It’s possible to beat him. Like the stout bully tripped up by the nimble skinny nerd, there are the occasional insane stories of success. There are authors who wrote/write things like the above-mentioned vampire novel, price them cheaply and reap a huge profit on volume sales. Then, of course, everyone copies the model and it doesn’t work again.
If you get creamed, you still have to go down the hall. In my opinion, this process still beats the traditional model of finding an agent or a publisher and going that route. Plus, if you’ve self-published and have had less than humongously successful results, it might even be less possible to get that traditional book deal on effort #2. Or 3 or 4 or 5 etc.
He might be best friends with your cute, popular sister. You will probably take writing classes and join writer groups and sooner or later someone you know is going to have a huge success in self-publishing. And then, dear writer, you must resist resentment and schadenfreude. You must take the high road and be happy for your friend, and also try to find out if there’s lessons to be learned there.
Complaining about him will get you nowhere. What’s the alternative – traditional publishing? That model seems to work only for the very, very successful author, the household name. Anecdotally I’ve been told by friends who have traditional publishing deals that they are still expected to bankroll their own publicity tours and other marketing. So it’s really difficult all around — see the link up top, the industry report, an industry in flux.
He mocks you incessantly. It seems every day there’s a new “insult” hurled your way – or a new way to market, or a new social media platform to use, or a new place to advertise your book. Kind of like that bully in the hallway you can’t ever really avoid.

There’s one nice thing about school bullies, and that’s that you eventually graduate and leave school. And you move on. With self-publishing, it’s my expectation that the longer you spend doing it, the more likely you’ll figure out the pathways to success. It’s true, however, not everyone has the luxury and time of publishing book after book until finally something clicks.

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2015’s Best and Worst Cities to Retire: Escape Los Angeles series

Source: 2015’s Best and Worst Cities to Retire | WalletHub®

But is there a dinosaur park there?

Here, this post from Best and Worst Places to Retire from WalletHub. There’s a lot of these best/worst lists around the internets, mostly of them total B.S. from what I can tell, as most of them come up with horrid small poor towns that no one actually would want to live in. This one however, seems a bit more comprehensive in that it lists the top 150 cities that scored on its metrics of affordability, activities, quality of life and health care.

So, since there’s 150 choices, and the city you are presently in is likely to be listed here. A lot of the usual suspects rank high, those sunbelt places in states like Florida and Arizona. It also comes as no surprise that of the top 25 cities in this list, only one is in a “blue” state — and that happens to be Colorado Springs at #20 — which, as you probably know, is a very conservative city in a state with more liberal leanings. It’s no secret that in the big cities where progressives dominate, cost of living is high and taxes are generally higher, too. (It’s called civilization.)

The first city on the list from California is my birth town, Sacramento, at #38. Los Angeles ranks at #95. Other places I’m thinking about: Madison, #68; Tucson #29; Milwaukee, #119. There’s a lot to look at.

Still, there are actually cities on this list you might want to live in, where you wouldn’t be the sole Democrat on your block and where you might find a gay bar or two. So take a look — even though in their criteria for activity rankings they looked at things like fishing opportunities and golf courses — like this is a retirement thing. Not sure that it is — I know no one who does either thing. To be it seems more like a retirement stereotype from the 1950s.

Since I don’t need the fishing hole, perhaps that widens up the choice list!

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Five Ways Creative Writing Can Keep You Out of Trouble

author under duress

For something that I approach with such trepidation (well, sometimes) it’s good to know that writing, especially creative writing, has the potential to keep one from trouble. Here’s five reasons:

Want to murder someone? Yeah well, don’t we all, occasionally? Or even more often? A better solution – write a story about the offender (artfully disguised, of course) and kill them off there. This has the multiplier effect of revisits anytime you want and fans may even applaud you. If only they knew the real story!
Participation in other crimes: Murder is perhaps the most heinous, but there’s loads of others — including bank robbery, art and jewel thievery, organized crime extortion, burglary, drug dealing — to name just a few — which are much safer to participate in from the relative calm of the writer’s desk. Bonus: you never go to jail.
It’s introvert therapy. Having the quiet time all to myself to enter into dream worlds are moments I crave. I believe it helps keep me sane.
In my creative writing, I’m always right, I’m always powerful. Don’t you love that feeling? In a world of your own creation, you make all the rules. So what you say, goes. How liberating is that?
You can work it out. Honestly, when I have problems of one sort or another, if I have a fictional character work them out, it’s like proxy therapy. I’ve found solutions seemingly coming from nowhere (though I believe they likely come from wisdom within) while writing fiction. It’s nice to know I can find solutions without spending $150 per hour to do so.

