fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
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…
In the numbing haze in which I found myself on that fateful day in June 1996 when Mom died, I managed to focus while packing for the trip to L.A. to join my family on that which was most important: Music. In those pre-MP3, pre-iPod days, I carted about a dozen or so CDs with…
This story could be called a love letter to the Duke Ellington Orchestra. I wrote it around the time I fell head over heels for all things Ellington and started listening to his music 23 out of 24 hours in the day — a practice I continue to the present time. I immersed myself in…
