Still Defying Gravity: Queer, HIV-Positive & 10 Year Thriving Sober
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
“Elphaba wasn’t the villain. She was the spellbreaker.”
In this powerful Pride Month episode, Alexander Bluefeather reflects on the moment Wicked became his lifeline. It was June 2003—freshly diagnosed with HIV, newly exiled from the Mormon church, and standing at the edge of a new life. Then Elphaba soared across a Broadway stage, green-skinned and defiant, and something shifted forever.
Now, 22 years later, Alexander returns to that sacred moment as the trailer for Wicked: Part Two – For Good is released. He shares how Elphaba became a queer archetype and spiritual teacher, how sobriety reshaped his soul, and why pride means more at 52 than it ever did at 30.
This episode celebrates 10 years clean from hard drugs, explores the grief of losing a parent, honors gender expansiveness, and affirms that queerness is holy. It’s part memoir, part spell, part sermon for the ones who had to leave to live.
Topics include:
Queer identity and Pride then vs. now
Living with HIV for 22 years
10 years sober from crystal meth and hard drugs
Elphaba as a mirror for queer becoming
Gender expansiveness and chosen family
Spoken-word taglines and healing through Broadway
For the ones with glitter in their scars—you were never wicked—you were always becoming.
Key Takeaways
Elphaba as Archetype: The green witch became a sacred symbol of queer defiance, resilience, and rebirth for Alexander.
Pride, Then vs. Now: From shirtless dance parties to embodied, intergenerational queer family life—Pride evolves.
22 Years with HIV: Living with HIV since 2003, Alexander shares a story of survival, shame, and radical acceptance.
10 Years Sober (June 24): The episode honors Alexander’s milestone of a decade clean from hard drugs, with a reflection on relapse, recovery, and spiritual sobriety.
Spiritual and Gender Awakening: Sobriety opened doors to deeper healing, including gender expansiveness and letting go of shame around femininity.
Social Taglines & Spoken Word: The episode includes poetic mantras for liberation, like “Queer, positive, sober, alive. I’m the green girl now.”
Upcoming Projects: Future episodes will dive deeper into gender identity, grief, and the magic of chosen family.
TRANSCRIPT
Toss toss. Welcome to this very special episode. The trailer for Wicked part two for good drops today, and the spell is stirring again. Because I remember another June, another version of me in 02/2003, June, '2 thousand and '3, '20 '2 years ago. I was raw, trembling, freshly diagnosed with HIV.
I had just left the LDS church, newly self exiled and grieving the death of an old self and my core of community. I was gasping for breath in a new world I wasn't sure would hold me. I was falling, finally. And then I saw Wicked for the first time in December of that year, '2 thousand and '3. The original Broadway cast at the Gershwin Theater in New York City, and Elphaba walked on stage, green skinned, wild hearted, uninvited.
I had read her story in the novel by Gregory Maguire a few years prior. But seeing her on stage, seeing Adina Menzel, Kristen Chenoweth, seeing Elphaba soar, that was church. That was resurrection. When she's saying it's time to try defying gravity. I didn't know a piece of my soul had been waiting for those words.
Seeing these two women in relationship, friendship, and in conflict with the state of Oz and politics and leadership, and how wicked was thrust on one of them, and then a toxic good girl inflamed the other. It was as if I was watching two versions of myself, David the good and Alexander. HIV positive, outcast, wicked. I mean, you know, Alexander the Great. So this episode is for the ones of you, those who've been burned at the stake of someone else's dogma, the ones who had to leave in order to live, whether you're listening from a closet, a recovery room, from rock bottom, or a high bottom questioning your relationship to drugs, including alcohol.
Perhaps you're listening from a place that you've carved for yourself out of ash and audacity. I'm here to say, join me. Magic is real. Queerness is holy. And flying, flying is our birthright.
Let's talk about Wicked. Let's talk about part two this November. Let's talk about Queer Pride, June twenty twenty five. Let's talk about surviving with glitter in your scars. So grab your broomstick or your bubble.
Let's take a ride. Welcome fellow Aussians, It's me, Alexander, the Wicked Witch of Viral Mindfulness. I'm glad you're here. Curtain up. It's June 2024.
Wicked part two for good is coming in November, and the trailer drops today. Also pride flags are flying and queer joy is loud. And I'm ten years clean and sober from hard drugs on June 24. I actually looked up the definition of hard drugs. It says hard drugs can be defined as narcotics or psychotropics that have a high potential for abuse and dependency.