What benefits (both expected and unexpected) have you found from your writing endeavors?

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Are YOU Cut Out to Be a Self-Published Fiction Writer? Take my quiz.

It’s become such a popular past time, it seems. Everybody’s got a book, just like back in the 1990s, everybody had a screenplay.

Hey, nobody bought any of my screenplays for a million dollars, either. (But– I actually know people who did win this little lottery, it does happen, though very rarely.)

Ready? Dig in, Answer these questions.

Are you the type of person who likes spending hours, alone, every day for likely a year or much more, constructing an internal world?
Would it bother you if this internal world was never appreciated by any other single human being, ever?
Are you the type of person who could then take that project, that world of yours, and totally rewrite it (if necessary) or chuck it if it’s just not working?
Are you the type of person who needs external validation to think you’ve done something worthwhile?
Are you comfortable being pigeonholed into a well-defined (and hopefully popular) genre?
Also, in a general sense, are you the type of person who is proactive, or are you reactive and more comfortable being told what to do or generally directed by someone else, like a boss or a parental figure, etc?
Are you the type of person who can straddle the role of introvert (most writers) as well as the extremely crucial role of self-promotion (generally an extrovert role) with EQUAL ease?
Are you the type of person who relishes creating a platform, likely from scratch, on social media, including things like a personal blog, twitter, facebook, instagram, Pinterest, tumblr, possibly more, with thousands and thousands of followers?
Are you the type of person who is comfortable devising an ongoing marketing plan for your self-published book, a comprehensive plan which involves reviews, readings, interviews, social media posts, YouTube promo videos, Twitter posts, Facebook posts, self-promo blogs, guest blogs for other people, and more, in a campaign which truly never ever ends?
Finally, will you be motivated to write your next great novel even if after all that’s come before (see the above list) only results in a handful of sales? Which don’t even cover the cost of self-publishing the damn book?

So how did you answer? There’s not really a scoring system here – you can pretty much get the gist of what I’m saying – that basically you need to be driven by the desire to write, and get tremendous satisfaction from doing just that, without a guaranteed promise of anything beyond that. Otherwise, don’t go there, save yourself the costs in both time and money, and do something you have a true passion for.

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Escape from Los Angeles

Los Angeles City Hall. Photo by Jimbolaya

“Escape from Los Angeles” is a series of new blog posts. I’m definitely on my journey to discover the next chapter of my life. Blogging about it was suggested by a regular reader of my blog (thank you, Rowan M!)

I’ve written a couple of times before about possibly leaving Los Angeles, here and here.

Probably one of the first things to determine is to decide if this (leaving Los Angeles) is really necessary or not. If it makes sense or not. My mother was always a believer in a “bloom where you’re planted” philosophy and I, as a man who has been sober for over 25 years, am always sensitive to the idea of doing “geographics.”*

So instead of seeing the cup as half empty (which is my default, as a pessimist) I’m trying, at least for a while, to see the cup as half full. Hence, gratitude lists: Every day I’ll write down 3 things in the morning that are working, three things that I’m grateful for for Los Angeles.

Today’s 3 things are:

Planet Queer (only in LA)

Hollywood Bowl (only in LA, and I’m going tonight)

The Red Line Subway

I’ll continue to write down my gratitude for L.A. as long as I feel this is productive. Who knows what I’ll find?

geographic, or doing a geographic. Wherever you go, there you are. You always take you with you. A geographic is moving somewhere following the thinking that this move will result in happier or more productive outcomes, i.e., it’s the place that sucks, not me; if I move, I will be happy and successful, etc. It never works.

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UPDATE August 19:

Here’s a couple of other stories on the subject – apparently it’s all in the zeitgeist:

Why People Are Leaving LA or Any Big City

Leaving Los Angeles Writer Scott Timberg is Moving After All

Bernie Sanders Rally Los Angeles August 2015

I joined my friend Chris King and 27,000 others at a rally for Bernie Sanders on Monday, August 10 at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. I don’t get down to that area too much anymore and it brings back a lot of good memories of my first days in L.A. at USC and at my first job here, which was only blocks away from this location back in 1981.

Anyway, the rally was great and inspiring. For more on Bernie Sanders and his platform, see the campaign website.

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