HIVer cosmetologists of America, unite! Allan Dugas finally got a (sorta) answer this week for why he was booted from the Hair Tech Beauty College in Paragould, Arkansas last winter. Dugas (pictured here) had come out about having HIV to an instructor when illness made him miss class. And—snip, snip!—that was it: His study at the hairdo-shaped school (pictured below) was over. But our local hero—long intent on a career in hair and makeup—was not about to let Hair Tech take his scissors away so easily. Dugas had enrolled in classes at Hair Tech to get his life back on track. “Cosmetology hours are flexible, and he would have time to take care of his health,” said Ken Choe, Dugas’ attorney over at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where Dugas turned after the Arkansas State Cosmetology Board refused to help. Now, state authorities are rising to the soft-spoken 37-year-old’s challenge.

Does Hair Tech really think HIV is mascara-borne? Dugas himself certainly seems to have no doubts that he was fired because of his status. Since Hair Tech ain’t talking to the Wizard, we may never know, but Choe suggests the school may have been “confused” by a state regulation that says you can’t practice the beauty arts if you have an infectious disease.

Choe sent a letter to the state board asking them to clarify the regulation. Soon after, the board gave Hair Tech an official tongue wagging: “The Arkansas State Board of Cosmetology does not consider HIV/AIDS as a communicable disease that can be transmitted during the course of cosmetology,” according to a summary of the board’s message to Hair Tech.

HIV 101 lesson delivered…”confusion” clarified…job restored? Sorry, but this tale is not so clean-cut. Hair Tech hasn’t apologized to Dugas or contacted him at all, says Choe. The lawyer doubts his client would re-enroll anyway—but with Dugas remaining mum to reporters, the Wizard bets the ACLU goes Cirque de Soleil if the school doesn’t start making amends.

Who’s sorry now? The Whitman-Walker Clinic, that’s who. The financial crisis over at the venerable AIDS service organization gets messier every day—and sadder. The latest news from headquarters in DC is that 62 of some 260 employees are out of work and two satellite clinics in Northern Virginia and Maryland will be shuttered. Many of the 7,000 clients are devastated. “It feels like they’re cutting off part of my body,” says Brian Latker, a former event promoter who lives in Falls Church, Virginia, and has depended on Whitman-Walker since his 1987 diagnosis.

Despite its ups and downs, what was a gay men’s venereal disease clinic pre-AIDS had remained among the so-called Big Six of national ASOs because of its early reputation for thinking ahead—it was one of the first to do HIV prevention in the ’80s and was quick to adapt as the face of AIDS got poorer and more racially diverse. But post-protease AIDS fatigue caused ASO funding to nosedive, and 9/11 only diverted HIV charity giving further. The clinic tightened its belt in 2003, but by last January, with public money shrinking, too, the bills had piled too high to see over. Now W-W is slashing $2.5 million from its budget in a desperate move to keep its doors open.

The moment of truth came last month, when the clinic couldn’t meet its payroll and went begging to the DC city council for $700,000 in overdue reimbursements. But Whitman-Walker’s cash-flow woes ran much deeper than that. According to the Washington Post, the group had been living beyond its means for years, which eventually led this week to tawdry admissions that W-W has been bilking the city for $2 million–plus in excess lab bills.

Joseph Santone, director of the Northern Virginia clinic, is confident Whitman-Walker will keep its "original flavor”—at least in DC. For Santone, the changes are just a sign of the times: “That reflects what’s going on with AIDS now.” Still, certain cutbacks—like the elimination of the clinic’s food bank—are sure to put HIVers’ health at risk. DC health officials are reported to be meeting to plan triage. As for longtime W-W client Brian Latker, he just lost his private insurance and doesn’t know where to turn. “I’m signing up for government assistance now—I don’t understand or know what they cover. And now, I don’t have the clinic to direct me.” (Hey, Brian, one place to start: medicareadvocacy.org.)

As for Whitman-Walker’s reputation, the Wizard is a little choked up. We don’t doubt its desperate-for-dough defense. What upsets us more is the fact that our government—and, for that matter, our own community—could let our ASOs hit such hard times. Come on, people, charity starts at home.

Just a few cyber-desks over from the Wizard’s curtain, POZ contributing editor Mike Barr took his disgruntled-former-employee grudge with the Treatment Action Group (TAG) public this week with the launch of a new website (pictured here). Barr was unceremoniously 86’d in January after 11 years as editor of the group’s cutting-edge newsletter TAGline. (TAG, of course, is the blue-chip org formed by disgruntled former ACT UP brainiacs that wowed President Clinton, wrested control of federal AIDS research in the early ’90s and still sits on the cutting-edge of treatment activism as we know it.)

When Barr’s April letter to TAG’s board of boldface names demanding an explanation and severance pay went unanswered, he retaliated with guerilla tactics certain to be appreciated by his former comrades, who won early fame by putting a giant condom (bankrolled reportedly by David Geffen) over Jesse Helms’ house. Barr’s website posts TAG’s funding, including the Office of AIDS Research at NIH and Roche—two targets of nasty coverage in TAGline that Barr believes may have cost him his job.

