I'm blogging live from Chicago from the 2009 LGBTI Health Summit, which has been a whilrwind of a weekend packed full of gay goodness. I've done two workshops so far -- one on The Bottom Monologues, another on my bottom study -- and tomorrow I have two more -- one on reading research critically, and the other called "Destroying Public Health." Phew! Exhausticating.

Tonight, however, I was thrilled to take time away from the "official" summit and host a lovely pizza party in my hotel room with 40-50 lovely activists, scholars, and otherwise delicious queers. I've been sharing a room with the Aussie, Daniel Reeders -- who you occasionally see here blogging -- and spending as much time as possible with amazing activist friends like Chris Bartlett of Philadelphia, Tony Valenzuela from LA (who also recently blogged here), Rochesterian Erik Libey (my "Bottom Monologues" co-coordinator), and dozens of other amazing queer men. The amazing, tremendous, and simply astounding Amber Hollibaugh is here -- and she never ceases to amaze or say exactly what is needed at exactly the right time. How she does it, I'll never know. She's recently made the move from NYC to Chicago, actually, and is working for Howard Brown Health Center -- which I was unaware of until this weekend. If you don't know who she is, look her up, read her book, and set up a shrine ASAP. And of course a huge shout out to T. Scott Pegues, Luis Guerra, Stewart Landers, Bruce Maeder, Justin Varney, Sister Glo, Todd Hull, Lark Ballenger (who I'm still waiting to call me out), Larry Bragg, and all you other queens who made the trek to Chicago!

One of the summit's lead organizers, powerhouse Jim Pickett, stopped by my party this evening and snapped some photos that were quickly uploaded to Flickr. You can catch the whole reel of his LGBTI Health Summit set here (tonight's party starts on the second page), but I picked some highlights:

Seth and Chris Bartlett, molesting an innocent bear

Gurl, what'd you say?

Gerard + the lovely Justin Varney here from the UK

Luis 2, Stewart, and the ever-handsome Luis 1

Daniel + Chase

Chris enjoying a thick slice of Chicago-style pizza. Yum. Apparently Luis supports this.