My Truth Doesn't Belong to You

For years, I let someone else write my story.

I sat in a 210-square-foot apartment that felt more like a cell — my whole world reduced to four walls and a window I was afraid to look out of — and I let the lies someone was telling about me become the only version of me that existed. I didn't fight back. I didn't correct the record. I just... shrank. I became smaller and smaller until I nearly disappeared altogether.

The man who did this to me was someone I loved. Not casually — deeply. When he was about to lose his housing, I gave him my bedroom and slept on my own couch. When he was hungry, I fed him. When he needed money, I gave him what I had, even when I couldn't afford to. I didn't do those things to earn something from him. I did them because that's who I am. That's what I do for the people I love.

And when he decided I was his enemy — based on assumptions he never gave me the chance to address, conclusions he reached without ever asking me a single question — he didn't just walk away. He burned the ground behind him. He told people things about me that were so far from the truth they barely qualified as fiction. He painted me as something monstrous, and he did it so convincingly that every friend I had introduced him to chose his side overnight. My phone went quiet. My social circle evaporated. My name became something people whispered about with disgust.

I will not catalog his specific lies here. They are documented, and they will be addressed in their proper venue. What I will say is this: the things he accused me of are not just false — they are the opposite of who I am. And he would have known that if he had spent thirty seconds asking me instead of spending three years telling everyone else.

The isolation nearly killed me. I don't say that for dramatic effect. I mean it literally. There were nights in that apartment when I sat with the mathematics of my own disappearance and found the numbers persuasive. The only reason I'm writing this today is that something in me — some stubborn, defiant thread that refused to be cut — held on long enough for me to get help. I did get help. I am still getting help. And I am still here.

For a long time, I grieved him the way you grieve someone who has died. Because the man I thought I knew — the one who laughed with me, leaned on me, trusted me — that man is gone. Maybe he never existed. Maybe I loved a version of him that he couldn't sustain. I don't know. What I do know is that I spent months — years — aching for him to learn the truth. Believing that if he just knew, if someone just showed him the evidence, he would understand. He would come back. He would apologize. The wound would close.

And then one day, sitting in that same small apartment, I realized something that changed everything:

My truth doesn't belong to him.

It never did. I know what I did and what I didn't do. I know the care I gave. I know the records that prove my innocence. I know the settings on the server. I know what the lab results say. I know what the FBI's response says. I have always known. And his belief or disbelief doesn't change a single one of those facts.

His opinion of me is not my biography. His delusion is not my identity.

That revelation didn't erase the pain. But it rearranged it. It took the grief I'd been carrying for the loss of my best friend and turned it into something else — something closer to clarity.

Because here is what I see now, with clear eyes:

A real friend would have asked. A real friend, upon stumbling across something that concerned him, would have come to me — the man who had given him everything I had to give — and said, "Shannon, I need to talk to you about something." Thirty seconds. That's all it would have taken. And I would have shown him. I would have explained. I would have put every fear to rest, because the truth was always on my side and I was never hiding it from him.

He didn't ask. He chose to believe the worst possible version of me without giving me a single chance to speak. And then he chose to spread that version to everyone who would listen.

That is not the behavior of a friend. That is not even the behavior of a fair adversary. That is the behavior of someone who needed a villain more than he needed the truth.

I've stopped waiting for his apology. I've stopped rehearsing the conversation in which he finally sees what he did. I've stopped scanning for his name in my periphery, hoping and dreading in equal measure. That chapter is closed — not because the story resolved, but because I finally understood that resolution doesn't require his participation.

I feel something for him now that surprises me. It's not anger, though the anger still visits. It's not hatred — I don't think I'm built for that. It's closer to sorrow.

Because I know something he doesn't know yet.

He lost me.

Not the monster he invented. Not the villain in the story he's been telling. Me. The real one. The one who would have driven across the city at 2:00 a.m. if he'd called. The one who gave him the last of his savings without being asked to. The one who loved him with the kind of loyalty that doesn't come with conditions or expiration dates.

That person is still here. Still generous. Still capable of that kind of love. Still offering it to the world — just not to him. Never again to him.

And one day — maybe not soon, maybe not for years — he will look back on what happened between us with something other than the righteous certainty he carries now. The lies will get harder to maintain as the years pile on top of them. The story will stop making sense, the way all false stories eventually do. And when that moment comes — when the scaffolding finally gives way and he has to sit with the bare, undecorated truth of what he did to someone who loved him — I hope he finds it survivable.

I did.

I'm still here. And my life is no longer his to write.

HIV & Depression

 How Long-Term HIV Survival and Depressive Episodes Go Hand-In-Hand

Living with HIV for decades turns time into something strange. The urgency of the early years eventually fades, but the virus doesn’t. It just settles in, like a roommate you never invited and can’t evict. The crisis slowly becomes routine, and routine becomes its own kind of prison. That little pill that keeps me alive is both my miracle and my mirror—every morning it reflects back the part of me I’d most like to erase. I swallow it with water and a wince, a daily ritual of gratitude and resentment in the same breath.

What people don’t always see is that long-term survival comes with a quiet, grinding grief. I outlived the panic-era headlines, the funerals, the whispered “Did you hear…?” phone calls—but survival has a body count, and sometimes I feel like I’m standing on top of it. Survivor’s guilt isn’t just a dramatic phrase; it’s the heaviness you feel when you realize you’re still here while faces you loved live only in old photos and half-faded memories. You start to wonder why you were spared—what cosmic math decided you get to grow older with this virus while others never had the chance. The world moved on to new scandals and new crises, but my body never got to move on from this one.

Then there’s the stigma that doesn’t die, it just evolves. It lives in the awkward pause when I disclose my status. In the way some people say “Oh… thank you for telling me,” like I just handed them a ticking bomb instead of a piece of my truth. It’s in the dating apps where you either brand yourself with three letters—HIV—or play this exhausting game of timing and disclosure and risk. Even in 2025, with PrEP and U=U and all the science in the world, there are still looks, still questions, still people who treat you as a walking warning label instead of a whole person.

