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Trial By Error: In a Tub Talk, Therapist Damon Jacobs and I Discuss ME/CFS, Long Covid & AIDS Activism

22 August 2022 by David Tuller

By David Tuller, DrPH

Earlier today, I posted a conversation about post-exertional malaise featuring Todd Davenport, a professor of physical therapy at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. I’d conducted the interview in April but had forgotten to post it here. And here’s another video I forgot to post—what I assume is the first “tub talk” to appear on Virology Blog!

My friend Damon Jacobs, a psychotherapist in New York City and a passionate advocate for sex positivity, routinely hosts and posts sudsy conversations with interesting guys, hosted from the bathroom in his Brooklyn apartment. The topics of these discussions range widely, from HIV prevention and LGBTQ activism to sex work, body. image, and underwear parties. In the case of my wet appearance, we discussed my work on ME, ME/CFS and long Covid, my brief turn as an ACT UP groupie in the 1980s, and my chest hair, among other topics.

Damon and I met in 2013 when I profiled his advocacy in a piece for The New York Times about the emergence of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV-negative people. This approach was based on ground-breaking findings that taking a medication normally used as part of an HIV treatment regimen could prevent the uninfected from contracting the infection in the first place. Damon also featured in a story I wrote a couple of months into the coronavirus pandemic about gay men seeking to emerge from isolation and have sex safely.

So I was delighted when he invited me to appear in one of his series of tub talks. We chatted for just over an hour when I was in New York in March, and he posted it on youtube in April. Again, I forgot to post it here on Virology Blog.

Filed Under: David Tuller, ME/CFS Tagged With: damon jacobs, tub talk

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. CT says

    23 August 2022 at 3:34 am

    And the duck, don’t forget the duck.

  2. Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt, PhD says

    28 August 2022 at 7:22 pm

    What a great idea for a format!

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