fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
Their bodies glided across a stage ankle deep in white mist and glittered with streams of tiny lights draped from above. “Newton, isn’t her dress lovely?” his mother said. “Yes, it is,” he answered. However, Newton wasn’t looking at the ballerina or her dress. He was looking at the guy in the tights, which left…
The day began in Sandy Hook, Connecticut with the tolling of bells. While the nation paused for a moment of silence in observance of the one week anniversary of the mass shooting, National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre prepared to take the stage. The NRA had been conspicuously silent about the mass shooting, which left 28…
The garage looked as cluttered as the yard. Boxes filled every nook. And stacked on top of them were assorted doodads that the darkness of the space would not reveal. But in the midst of all the clutter, Creepy Man had created a clear pocket for folding chairs that faced what looked like a covered…
Most of the ghost stories centered around 313 Greene Street. It fit the bill as the requisite scary house of the neighborhood. Each generation of neighborhood kids learned the tales about the house and embellished on them. It wasn’t hard to make up stuff about the place. For one, the house itself looked like it…
In the masthead for the gar spot you’ll see the bottom part of my tabla sitting just above the keyboard. This is the instrument I actually ended up studying, and continue to study after over a quarter century. But my first Indian instrument, the first instrument I ever studied seriously, was the sitar. I had two…
When the tweets came out that the US Supreme Court would hear cases challenging 1996’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and 2008’s Proposition 8, I paused. Most of the initial responses I saw seemed happy that the cases would have their day before the Supremes. My enthusiasm was tempered, however, and I can explain my…
When I wake up in my own bed, I think sometimes of the morning I woke up in a totally different environment, the tropical paradise known as the Island. I half expected Rover to bounce by, though at the time I was far from amused. I remember how I first looked at Rick with both…
