So much has changed in a year. It would be this time last year I received an email from someone I knew at The Stephen Lewis Foundation requesting I participate in their Dare Campaign. It's a pledge campaign to raise money based on a dare, not dissimilar to The Breast Cancer Walk etc.  

My challenge was stand-up.  I'd wanted to do it but was too chicken shit to do so. I had comic friends and had played with improv. But the thought of going up and bombing was too frightening. Where do you start? How do you figure out material when you've never had an audience to gauge it by.  

As with everything, once you pick a date, it will happen.  I did, and it happened and I killed that night (thank god or I probably would have never done it again). 

Up until then I had been working on this national online magazine for people who are HIV positive in order to foster a sense of online community.  

It was hard going into comedy and walling off this (HIV) part of my life. It's such an ordinary thing in my life and in the lives of most people I know. We accept it (as there is no choice) and we move on integrating into our loves and a new sense of normalcy is achieved.  

However, no matter how hard I try, I can't keep my mouth shut about it.  Not that I want to talk about it all the time, but I have nothing to be ashamed about. If I feel I want to talk about it, I have every right to since pedophilia, rape jokes and general misogyny have found homes in comedy, after all. And if there is room in comedy for that, then there's plenty of room for me.  

There is a secret part of me that does like to freak people out. Not in that they should be freaked about my status, but rather that I'm so open about it, that I don't bat an eye. I've shared my life literally with thousands of people prior to there even being an internet.  I have about the same emotional attachment to the subject as a hooker giving her 10,000th hand job. So to see people be shocked by my dark humour is in some ways rewarding. 

Do you know how much stupidity we have to deal with? What it's like to wonder if someone will only think of me as this weird being with a virus and not just Brian Finch the moment I talk about it? If the shoe is on the other foot in terms of uncomfortableness, then so be it. Try it on and see what it feels like, cause I sure could use a break from time to time. 

None of this would have been possible if it were not for the process of my becoming Jewish. This was the first time I stepped out of my protected safe world where I could be a big mouth, write crazy articles and gain community profile. Once I stepped out of this world, I reverted back to the old quiet, scared and shy me.  

You see, I never felt anyone could really accept me as me unless I hid significant aspects of my life.  I wasn't comfortable about sexuality my entire life. I separated myself from my family, basically living a double life. This was the beginning of my compartmentalization. 

Family got to know certain things, friends another. This carried on for a long time. Then I got into the drugs, something else not to share with family. This continued for a very long time, in fact until the Jewish process began (and Facebook). 

Obviously there are a lot of things that were not appropriate to share at that time. But at least I could talk openly about being gay, and, with some, even about being positive. It's a hard topic to avoid when I was the founder of an online magazine and am asked what I did for work.  This, my friends, is why I hate that question as an aside. 

Once into the process of converting, I was starting out to hang out with straight guys. I've never done this before. Call me old fashioned, but kicked in the head once, twice shy. And I retained that through out my life. Straight guys were the enemy. They were the oppressors who would go out on purpose to seek people like myself and beat them to near death. Once just stopping into a 7/11 late at night (and on acid, go figure) in Winnipeg was a near death experience.  

There were years of harassment from the way I looked to the way I spoke. For years I mumbled because my voice had been mocked so much I just didn't have enough self-esteem to be actually heard. It is because of this I started working with a voice coach, not just for the quality of voice but the baggage that goes with it. 

Take all of this, and the idea of performing in front of straight crowds, mostly, and getting up and just being myself, serostatus included, has taken a lot of work.  Most people don't know I started public speaking at the age of 23 and have been on all the media, a documentary even, and a social marketing campaign. Also I worked as a corporate trainer where I had to be the company cheerleader. There are still masks to hide behind in these roles. It wasn't unitl comedy that I could take the mask off.  

So it is with this long preamble that I express so much gratitude for those who have been so supportive over the last year. January 18th will be a year at working on stand-up. I can't possibly name everyone. 

You are the people who treat me exactly the same once you know everything about me. I can't tell you enough that such a simple thing means a lot.  

You have encouraged me to do stand-up and storytelling. 

You've talked to me when I'm having challenges and helped me remember that yes. I am funny even if not every set is stellar. 

You've given me great notes to help with material. 

You are people who understand that this is a journey, not a goal to be a headliner at Yuk Yuks (that would be great – but not the ultimate goal). 

You are the straight dudes that joke with me in a way that makes me feel like one of the guys and girls. (Probably more of the girls. let's face it.)  

You've invited me to your shows.  

You've taught great workshops 

You are challenging me to dig deeper and work harder.  

You inspire me to walk through the fear. 

Some special shoutouts go to: 

Brian Ward - first guy to tell about the rooms. etc here. 

Erin Rodgers - quickly became friends and coproduced a show together.

Catherine McCormick - amazingly supportive and sticks to her guns.

