Jai . . . With the Funny Name: Owning His Story

Manyonge Jarrett Makokha, more commonly known as Jai with the Funny Name

One in a series of articles profiling the courageous young Black MSM who are participating in #SpeakOutHIV, the Greater Than AIDS campaign engaging the LGBT community in confronting HIV/AIDS stigma and silence.

Some experiences can make you or break you.

For 29-year-old Manyonge Jarrett Makokha, better known as "Jai . . . With the Funny Name," one of those experiences was being raped repeatedly between the ages of 8 and 14. For years he felt broken from the experience. He also grappled with the knowledge that he was gay in a society that had harsh rules about what men should and should not be. Not quite able to love himself, Jai sought acceptance in the arms of others, often leading to complicated emotional entanglements and more than one STD diagnosis.

But then he had an epiphany. "I realized that as horrible a circumstance as rape was, it took me going through that and growing from that to become the person I am today," he says. "If that had not happened, I would not be the Jai that I am now."

The realization sent him on a path of healing. "The power of self-empowerment is being able to claim all of those experiences that we have and realize that it took them to make us," he says. "That is the power of telling your story."

Today the Dallas-based blogger is the founder of myfunnyname.com, a website that inspires Black gay men to tell their stories and talk about everything from sex to health to finances. There are many conversations that Black gay men are not having, he says, and he wants his peers to "talk about our lived experiences in a way that is expansive and helps us to think higher of ourselves."

The Power of Speaking Out

Jai is also encouraging conversations through his participation in Speak Out, a Greater Than AIDS campaign that encourages gay and bisexual men to confront the silence and stigma surrounding HIV. A social media component of the campaign, #SpeakOutHIV, provides a forum for Jai and other participants to post videos in which they discuss HIV, their sexuality and stigma. In his video, Jai discusses coming to terms with his sexuality. "I really do believe that I was put on this planet to help people talk about the things that they can't talk about elsewhere," Jai says.

Having been an HIV/AIDS educator for many years, he says, "I would go into a room and speak on behalf of an organization." But the Speak Out campaign allowed him to speak for himself, an experience that helped him to embrace his past and take ownership of it. "Speak Out kind of whittled away all of the other hats that I have to wear and it forced me to focus on Jai," he says.

Although he is HIV negative, Jai advocates on behalf of PLWHA and encourages every gay and bisexual man to find the good in himself. "There is power in being able to speak well of yourself," he says. "The second that I was able to say, 'Jai, you're enough,' is the first time I got it. Then, once I got it, that's when everybody else in the world started saying, 'Jai, you're enough.'" That was when he mastered another lesson: "The most important person to share your story with is yourself," he says.

Speak Out gives Jai the opportunity to pass that message of self-acceptance on to others. He hopes to continue using his platform to inspire other men to embrace their own magnificence. "Every time someone else is able to affirm in me that I'm enough, I realize that it's my responsibility to affirm that in somebody else," he says.

Tamara E. Holmes is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who writes about health, wealth and personal growth.