fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
Black queerdom collectively gasped when word got out that Patrik-Ian Polk created a Noah’s Arc reunion. No, not in production, not in the planning stages, not in the cards, but in the flesh. (LOTS of flesh.) The magic dropped on Sunday, July 5, a perfect way to end the Independence Day Weekend. Entitled “The ‘Rona…
Mark the date! Next Saturday, July 11 at 1pm CDT (11am PDT), I’ll be a guest on the Sandra Moran Radio Book Club from radio station KKFI in Kansas City. Host Elizabeth Andersen, panelist/poet Mercedes Lewis, and I will discuss my novel Sin Against the Race. Society has entered an extraordinary period of activism around…
I previously wrote about my excitement about attending the Saints & Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival in New Orleans again. It was set to take place March 27-29. And then COVID-19 happened. Wisely, though sadly, the Festival cancelled this year’s edition. New Orleans has been hit hard by the pandemic and I wish all of my…
Thirty years ago, October 6, 1989, the Castro Sweep happened. And I was there. What started as a fairly routine ACT UP demonstration turned into a police overreach of epic proportions. I wrote about the Sweep a few years ago in a review/critique of a book by Paul Krassner (RIP), where he wrote about his…
In 1988, I wrote an article for 10 Percent, the former LGBTQ news magazine at UCLA about Christopher Street West. The article also included a bit of history about the Stonewall Rebellion. As I had learned in my Civil Rights History classes, Stonewall did not just up and happen. Stonewall happened in the context of…
The AIDS Memorial on Instagram and Facebook invited me to write a post about black gay writers during the height of the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s. I came out around that time and quickly saw the devastation the disease caused within the black gay literary community. Writers whose works I came to…
Folks like Kevin Hart are exactly why I wrote SIN AGAINST THE RACE. Nothing hurts more than when straight, cis black folks turn against their own because of anti-LGBTQ bigotry and hatred. Nothing he has said or done has made up for the vile remarks he made during his comedy routines or in his tweets….
December 16 is the birthday of my fictional character Alfonso Rutherford Berry, III, protagonist for my novel Sin Against the Race. So to mark the occasion, I read parts of the book that reflect upon Alfonso’s 21st, which he spent in hospital. Earlier in the book, police beat him while he tabled at a needle exchange…
For World AIDS Day this past Saturday, December 1, I read an excerpt from my novel Sin Against the Race. The story involves Alfonso Rutherford Berry, III, a young black gay man coming into his own, mourning the loss of his cousin Carlton, a long term AIDS survivor. Here, taken from Chapter 20, Alfonso explains to…
I’ll be reading with Rick and Wayne’s Perfectly Queer November event at Dog Eared Books, Castro next Tuesday, November 13 at 7pm. The date falls on Rick’s birthday and we’ll be celebrating. Join us for readings, wine, and cake! The theme of this reading is friendship. My novel Sin Against the Race is about the friendships…