These substances can alter the brain's chemistry leading to powerful cravings and withdrawal symptoms. There's four examples of classes of hard drugs, opioids, heroin, fentanyl, oxycodone. I did not partake of most of those. Pain pills, yes. Always a pain pill popper.
Glass of wine. Stimulants, oh, yeah. Methamphetamine and cocaine, totally. Hallucinogens, LSD, psilocybin, uh-huh, uh-huh. Also ecstasy.
And molly, inhalants, glue, no, nitrous oxide, yeah, poppers. So, yeah, hard drugs, 10 clean and sober, June 24. And I'm not just surviving. I'm soaring in a way that I haven't. And August will be a ten year marker from cannabis.
And then September 24, was my release of alcohol. I had a beer on September 23 and realized that if I didn't abstain from everything and alcohol was the last one And alcohol had not developed into a huge problem for me. So here's a little quick moment of then versus now. Then back in 02/2003, I was surviving and I had just left Mormonism. I had an HIV diagnosis.
I was grad I'd graduated from my master's in social work at the University of Utah. I had fallen in love and codependency with this very beautiful, dangerous, bipolar, gorgeous man who loved who would eventually love to carry around a little backpack of drugs, and I would just join right along. And everything that I thought was holy fell apart by design, by my choice. And I was getting ready to dive deep down into drug addiction and would take, you know, a good another decade in 2015 before I finally set everything down and set the path for soaring, truly soaring. So in 02/2003, Broadway, the year of exile and emergence in meeting Elphaba on stage, I had actually read Gregory Maguire's novel, Wicked.
I had read it. It was published in 1995. I need to double check that. Right here is my 1995. Yes.
And I had read it, I don't know, maybe the end of the nineties. And also the end of the nineties was the first time that I went to New York to Broadway and did a big, huge Broadway, week of shows with two girlfriends from my Mormon, my last sort of Mormon days. And I'd read Wicked and really loved it. And then of course, February, I was now regularly going to New York. I was in my relationship.
I was just I had just celebrated my first World AIDS Day on February, being HIV positive. And theater was becoming my new church. Theater was my temple. Broadway, the Great White Way, this is where I would have deep experiences and have year after year, decade after decade, learning the truth of love and inclusivity with some of the most talented people on the planet. I remember seeing Wicked.
I was on the front row. I saw the original cast. They had just opened a couple months prior to this. This was the time on Broadway where they would do lottery tickets, and you drop your name on a ticket. Like, they would open the lottery, like, 05:30, and the show starts at eight.
You had to be there between, like, 05:15 and 05:30 to drop your name on a ticket. You could, say how many tickets you wanted up to two, and you had to show your ID and pay cash, and then you would either get one or two tickets. And then you sat on the front row. They would give you front row seats. And I won and saw wicked and it blew my mind.
It was Elphaba wasn't just a witch. She was like a mirror for me. And I mean, when the end of act one, she has her big moments where she's realizing that something, she says the lyrics, something has changed within me. I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game. I mean, I was 29.
I had just turned 30 that summer. I was freshly HIV positive. I felt like someone who had green skin, although my HIV was very tucked away and very hidden and very shameful. I would feel so much. I felt so much in this character and I'd learned about her in the novel, but seeing it in the sacred, most important place of Broadway, it was so awesome for me.
And of course, I fell in love, and, of course, I couldn't stop talking about it and told all of my friends about it. So the first time I saw it was December 2003. And then in June, so the next year in the same month in the June, our June month of 02/2004, I saw it twice. And I went with one of my girlfriends, Melinta, Ashley, Melinta, Ellen, Ashley. And I won tickets twice in a row for the lottery.
And so I went with Melinda once, and then I think I went with my sister or somebody else who was there. We sat on the front row. So, so cool. And then I went again in February when I took a trip with my boyfriend, Jake Rowe, and we saw Wicked together. September 2007 would be the next time I saw it.
This time it wasn't on Broadway. It was here on the LA run with Eden Espinosa and Megan Hilty who planted themselves in the West Coast premieres, I suppose. It was here planted, in LA for months or even longer. I went with my friend Weston and Anita. And then I saw it in August of twenty twenty three during my fiftieth birthday bash on Broadway and my mom and my sister wanted to see it again on Broadway so we did.
