fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
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…
Saturday, March 19, 2157 Popcorn and a movie, that’s what we need! Walter said. Even without the unaccustomed enthusiasm overtaking his usual staid speaking voice, I saw this activity for exactly what it was: a date. And I giggled. He grew his own popcorn in the greenhouse and popped it in a plastic container in…
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…
Thursday, March 17, 2157 So what sent me over the edge over a week ago? I have it on my lap: a book called Titans. That Saturday I remember getting up early and going outside for a walk. It was already hot, so I didn’t stay outside for long. I’ve spent so little time outside…
Friday, March 11, 2157 Walter is so wonderful. Most of my life, the people I’ve encountered don’t give a damn about anything but their immediate existence. They have no time for anything else, especially other people’s complex emotions. I’ve lived most of my life, most of my adult life, among this class, 22nd century hunter-gatherers….
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…
Radical left politics went haywire in the 1970s. By that point the big names, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, were long gone. The FBI had decimated the Black Panthers. Anti-Vietnam War protests – and indeed the war itself – had grown nastier, with events like the killing of students at Kent State. The dizzying parade…
Torture has no justification. There is not, nor ever will be, a reason to torture someone. All the rationalizations are hogwash. Torture has one, singular motivator: revenge. Revenge is a part of our mythos. Cultures throughout the ages have envisioned angry gods exacting revenge upon indolent citizens, or even each other. We follow in their footsteps. Theater…
