There was a bedtime and morning ritual in the Malebranche household. A kiss from the family patriarch to his son David and daughter Michelle that was so routine—his decision to replace David’s kiss with deafening silence—reverberated loudly throughout their home in Galway, NY, in the summer of 1992.

Despite being an exceptional student with degrees from Princeton, Emory, and Columbia Universities, Malebranche, now 53, had become accustomed to achieving a level of success that appeared to impress everyone but the Haitian-born surgeon he called dad. Yet he was not accustomed to being viewed as a disappointment by the man he idolized.

“Donna, is our son trying to tell us something?” Malebranche recalls his father asking his mother almost daily, particularly after getting his ears pierced, and choosing to wear an earring in the right ear only on this particular day, which in the early 90s was a cultural indicator that a man was not heterosexual.

“He would ask her that question every morning. He would not let it go,” Malebranche said. “So after the third or fourth morning, she'd say, ‘What do you want me to do? I can’t cover for you.’”

“I'm 23. If he's not man enough to ask me directly, he’s not man enough to hear it from me, so you tell him,” he said. “And so she did. Those three days that I was home, he didn’t speak to me at all.”

CNP mourns the recent and sudden passing of pioneering researcher Dr. John L. Peterson, a leading figure in early HIV research, and mentor too many in Atlanta’s Black gay and healthcare communities. CNP Executive Director Charles Stephens cites Peterson as an early influence on his decades-long career in advocacy and organizing on behalf of Black gay men dating back to his time as an undergraduate student at Georgia State University, where Peterson was a member of the Psychology department faculty.

Today, December 1, 2020, is World AIDS Day. And as we reflect on the lives lost to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic, we also celebrate the resiliency of those living and thriving with HIV. Michael Ward, 34, is one of those individuals. In a year rife with devastating loss, global financial instability, food insecurity, mental health challenges, and a lack of national leadership in response to the coronavirus pandemic, many Americans were forced to navigate life in unfamiliar ways and with varying degrees of success. Ward, whose public profile increased in 2020 is no exception. As the host of CNPs “Revolutionary Health,” a weekly Facebook Live series focused on the health of Black queer men, and as co-creator of “Black, Gay, stuck at home,” a virtual film series centering Black LGBTQ stories and filmmakers, not only is Ward’s visibility increasing, but his vulnerability and willingness to speak about his experience of being a Black gay man living with HIV is as well.