Rodney Lofton begins his memoir, “The Day I Stopped Being Pretty,” in the bleakest of all literary locations: rock bottom. After a failed suicide attempt, he ends up dry-heaving in an emergency room, and his identity as a gay, HIV-positive black man becomes the lynchpin of his journey into and out of despair.

As with many gay men, Lofton’s relationship with his father was a tumultuous one. His delicate physical attributes, evidenced since childhood, were a sticking point between father and son, especially when a woman the father was dating called his young son “pretty.” The tension between the two only increased as Lofton acknowledged his gay sexual orientation.

“We never had the best relationship when it came to my sexuality,” Lofton says about his father. “It was like clockwork. The same way I go quarterly to get my viral load checked, my dad would ask me every three months if I had met a nice girl. This happened until the last time I saw him in July of 2003. “

Lofton’s father died in 2005, but the two were never able to reconcile their differences fully in his lifetime. “Pretty” turns on Lofton’s attempts to seek from other men the love and approval he never got from his father. He describes a series of overwhelmingly negative emotional and sexual relationships, eventually leading to his contracting HIV, and Lofton says this book was an attempt to break his self-destructive patterns.

“It was therapy, it was something I needed to do,” he says. “I was hiding behind a lot of insecurities, and I needed to show the true me. I realized I’m comfortable with the man I see in the mirror now. It’s a little harder, I’m a little more gray, but I embrace it these days now.”

LOFTON SPENT HIS childhood in Richmond and Baltimore but moved to D.C. in 1996 to take advantage of its HIV resources and “friendlier HIV community.” He eventually returned Richmond, where he lives currently, and works mostly as a motivational AIDS speaker. As media depictions of HIV-positive black gay men are rare, Lofton feels it’s important to model healthy ways of living.

“When I was first diagnosed, I didn’t see any individuals that reflected me until I saw that BET did a special. A gentleman named Phill Wilson, who’s currently the executive director of the AfricanAmerican AIDS Policy and Training Institute in L.A., sat on this panel and it was the first time I saw a black gay man living with AIDS, but living positively.”

Lofton also counts D.C.’s Ron Simmons, of Us Helping Us, as another mentor, and Lofton wrote a lengthy acknowledgment to him in the book. “If I can become half the man that you are, my life here will not be in vain,” he writes.

Lofton’s next book is a fictional love story that will include characters with HIV. He was going to write a continuation of “Pretty,” but after critics latched on to a certain sexual element of his first book, he changed focus.

“[The sequel] was originally entitled “Does That Make Me a Ho?,” but the reviews I’ve seen focus on my hyperactive sex life and I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as someone who writes about sex.”

Though “Pretty” does contain many sex scenes, the hook-ups come off more as an attempt to find a stable emotional partner than just random one-night stands. At the end of the memoir, when he finally learns to love himself, the confidence gained means he no longer needs acceptance from other men.

“I’m single,” he says, “But I’m happy about it.”

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