The last few weeks have been a busy time, work-wise. At the beginning of November I traveled to Vancouver for a week to attend the 7th Annual Gay Men’s B.C. Health Summit with the support of CATIE. I returned to Ottawa after that to participate in the Mister Leather Ottawa Competition as part of the opening number for the popular annual fetish wear event, and fundraised at the event in support of the AIDS Committee of Ottawa . I’ve been busy constructing a brochure to promote Chatter, the young gay men’s HIV+ support group I facilitate, and I’ve been working on creating campaign materials aimed at addressing internalized homophobia, sex-negativity, and racism within our own queer community.

This Saturday I re-launch The Magnet Party, a quarterly poz party started in June of last year that aims to reduce social isolation and depression among HIV+ men and create a safer space for disclosure, networking, and the accessing of educational materials about sexual health and well-being.

This quarter’s event is themed around sex-positivity, with the intention of exploring sexual rights as human rights, harm reduction techniques to reduce HIV transmission during sex, and advocating sex-positivity as vital to reducing our HIV rates and supporting our poz brothers. To do that I’ve enlisted the help of  Montreal‘s Burlesque Troupe Glam Gam Productions, Ottawa’s Capital Tease Burlesque Troupe, Montreal’s DJ Rush'n Noiz!, and the new Mister Leather Ottawa 2012 Isaac Wesley! The Magnet Party takes place at Centretown Pub starting at 10pm. There is no cover.

Mr. Leather 2012 Isaac Wesley himself has his own fundraiser coming up at Centretown Pub, Stamping Out Hunger, in support of Bruce House  on December the 4th starting at 4pm. If you’re in the area I urge you to check it out and bring with you a non-perishable food item to donate. If the cheap beer, tea dance, and charity angle isn’t enough of an incentive to get you to attend, the smouldering Mr. Leather promises not to disappoint with his choice of outfit.

The first time I ever took my clothes off onstage was for charity at Halloqueen 2, in support of the AIDS Committee of Ottawa  and the Village Initiative Project.  The events organizer, Glenn Crawford, was having trouble wrangling male volunteers to perform amateur burlesque, and emboldened by the fact that I had been hitting the gym regularly at the time with a personal trainer, I said yes when asked.

I remember trying to calm my nerves beforehand by drinking Smirnoff Ice, and juggling with finesse the attentions of two men I had been secretively simultaneously dating, who both showed up to support me unannounced. I remember little about the actual performance though, other than trying to not make eye contact with the crowd, and remembering to hit my marks, and as the music died down and the applause rose, I swore I would never do something like that again. That is, until seven months later when I organized my own amateur burlesque show to raise money to help fight cancer….

I have never been so much a sexual person I think, as I have been sexualized. Years working as a bartender in a gay bar taught me how to harness sexual attention, commodify it, and talk about sex in a positive way that grossly overemphasised my own interest in the actual carnal act of fucking. Like Boy George once famously said, I’d rather have a cup of tea. But like anyone else, I do have some base sexual needs, and stripping turned out to be bit of a revelation in that respect.

I had unwittingly discovered that night up on stage a medium that was ideal for shameless cockteases like myself! People who had little interest in following up their sexual suggestion with action, but who still craved at least some sexual validation and expression! I got to be creative, have fun, and live and preach my values in a public forum that showed I didn’t just talk the talk, I walked the walk of sex-positivity. I felt like a sexual rebel, a sexual educator, and a valued member of my community all rolled up into one! Every time I stripped or performed terribly amateurish burlesque on stage I found it empowering! When I could overcome my own body fascism, I found I really enjoyed the art of Burlesque and entertaining people onstage!

Inspired by reading Tits And Sass ’s Stripper Music Mondays posts, and my own love of mix-tape culture, I decided I wanted to compile my own stripper/burlesque music mix-tape to share with all of my lovely HIV+ readers, fellow Go-Go boys, Burlesque stars, and closeted bedroom mirror strippers in honour of the upcoming International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers on December 17th.

Of course none of these suggestions will ever replace strip club staples like “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails or anything by Peaches, but hopefully everyone reading will discover a new song or two for their next stint on the pole! As for my next appearance on stage half dressed? Look for me at this years Mister Leather Ottawa on November 13th as part of a fetish wear fashion show in support of the AIDS Committee of Ottawa!

Michael’s Stripper Music Mix-Tape Playlist

The Faint "Erection": The first song I ever stripped too. It’s sexually explicit, comically masculine, and this erection is only 2:45 minutes long , which means you won’t find yourself up on stage for what might feel like forever. Trust me. For your first time pick a short song!

Ween “The HIV Song” : Love using this song to promote discussions of sex and STI’s!