Sex, for me, isn’t a minefield of disclosure anymore; I took that part out of the equation a long time ago. My status is right there on every profile, in plain sight, so anyone who can’t handle it can quietly move along before we ever exchange a word. It’s a kind of harm reduction for the heart: I don’t have to brace for the awkward pause, the panicked unmatch, the “sorry, I didn’t realize…” message. But there’s a quieter cost to that system too. I never see the rejections—I just feel the absence. Fewer messages, fewer replies, conversations that die on the vine. You can’t prove it’s because of those three letters, but you feel it anyway. It becomes easy to see yourself less as a person who happens to have HIV and more as a filter people are silently passing or failing before they ever bother to meet you.

Over time, that kind of invisible sorting seeps into the bedroom, even when I’m with someone who does show up, who does understand U=U, who doesn’t flinch at my status. My body still remembers years of being treated like a risk instead of a partner. Desire gets tangled up with self-consciousness, with side effects, with the sense that I’m a “safer choice” only because I’ve turned my sex life into a disclaimer-first operation. It’s not that I’m afraid to be honest; it’s that honesty has taught me exactly how conditional other people’s desire can be — and some days my libido responds by just shutting the whole system down.

Depression doesn’t just drain my mood; it interferes with the one thing that’s literally keeping me alive. When I fall deep into an episode, basic tasks turn into impossible mountains. Getting out of bed feels like a negotiation. Feeding myself, brushing my teeth, taking a shower—those start to feel optional. The pill bottle on the nightstand stops looking like hope and starts looking like a judgmental little witness. On the worst days, I just roll over and let the hours pass, doses slipping by untouched. It’s not always a dramatic “I want to die.” Sometimes it’s just a quiet “I don’t care what happens to me right now,” and that indifference is its own kind of danger.

That’s what scares me when I finally surface: how easily survival can start to unravel in those stretches. If I miss meds for long enough, HIV stops behaving like a managed chronic condition and starts becoming a real threat again. The virus I work so hard to keep caged gets a chance to wake back up. Then the shame hits: You know better. How could you let this slide? That shame folds right back into the depression, which makes it even harder to pick the pill up the next day. It becomes a loop—virus, pill, depression, avoidance, more risk—and it’s terrifying to realize how quickly that loop could become deadly if it goes unchecked.

From the outside, it just looks like I’m “having a rough week” or “in a funk.” Nobody sees the small, lethal math happening in my bedroom: missed pills, skipped meals, a body quietly absorbing every choice I’m too numb to make. Long-term survival is sold as lab numbers and adherence charts, but for me it’s also this constant fight not to let the darkness talk me out of basic self-care. The same daily pill that gave me a future back can become the first thing I stop reaching for when the future feels too heavy to hold.

And yet, here I am. Still taking the pill. Still doing the laundry. Still paying bills, going to work, flirting on good days, hiding on the bad ones. That’s the darker side of survival no one prepared me for: not the drama of dying, but the discipline of living. Waking up again and again to the same virus, the same bottle, the same history, and choosing—sometimes reluctantly, sometimes angrily—to keep going. It isn’t inspirational. It isn’t neat. It’s just real.

Buy My New Book - The Wall Between Us

 My Book, The Wall Between Us, Available on Amazon

Based on real events first revealed here on this blog, The Wall Between Us tells the tragic story of Cody and Sean, an unlikely pair of friends whose bond forms quickly only to be ripped apart way too early. Dive into the emotionally raw and unflinching look at how trauma can shape our lives in unexpected ways and how addiction and insecurity can destroy connection from within. Available now on Amazon.com in hardcover, softcover, and Kindle e-book formats. Get your copy of The Wall Between Us by Oscar Silvestre today!

I Wish I Never Met You

 

Hope It Gives You Hell

 Petty? Perhaps. But It Feels Right.

After what's been done, the lies that have been told, and the damage done to each other, all I can say at this point is that I really, really do hope I serve as a thorn in his side every time he has to come near my door or walk past my window. When he's parking, I hope there's a moment when he has to ask himself if I can see him and drives around some more to look for another option. I want to know that as much as he hates it, I'm on his mind every damned day, and I hope it's utter hell.

Jealousy Makes A Lousy Third

Part 2: How To Destroy A Friendship With Jealousy In Just 5 Easy Steps

My friendship with Cody began unexpectedly and with such a strong and surprising bond between us. The three months he spent living with me at the beginning of 2023 proved to be three of the best months I've had in all the years I've lived in Washington. We were inseparable. When Cody wasn't at work, he was with me. There were even mumblings from envious mutual acquaintances that I had some sort of sway over Cody to the point where they believed I kept him under my thumb and away from their individual company. 

The truth is that in the beginning, Cody honestly enjoyed spending his time with me. We talked, watched movies, exchanged stories from our troubled childhoods, and formed a truly great friendship. He was so fond of my company that after I'd helped him to move into his own apartment in my building just one floor up from me, he still chose to spend every night of that next month at my place instead of his.

I was happy to have someone so patient who actually seemed to get me. I hadn't felt heard, understood, or accepted by anyone in so long, that by the time Cody came into my life, I'd forgotten what a wonderful and powerful feeling that was. He bolstered my confidence, gave me someone to care for, and was kind and appreciative of the support I offered him. 

While he lived with me those first three months in 2023, Cody and I would co-host countless sex parties. We were cautious about how much 1-on-1 interaction we had, not wanting something as ridiculous as sex to interfere with the friendship we had built. So we invited in others to satisfy our needs while his boyfriend was locked up in California for probation violations. I would recruit guys from Grindr or Sniffies, run their pics and stats by Cody for his input, and invite them over if we were in agreement. It was a lot of fun, until it wasn't.

