fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
Lillian had to go shopping. She left Ángel with her mother, a harmless enough move, so she thought. Her mother would watch her favorite TV shows, too engrossed in them to fuss about this or that. Ángel would read. Thing was, though, that Lillian’s mother had an old school way of looking at baby-sitting. The…
(For Ray Bradbury) By the early 22nd century, guns were ubiquitous. Folks started getting trained on how to use them in kindergarten on account of all the drive-by shootings that took place. As a means of defense, a gun was alright. But it rarely worked as a means of securing justice. Perpetrators tended to get…
As predicted, and feared, foes of marriage equality in the great state of Washington have filed more than enough signatures to put the issue on the November ballot. The Washington secretary of state office recommends those seeking to put an initiative on the ballot collect at least 150,000 signatures. The anti-marriage equality folks gathered over…
A friend in college hipped me to the Syracuse Cultural Workers’ Carry It On Peace Calendar. I’ve purchased them ever since. It features photos, art, and notable anniversaries from social movements both contemporary and historical. For June, they always do a nice spread for Gay Pride month. This year they are featuring the story of…
After the service, I became visible again. Folks asked me if I enjoyed the service, and I had to say yes, I did, because I did get into singing and clapping and all that. XY spoke to me. He told me to wait with XX while he got the car. So I did. But then…
On Daily Kos appears a piece about a $20,000 reward for anyone who can provide a copy of President Obama’s college transcripts. The offer is being made by a Mr. Brooks Bayne over at a website called The Trenches. Quoted in the L.A. Times, The Trenches says: “We’re not convinced that Barack is as smart…
One weekend, my parents were out of town and Righteous was at some religious camp for good little boys. So Kurt spent the night. The Sci-Fi channel was running a “Prisoner” marathon that weekend, the show about an ex-spy who gets kidnapped and sent away to the Village after resigning from his job. We got…
(Editor’s Note: This story is an expansion of “The Burrito Kiss” which was published on the gar spot previously. The story is set c. 1992.) Saturday nights meant church service and that usually meant glares and taunts from Righteous, my older brother Jerome. Hurry up. Comb that mess on your head. Wear something appropriate. Don’t be…
Some folks in the gay community have recently argued against a harsh sentence for the convicted Dharun Ravi, the man guilty of surreptitiously broadcasting over the internet his gay roommate, Tyler Clementi, while he was having a date — an act which led to Mr. Clementi’s suicide. Some feared a harsh sentence might cause a backlash. Others…
Some of you follow the gar spot via e-mail subscription or feed from Google’s Feedburner service. I discovered this past Saturday that Feedburner was unable to read the feed from the website since May 9. This means that all posts between May 9 and May 19 were not sent out. I fixed the problem late Saturday….