K's Choice "Not An Addict": A love song about heroin featuring some very sexy humming.

The Tea Party "Release (Radio Mix) [Alt Version]" : Slow songs are a dangerous game, especially for a rank amateur like myself. When I’ve performed to this song in the past, I’ve enlisted help, made it theatrical, and usually referenced some S&M themes.

Duran Duran "Come Undone": A failsafe classic. Remember your crowd might be multi-generational. It’s always good to pick a song many will know.

Xiu Xiu "Only Girl (In The World)": Sometimes throwing in an indie rock track sets you up nicely for conversations with the patrons later. They’ll stop and ask you, what was that great song you just performed too, and you’ll share with them what a hipster you are, maybe write the name of the song down for them, and the next thing your dragging them to the Champagne Room or collecting a donation for the cause you’re promoting. Score!  

Lykke Li “Get Some (Beck Remix)”: It’s all in the lyrics.

To learn more about sex work and how you can get involved in your neck of the woods supporting International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers on December 17th, be sure to visit P.O.W.E.R.,  the Turn Off The Blue Light Campaign  and St. James Infirmary.  Sex work is an umbrella term and it includes everyone from amateur, shitty Burlesque dancing wannabes such as myself, to phone sex line operators and rent boys. When we talk about sex workers, we're talking about their advocates, friends, families and allies too. Get involved, and help end violence against sex workers.

Comic book writer, artist, and creator Dan Jurgens may be most famous for having killed Superman back in 1992, for which he won the National Cartoonists Society Award for Best in Comic Book Division, but it's his work on Justice League and the creation of the lovable, screw-up and corporate shilling superhero Booster Gold that has made me a fan for life.

This September, along with artist Aaron Lopresti, he re-launched the Justice League International, brought along Booster Gold for the ride, and gave D.C. Comics another bestseller. In an exclusive interview with positivelite.com, Jurgens is kind enough to take time away from his busy writing schedule to answer all of my questions about my favourite new comic book Justice League International!

Michael Burtch: First up, congratulations on the success of Justice League International #1! Diamond Comic Distributors is reporting it charted at #24 on the sales chart for September and Bleeding Cool's Rich Johnston has speculated that with low returns and Britain's sales factored in, JLI is more likely sitting at an even prettier #19! You must be very proud of JLI's sales and overwhelmingly positive reviews! How did you come about being attached to the title?

Dan Jurgens: Yes, I'm very happy with the way JLI performed, not to mention all the New 52 books. It's been great to be a part of it.

In terms of how I first became connected with it, I'd had some general discussions with Bob Harras regarding the kind of stuff I like to do and general books and characters I feel comfortable with. Not long after, they asked if I'd like to write JLI and it was a total no-brainer to take.

One of the things I love about your configuration of the JLI is that your team is an almost equal 50-50 split between men and women and has a lot of ethnic diversity, both big, big pluses in my book! What are your thoughts on the criticisms the rest of the 'new 52' have faced over the lack of diversity in their titles?

You might be talking about two different things here. First, in terms of any lack of diversity in the characters themselves, I think it's pretty clear that we're trying to add more character diversity to the books. It isn't something that happens totally over night, but we're certainly making progress in that direction.

Second, there was a great deal of talk regarding the lack of female creators as part of the effort. By now, people have come to see that that were more things in the pipeline featuring women like Amanda Conner and Nicola Scott. In addition, I don't think there was enough attention paid to the fact that we have creators with a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, working in a variety of countries across the globe.

I have to admit that I groaned and rolled my eyes at first over the inclusion of Godiva in the new JLI, but after reading issue #1 she became my favourite character! How on earth did you decide to use this (formally laughable) character in JLI and are you aware that she's, at least in my eyes, totally become a gay icon! The woman screams diva!

We tried to make her fun and interesting, and probably have some more treats coming up. Stay tuned!

Obviously I'm a big homo myself so I'd be remiss if I didn't ask this; might we be seeing a gay hero or villain popping up in the pages of JLI anytime soon?

Maybe you already have. Who's to say? I think we have some interesting things cooking.

With such a large, diverse cast of characters in JLI, who's your favourite character to write and who's closest to resembling yourself?

Godiva has become a favourite, as has August General in Iron. Guy is up there as well. As for who's most like me, gosh... Booster, maybe? But even that's a stretch.

Rumour has it that Booster Gold is Canadian now ah! Can Canuks expect a JLI adventure in Canada anytime soon?

Eh? We actually hit the shores of Canada, very briefly, in issue 3.

People have a love/hate relationship with Government. The United Nations for instance has been investigated for promoting forced-abortions and coercive sterilizations with the United Nations Population Fund, and the United Nations Security Council have been accused of lacking uniformity in responses to humanitarian interventions. How great a role can we expect the United Nations to be playing in JLI and how political might your stories get?

