Tag: feelings

Toxic




Jim McKeeth • CC BY-SA 4.0

Content note: This piece references sexual role-play, kink dynamics, humiliation language, and HIV-related stigma. It may be activating for readers with trauma histories around sex, power, or medical stigma. Please take care while reading.

I had a hookup recently that was mostly good, a little scary, and unexpectedly clarifying. He is 55 so from the same generation as me. That matters for what came next.

There was kink. Some bondage. Some power play. Some things that pushed my edges in ways that felt exciting. And then there was a moment that landed wrong in my body in a way I couldn’t ignore.

At some point, he noticed the U=U sticker on the back of my phone. In the middle of the scene, he asked if I was HIV negative or undetectable. I answered honestly. Undetectable.

He shared that he was HIV negative. And then, woven into the role-play, he started using language about me being “toxic.” He asked who made me that way. He asked if I had ever “converted” anyone.

I want to be clear. I’m not opposed to fantasy. I’m not fragile about sex talk. I can hold a lot of words in a consensual space. But something about that language stopped me cold.

“Toxic” wasn’t hot. It wasn’t edgy. It felt old. It felt like fear dressed up as kink.

I found myself wondering why the details mattered. Who passed it on to me. The idea of “conversion.” The implication that my body was dangerous. Even in a fantasy, those words don’t live in a vacuum.

I said no. Gently. We moved on. The role play continued. And on paper, nothing bad happened.

And yet, something shifted for me.

I realized I had just discovered a new hard limit, one I didn’t know I needed until it was crossed. I’m still sitting with why that is. Part of me feels surprised by my own reaction. Part of me feels steadied by it.

As someone who does HIV advocacy work, I spend a lot of time talking about science, stigma, and criminalization in public spaces. I’m used to explaining. I’m used to educating. I wasn’t prepared for how jarring it would feel to have those same stories show up in a private, sexual space without warning.

This isn’t about blaming someone or calling them out. It’s about noticing the gap between what we think we understand about HIV and the stories that still surface underneath in intimate spaces. Even among people who believe they are informed. Even in spaces that see themselves as sex-positive.

I don’t have a neat takeaway yet. What I have is awareness. And a clearer sense of what I am not willing to eroticize, even in play.

For now, that feels like enough.

I also know this will find its way back into my art. That’s how I process. I feel my way through my body first, then let the images come later. There will likely be a new layered piece around sex, sexual harm, and the complicated space between pleasure and injury. Around recovery, healing, and growth that isn’t linear or clean.

This experience will be part of that. Not as a reenactment, but as an imprint. The lessons I’m taking with me. The sensations that stayed in my body after the night ended. The parts I’m still listening to.

That last part will be the hardest. And it’s the one I trust the most.

Keep telling the story.

Professor Peacock

When Depression Steals the Room


Depression doesn’t always arrive like a storm. Sometimes it slips in quietly, dulling everything it touches. The things that used to bring me joy – laughter with friends, coffee, a good conversation – drift out of reach. Colors wash away. The world shrinks into a small, cold corner where it’s hard to breathe.

It feels like a lifetime’s weight pressing me down into that darkness. I wake up heavy with years I didn’t ask to carry; every small hope becomes harder to lift. I feel alone and isolated, watching my life through glass. Friendships that once gathered now feel permanently distant. Family conversations thin into echoes. Simple pleasures scramble into things I can’t recognize. And there’s a voice that settles in: you are unworthy, insignificant, worthless. That voice is loud and mean and, in the silence, it feels like the only truth.

That loss doesn’t just hurt me. It hurts the people who love me, too. They watch helplessly from the outside, wanting to help but not knowing how. Their eyes ask questions they can’t answer, and I feel the weight of their worry alongside my own. Guilt spreads on both sides: I feel it for not being able to “just try harder,” and they feel it for not being able to make it stop.

Too often, depression is misunderstood as a choice, as if I could simply wish it away and rejoin the world. If only it were that easy. The truth is, depression is not weakness, laziness, or a moral failing. It’s an illness that isolates, confuses, and holds tight.

But here’s what matters: feeling powerless does not make me powerless. Speaking it, naming it, asking for patience – that is its own kind of strength. Depression hurts. It steals parts of me and makes me feel small. But I am still here. I am still reaching. I am still worth the light I hope will find me again.

Keep telling the story,

Professor Peacock

What have I learned?


That music heals.

I remember where I was when the news came.

The world wept.

More news comes.

We weep.

You remember where you were when the news came.

This music heals.

08.24.2022

I invite you to find and listen to Diana, Princess of Wales: Tribute

You can find it on Pandora or purchase on Amazon.

Thanks for listening,

Keep tellin’ the story.

Sawubona

Professor C Todd Peacock III
Community Artivist, Connector, Storyteller & Healer