There began to be a pattern where the guys who came to join us in bed would focus all their attention on the younger, sexier Cody, leaving me feeling left out and unwanted. At first I let it slide, not wanting to make a stink of it by addressing it with Cody, but after the fourth or fifth time, I spoke to him and clued him in on what I was experiencing. The friends who I had been inviting over to play with Cody and me had begun to go behind my back directly to Cody to hang out and spend time, and some of them went so far as to expressly ask him to keep it secret. 

If there's one thing you should know about me, dear reader, it's that I don't do secrets very well. When I get a whiff of one, it's all I can think about. I'll scratch it and pick at it and rub it raw trying to uncover something that's being intentionally kept from me. And that's how I found out about these friends bypassing me to go and have alone time upstairs with Cody. 

I wrote him a letter letting him know that I was aware, and I told him how badly it hurt my feelings that he would participate in such clandestine rendezvous with friends he'd met because of me. I brought up how often I'd been feeling ignored and left out of the fun at our co-hosted parties, and I asked him if he might be willing to be more aware of the times when he felt me pulling away and try to circumvent me getting pulled into my head to overthink the situation by offering some reassurance.

He was hurt, feeling accused and blamed for the friends choosing to spend their time without me at his place. I assured Cody that I wasn't blaming him for their actions, and I apologized for failing to consider his own feelings about those friends and the possibility that he might have felt a kinship that had nothing to do with me. It was selfish of me to expect Cody to be my tether to the real world when I inevitably started to withdraw from activity that seemed exclusive of me. He wasn't to blame for being younger and having more appeal to these guys than I did. I felt awful for the jealousy I felt. It was humiliating.

And though he volunteered to be more vocal toward these guys when they began to focus all their attention on him, offering to speak up and remind them who had invited them to play, the task began to feel like a chore to him pretty quickly, and he ultimately came to resent the responsibility. And then, to really start the jealousy ball rolling, in came Skyler.

Skyler was a cheap hooker I'd hired about a year earlier who turned out to be a criminal and a manipulative, backstabbing thief. I was cautious of him, but when I found out that he and Cody had met and formed a close friendship, I welcomed him back into my life for Cody's sake. I didn't want to be seen as the mean old man who wouldn't let Cody have his friend over to play. So, when Skyler asked for help getting back to Seattle from Louisiana, I helped. I even let him stay with me when he got back, since Cody had moved upstairs by then.

When he arrived, there were a couple of nights of sex, first with just him and me, then with Cody. But from the start it was clear to me that there was a spark between them that I would not be able to compete with. They paired up, and without a word, suddenly Skyler was no longer staying with me as we'd discussed, but had opted to move in upstairs with Cody. They spent more and more time away from me, opting to party with Cody's growing circle of ne'er-do-well buddies.

It became difficult to get any alone time with Cody the way we'd spent the previous three months, just he and I. Anytime he came to see me, he had Skyler in tow, so there were conversations we couldn't have for lack of privacy. Part of me thinks that may have been by design, since having heartfelt conversations on the subject of feelings was low on the list of Cody's favorite things to do. And my jealousy grew more fierce and constant.

Not long after Skyler had entered the scene, I invited an out-of-towner named Lane, who was new to Seattle, to come over for sex. In keeping with tradition, I ran his info past Cody and asked if he would like to join in on the fun. In hindsight, I fully regret extending that invitation. Soon after Lane arrived and he and I had just begun to mess around, Cody showed up. The three of us had fun for a while, but I felt the familiar tug of attention being drawn away from me for longer and longer stints. I got in my head, and I tried to combat that by drinking more G. My plan backfired, and I passed out for two hours. 

That was enough time to cement what would become a burgeoning new friendship between Lane and Cody. They bonded and fucked and talked and fucked and bonded some more while I snored my face off in the other room. When I woke, they dressed and left to go up to Cody's place, where apparently Lane was going to be staying for a while. Apparently he had expressed some discomfort about the guy he had been squatting with expecting him to put out while he was staying there rent-free, so Cody, being the knight-in-shining-armor that he is, offered Lane his futon until he could find other arrangements.

It took close to three months for other arrangements to be found. And during those three months, the friendship I had forged with Cody grew more strained day by day because he was never available to do anything anymore with me, and when he did make an appearance, he always had Lane in tow behind him or Lane upstairs having a crisis, or Lane texting to say he'd been gay bashed by a group of trans girls, or Lane. . . you get the picture. Lane was a pathological liar and a master manipulator who instantly wormed his way in between Cody and me. Needless to say, I hated him for that.

Well, there you have the first two steps toward destroying a friendship with jealousy. Check back soon for steps three through five, and find out just how bad things got.

What Is The Point Of Being Good?

 The way I was raised by my grandparents was to live by the golden rule. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It seemed a pretty good way of living back then, where a small rural community stayed closely knit through family ties or church. I saw that rule pay off many times, too. My grandfather would help our neighbors pick their beans. In exchange, they would give us a bushel or two to take home. My grandmother was famous for her pies, which we distributed around the community now and then. In exchange for a chocolate silk pie, there was a lady who'd sit and shell those bushels of beans with her shelling machine and send us home with a few jars of her fig preserves as a bonus. People looked out for each other, and when we found ourselves in need, there was no shortage of help we could reach out for from our friends and neighbors. 

I have tried my best to follow that rule my whole life. When I've met someone in need of help, I've given it. If a new friend found himself down on his luck and facing homelessness, I gave him my bed instead, rent-free. I've fed the hungry. I've housed those without homes. I've always tried to put as much kindness and generosity out into the world around me, and there have always been people who've taken any and all support I had to offer. It made me feel good knowing that I was able to make someone's life a little easier, a little happier, or at least a little less sad. 

