Twenty-five years ago, Aundaray Guess started college at the age of 19. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with HIV and dropped out of school. Guess, who is from Minneapolis, then got kicked out of his house when his mom found out about his status and sexuality.

For months, he slept in his car and applied for job after job until he was hired by a community theater. It was there that Guess began writing plays and launched Flayva Cabaret, a company focused on LGBT artists of color. About 11 years ago, Guess decided to move to New York for a life change. But it wasn't until a chance encounter at a drug store that he also decided to return to school and complete his degree.

Guess graduated from New York University with a social science degree on Monday, and received extensive academic accolades. The Voice caught up with him to talk about the challenges of going to school as an adult with HIV.

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A New York court has just reversed a legal order requiring that the state provide individualized housing for thousands of mentally ill people.

The Associated Press indicates that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan's move could impact other states' court decisions on psychiatric illness.

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Today is World Autism Awareness Day, which happens to come shortly the Centers for Disease Control announced that 1/88 children nationwide has an autism spectrum disorder -- a 23 percent increase since the last report was released in 2009. Long term, this represents a 78 percent increase from data gathered six years ago.

In New York specifically, autism cases have gone up 28 percent since 2009. DNAinfo says: "Their numbers are growing at an alarming rate."

DNAinfo does ID a big problem: namely, that it's extremely difficult for these kids and their parents to get access to necessary services. It's just wrong to make them navigate bureaucracy when the only thing they should spend time and effort on is treatment.

However, something does need to be said about these recently reported numbers.

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Sam Levin

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn on a tour of the Hotel Trades Council Health Center with Dr. Robert Greenspan and Peter Ward, both from the HTC.

In her state-of-the-city address last month, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, announced that the City Council would work with the Freelancers Union to launch a flagship health center that would provide low-cost care to the city's self-employed residents.

This morning, Quinn, alongside two other colleagues in the City Council and Freelancers Union Executive Director Sara Horowitz, toured the Hotel Trades Council's health center in Harlem, which she and the union plan on using as a model for a flagship clinic for freelancers in Brooklyn.

Runnin' Scared tagged along with the Council members and union reps for the hour-long tour, passing through dental offices, exam rooms, the center's pharmacy, and going up and down elevators, as the Hotel Trades representatives explained to Quinn how their operation works.

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Some New York hospitals are in the business of screwing over poor people as much as they are in the business of providing healthcare, a new report has found.

According to the Community Service Society, most of the state's medical centers tend to violate debt collection regulations -- which protect indigent patients from aggro bill collectors.

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After several religious groups, most notably the Catholic Church, took issue with a new federal regulation requiring organizations to provide contraception coverage to its employees, the Obama administration has announced a new compromise that it hopes everyone will be happy about.

"If a woman works for religious employers with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide contraception coverage but her insurance company will be required to offer contraceptive care free of charge," the White House said in a statement earlier today. Obama hopes that this compromise will respect issues of religious freedom while still allowing women to access the healthcare that they need.

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Mike Bloomberg thinks that it's perfectly OK to scare you into behaving -- at least when it comes to what you eat.

The mayor's office and health department say that their in-your-face public health ads -- one of which features a fake amputee -- are necessary shock tactics to get people to make healthier meal choices and stop smoking.

A lot of people beg to differ: Experts say that these campaigns -- much like the anti-heroin posters with toothless addicts and fried egg anti-drug commercials -- likely bounce right off the stubborn people who need the message the most, the New York Times reports.

Still, the City plans on moving forward with freaking you the fuck out.

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A Bronx man got charged some $44 million for a $300 hospital bill, which he says worried him so much that it almost prompted an asthma attack, the Daily News reports.

Alexis Rodriguez, however, realized that he couldn't possibly owe that much money, so he did some investigating and found out that Bronx-Lebanon Hospital's billing company just screwed up.

The invoice was the result of a computer error, so Rodriguez and several other patients with similar billing problems will not have to pay Bronx-Lebanon a small nation's GDP for simple medical services. The story's happy ending gets even better: The company behind the mistake has apologized, which is real thoughtful and stuff.

Since all's well, we have decided make absurdist lemons into lemonade, and find the humor in something so terrifyingly Kafkaesque.

Behold the best headlines about Rodriguez' saga.

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Photo by Mindy Tucker

Lizz Winstead is a wee bit tired. She's been traveling since June 14 with her "Planned Parenthood, I'm Here For You!" Comedy Tour, which has spanned 12 cities and 10 states. Plus she's been working on her upcoming book, out in June of 2012. All this activity "does energize me, but I'm exhausted," she told us from her homebase in New York City when we spoke to her by phone recently. At that point the book was 500 words from completion, not that finishing it means time off for Winstead. A major moment in the comedy tour, which benefits Planned Parenthood, will happen in New York City this Thursday, September 22: Winstead will perform at the Gramercy Theatre alongside comediennes and friends Sandra Bernhard and Lisa Lampanelli, Salon.com's Joan Walsh, and singer-songwriter Ambrosia Parsley.

We caught the Daily Show co-creator/Air America co-founder/political satirist/all-around funny lady in a rare moment of down time to ask her some questions about the cause she's embraced, her upcoming New York City event, and what she thinks the 2012 election has in store for us.

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Zazzle

Yesterday, we proposed a plan. In an effort to increase communication about a virus most people don't know enough about -- and many women are too ashamed to talk about, even though pretty much every woman we know has dealt with it at some point in her life, maybe more than once, and even though it can cause cancer, and therefore we should know as much as we can about it -- let's open up a little on Twitter. Because if we all come out and say it, how ashamed can we possibly be? We're talking about the sexually transmitted virus HPV, which has been in the news a lot lately regarding a certain vaccine that Michele Bachmann is very much against. (More about HPV here.) But this post is not to debate the politics of the vaccine or anything else: It's simply to get the word out. Tomorrow: Tweet, Facebook, or simply tell someone -- we don't care how! -- that you have had, or currently have, HPV.

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