fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
“The Passion Flower series, Mr. Gale,” he said after a long sip of brandy, “you asked what was the inspiration.” “Yes.” “It was my pathetic attempt at career suicide. I wanted to destroy everything I had built up. I wanted the world to write me off and leave me the fuck alone. But it didn’t…
We stood in front of a shelf marked 1953. A gap sat in the middle of otherwise tightly packed volumes. He began stroking the dust from the empty space. Again, it felt as if he were stroking my skin. This time I let myself experience it, for a little while. “Where are those volumes?” I…
During the Prop. 8 campaign four years ago, I received a mailer from the Yes on 8 folks which featured black religious figures on one side and then-presidential candidate Barack Obama on the other. It contained quotes like these: “Marriage is something that is sacred and worth defending as an institution of one man and…
Light, airy, and meticulously clean, attributes that well describe Mr. Horton’s apartment. His closet embodied the exact opposite. As we entered, he reached up and pulled a cord. A single bulb, brown with dust, hung on a thick wooly wire. The light revealed a cavern, cramped, long, and narrow with a pale wall grimed by…
“Listen, why are you here?” Startled, I looked up from my notepad. “The lifetime achievement award, Mr. Horton. My magazine wanted an interview.” “No! Why did they send you?” I had no immediate response. “You’re awfully young, you know that? How the hell do you even know who I am? What work of mine have…
Grease splattering, water boiling, pots and pans clanking, bodies moving and shuffling, and layered above it all were the voices of the too many chefs against a backdrop of old school blues moaning its heart out. Crissy got annoyed. She always got annoyed. “Can’t we play something more upbeat than this? When I’m cooking I…
It’s depressing that queer storytelling is still regarded as something rare, unique, or extraordinary. Even in an age where queer characters populate more films and TV shows, the voices from these characters are usually just a footnote rather then the main subject. The film 54, from 1998, pops to mind. Named after and set in…
Young black kids are killing and dying in the streets. Gun fire echoes on quiet nights, on busy streets, in daylight — bodies fall to the ground. Killers stand over the fallen triumphantly and pump in more and more. Then they run away. But it’s not OK to snitch. Young black kids trying to get…
This week Live Science published the article 6 Civil War Myths, Busted in time for the 150th anniversary of the start of the bloody battle. The first myth busted is that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War. The article presents this alarming statistic: Across America, 60 percent to 75 percent of high-school…
{Editors Note: The dialog between Jameel and Alfonso was taken from my unpublished novel Sin Against the Race.} He knew Hegel. He knew Marx. He knew Lenin. He knew Trotsky. He knew Mao. He knew Ché. He knew Cleaver. He knew a whole bunch of others that none of the rest of the group knew. …