But there comes a point when I have to ask myself why I keep doing this for people who never seem willing or able to return the favor. In fact, there have been a couple who I poured so much love and support into that it left me reeling, yet when I needed some of that kindness or care or patience back, they called me needy. They pushed me away. They turned their backs on me. The most recent one even filed for a protective order because I wouldn't stop asking him to repay me over $1100 in loans and a down payment that he had agreed to repay to me but never did. 

For the last year, I've been unemployed. For the last 6 months, I haven't been receiving unemployment benefits. I'm unable to afford the basics, like rent, phone, or internet, and I'm fearful of stepping outside my apartment door for fear of running into him and being arrested because he is so very eager to see that happen. 

I think my grandparents prepared me to live in a world that no longer exists. They imbued me with values and beliefs that do not serve me well in this day and age. I give and give while these people take and take, and yet never does the good deed come back around. I've wasted 51 years being other people's door mat. I've helped everyone but myself. And now I'm too old to do much of anything about it. It's just pathetic how I've given my life away to people who couldn't care less if I live or die. I've wasted a life. This was all a huge waste. 

In the end, all I can say is that I was a good person. I don't think that actually wins me anything. I can't buy toilet paper or cat food with my good person badge. But it still feels important to me to be able to say that earnestly. I wish I'd chosen better people on whom to shower my love. And I wish that my love was enough to win me theirs in return. But I didn't and it wasn't, so fuck it. What a waste.

Ridiculous Men of the PNW

 Who Raised the Gay Men of Seattle?

Because I would really like to have a word with them about some of the choices that were made about teaching them manners, respect, directness, and honesty. I've lived in cities across the United States from Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco, and nowhere in all my travels have I encountered a population of men so ill equipped to participate in normal adult interactions without any care for the impact their actions have on the people around them. 

Case in point: There is a frequent practice here in Seattle of using the various gay hookup apps as time sucking prank machines. Men will engage in conversation, being flirtatious and giving the impression that they have an interest in meeting in person to get better acquainted with someone. They flatter and talk dirty and brag about all the things they're going to do when they get there, or conversely, solicit a litany of naughty things that will be done to them when they arrive. But they have absolutely no intention of ever arriving! 

They produce excuses and keep the flame burning again and again with the promise that they are on their way. They offer just enough information about their whereabouts to keep a guy on the hook for the meet up they have planned, and after hours have passed without any sign of them on the doorstep, they either block the guy whose time they wasted or delete their account and evaporate into the sea of anonymous profiles without pictures or useful information about themselves. I have been ghosted so often here in Seattle; I've begun to think my asshole is haunted.

Some of them do it just for dirty talk. They get off on the fantasy and have no intention whatsoever of meeting the other person face-to-face for sex. They are easy enough to spot, because if the dirty talk stops, they move on to the next potential source of spank bank material. 

Nefarious Example 1

Others have more nefarious motives behind their performance of this ritual. They get enjoyment out of the frustration and emotional distress that a series of such fruitless encounters can cause in a man. In fact, there are more verifiably malevolent men living in Seattle than I have ever experienced anywhere in the world. The plots and subterfuge that goes into their long games of manipulation and deceit rivals any intelligence agency's bag of tricks. These monsters live off the honest work of others, always on the lookout for opportunities to take. They scheme and grift to pocket what they want from the trusting men they target, and ghosting is just a means of making a clean getaway after they've fleeced their marks completely.

Delicate Soul Example 1

And finally, there are the hypersensitive conflict avoiders who will go to absurd lengths and deliver passive-aggressive signals that are meant to inform someone that they would appreciate it if he would dismiss himself on their behalf, because they are simply too nice a person to be so rude or direct about such a possible feelings-hurty subject. Directness, in fact seems to be something these men find sus. They will delete conversations instead of blocking an unwanted fellow's advances permanently, presumably because to block someone is a microaggression and is therefore tantamount to physical violence as far as these delicate do-gooders are concerned. 

It begs the question why they are on these apps and sites at all. One would think that such a minefield of potential conflict would tend to wear on their pious little souls enough to dissuade them from using them. But I suppose enough of them find enough of the type they are into that it's worth it for them to endure running into a mouthy old codger like me occasionally. 

Hot Guy Sex Example 1

I suppose one might also ask why, with all the aggravation these guys generate do I continue to use the various hookup apps and sites. It's a question I ask myself regularly. I guess it's because I do find enough sex with hot guys to make the frustrating ones worth the effort, as long as I get to brag about the hot ones I get and berate the fragile time-wasting ones publicly here in my blog.

An Unexpected Reunion

How My Ex Best Friend Came To Be Asleep In My Living Room On His Birthday

It may come as a great surprise to learn that for the last two and a half days, my apartment has become stuffed with an ex bestie who recently did some fucked up shit to me, half of his belongings, and his cat. But it's true. Not only is my head spinning from the 180° turn of events, but my heart has not yet understood what exactly the fuck is going on. It knows it wants to rage, to burst into a fiery ball of molten pain and sear the flesh right off of his stupid face, but it doesn't quite comprehend how to reflexively cause more pain to someone who is clearly already in a bad position.

Nearly 2 weeks ago just as I was finishing work at around 7:00 PM, I received a DM on Sniffies from a profile I'd never seen before except for saying hello to it maybe half an hour earlier. The DM contained a screenshot of a profile that featured a 10-year old photo of me with an untrimmed beard and about 50 extra pounds of weight, and the name on the profile was "N.A.M.B.L.A.?", implying that I am an overweight, shaggy pedophile. It also contained my full name and private cell phone number, which was captioned in red ink with the words, "Sub-Human Toilet. Shit in my mouth. I have a rim chair.", scrawled across the top of the photo.

I immediately knew it as Shawn's handiwork. He had shown up on the apps just 75 feet away from my apartment a while earlier but refused to answer my messages asking him what he wanted here. It was supremely creepy. And then, to follow that up with the bold proclamation that the greater Tacoma/Pierce County area and beyond now had visibility to my private contact information, even the long list of men I've blocked over the course of the 3-and-a-half years that I have lived here.