Marilla Wex - what can I say! 

Zeb Pike - taught me str8 guys don't bite, well they do, but that's why they're straight :-) 

Sage Tyrtle - her wonderful storytelling workshop is amazing, and she's even abetter faciliator.

Todd Turtle – If were a girl, I’d marry him, sorry Sage.

Tracey Erin Smith - whose soft and articulate direction allows me to think, "I can do it." 

Joanna Downy - for getting me up at Spirits. 

Scott Thompson for being so supportvie with the new people. 

Shannon McDonough - super fab and supportive.

Maggie Cassella & The Flying Beaver - "When you have an hour come back, I'll book ya." 

Blair E. Streeter - cause he's amazing.

Sandra Shamas - very supportive and for coming out to our storytelling show. 

Eli Jakeman - (Rene squeaks in there too) only straight guy I have competitions on who is gayer, oh ya and it’s not gay if you are doing it for money.

Scott Dell - who sat down in order to stand up and give me an ovation, which is the golden seal of offensiveness approval. 

Joel West - got to know him better with our last "Tales of", great guy to work with. Love his stories.

Phil Luzi & Sandra Battaglini - for just being you.

Shelly Marshall - don't know what to say other than she's great & her lesbian daughter could beat me up. 

Brenda Lennie - for being so great, and getting me on her shows when I started. 

Jim Maxwell - for giving me motivation for all these changes. 

Anto Man-Ming Chan - very cool guy & super supportive

Rene Armondo Payes - for just being you.

Jennifer McAuliffe - as well being so encouraging. 

Paul Bellini - just read his book, you'll know why. 

Zabrina Chavennes - cause she is so funny, and supportive.

Jennifer Gee – amazing workshop partner and a lot of fun.

Marco Bernardi - for being so warm and actually giving me a hug in Caplansky's the first time we met (no I'm not stalking). 

And a special thank you to the folks who continue to keep PositiveLite.com going. It's been a privilege to create it. One thing I've learned this year is that I like to create, but I suck at managing. So here's to another great year for PositiveLite.com.  

There's a lot more so don’t feel left out. People can have the biggest impact with the smallest gestures. These are just a few names that stick out over the year. 

As we head into New Year's Eve I also think it's important to think back with some gratitude over the last year.  Usually I hate the year just past and think, "Thank Christ year X is over". It's been a great year of transition, new friends, new collegaues and most of all, new challenges and opportunities to grow. None of this happens in a vacuum, but within communnity.  

I just know that 2013 is going to be a great year. Now if I could just brush up on some Middle East comedy, I could hit some open mics during my month long stay in Israel. 

Storytelling is something I discovered once I got into stand up. I had no idea that such a thing existed or I would have done it a long time ago.

Most people don’t know what it means, but it’s quite simple -  people tell stories. However these are polished stories that require a great deal of thought and work in order to be good stories.

I had seen a poster for an organization saying they were having a storytelling night with positive speakers. But that was about experiential sharing, not well thought out crafted stories with a begining, middle and end. There are no characters, structure, comedy, drama, etc. that exist in conventional story telling.

This is why I love storytelling. I can safely say after I took Sage Trytle’s storytelling workshop a few weeks ago that storytelling is far more work than stand up in terms of crafting and learning.

The work pays off when a story is essentially a sad one, such as the Remembrance Day story I performed at Caplansky’s. It started off serious, then turned very funny as I talked about my family, but I brought it all together again to the point that when I finished there was silence and a number of teary eyes.

I’ve told the story about getting into public speaking, which meant I had to talk about being HIV-positive as it’s directly connected. I did this in a Jewish Deli.

The best part is there is a community of performers and I’ve been able to get to know, make friends and work with incredible people. I’ve made many acquaintances, and even more friends. It’s an amazing community. I’m completely out about being positive and nobody is treating me any differently

I had only started performing last January and I’m still pinching myself at times. Last month was the first event of a storytelling show called “Tales of….” I’m co-producing. When we first starting talking about it, we made a “dream list” of performers, and we have managed to get my top three in the first three shows.  We took the attitude  “If we don’t ask, it will never happen.”

Storytelling for me is very therapeutic. It requires a lot of thought to be done well. Every word has to count.  My hope is that once I get more experience that I can design a workshop for HIV-positive folks who would take on a more creative and performer-based kind of story telling and not, “I was diagnosed in 1987, and I was really shocked.”

In the summer of 1987, Phil, my first and only best friend I’d ever  had passed away. He was the first person I knew to find out he had AIDS.  He was the kind of friend that I could call up at anytime and with only a few words whatever might have been weighing me down was gone.

I’d maybe do a story about being diagnosed pulling back further in time working up to it.

I’d start, maybe,  with . . .