Senior Executive Director Mark Harrington, who fired Barr, says no way. The problem, he says, was that Barr’s TAGline didn’t “reflect the diversity of TAG’s work”; the MacArthur “genius” Fellow also criticized Barr for shoddy reporting, including failing to follow up on allegations against researchers. Now the Wizard can’t claim objectivity where one of our favorite contributors is concerned ,and we can’t resist a heaping plateful of good dish. But what about Barr’s larger concern that TAG and other activists and researchers who influence federal treatment policy have been lulled into submission by the deep pockets of Uncle Sam and big pharma? “You always have to be vigilant about that issue—but you have to look seriously at work activists do,” says Harrington, pointing out that TAG has launched numerous high-profile protests against drug companies, including spearheading 2004’s massive campaign against Abbott’s Norvir price hike.

Don’t look for these two to reconcile anytime soon. Harrington is not planning to answer Barr’s allegations, and Barr says he was “backed into a corner” by TAG’s stonewalling. “This may evolve into looking at the finances of all AIDS activists and treatment-education groups,” he says. “Everyone’s getting money from drug companies, and everyone’s getting too comfortable.”

Our creepy crime story of the week is, thankfully, France’s problem. According to Le Monde, Paris cops think they may have finally nabbed the notorious “Rollerblading rapist” who had eluded them since 2002. And not in a million years would the Wizard have ever guessed that he’s one of us—an HIVer who works for an HIV and hep C prevention group serving IV-drug users. Victims of the “violeur à rollers”—who allegedly forced women to fellate him by threatening them with a boxcutter—have identified the suspect in a lineup. The arrest couldn’t come at a worse time for French AIDS activists, currently in the middle of a bitter debate over criminalizing HIV transmission when someone knowingly puts a partner at risk…. In other foreign sex-crime news, 24-year-old Christopher Clarke got four and a half years behind bars after being convicted in Winnipeg, Canada, of sex with two women without a condom. The perp apparently hid his status from both partners, the second sleuthing it out herself by checking his medical records.

OK, so we Americans have a few issues, too—and on rare occasions, you catch a glimpse of something about something on TV. The Wizard suggests you check out We Are Dad,  a tear-jerking documentary directed by Michael Horvat airing Sunday, June 19, at 7 p.m. on Showtime. The film tracks life since the ’80s for the family of Steve Lofton and Roger Croteau (pictured here)—two pediatric AIDS nurses who are the foster parents of five “unwanted” HIVer babies. Under Florida’s gay-adoption ban, the couple is considered unfit to adopt the children they have raised since infancy; the battle gets especially heated when one of the kids seroconverts as a toddler....  So you don’t have cable? At 10 p.m. on June 21, PBS presents The Education of Shelby Knox, a smalltown look at abstinence-only education. Rose Rosenblatt and Marion Lipschutz took their cameras to Lubbock, Texas, where the message to teens is that the only safe sex is no sex—and yet teen pregnancy and STD rates are higher than ever. The day is saved by 15-year-old devout Christian Shelby Knox, who made an abstinence pledge herself but hunkers down to overhaul her school’s sex-ed program.

Also keeping it real with her HIV activist side this week was bodacious Baywatcher Pamela Anderson (pictured here), who MCed Toronto’s Fashion Cares AIDS benefit last weekend and splashed the Canadian press with prevention tidbits that included a warning for everyone, especially the ladies, not to let matrimony get in the way of being tested for HIV. It’s a personal topic for Ms. Anderson, who traces her own hep C infection to sharing tattoo needles with her body-art-blanketed ex-hubby, rocker Tommy Lee. Pam is also helping keep MAC Cosmetics’ Viva Glam HIV-awareness campaign afloat: In the month since she signed on, Viva Glam’s sales have ballooned 200 percent.... Speaking of celebrity couples, Brad Pitt surfaced Wednesday in Ethiopia in a live interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer. Pitt, bemoaning the lack of media interest in AIDS, told Ms. Sawyer, “I can’t get out of the press. These people can’t get in the press. So let’s redirect the attention a little bit.”... Find the heat of the Ethiopian sun (or the Angelina/Brad obsession) a little wearing? Maybe you were lucky enough to head north with Nelson Mandela and his celebrity-studded 46664 AIDS benefit concert on their Arctic Circle stopover this Saturday in Tromsoe, Norway. Annie Lennox, Robert Plant and Peter Gabriel set foot on the fjord to amp up young people’s AIDS awareness.

Nothing lifts the Wizard’s spirits like a company that does the right thing for HIVers. So, we will be stepping out from behind our curtain this weekend to bless the makers of Trojan condoms, Church and Dwight, Inc., who just announced that the next 30-second spot in its first ever prime-time-TV condom-promotion campaign “Make a Difference” campaign will not feature the hideous anti-HIVer info that made the Wizard lose sleep last week. Instead of demonizing us, Trojans will pitch the fact that one in four HIVers is not aware of his or her status—so wear a condom when you have sex. Although Trojan’s press release mentions nothing about the Wizard’s wise words on last week’s blog—or, for that matter, anything about its disastrous “Make a Difference” premiere spot—this only goes to show how great and powerful we are. Now, keep your eyes peeled for a Wizard sighting this weekend, toting a Trojan condom (Magnum, of course). And stay cool!