No sooner had I realized that than the messages started rolling in. The first guy texting me from an unknown number asked, "Hi, Shannon. I got a huge dump for you. Hungry, baby?" I blocked him. A second message arrived only minutes later, also from a number I didn't recognize. It asked, "Hey, Shannon Murdock! What's the youngest you've ever been with? Mine was 11." I blocked him, too, and hurriedly deleted both conversations. I felt sick at my stomach as dozens more similarly disgusting text messages and voicemails streamed in over the next 24 hours.

My every instinct begged to hurt him, to lash out blindly but explosively and to eradicate Shawn Schneider from the face of the planet for what he'd done to me. Of all the people in the world, he knew better than anyone how things whispered behind my back about me were my Achilles heel. There wasn't any assault he could have made on me that would have done more damage, and I felt him revel in it. 

It took every atom and inkling of restraint in my being to refrain from enacting his utter annihilation right then and there. Images of me on the northbound express bus flashed in my mind, followed by a street altercation and blood, so much blood everywhere that my mind's eye saw only in crimson tones. Instead, I took several deep breaths, put my phone away, and slowed my racing heart to something more closely resembling a seated human male in his forties. I messaged him back, thanking him for the attention he'd brought me and letting him know how surprised I was at receiving such a gift from him - all these attractive men contacting me for sex? Yowsers! Gracias, pendejo.

But the truth was I was horrified. Even now, two weeks later, I'm afraid to go out in public for fear that one of those perverts could be anywhere around me. Was the barista the one who had molested that 11-year-old? Was the bus driver the guy who'd offered me his shit? Does the cashier at the convenience store think I am a pedophile? I've stayed inside even more than when I was strictly adhering to the coronavirus quarantine. 

Then, out of nowhere, my doorbell rang at 5:55AM this Monday morning. I looked through the peephole and saw a tall, lanky figure dressed in a hoodie and wearing a hat that hid his face from the light. I didn't recognize the person, but assumed it must be one of my friends who frequently come over to visit, so I opened the door and invited the mysterious figure in. My eyes searched his face for some recognizable feature just as he turned to me and said, "We need to talk.". In that moment I knew exactly who had just invaded my personal space, and he was every kind of unwelcome there is.

Yet I still held back the instinctive scream that threatened to rush out of my mouth
and shred him with a thousand tiny blades, each honed by my rage and my hurt. "Yeah. We really do.", I said, closing the door and ushering him into the sitting area. "Thanks for the flattering profiles you left for me and everyone around town last week.", I added bitterly.

"Oh, you saw that, huh?", he grinned, not even trying to disguise his smirk. "Yeah, that wasn't me. I'm sorry. I mean that was ME, but it wasn't the me I want to be. You know what I mean?"

"What exactly are you sorry for, Shawn? For body shaming me with that 300-pound photo of me and saying I weighed 350? Or is it that you published my name and my phone number to every psycho and pervert in a hundred miles, who have all, I might add, been blowing up my phone with the sickest shit you can imagine until I finally changed my number."

"Both.", he said flatly, almost sullen in his sudden shame. "I didn't know you'd changed your number.", he said. "That's why you didn't get any of my texts this morning. I've been sitting outside in my truck at the end of the alley for nearly an hour debating what I was going to do when I got to your door, and I texted you all these messages challenging you to come outside and face me. I said, 'I know you're reading these, Murdock. Don't be a coward.', and a bunch of other stuff you didn't reply to. So I finally called you about fifteen minutes ago, and that's when I got the message saying your number was no longer in service or whatever."

"Of course I had to change it. What did you think was going to happen when you made that information public, Shawn? My phone blew up." I stared across the living room at him, sunken into the chair, eyes wide and almost confused, his clothes hanging off of him like rags on a wire hanger. He looked exhausted and a little crazy.

"And what do you mean 'deciding what I was going to do'? What did you decide, exactly?", I asked, remembering the threat I'd detected in that sentence before and fearing a snap was coming any second. I straightened and glanced left and right looking around for anything I could grab to protect myself if he lunged. My eye settled on the heavy glass ashtray in front of me on the coffee table, then met is again to monitor his movements.

"Nothing. Talk. Just talk.", he said with a telling crack in his voice like puberty was making a second house call just as he started to speak. "I haven't slept in days, and I'm paranoid as fuck right now. Somebody, I'm not saying you, but somebody has been putting up profiles everywhere chasing me all over the country saying shit about me and throwing shit in my face everywhere I go." He paused for half a beat, then continued, "If it is you, stop it. Please. Just stop."

"Look.", I started. "I've already told Corey and Tyler both a hundred times that it's not me. I'm so sick of getting blamed for whatever hell you've brought on yourself, either from one of them or some other poor schmuck that you've pissed off in your dealings. I'm going to say this one more time, and then I am not going to discuss it again. I am not responsible for the fake profiles being placed on Grindr and Sniffies." My voice was steady and stern, making my point as confident and final as I needed it to be. "I even managed to capture a conversation with the asshole in screenshots a couple of weeks ago, and I sent that shit to both your exes as proof that it wasn't me. Did they not show you? Don't tell me you haven't been tied to Corey at the waist for the last two weeks, either."

"No, I'm not speaking to Tyler, because -- uh, whole other kind of crazy -- and Corey and I aren't talking. But okay. If you say you didn't do it, I'll take you at your word. It's just that whoever it was mentioned something in one of the profiles about my Opa this time, and I saw red. It took two people to hold me back or I would have been here last night and this whole thing would have gone down a lot differently."

"What, would you have brought your favorite putter and practiced your swing on me again?", I asked with so much contempt that the snark was practically dripping from the words.

