Turn back to 2015, and you may recall a busy year. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of nationwide marriage equality. Barack Obama's second term was coming to a close. Caitlyn Jenner came out as transgender. Star Wars offered up the seventh installment of its ongoing space opera. And, in December, Trade opened on 14th Street.
Ed Bailey, sort of the public-facing proprietor of a decades-running D.C. gay nightlife empire -- along with John Guggenmos and Jim "Chachi" Boyle -- knew the space well. He's long lived just around the corner. Since World Pride, back in June, the original Trade space has more than doubled. Bailey was particularly familiar with the next-door addition the bar grew into.
A recent study of injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis found that twice-yearly injections of lenacapavir -- marketed as Yeztugo by Gilead Sciences -- do not have clinically significant interactions with gender-affirming hormone therapy.
"In the most gender-diverse Phase III PrEP trial conducted to date, lenacapavir had no clinically significant impact on feminizing or masculinizing gender-affirming therapy concentrations," the study’s researchers concluded, as reported by POZ.
The study, led by Dr. Jill Blumenthal of the University of California San Diego, examined whether lenacapavir interacts with gender-affirming hormone therapy, including estradiol (a form of estrogen) and testosterone. Because those hormones are metabolized by enzymes such as CYP3A4 -- which lenacapavir can inhibit -- the researchers analyzed whether the drug altered hormone levels.
"People don't realize how queer the Harlem Renaissance was."
Albert Lee makes the point while reflecting on how the "fluidity" of his sexual identity -- and the multi-pronged path of his musical career -- draws from cultural forebears rooted in that landmark era a century ago.
"As a person who sings literature, the joy of my own journey as an artist has been latching onto Langston Hughes' voice early in my career," he says. "And then, as an intellectual and as an artist, and as someone who was really trying to understand the next level of my own self, I was to come upon James Baldwin's writings and see -- just from Hughes' generation to Baldwin's generation -- a real evolution of how poets, of how artists, are able to move through the world and able to identify."
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