This isn't going to be a book about the UN. However, I do think there's a lot of room for commentary regarding the scepticism people currently hold for all sorts of institutions. We see such polarized opinions today that it's a natural topic to plumb.

Um, and just out of curiosity, how much does a Superhero get paid by the United Nations to be in the International Justice League anyway?

That's something we're going to touch on a bit later. We're focusing on pulling the team together at this point.

In JLI #1 you reveal that the identities of the team are public knowledge. This really captured my imagination! I instantly started to wonder how being a superhero with no secret identity might be really dangerous but also really fuckin' annoying. Or, vice-versa, perhaps totally fuckin' awesome! Will we see this explored more in upcoming story lines?

Yes. I don't want to play the celebrity card for these heroes too strongly, but they are going to be the most accessible heroes in the DC. Like anything, that comes with positives, as well as negatives.

You've previously said in an interview that "the [JLI] line up is constantly subject to change". There was a lot of speculation initially that the raven haired mystery woman that popped up in early promotional cover art for JLI #1 might have been Donna Troy or Gypsy. Some have suggested it might even be the super powered Greek heiress Alexandra. You've only publicly denied that she's not Donna Troy. Can you give us any further hints about her identity and if Donna, Gypsy, or Alexandra may be making an appearance in JLI in the future? Just how big can we expect the JLI to get?

The only thing I'll say is that there's a story waiting to be told and we have every intention of getting to it.

Lastly, let's play my favourite game: Fuck, Marry, Kill! I name 3 former JLI characters and you have to decide which one you'd marry, which one you'd have killed, and which one you'd make sweet, sweet love too! Your blasts from the past are Crimson Fox, Tasmanian Devil, and Dr. Fate! Go!

No blasts from the past allowed-- doesn't fit the New 52! Godiva [to fuck], Ice- the most genuine of the bunch [to marry, and to kill] none of 'em! Who could possibly want to kill any of these guys? Even Guy Gardner has his good points.

My thanks to Dan Jurgens for taking the time to speak to positivelite.com. To stay up to date with Dan Jurgens and his many projects, you can visit his website at http://danjurgens.com or follow him on Twitter at @djjurgens. Justice League International #3 goes on sale on November 2nd.

Back in May I participated in a photo shoot with photographer Lucyna DanUTA Barossa, Toronto’s Dita Dior, and Ottawa‘s queen of the night Sultanna Corangie. Inspired by a Naomi Campbell pictorial in Interview Magazine, Sultanna had brought us together to help her produce photos that would explore themes of sexuality and violence.

Impressed with the final results, photographer Lucyna DanUTA Barossa encouraged Sultanna to let her shop the photos around, and in September they were published by Guerilla Magazine . Sadly, a month before print, Sultanna passed away from a heart attack.  She was 37.

Below is an excerpt from the obituary I wrote to accompany and contextualize the Guerilla Magazine pictorial. My thanks to Tony Martins for editing the piece. You can read it in full here . Donations in Sultanna’s memory can be made to P.O.W.E.R. (Prostitutes of Ottawa/Gatineau, Work, Educate, Resist) here .

“Her name would be followed, in hushed tones, by mention of her occupation, in much the same way that I imagine my own name is followed by mention of my HIV+ status. It’s an accusatory whisper. They always lower their voice and lean in close to share with you what they know. To warn you that your mutual acquaintance is a social pariah. Whenever I heard her called a whore or a prostitute, I also heard every message board comment, letter to the editor, Public Health nurse, or crush who had rejected me because of my status. They all speak through their words of warning and judgment: as if being a sex worker, or having a disease, somehow makes us undeserving of sex or love or family or respect. My kinship with Sultana began there, as two outsiders in an already marginalised gay community.

She was a smoker. As she laid out her vision for the photo shoot to me, she’d slip her hand into a table-top cigarette holder and pull out the next smoke, leaving discarded, lipstick-kissed blunts smouldering in a sparkling crystal ash tray. She wanted to convey strength and dominance, she said, and explore the contrast between her and her bleak surroundings. As she spoke, she glamorously applied her make-up, chose her outfits, poured wine for me from a decanter, and, of course, smoked.

Looking at the photos now, it’s clear that she was intent on exploring far more than what she described for me then. The fetishization of sexual violence against women, queer gender politics and identity, the resiliency of queer men and women in the face of oppression, anti-body fascism, HIV-phobia, whore-phobia, and expression and exploration of kink—Sultanna and photographer Lucyna Bakowska give rise to many issues for viewers to investigate and discover.