"Something like that.", he admitted and then looked away. "It's driving me crazy. Everywhere I go I'm paranoid that he's watching me. He says shit about who I'm with all the time, and like, it's not always right. Like half the time he's wrong, but half the time he's right. And so it's like he's got eyes on me all the time to the point I can't sleep. I leave town and he follows me. He followed me all the way to Atlanta and fucked with me there. On my flight home, I stopped in Dallas for an hour, and there he was with another profile showing up in DFW. I don't know many people that are smart enough to do that kind of shit with computers. You are probably the smartest person I know. So tell me the truth. Is it you? No threat, no fight. Just tell me."

"I already did. We're done with this subject.", I answered, refusing to back down from my line in the sand. 

"Then it has to be Tyler.", he posited. "I've noticed in some of the profiles there are certain typos and misspellings."

"I don't do typos or misspellings. I'm incapable. You know that."

"I do know that. Which is why I'm pretty sure now that it's got to be Tyler.", Shawn concluded. "He's smart. -Ish. But also dumb. You know what I mean? There are words he always spells wrong in everything, and I've seen them spelled wrong in some of these profiles." 

"Then you should be defaming him up in Des Moines instead of dragging my good name through the mud down here. You did that shit to me for something I didn't even do!" I was livid once more. Tears threatened to erupt from my eyes as I clenched my jaw tightly and held them back with nothing but sheer will. I  had to appear stronger than he remembered me. I needed him to see how hardened my heart had become in the wake of his abandonment of me this spring.

"I know, and I'm sorry.", he admitted quietly, almost whispering. "I'm not proud of that, that's why I took them all down. Well, one of them got taken down and banned as soon as it went up, and then I took the other two down, 'cause I felt bad."

"I only knew about 2 of them, and I reported them both to Sniffies and Grindr. Where was the other?", I inquired urgently. My mind raced, wondering how long the exposure had remained in place without my catching it.

"It was at Tyler's. I did one of the two of you. Two birds one stone kinda thing. But that one was the one that as soon as I finished and posted it it got yanked and banned by Grindr.", he answered. "I'm really sorry. I didn't know it wasn't you, and when it said that stuff about my Opa. . . I only talked to you about him, and I remember you using his name against me as a weapon before at the golf tournament in Federal Way that time. And I never, I don't think I ever talked to Tyler about Opa, so it's just weird that the profile would say, 'Your Opa would be proud.', is all. I believe you, it's just. . ."

"It. Wasn't. ME! I swear to God, Shawn, if I have to say. . ." I was incensed. 

"Okay. Okay. Okay, I know. I believe you.", he interrupted, aware of how close I was to losing my shit if he pushed any further and continued to doubt my honesty. "Hey.", he said, waiting for me to look up and meet his eyes. Holding my gaze he spoke. "I mean it. I'm sorry. I made a mistake, and I regret it. I'm sorry."

It was as if a year's worth of pain, doubt, anger, hurt, confusion, and heartache I'd been paralyzed by was suddenly sucked up by a big invisible hose, clearing my vision and leaving hardly any trace of those heavy, ugly emotions in view. I felt a relief the likes of which I haven't adequate words to describe, something akin to a weight that had permeated my body from head to toe and held me down for so long lifted, and I was able to see him for the scared, broken man he was in that moment and forgive him. 

We talked for over six hours that morning, covering everything from the infamous abandonment at Harborview in March to the robbery by Anthony and the rumor that I'd chased him all over Capitol Hill with a gun, ready to shoot him dead in the streets, which were fabricated by the very same friend who robbed me the following day. I steered the conversation toward some of the unanswered or contradicted questions he'd left me with when he bailed and took up with Tyler over me, and to my surprise, he kind of sorta answered me. Not in any useful way, like, with actual information that fills in a blank where there was no information before, but at least he gave me something instead of deploying his usual smoke screen of words and then running for the hills the second I look away.

He stuck to his original story on the subject of my being the one person he didn't want a relationship with. He said then and now that he came here wanting to be alone. He didn't want to be tied to the responsibility of keeping one person happy and not breaking their heart. He wanted to be free of any and all relationships more serious than a friend with benefits. After I'd confessed my feelings to him in late May 2019, he said he kind of freaked out and started trying to find ways to distance himself so that I would maybe lose some of that love. Of course at the time he told me we were totally fine, and that things weren't weird and he wasn't freaked out by my confession. He says he simply couldn't bring himself to say the harsh truth in full because he was afraid it would hurt me so badly that the entire friendship would end, so he tried to maneuver us in a way that only that unwanted love part would die.

As for the part about suddenly going from wanting no relationships at all to being in one up to his heart, he simply claimed that Tyler is a very good salesman and that he'd set his mind on Shawn, so he sold Shawn on the idea of being his boyfriend. In fact, he says that when it started, it wasn't even supposed to be true. He'd been on the phone with Tyler after fighting all day with Corey, who had been accusing Shawn of being in a relationship with Tyler, so Shawn jokingly said to Tyler, "So, did you know that you and me are boyfriends now?". He said Tyler took that to mean that they WERE boyfriends, and that was that. Hmmmph.

I don't know if I believe that, but I wasn't going to push him any further on the subject. He would have clammed up and I would get no more answers to the questions I still had for him. He's stubborn as hell, and he also really thinks that he's sparing me pain and suffering by not telling me his harsh truths, no matter how many times I assure him that's not the case.

By noon, we had come to a sort of uneasy truce; one that neither side had seen coming just hours before when we each had murder on our minds. It was bittersweet, having a slice of our previous friendship pop back to life and start dragging itself around my living room. I almost smiled, despite the soreness still surrounding my heart from all the hurt I'd held onto for so long. He saw that tears had welled up again in my eyes after his apology for how he left me, and he came across to the sofa to sit beside me as the sun shone through the patio window and turned us both into beautiful statues of gold.