And it was awesome. And that brings us to here we are last year in 2024 experiencing Wicked part one, the film. And oh my gosh, what's it gonna be like this November? So what did Elphaba teach me about queerness? Well, first of all, being different is dangerous and divine and holy.
And it took a lot for me to deconstruct from where I had come and what was tucked far below the ground. And part of my drug addiction was a pathway to avoid, to escape, to numb. And, you know, it was difficult. And eventually now I'm here with this beautiful decade of sobriety and connection and my teeth. And I know that some people don't get out of addiction.
I've had so many people even not survive and die because of their addiction to drugs and alcohol. But, like there's also spiritual death and creative death and, you know, like an emotional death where we're so consumed and so, blocked with our trauma and our pain that we're not bright, light, and creative forces of blue magic. So, you know, Elphaba was a character that became somewhat of a hero and a queer archetype for me. Her green skin, her power, her refusal to shrink. She she's what queerness felt like when we're finally free.
And there was so much more in the book about Elphaba and some of the other characters because the musical can only tell so much. I feel very much like my story of queer survival and rebirth, you know, is reflected in this beautiful music and character. And I know that so many of you have very similar attachments to the music, to Wicked. It also celebrates female friendship. It's so amazing.
We'll see how part two works. Oh, so here's a funny story. Okay. My very dearest, Jay Cates, Jay Bluefeather, Harvey's dad. He the first time he saw Wicked, I think we were just friends.
And mind you, we became friends in February. Pride is where we connected and built started our friendship in Salt Lake City. And so at some point after that, he went to San Francisco. I'm pretty sure it was San Francisco. And he went to see Wicked.
He had never seen it. Of course, he heard had heard me talk about it and many others. And so he went, and we were very big stoners. And he was one, I was one. I'm a stoner at heart.
But that's just to give you more fun qualities. But, like, so he went to see Wicked and, you know, the end of act one, she flies, she lifts up and he's just like, oh my gosh, that was amazing. And he left. He'd never been to a musical, a Broadway style musical, a Broadway musical. This was one that was touring and he thought it was over And he slowly left.
And he didn't see act two. And it's so funny because, you know, act two has been criticized as not being as strong as act one for sure. We'll see what they do with the movie. Confirmation today with some articles early this morning. Each of Elphaba and Glenda each get one new song from the original composer.
So that's amazing. It's fun to have a queer hero that's green. That's kind of like a misunderstood witch. I think that I wanna tell you a little bit about pride month then versus now. So what pride meant for me in 2003 versus this year in 2025, it's very different.
And part of it is because, I mean, I have aged and I am older and I'm 52 this year. And in 02/2003, this year that we're talking about when I, you know, was freshly diagnosed and was in my first big boy relationship, man boy, he was a man boy. That pride was really big and important for me. And it was where I started to build community after leaving my religious community. And pride was always about dancing and being very naked and taking my shirt off.
And I was very thin and working out and I had great tone and abs and, definition. I wasn't big, but I was definitely, big as in muscular. I definitely had toned body and I would start experimenting with drugs this year. And I would really start jumping in at the end of the year and into 2024. Embracing the full spectrum of my queer identity is something that's more modern in the last five years.
So pride for me has taken on a whole more expansive understanding that my sexuality is one part of my queerness and queerness is the word I choose. Queer gives room for my sexuality and my gender. And my gender expansiveness is, is such a, an important part of who, how I'm understanding myself and having pride. For so many years, I've felt so terrible about being a very effeminate man And that I would it was very internalized and shameful. And it wasn't until, you know, the last five to six years where I started getting people out there reflecting back to me my femininity and the changes in my age and in my body getting a little bit more curves.
And so coming to this more proud place for my full, the full spectrum of my queerness, Yes, I'm attracted to men. Yes, I have had sex with men, and I want to continue to have sex with men, and other non binary, gender nonconforming, male presenting humans. I'm open. That's something that's of interest to me. I'm also HIV positive, and I've been alive for twenty two years on medications.
And I feel so grateful to be alive. And I'm a queer person who was very affectionate and had a huge problem with crystal meth and was an injecting drug user with meth. And I am alive and sober, and I'm so grateful. So here we go, June 24 of this month. That's when it started.
