Charles Sanchez is very busy being good at a lot of things, especially being gay. A Chicano writer, actor, singer, and advocate, he's a contributing editor for TheBody.com. His writing has been featured in POZ Magazine, Them.us, PositivelyAware, and more. In the fall of 2024, his article “Health Insurance Obstacles Can Disrupt Your HIV Care, but It’s Important To Keep Advocating for Your Health” (TheBody, 2024) was honored with a Gold Digital Health Media Award. For four years, he hosted the Instagram Live broadcast for TheBody, “At Home With,” featuring interviews with celebrities and prominent members of the HIV and LGBTQ+ communities. Sanchez's groundbreaking web series, Merce – a musical comedy about a person living with HIV who isn’t sick, sad, or dying – won “Best Actor in a Web Series” at the Official Latino Short Film Festival and “Best HIV Content” at America’s Rainbow Film Festival. Sanchez collaborated with composer and lyricist Joel B. New to create the HIV public service campaign on YouTube, “The More You Can Ho.” He was tapped by the World Health Organization (WHO) to lend his humor and honesty to their global social media campaign that brings awareness to the MPox epidemic. His lifelong dedication to the arts and activism has been recognized on Healthline.com's List of HIV Honors: The Most Influential Voices and POZ magazine's POZ 100, as well as being featured on the cover of People En Español Salud (Winter, 2024).
“Geez, it’s a helluva time to be sober, huh?” I said this jokingly to a friend of mine recently, a fellow addict living with HIV. We both snickered, but we know the truth: there’s no drug or booze that could make any situation, even the hell of what we all are living through in Orange Cheeto’s America, better.
When I woke up in a Little Rock, Ark. hospital in 2003, I didn’t know where I was, or why.
What is a person worth? Who is worthy? Of help, of love, of existence?
I’ve been thinking about my first love lately. No, not my first serious boyfriend, Paul, nor my first hardcore crush in high school, Rick (oh, how cute he was in his corduroy OP shorts!), nor Patrick Duffy in the too-short-lived 70s TV show, The Man from Atlantis.
There’s an event in my life I’ve rarely shared. Not to friends, not to therapists, and definitely not to family. It’s a deeply mortifying memory, and it happened when I was only 17.
I have a wee crush on my doctor. He’s extremely good looking – tall, dark, and handsome, and very good at his job. He also has a husband, but I overlook that fault.