When he left that day, I sat in stunned silence for an hour, replaying the morning's conversation over and over again looking for some sign that he'd been scamming me somehow. Had all that toxic animosity between us, all the fearful screening of friends for any signs they'd been in contact with him, all the anger and jealousy, and the pervasive feeling of betrayal all been so trivial that all it took to erase them was one honest conversation and a couple of tight, meaningful hugs? Apparently so. 

I'll tell you the rest in the next installment. I've already given way too many words in this post for most people to tolerate, so I won't push my luck by continuing on with the tale right now. He will be heading to Portland for the weekend, so that will give me time to think through this past week and all the unbelievable twists and turns that it brought into my life again. If you want to find out how he ended up here snoring while his cat kept my two cornered and hissing in the bedroom, check back later. For now, examine that feeling of confusion and curiosity that's swirling around your head right now. That's exactly how I feel now, too. Weird, isn't it?

The Best Conversation Ever

When There's Truth, There's Understanding

The Tragic Fall of Fuckboy, Part 1

As Was Foretold, What Befell Me Soon Befell Fuckboy

A Milestone For The Memoir

After Months of Effort, "A Corpus For Closure" Nears An Important Milestone and a Sneak Peak!

I've mentioned here before that I was combing through texts and emails, even screenshots of memorable arguments or discussions had on Scruff or Grindr, any and all correspondence between me and you-know-who - trying to separate the truth from the fiction. I've been an absolute emotional mess for the duration of this task, because reading and rereading all our most intimate (and our most inane) conversations looking for clues is keeping the wound raw and tender. Every time I reach a point where I think I've decided on an answer that will suffice, some other contradictory memory pops up and sends me back through a year's worth of texts and electronic communication.

Well, no more, I say! Because I'm nearly done. I've struggled with having to learn a lot more HTML5 and CSS3 for Paged Media than I knew before in order to get the look and feel I wanted for the book. It may not be the most creative or inspired looking work, but for me, it represents months of diligence paired with heartache and rage all heavily seasoned with my own secret seasoning, which is 2 parts self-loathing, 2 parts depression, a cup and a half of indignant "I told you so!" aimed at myself, and just a pinch of suicidal thoughts to give it that bitter, metallic taste.

The editing and illustration of the memoir has been very unexpectedly therapeutic, I will admit. It will likely be considered petty, juvenile, and in some cases downright mean, the way I retell our story, but it has my voice in it, my perspective and understanding - often mis-understanding - of what went down between us. I'd hoped that in villainizing him I could somehow trick myself into sour graping him and thinking that it was he and not I who didn't deserve the affection or respect of the other. But even that cold comfort wasn't available to use as a shortcut around the painful, uncomfortable, and psychologically draining processing of our words, my feelings, and the facts that remain despite it all. 

There will definitely be more from me on the making of, so be sure to check back for a sneak peek at what's in store for release coming soon! I can tell you this much in all honesty - you won't be able to put this down. It's not a story like any you've heard before, and the complex emotional fallout that is examined throughout is good fodder for any grad students looking for a great Psych thesis, that's for sure. I'll be posting some of the illustrations here and on my Instagram (@art_by_shannonm_) shortly, but follow me for details about the pre-release peek at "A Corpus For Closure."

 

Was Everything A Lie?

Saying One Thing, But Proving Another - A Game Of Lie vs. Ty

I'm not sure how to see myself in the mirror's reflection when I'm actually able to tolerate the sight. Am I looking at the sexy, good looking, charming goofball that he told me I was all last year? Or is it the fat, AIDS-ridden, overbearing and unwanted loser whose pathetic need for validation makes him absolutely unattractive to anyone not looking to take something from him or use him in some way? 

I used to have a better picture of my own. Before my world went dark and spun off into cold isolation at the whim of a narcissistic liar, I actually trusted in my own beautiful traits and virtues. All of the pillars upon which right and wrong or up and down were based seem to have been toppled at the realization of his cowardly lies. And the fact that he maintains them as truth keeps them fixed in disarray in this upside down calamity.

Six months ago, I was still under the mistaken impression that Shawn was a good person who simply wasn't wired for the kind of romantic relationship I'd come to want with him. That, in and of itself, would have been regrettable but understandable, had it been true. It was not. We fought and reconciled and tried again a few times throughout August and September, and by October, he'd shut me out once again. His birthday came near the end of the month, and lo and behold, "Holden" had suddenly found a new guy to replace me as his best buddy, and what's more, he was in a relationship with him. A seemingly happy one, at that. Shawn was in love. 

He did have the capacity to love and be loved. He wasn't completely unwilling to be in any romantic relationship with anyone, as he'd repeatedly insisted to me for months. Shawn was perfectly okay having a boyfriend a little on the chunky side who was HIV positive and older than him. He just didn't want me.

And even that truth, hurtful though it might be, would have been an excusable one that I could have accepted had he simply had the balls to say that was the case. Had he simply sat me down and talked it out, explaining what it was about me that was wrong for him in that regard, I could have gotten the lesson I needed from it and moved on. But for him to hide behind a soft lie and let me think he loved me but couldn't handle a new relationship so soon after the dissolution of his 13 years with Corey was an unforgivable bit of laziness and convenience. It excused him from having to say the hard words he was too afraid to watch me hear. Then, when he'd found someone so similar to me in so many ways and became enamored himself, did he finally step up and tell me the truth, cutting me loose with some tears, a bit of heartache, and some closure? No. Not Shawn.Not him.

At first he pretended to let me be back in his orbit, hiding as much of his actual life from me as he could while feeding me lies and making excuses for not seeing me in person. When I grew suspicious of his odd behavior and went to see him unannounced, he was caught off guard and fed me a bullshit story he thought I'd want to hear about how he was simply using this dumb, dumpy rich guy for his car and apartment until he could rebound from his eviction and get back on his feet. 

It excused him from having to say the hard words he was too afraid to watch me hear.