That's when I set down crystal meth on June 23, and so I started on June 24. And it was a very big experience for me to come to the tail end of a couple years of relapse and lying and shame. And it just picked right up, and it was as big and bad and terrible and wicked as ever. I was partying in Hollywood and Long Beach, and I was doing all kinds of drugs with the meth. Poppers and Viagra and GHB and cocaine and just anything I could get my hands on.
And then I needed so much help coming down from the high with cannabis and wine and Xanax. Yeah, it was just a mess. I was, I was a disaster. And so pride for me now is so rooted in having succeeded through community, through surrender, through 12 steps, through the Buddhist inventories and inquiries through the luckiest club, all these beautiful places, spiritual friendships, sober friendships. I'm sober, and I'm queer, and I can go to events and enjoy myself and dance and be around people using drugs and drinking.
And it's not a big deal. And for me, there's so much pride in having also the act of flying has shifted for me. And now I fly in a way with so much awareness about so much true authentic alignment with who I've become and where I've come from. I'm no longer unaware of the deep pain. It wasn't until five years in sobriety where I really got in touch with the core of my religious and trauma growing up in a religion that I did and other aspects of living that were deeply tied to my sexuality and the family and traditions and the religious traditions.
I'm gonna go more into this in detail when, later in this month. And I'm also going to do a episode specific to gender expansive and tell you a little bit about my experience in the last few years and something that recently happened to me when I walked out my front door. These little kids, the neighbors. I've I don't know them and what this three year old boy and this eight year old girl had to reflect back to me about my gender. So I've come so far, and I'll share so much more.
So pride for me has really cracked open into different ways of celebrating. Also, I'm no longer hanging out in the same decade. I'm 52. I'm part of a little queer family on the East Coast, a two dad family with my goddess daughter, Harvey, who's six and a half. She'll be seven in November.
And I spend a lot of time with them, and I'm part of the care crew. I'm the goddess father deluxe. And we get to spend a lot of time, and I have no intention of not continuing forward for as long as I can. And therefore, we do things as a family, and how I show up in the queer community is different now. Also, one of the things that I wanted to tell you about my religious transition, One of the lyrics from Elphaba's one of her songs, the wizard and I, she talks about in the song, the lyric is no wizard that there is or was is ever going to bring me down.
And I love this metaphor for my own life because the wizards, those in authority, the religious teachers, the elders, the bishops, the prophets, I put so much value in these humans and what they had to teach even when it was anti gay. Even when it was against who I was as a queer human, I still believed and took in what they had to share. And I don't do that anymore. Like, any person of authority or religious or leadership who does not embrace queer LGBTQ humans, LGBTQIA plus. Yeah.
No more. No more. So I have a few more things I wanna share with you. Final blessing for the queer ones out there with wings. For those of you who were told that you were too much or too soft or not enough or too green or too gay or too feminine.
May you rise and may you sing and find your music and song. And may you never ask permission again to fly. I love Wicked, and I love the film. I think the film is a beautiful expanded version of such a great story in the music. And I haven't watched the trailer yet, and I just looked online, And the trailer's there.
It posted thirty three minutes ago, and it's sitting right here, and I can't wait to watch it. So I'm gonna go watch it. But before I do, I wanna share with you a couple quotes from four characters in Wicked, something they said and how I feel about what they said. And I also want to share with you something that's kinda fun called social and spoken word taglines. I'm gonna use these to advertise this episode on social media.
So let's start with social and spoken word taglines. Here's the first one. Elphaba wasn't the villain. She was the spellbreaker. I feel like in my life, it's really easy coming from decades ago and how people and society and even my family felt about gay people.
And what the religion that I grew up with that are was the tradition of my family, what what the villain, the wickedness of those who embrace the gay lifestyle. And this idea that Elphaba was the spell breaker. I feel like my life has broken a spell, and I one of the things that's so beautiful to me that I became aware of when my father passed away this season. And mind you, the last podcast episode, I sometimes will go and revisit the podcast and listen to what I create so that I can become better at my craft of podcasting. And I said that my dad died in December.
I totally just misspoke. It was February, but most of you know that, but that was funny to me that I threw it back several months. Because sometimes I just get going and talking, and instead of editing and going back, it's, it's it's just a way to move forward. So I've I'm fact checking myself. I broke a spell with my dad when I became an adult in my twenties.
