fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
In “The Scouring of the Shire,” the penultimate chapter to The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf gives Frodo, Sam, Pip, and Merry a warning about Saruman. Though defeated, his powers diminished, his master Sauron vanquished for good, the old wizard is still capable of a little meanness in a cruel way. Such is often the case after…
Stellar evolution. Lately, the current trajectory of the Republican Party has me thinking of the lifecycle of massive stars. All stars go through the same general evolutionary pattern, but larger stars die more dramatically. If the GOP has entered its death throes, then it is doing so in the most dramatic way possible. Stars in the…
[Ed. note: Today (March 3, 2016) is the 25th anniversary of the beating of Rodney King by police officers. No single event of police violence has had a greater effect on me. I still can’t watch the video anymore. Before Twitter, hashtags, and #BlackLivesMatter, there was Rodney King, recorded old-school on video tape. It gave the world a glimpse…
A Christmas gift from a friend. Tickets to a rock concert. I had only been to one other, a stadium affair. U2. This felt different. Perhaps more authentic. New Year’s Eve. Folks wore party hats and spirits, sparkles and glitter on their black and silver clothing. The line snaked down the block. It led to…
From the Oompa Loompas, we learned the following: Who do you blame when your kid is a brat, pampered and spoiled like a Siamese cat? Blaming the kids is a lie and a shame. You know exactly who’s to blame: The mother and the father! At age 16, Ethan Couch killed four people while driving…
I got my first motorcycle in December 1987. Before then, I had owned two scooters, a Honda Aero 50 followed by a Honda Passport. Neither were freeway legal, but that didn’t matter. I navigated the surface streets of LA like a boss. Commuting to UCLA from South-Central had its challenges, but I had various backroad…
As a reaction to the horrible mass shooting in San Bernardino, the New York Times published its first front page editorial in 95 years. Titled “End the Gun Epidemic in America,” it is yet another plea for common sense to prevail and for politicians, particularly the US Congress, to pass common sense laws to curb the…
I fear that I have to interrupt my Billy Strayhorn tribute posts to make an important announcement. 16 shots equals sadism. Over a year after Laquan McDonald, a 17-year old black kid, was shot and killed by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, a white cop, under very suspicious circumstances, video of this shooting has…
Spanish Bay by Hans M. Hirschi Published by Beaten Track Publishing Genres: Romance, LGBT 196 pages Release Date: October 10, 2015 Synopsis Spanish Bay is a feel-good novel about two young men who, despite having the odds stacked against them, never give up, always see the silver lining, work hard, and are committed to their families, come…
The teenage girl body slammed by former Deputy Sheriff Ben Fields at Spring Valley High School in Richland County, South Carolina recently lost her mother and is in foster care. In other words, she’s already in one institutional system and now, thanks to her trumped up, over-the-top arrest, she’s in another. Her foster mother has said…
