Alexander Cheves

hey i will follow you anywhere, especially to Barcelona

the thing about all my great friendships is we never take selfies. we’re always too busy just being. but Matt and i seem strangely good at taking pics each other’s backs 😝

we spent a week driving down the Catalonian coast while i filed my first piece for The Guardian from erratic hotel lobbies and temporary wifi spots. The piece was about Jack Kerouac and the writing of it was very Kerouacian, which felt right.

thanks to this silly bear for so much adventuring, lessons, & beautiful food, all while I stressed over a deadline and my stupid computer

time with you always restores my faith in humanity a bit. you're one of the really good ones ★

I've been on Winter Instagram Break—happy to be back⚡️

Last week, on 13 Feb, my episode on "HIV: The Morning After" podcast came out—link in bio and on my site.

The project is a "public-education audio archive documenting the lived experience of people living with HIV." It's by Emmy-Award-winning producer, director, and documentarian (and my new friend) Dan Hall ***r—Dan's recent film "Bowie: The Final Act" about David Bowie's last album recently rocked London. In our episode, we talk about love, drugs, meditation, and much more. It's beautiful, give it a listen 🤟🏼

I have to spotlight some other guests: Ep 1 on 6 Feb featured Lord Chris Smith, first member of UK Parliament to come out as gay and publicly disclose his status.

27 Feb - Garry Brough, a gay man who fled the Welsh mining valleys for London in the 90s, tells about city life in the peak of the AIDS crisis.

6 March - , performer and activist, contrasts the legal protections in the UK with the deep-seated stigma of post-dictatorship Chile.

13 March - , CEO of , advocates for gender-specific services to address the complexities of ageing, reproductive health, and under-representation of women in clinical trials.

20 March - .t.i.f discusses a UK health system that still struggles with trans-inclusive data around HIV and AIDS.

3 April - author , my friend and fellow member of the Berlin Q***r Writer's Circle, speaks on the intimacy and "code" of Berlin's ba****ck scene in the years before PrEP.

10 April - my new friend , author and activist with , talks about his past playful, headline-making protest actions and why he thinks activism is core to human survival. (Expect a profile of Dan coming soon!)

More amazing humans I didn't have space to write about are featured—listen to them all.

Finally, enjoy this cute pic of Dan Hall (left) & Dan Glass (middle) taking me out to Camden in London. These good and beautiful men are doing life-saving work—it's an honour to have met them.

RIP Amy 💔

Back tattoo touch-up last month by the one-and-only .

I get asked about this tattoo so often—everyone wants to know what it is. The list of things people see include a bulldog, a Pit bull, a mouse, a rat, a mole (?), a monkey, a theatre mask, a rabbit, Frank the Rabbit from Donnie Darko, a human face, a bird (?), a demon/devil, a map, guts/intestines, and—for many—purely abstraction, not an image at all, just blackness. I won't ever say what it is. It's all these things.

It's like a Rorschach, one that appears most often on dance floors when people are out of their minds. Maybe I'm keeping us all sane. Face your demons on my body.

Happy to be of service.

𝐈 𝐀𝐌 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐉𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐀 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐃.
𝐈 𝐀𝐌 𝐀 𝐏𝐈𝐄𝐂𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐄𝐀𝐓.

𝕳𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖔! I'm back! Took a pause from Instagram for a bit. This app is bad for you, and we should all delete it. But we're not, so let's suffer through late-stage capitalism, persuasive technology, and neuromarketing together.

Send me a 𝖘𝖊𝖝 or 𝓻𝓮𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷𝓼𝓱𝓲𝓹 question—I might answer it anonymously in 💕