I reached out to him and wanted to become closer to him. And he agreed, and we spent a couple decades before he fell into the last decade of his life with dementia, where we were really close and broke the tradition of distant relationships between the men and their boys. In fact, I recorded the, the the seven minute, speech or words that I shared with my siblings at my dad's celebration of life, and I will play it for you soon. I'm also gonna do a few episodes about grief and things that I'm continually continually learning. Okay.
Next social and spoken word tagline. Here we go. Twenty two years ago, I met Elphaba. She taught me how to fly. And this month, I celebrate ten years clean and sober, still flying.
Oh, cool. K. Here's the next tagline. Queer, positive, sober, alive. I'm the green girl now.
That's especially fun for my I was just with Harvey for a spring visit, and we play family. And she's Chelsea, and then I get to be mom. And then the American Girl dolls, she has Julie, and I have Kavi. And they're sisters. They're the kids, the younger sisters.
And I'm the green girl. I'm the green girl mom now when we get to play family. It's such an honor. Okay. Two more.
Social spoken word tagline. This is what happens when you stop asking for permission to exist. That's what I wanna say too that I'm so proud of in sobriety and being queer, and putting in the work to uncover, to get to the core of the trauma, and then to identify my spiritual life, what are my gifts, what are my contributions, what am I doing? I am clear what I'm doing for the next five decades. Okay.
Three decades of my life. Okay. Two decades. I no longer have to ask for permission. And for all those people who have things to say about me as a queer human, so be that.
In fact, something that's coming up, next, one of the quotes is perfect to say to them. Final spoken word tagline, they call it defiance, what Alexander Bluefeather did. I call it becoming. They call it defiance, alphabet, We call it becoming. Alright.
So for those who have opinions about our queerness, this is cute. Fierro, one of the things he said is that Elphaba, she doesn't give a twig what anyone thinks. So I'm learning to practice. I don't give a twig what you think. If you do not embrace queer humans, buh bye.
Okay. Madam Morrible. Here's one of her quotes. Once you learn to harness your emotions, the sky is the limit. So when I sobered up at year five, I really got in touch with some of the deeper religious trauma, spiritual trauma that kept me from being able to live like sky's the limit.
And it took a good five years of sobriety before I could really even articulate what was underneath so much of my longing to get away, and giving space for those deep experiences and emotions of grief and loss to surface and to come home to me as a adult who's who's become. It's it's such a beautiful process. Elphaba, one of the things she says is, as someone told me lately, everyone deserves the chance to fly. So if you're out there and you're struggling and you're stuck and your story resonates with mine, I just wanna tell you that you deserve the chance to fly too. So, don't give up.
Every effort, no good deed goes unturned. No good effort you put in, it always adds to the flow and to the structure that you're building. You might not get to sobriety until twenty years from now, but every good deed I put in, every effort was part of the tapestry of my becoming. And the final quote will come from our dear Glenda. She asked in the very beginning, are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?
I think too often, we're thrusting wickedness on others. People that are different than us, people that have a different skin color, people that have different beliefs, people that the best way to break your own bias, discrimination, to call out the wickedness you put on someone else is to get to know another person, to get to know their story. I'll never forget how I implemented that right after set social work, the same summer, February, when I realized I don't have any tea friends. Meaning, in the LGBTQ community, that's what we called it back then, I didn't know anyone who was T, who was trans. Like, I want to know someone who's trans.
And I finally found someone. I noticed someone at Hollywood Video when I go check out CDs, DVDs. They're not CD DVD movies. And I just started being very friendly and open and looked her in the eyes and would talk to her. And, eventually, I ended up working with her at Salt Lake Community College.
And we performed together, and we became, you know, we were colleagues. We were, club advisers for coloring outside the lines at Salt Lake Community College for my stint on campus mental health and health and wellness services is awesome. So alright. I'm ready to watch the trailer. So I'm gonna go watch the trailer.
Go to my social media Instagram and see I'm gonna record myself watching the trailer. I've never done that before. Okay? Be well, all my love. See you next time here on the podcast.
Soul sibling, can you do me a favor? How about rating, reviewing, and following my podcast? It's so helpful. It does so much to get my podcast out into new listeners, and you'll get updated when there's new episodes wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm heading out on the road next week to travel for several weeks and work.
I'm heading north all the way up to Montana to Glacier National Park, and I'd love to hear from you. I'll be podcasting along the way. Send me an email, alexander@viralmindfulness.com, and, of course, my website. There's lots of juicy things to browse and explore over at my website. Ding ding.
See you soon.