The last time I saw Sultanna we had bumped into each other in the street and she was nervous about writing a piece to go with the pictorial in Guerilla magazine. Unsure of how much to reveal and whether her written English was strong enough to communicate intelligibly, she appreciated my encouragement as we brainstormed. A week later, while she was running a bath, her heart stopped. The water cascaded over the tub, channelled itself around the bends of her apartment walls and out into the hall from underneath her front door. The superintendent was alerted; he found her lifeless body pruning in the running bath. She was 37.

Mere hours after news of her death broke, rumours ran rampant that she had been murdered by a client and was a victim of her own ‘wicked lifestyle‘. Friends would be forced to re-iterate this whore-phobic talk in the press in order to deny it. Her Muslim family, from whom she was estranged, would request a private burial. It seems that they didn’t want Sultana’s fellow sex workers, customers, degenerate friends, fags, and drag queens to show up and pay their respects. Local gay bars were happy to host memorial shows and pub crawls in her honour, however, perhaps for one last chance to make a dollar off Sultana’s name and following. Here, condolences were offered by tipsy party hosts while drunk patrons laughed, danced, and ordered one more bottle of Stella before last call.

Hours before the photo shoot in early April, I had a new tattoo done. The syrupy fake blood we used in the photos stung when it made contact with the tattoo wound. As Sultanna applied generous amounts of it to my torso, arms, and face, I quietly asked her a question. Had she considered that she would be posing with an openly HIV+ person who would appear to be bleeding profusely all over her? Would she be all right with possibly having her own status called into question as a result? Sultanna paused, looked me directly in the eye, and simply said “fuck them.”

Dita and I will always be grateful to have these pictures of our friend, whom we loved, respected, and now miss dearly. She was a joy to be around, an outgoing, generous soul who only wanted to entertain and create beauty out of her surroundings. She was an Algonquin College graphic design graduate who moonlighted as an Arabic goddess, lip-syncing to her signature song “Queen Of The Night” by Whitney Houston and always dominating the stage. As a drag performer, she was one of Ottawa’s best; as a friend, she was even better. She was a pure spirit. And as for anyone who would disagree, fuck them."

Writer Brian Azzarello once again casts Wonder Woman immersed in a world of myth and monsters, once again removing her from the world of modern man and traditional superhero heroics. Disappointingly, Diana has spent so much of her recent superhero career battling Greek Gods and Monsters that the Gods re-appearance in issue #1 is slightly tedious and anti-climatic. Wonder Woman has a wonderful rogues gallery of formidable female foes that are criminally underused; including the Cheetah, Silver Swan, Doctor Cyber, Veronica Cale, and Giganta, and it would have been far more satisfying to see them rebooted and properly used over the inclusion of the Greek Gods yet again. That said, Azzarello's use of locations Virginia, London, and Singapore to tell his story lends a nice scope to the book that makes the threat of the Gods seem more epic and world threatening than before. Artist Cliff Chiang's renderings of the Gods makes them appear far more compelling then they've previously seemed, and the reader is instantly hooked.

Described as a horror book, Cliff Chiang definitely captures the tone in his art, particularly in the birth of Hera's Centaurs. Despite the acclaim that follows Chiang's art, I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. He definitely knows how to draw your eye! Points too for drawing Wonder Woman over 6 foot tall, with a modest bust, and in a non over-sexualized manner. That said, the costume is still atrocious. Loose the choker, arm band, and over sized boots and bring back the pants. The return to star spangled bikini bottoms doesn't read classic, it reads ridiculous. Made all the more obviously so, and jarring, by having grown accustomed to her in pants over the last 14 months.

Interestingly, Azzarello and Chiang introduces the idea that this Wonder Woman makes mistakes, gets dressed like the rest of us (ie. no spin), gets bulled over from the impact of deflecting a weapon, and is never depicted flying (perhaps she can't?) which makes for a far more human character then the demi-Goddess we have grown accustomed too. Toning down her increasingly exaggerated abilities helps create greater suspense in the story and encourages greater investment in the character from the reader. Of all the changes to the character, these have me the most excited.

Wonder Woman issue #1 is by far my favourite re-launch and read so far from D.C.'s The New 52 and I'm looking forward to seeing more from Azzarello and Chiang at the conclusion of this 4 issue story arc. (Brian Azzarello is signed onto Wonder Woman for at least a year.) I bought the last available copy of Wonder Woman from my local comic book shop today. It had sold out in under 3 hours. It looks like I'm not alone in thinking that this Wonder Woman, under the combined talent of Azzarello and Chiang, is a most read. Be sure to leave a comment on this post and let me know what you thought of the amazing amazon's first issue!

P.S. It took a few flips through the book before I spotted the mysteriously hooded female figure that's crept up in all 52 first issues of the re-launch. Did you spot her in Wonder Woman #1?