Once we dressed up for coronation together in such bad drag. (In the drag Monarchy, a drag queen is voted in as Empress, and usually a leather guy is Emperor, and they fundraise throughout the year.) One of our group went out with visible chest hair, bad drag and called himself Yolanda Douchebag, The B.C. Tel operator, as they were known for their terrible customer service. (I'd provide a detailed description of him and how they all went bowling in negligees).

The body of the story would then work up around the time of diagnosis and what was going on in my life. To conclude I’d bring back my friend Phil and the various aspects of the story together for the conclusion.

It can be very funny in the middle, but then become more serious as the story goes on.

It’s the details and laying of different textures to the story that makes it funny and powerful.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, then come out to my show at The Rustic Owl this Dec 10. We have the legendary Sandra Shamas, and other equally talented performers. I will be hosting.

If you can’t make that, our next show is January 14^th featuring the fabulous Scott Thompson. 

It’s here folks! It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was preparing for last year’s Pride. How things have changed in a space of year.

I’m Jewish. I’m a comic. Gone are the activist days, and I’m so fucking happy. If I hear one more person seriously try to tell my why I have to say all the letters in LGBT…….

I will barf. This happened about two weeks ago.

People, wake up! I don’t give a shit. I don’t even want to give a shit. I just want to have fun. I now shun people who think that social justice and action means spending hours analyzing the semantic nuances of acronyms.

I’ve discovered that I’m actually quite allergic to people who wrap themselves up in oppression to live out their lives. It’s a violent allergy in fact. I’ve been told to keep my Epi Pen with me at all times, especially during Pride.

Coming up this week I have a set at the Laugh at Slacks Music Bar & Lounge Open Mic on Wednesday (June 27^th).  I’m really looking forward to it, as it’s a stellar line up. So much so I’m a little intimidated by it. But I’m intimidated by everything, that’s the problem being really neurotic. I’m not really happy until I have something about which to worry.

The main even for me is July 4^th. I’ll be hosting the Laugh at Slacks show. Not only is it the American Independence Day, it’s also my Chihuahua’s fourth birthday. I’m hoping the weather is nice, but not too hot. Slacks front opens up completely to allow some of the street life in. On the first night of Laughs at Slacks, I could see pedestrians stopping to check out the action going on inside.

The next day I heard about people who had been walking by and recognizing my voice bellowing over the PA system. We really haven’t had a venue open up onto Church St. like this since the days of Bar 501’s Window Show.

I’m really hoping that this can be cultivated, providing it doesn’t get so hot that the A/C forces the windows to be closed up.

In any event, come out and support the only open mic gear for specifically women and the “gays” (fill in the letters accordingly – I’m calling July 4^th a BYOL even “bring your own letters, or in this case lesbians too). 

I love the women comics. The energy is very different. I find them to be more supportive, and I get to hang out with them in ways that the straight comics don’t always get to. It feels less competitive. During my first set at Slacks, I could see the comics attentively listening and engaged. It was really nice.

Now that my Jewish conversion is done, I’ll be announcing far and wide that I have the freshest kosher virgin cock in all of Pride 2012. I think it will make for a great ad on Craig’s List or Kijiji.

Being on stage is great. Instead of shelling out money for a Manhut profile (btw someone still has a profile using my photos. I’m very flattered that he says I’m only 37) I just announce on stage that I’m single & looking for cute Jewish guys. And if it’s the kind of date that only lasts under 60 mins, then I don’t care what the guy’s background is. Just bring the right body parts for the occasion and we’ll be great 

Happy Pride Everyone and remember to come out to Slacks June 27^th & July 7^th. Come to July 4^th if you have to choose! 

Just the other weekend I attended a workshop called “Stepping Forward into Inspired Action” facilitated by my health/life coach. The topic seemed to be in line with other discussions I had been having with others, as well as writing here on PositiveLite.com.

Sometimes in order to step forward into action, inspired or otherwise, reflection is required. I often believe everything happens for a reason, and there was a reason for why this workshop was happening on this particular day.  Putting one foot forward . . . 

For quite some time running in the background I’ve felt the need to reshape my life. The workshop was just the right time to do a frank assessment of where I’m at and where I’d like to be. The result is the natural process of evolving and transforming.

I left the workshop realizing that I have some new interests and focus in life, and that I had fulfilled my job of creating PositiveLite.com. It is truly amazing to see the transformation of this project that started with two dimes and an idea.

Originally I had envisioned the site as a way to maybe gain some revenue modeled after other websites taking a similar approach with different subject matter. However, PostiveLite.com has grown by leaps and bounds, surpassing long ago any established model of how the website could run.

We have become so much more than a magazine. We provide a platform to give voice to those who traditionally do not have the opportunity. We have created an online community, and hopefully soon a more established national community. This goal is well on its way to being achieved.

PositiveLite.com has become an essential community communication tool that no longer is about one person, nor should it be. It definitely takes a village to make this baby run.

