fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
My sister Betsy and her partner Sue got married today. They had been together for 14 years, but the wedding was a spontaneous thing. They were getting ready for work, getting the kids ready for summer day camp, the usual routine. Then they heard that the court struck down the gay marriage ban. Betsy said…
25 years ago, either this week or next, I wrote a letter to my family entitled “What James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin, and Gregory A. Russell Have In Common.” Sadly I don’t think I have a copy of it anymore, though I don’t think the essay itself was as good as the title I gave it….
Anderson Cooper came out. Jim Parsons came out. Ricky Martin came out. Neil Patrick Harris and George Takei are out all over the place. Each one of these celebrity outings has weakened the walls of the closet that much more. In his eloquent coming out statement, Mr. Cooper explains that he always wanted to keep…
It sat in a little white building nestled on a small block squeezed by Santa Monica and Sunset. I always had problems finding it exactly, and then there was the parking which was challenging even for a motorcycle. I didn’t drive cars in those days. It was small and crammed, the way all independent, hippy-ish…
1985. UCLA. Sophomore year. I fell into the swell of anti-apartheid protests that engulfed the campus that year and began to live the life of the “activist student.” My mother made a suggestion.
“You should start writing a journal.”
