fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
Rick called on Lionel’s cell just as he was packing up his briefcase. It had been a long ass day filled with too many meetings about too much stuff that they had been dealing with for too long and he wanted to bolt from the office. So naturally, the phone rang. He hadn’t even had…
Sonja didn’t tell her everything. She didn’t tell her about her father’s cackling. But she did tell her about the origin of the pink ribbon. She did mention Rick’s name. And she did tell her that Mickey met his late partner because he couldn’t get over the pink ribbon on Mickey’s horn as he played….
I opened the Oakland Tribune the other day and found a most shocking headline: “Mehserle asks appeals court for new trial.” I swear I thought it was a typo. Mr. Mehserle, as you may recall, is the former BART officer who feared Oscar Grant as a big scary black man and shot him at point blank range. Mr. Grant…
If you go back and look at the tape of then VP-candidate Joe Biden during the vice presidential debate, when he answered the question about same-sex marriage, you can hear in his cadence that he was following a script. Yes, he said, he and Barack Obama support equal rights for same-sex couples, but no, they…
“Sonja! Oh my God, girl, how are you? How’s it blowing?” “It’s blowing,” she replied with a smile that Leticia could hear over the phone. “It’s good to hear from you, Sonja.” As Mickey rounded out the ballad he cooed from his tenor sax, Sonja opened her eyes. She reclined on his too comfortable…
{Editor’s note: This is the 100th post on the gar spot.} On April 29, the Los Angeles Times published an article which chronicles then-Governor Mitt Romney’s history with Massachusetts’ gay marriage law. It makes for very interesting reading. While campaigning for the governorship in 2002, he proclaimed he supported the rights of gay and lesbian citizens…
He stood eyes closed and let the notes wash over him as he leaned against the wall, a Diet Coke hanging from one hand. He barely allowed her to speak when she arrived. “Take it out and play something,” he said. She complied. First came the stomper, now crooned the ballad. It threatened to lull…
April 29, 1991. I was at work in Berkeley. There was no World Wide Web in those days. I checked. The Mosaic browser wouldn’t come out until the following January, over a half-year later. No, I got the news on the telephone when a friend and former roommate from LA called me while I was…
A corner. Just a corner. Not a fancy corner on a tree-lined boulevard with a landscaped median strip. No, it was just an ordinary corner, but a happy corner that saw the sort of traffic a corner would see when bordered by busy thoroughfares. There were streetcars, then buses, and cars, bikes, and pedestrians. Folks…
As soon as Lionel entered the family room, tie undone, shirt untucked, beer can in hand, his eyes fell on the saxophone. It has occupied the same corner, slouched at the same unaltered angle, for the past four days. Dust has settled on its upper slopes. A cobweb draped between one of the keys and…