After the workshop I knew that I had taken PositiveLite.com as far as I could on my own.  It is now time to let someone take over this aspect of running the site in order to take it to the next level. I’ve had a great three years working on this, and look forward to continuing with my writing etc.

So with great honour I’m announcing that John McCullagh is effective today the publisher of PositiveLite.com. I would like to thank John, but also our editor Bob Leahy for their tireless work on the site. I am also humbled to see everyone feel that they can take ownership of this collective effort.

PositiveLite.com has become an important stakeholder in the Canadian HIV landscape, and I look forward to watching it evolve in the upcoming future. 

In the mean time, as I meantioned I will keep on contributing and helping out where I'm best suited. I'll also be exploring the world of stand-up comedy. Thus proving I'm a true Gemini who seems to have a need for lots of change. 

For better or for worse, my life is always about re-invention. When I found out that I was a snake in the Chinese zodiac signs, I didn’t think that was good. A friend pointed out that snake can be good, a sign of shedding many skins.

My approach in life is to try new things, not knowing if I have one modicum of talent and just go for it anyway. If I didn’t do well, then at least I knew. 

Even when I was stuck, I was re-inventing myself. Unfortunately they weren’t in healthy ways, but nonetheless, I was flying around the world. I made New York and Amsterdam my second homes.

What I had to learn, and it took me a long time, was that I needed to find something that appeals to my risk taking & reinvention is safe healthy ways. Also I needed to find meaningful exciting experiences that didn’t involve getting on a plane. I needed to find the same passion I had when I was abroad and bring it home. We can’t have our happiness conditional upon being in Europe or wherever floats your boat more.

If I have to keep up doing my “She’s Still Here Tour” launching on World AIDS Day, then I had better something new to talk about other than my HIV.

OK, so my last post was a dare of my own to write down 15 goals, dreams, or things you just have to get done but have been procrastinating. I've actually taken on a couple things since I had the idea to write this. Some of these I will always consider a work in progress. 

Now I dare my follow contributors to come up with their lists. 

Stand-up comedy - work in progress

After years of procrastination I forced myself to do it. I’ve done one set in Hamilton and one in Toronto. Both went very well and I’m now going to do a set for a fundraiser in Woodies at the end of March. I’ll be going to a couple open mics in Hamilton.  An entire new world is opening up to me. What I love about the stand-up is getting to know some really cool people, and being able to be out at different venues. Oddly enough, I kind of prefer the straight rooms. We’ll see after March.

Create a nice living space - work in progress

Began painting apartment and getting rid of old furniture. I am getting a few new pieces. My place is feeling like a completely new apartment. I have lived in a darkly painted apartment for almost 10 years. Still more work to be done.

Being a father

Believe it or not, I always thought I’d be a father. I’m saddened that didn’t happen. I suppose I should never say never. But it’s a long shot. But why not have the dream. I don’t even care if I’m involved with the kid, I just want to know that I have a child out there and that a part of me will carry on.

Creating meaning work in my life -Exploring spirituality - work in progress

This has been an ongoing struggle for me for last decade or so. Creating PositiveLite.com has been enormously beneficial for me. I couldn’t do what I was doing any more. I had no sense of ownership over it or passion. I like the idea of creating something new and innovative.

The site is doing well and will be going through more changes so stay tuned!

There are some that say that all I do is work in HIV, which isn’t true. They don’t see the other worlds I walk in; people think that I solely concentrate on it. It is a lot of work and demands it. Even so, Positive Lite.com is so much more about HIV. It is about writing, managing, tech work, videographer, film editing, interviewing interesting people and so much more.

Exploring spirituality - work in progress

This has been a natural evolving past for me since about 2007ish. It has been an amazing journey that really has changed my life in so many ways that I could not list it here. I’m not suggesting this be something on someone’s lists, it’s just what I ended up pursuing. I’m getting to know great people in different communities, where I can check the subject of HIV at the door. 

Learn how to use my good camera (I need a weekend long class in it)

Procrastinating

Be a film maker

Procrastinating – when do I have the time?

To find a French-speaking Jewish boyfriend.

I put this on in jest, but wouldn’t it be nice.

Get back to exercising

I’ve left my healthy changes as the winter carried on. I have to get back to this routine.

To see my family more in Winnipeg

Will be seeing them in April. I have points that can get me there for about two or three more trips.

Organize my workspace

Major procrastinating – not a good organizer. Should get someone to do it for me.

Fix up my balcony for summer.

I’ve never done this, it would be very nice for this summer.

A trip to Israel

This will happen sometime in the next year. I have the points for the flight.

A trip to South America

Would love to study Spanish in Buenos Aires for a month!

Play with photographic images to create art.

Major procrastinating

Take acting class

One day when I can focus on it. This one scares me and I'm going to have to do it one day. I think I'd suck at it, and maybe I would, but gotta try.