fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
I can’t look at his face. It’s too young and too fresh and too new. I can’t look at his face. It’s untested, unchallenged. There are so many first lights he did not get to see, so many mountains he did not get to climb, or even envision, so many triumphs he did not get…
I received some nice feedback for my short story “Clyde” published a few weeks ago. Thank you for that, and thanks to everyone for reading my stuff. I truly appreciate it. A friend asked if “Clyde” was in fact a true story. I said quickly, unequivocally, and publicly (on Facebook) that it was a work…
The circumstance behind Tyler Clementi’s death sickens me to the core. A young man with a shy smile and a whole life ahead of him ended his own life after his homosexuality was posted on the internet for all the world to see. How was his gayness placed on the internet? His roommate at Rutgers, Dharun…
Hello, this is Richard Foote-Long again. Now, you little ladies out there scoffed at the sentiments of my last little commentary about the necessity of protecting My Sacred Sperm. You demonstrated your disdain for my beliefs by the way you treated that great soldier of the cause Rush Limbaugh. Mr. Limbaugh finds himself fighting to hold…
The magic, they say, happens after the lights dim and the images begin to flicker on the screen. In this case, though, for most, there would be little magic as the story was already known. But for others who were young like me, black like me, and torn asunder by my queer loins like me,…
February was a remarkable month for marriage equality. Three state legislatures passed bills to allow same-sex couples to marry: Washington, New Jersey, and Maryland. In Washington and Maryland, the bills passed by an average of 54%. This jibes with a Gallup poll from May of last year which showed, for the first time, majority support…
When I was about 13 I had to endure a week at Reverend Schlep’s Summer Camp for Men and Boys. It’s a right of passage in my family. My grandfather took my father. My father took my older brothers Mark and Karl, Jr., when they reached the right age. Now it was my turn. If…
(Ed.’s Note: This guest commentary is best read while whistling “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”) I write in support of a silent victim, one so denigrated that its silent screams often go unheard. Even those who defend life to the utmost are deaf to the plight of these literally millions of victims. If not murdered…
Friend John Iversen, long time AIDS activist based in the East Bay, recorded a CD of tango music last year. He is holding a CD release party/birthday party this Saturday, February 25 at 7:30 pm at Studio 12, 2525 8th St. in Berkeley. $12 admission; $10 students, disabled, elders, unemployed; under 7 free. Yours truly…
February filled every classroom and hallway at Norman Avenue Elementary School with red, black, and green. As the month’s end approached, the colors blossomed in the school auditorium in preparation of the annual Black History Month Dance. Parent volunteers filled red, black, and green balloons with helium and tied similarly colored streamers to their tails….
