fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
(Editor’s Note: The ‘growing up gay’ tag is usually applied to essays. This story is strictly fictional.) For a 12 year old, Clayton Simmons maintained the most peculiar habits. By a calculus all his own, he computed the precise number of movements and amount of time necessary to complete his morning rituals so that he…
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…
In conjunction with an exhibit on the life and music of Billy Strayhorn at the San Francisco Main Library, in May of 2009, there was a concert held one Saturday afternoon. The performance featured The Junius Courtney Big Band and singer Denise Perrier. They alternated between music and short stage vignettes that dramatized various milestones in…
A friend in college hipped me to the Syracuse Cultural Workers’ Carry It On Peace Calendar. I’ve purchased them ever since. It features photos, art, and notable anniversaries from social movements both contemporary and historical. For June, they always do a nice spread for Gay Pride month. This year they are featuring the story of…
After the service, I became visible again. Folks asked me if I enjoyed the service, and I had to say yes, I did, because I did get into singing and clapping and all that. XY spoke to me. He told me to wait with XX while he got the car. So I did. But then…
One weekend, my parents were out of town and Righteous was at some religious camp for good little boys. So Kurt spent the night. The Sci-Fi channel was running a “Prisoner” marathon that weekend, the show about an ex-spy who gets kidnapped and sent away to the Village after resigning from his job. We got…
(Editor’s Note: This story is an expansion of “The Burrito Kiss” which was published on the gar spot previously. The story is set c. 1992.) Saturday nights meant church service and that usually meant glares and taunts from Righteous, my older brother Jerome. Hurry up. Comb that mess on your head. Wear something appropriate. Don’t be…
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…
{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…
“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…
