fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
In 2012, I explained my reasons for supporting President Barack Obama’s reelection. One word: healthcare. The Affordable Care Act had not yet begun so its benefits at that time were still largely an unknown. I just knew that if Mitt Romney had been elected, he would have trashed it, despite having instituted something very similar in Massachusetts…
I went to a talk by legendary former South African jurist Albie Sachs the other day. He spoke about his role in bringing marriage equality to South Africa. Albert “Albie” Sachs was born in South Africa and early in his youth, he explained, he began resisting the racist apartheid government of his country. For his…
There’s a Gumby cartoon that has stuck with me over the decades. It’s called “The Small Planets.” Gumby decides that he’s sick of being bossed around, told to do this chore and that chore, so he hops into a book about planets, dons a spacesuit, and speeds off in a flying saucer to the asteroid…
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas announced his candidacy for US President. The thought that went through my mind was, how can he run? He was born in Canada. For most lay people who are into such things, we believe that in order to be eligible to run for US President, one has to have been…
Self-haters gonna hate. Earlier this week, gay Italian fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana made harsh statements about same-sex couples raising children. We oppose gay adoptions. The only family is the traditional one… No chemical offsprings and rented uterus: life has a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed. They further…
I see a continuum between the foul mouth frat boys shouting racist obscenities on a bus and the 47 senators signing a letter that belittles and attempts to undermine the authority of the president. Both groups cling to a used-to-be that has become increasingly recognized as outmoded, even vilified. The brothers of Sigma Alpha Epsilon…
A long-lived urban legend states that cities have a quota system in place for parking enforcement officers. One retired traffic officer in LA recently said that this is no legend, but a hard fact. In particular, says the retired officer, at the end of the year, when the LA Department of Transportation is preparing to close…
After Mom died, I couldn’t listen to Brahms for about four years. Truth be told, all classical music remained highly problematic. For whatever reason, though, Brahms topped the don’t touch list, the trigger-warning list. I can recall a conversation between my mom, one of my brothers, and me, rhapsodizing about the music we loved. Brahms…
After the first instance of racially motivated violence during Selma, I wanted to start shouting “Black Lives Matter.” I held my tongue, so as not to disturb others in the theater. But I wondered if others in the audience saw the obvious connections between the racial violence of 50 years ago and the violence we’ve…
The Castro began life as Eureka Valley. A rail line built in 1887 made the area more accessible and a population boom took place. Working class families of Irish, German, and Scandinavian heritage began buying land and building large Victorian houses to serve several generations of their families. Denizens shared a Catholic background and a…
