For Nelson D’Alerta, authenticity has always lived in the arts. Long before he arrived in San Francisco, long before he became known as Catherine White, he was a young boy in Cuba secretly dressing in his mother’s clothes and performing drag underground in private homes — hidden moments of freedom in a country where being gay or doing drag could lead to imprisonment. Even then, drag brought him joy. It gave him a glimpse of himself.

Born in 1954, Nelson spent much of his early life hiding parts of who he was. But something inside him always knew there was a bigger world waiting. In his early 30s, after seeing an image of San Francisco on screen, he made the life-changing decision to leave Cuba and move to the Bay Area in 1983.

“When I came to San Francisco, I finally felt free,” Nelson says.

In San Francisco, Nelson immersed himself in nightlife and fully embraced his drag persona, Catherine White. Through drag, he found not only self-expression, but community — a place where he could exist openly and authentically. But as the AIDS epidemic devastated San Francisco in the 1980s, joy quickly became intertwined with grief. Nelson lost ten friends in a short period of time.

Still, he kept moving forward. In the mid-1990s, a friend introduced him to Shanti Project. Nelson immediately recognized something familiar there: community, connection, and care. In many ways, it reminded him of the underground spaces in Cuba where queer people quietly gathered to survive and support one another.

“Shanti gave me that feeling again,” he says. “Like I belonged.”

Over the years, Nelson built a life in San Francisco working in a salon, a career he loved deeply despite the physical toll it eventually took on his body. Today, after back surgery and years of navigating health challenges, Nelson says Shanti continues to be a constant source of support in his life — especially through his relationship with his HIV Care Navigator, Gio.

When Nelson talks about Gio, his face lights up. Gio joined Shanti Project in 2023, but for him, the work has never felt like just a job. “It’s connection. It’s community,” Gio says. “I don’t see it as work. It gives me a sense of being useful and helping make life easier for people.”

Having experienced support in his own life after moving to San Francisco in 2015, Gio says working at Shanti feels full circle — an opportunity to show up for others in the same way people once showed up for him.

For Nelson, that support goes far beyond appointments and care navigation. Sometimes it looks like simply having someone sit and talk with him in his home. Other times, it looks like Gio finding tickets to the opera or ballet — experiences Nelson would otherwise never be able to afford.

One ballet outing became especially meaningful. As the performance unfolded, Nelson was suddenly flooded with memories of his grandfather from Florence, who recognized Nelson’s artistic spirit long before Nelson himself fully understood it. “I want to take you to a place that you will want to be your whole life,” his grandfather once told him as a child.

Sitting at the ballet decades later, Nelson realized his grandfather had been right all along. Through art, through drag, through Catherine White, through San Francisco, and through the care and connection he found at Shanti, Nelson had finally arrived at the life he was always meant to live — one rooted in authenticity.

“Pride means being proud to be gay,” Nelson says. “No more hiding or being ashamed.” Since moving to San Francisco, he has attended Pride every year.

Today, Nelson continues to choose joy, even after all he has endured. “I have a lot of reasons to be angry,” he says, “but I’m not because I choose happiness.” And he is still dreaming forward. Nelson hopes to one day stage a play he has already written about a drag performer living with HIV — a story that reflects not only survival, but visibility, artistry, and truth.

Because after all these years, Nelson is no longer hiding who he is. And thanks to community, care, and connection, neither is Catherine White.