He looked me in the eye and told me that this fuckboy, (who publicly claims to be 36 but is actually 40 years old, and who had to be shamed in front of Shawn into being honest about his HIV status with the men they were fucking) was no more his boyfriend than I had been, and that he still wasn't looking to be in a relationship. He claimed that he was selfishly allowing the new guy to believe what he wanted to believe. That was precisely what he was doing -- to me. The moment I dropped him off at his apartment in the wee hours of the night, he literally fled into the night as if he had escaped some maniac's clutches. Like he was afraid of me. It ripped me apart. What the hell had happened? He was afraid of almost having had to face the lies that he'd amassed. That's why he ran.

He leaves love notes in his boyfriend's car.

That feeling of betrayal eats at my guts like I'm corroding and rotting from the inside. I cry every single day, no matter how hard I try not to think about him, some memory invariably bubbles up to the surface, triggered by some sight or sound or smell. It isn't him that I dwell on, per se, so much as the messy end to our friendship and the lack of identity I am left with as a result of his cowardice. It's unacceptable. My story, more specifically the the part that I shared with him, deserves a just ending. He should have to face me and tell me the truths he hid from me and finally show me the world as it is, not as he would have me believe it.

But I can't make him do what he should. Nothing I say will change his mind or persuade him to suffer the discomfort that telling the truth sometimes requires. He has moved on to greener pastures having had to feel none of the anguish he left me to suffer. He comforts himself with poorly formed philosophical bullshit about letting go of the past, not fearing the future, and making the best of the present. He detaches and forgives all of his bad behaviors by simply writing off the past as something we just shouldn't dwell on. And as long as he can sidestep any collision with me, he will never have to care what he did by doing nothing. Karma will have to be his justice, and I won't even get the pleasure of seeing that unfold. I'm certain it will be magnificent and terrible in its weaving of his next incarnation's circumstances, and what a sight that would be indeed.

Young Gay Men Too Ignorant To Survive

It's such a common occurrence for me to encounter gay men online who are woefully ignorant about the finer details of HIV and the mechanics of its transmission and prevention. The stigma stays about hip deep year round, from coast to coast with occasional beacons of hope strewn sparsely throughout, defying their age with some well studied wisdom. I've dealt with this kind of rejection my entire adult life, since becoming infected at 18. But the fact that my skin has grown thicker and can withstand most of the onslaught of stupidity and discrimination doesn't mean I forgive the men who participate in the spread of such fear-based misinformation and intolerance.

Last night I was minding my own business, playing around in Photoshop and trying to come up with some new designs when I got a notification on my phone that I'd received several messages in rapid succession on Grindr. Curious, I swiped into the app and went into my inbox to see who could be so interested that they were still hitting me up. I was surprised, truly, to discover that the culprit was a very attractive young 25-year old who opened with a short greeting and followed it with a flurry of dick pics that had my full attention the moment I saw them coming in, one after the other, filling my box to capacity.

He was assertive, to say the least. Confident in his choice to hit me up, and apparently finding everything I had written about myself, my likes, and my dislikes to his approval. He asked if I could host. I agreed, but only after I ran a quick errand and came back - about an hour's work. He accepted the invitation, and the date was set.

Nearly 45 minutes later, having raced through my errand, I responded again to let him know I was ready, and I sent him my address. He gave an enthusiastic acknowledgement and said he was on his way. And then he asked a question I would have expected to have come much, much earlier if at all. "What's your status?"

Puzzled by the timing of his question, I referred him back to my profile, which he'd read before contacting me, and confirmed that I was HIV+ with an undetectable viral load. I sent him a screen shot of my latest viral load test to confirm it. Silence. A long, uncomfortable one.

I waited a minute, giving him an opportunity to piece together his excuse, but when it didn't come quickly, I decided to turn the shame back around and told him that if it was going to be a problem, that was fine, but that he had all of that information available to him prior to ever contacting me. I explained to him that I was used to being turned away based on fear like this, and I told him that I always disclosed my status to every partner I have, giving them the opportunity to make an informed decision about how to proceed. I am honest about my status because it's the right thing to do, even though, in reality, I could just as easily have said I was HIV-, since the risk of his becoming infected by me was about the same, but that would make me a liar, like all those guys on the apps who claim to be taking PrEP so they can get their bareback on, but who, in reality, hadn't set foot in a testing facility in years and had no idea what their status was.

He never spoke another word. Nor did he block me. He had probably already used up the day's allotment of blocks before getting around to my profile, so he was literally stuck, unable to block or hide, and unwilling to continue the uncomfortable conversation we were having. Or at least the one I was having. He ignored me and went on looking for another candidate to breed.

What the fuck, people? Those fields in the hookup app profiles are there for a reason. And people like myself fill them out honestly for a reason. If you are concerned about HIV transmission, how about not waiting until you are en route with your dick already in your hand before asking such a game changing question? There is absolutely no reason for a man looking to hook up in this day and age to cause someone with whom he initiated conversation to feel ashamed of themselves, even for a second. It's not okay. You need to do better, gay men. All of you.

If you or someone you know needs a refresher on how to interact with people living with HIV, for the love of all things horny, please visit my Facebook page, HIV4Dummies, and get yourself some education. At the very least, maybe you'll gain some insight as to how to protect yourself from infection in case you come across someone less upfront about their status who's willing to risk your life for a nut.

An Inspiration To Us All

New Haus of Heaux Products Influenced By Charismatic Asshole

We will admit the latest products rolling off the assembly line at Haus of Heaux haven't been real crowd-pleasers, and that's because they are specifically inspired by and meant only for the enjoyment or torture of the master of mean, the conductor of chaos, a man whose personality is a technicality -- the one, the only Shawn J. Schneider.

Shawn Started Shit Over It

The Schneider Goodbye

Thumb On The Scale All Along

Made Because of Shawn

Made For Shawn