fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
I’m very excited to announce that my short story, “Tom of Boalt Hall,” is a finalist in the annual Saints & Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival’s Short Fiction Contest. The story will appear in their superbly put together anthology along with new works from a group of amazing writers. I first attended Saints & Sinners in…
Last May, to celebrate our 25th anniversary together, my husband and I took a trip to Germany. It was our first trip back in nearly 12 years. We went with a group organized by Dr. Marion Gerlind and JB of the Gerlind Institute for Cultural Studies. We had studied German at the institute many years…
October 17, 1989. Around 5:02 pm or so, I left my office, old room 349 Boalt Hall at UC Berkeley. I wound through the narrow catacombs that made up the third floor at that time, skipped down the stairs and exited the building via a backdoor between the second and third floors. The door exited…
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…
Herbie Hancock entered the recording studio all smiles and excitement. “We’re gonna have a great time!” he enthused. So my brother Robert told me many years after this memorable gig, where he played bass with the Maestro. Mr. Hancock no doubt came in with such charged happiness and positivity to help calm the nerves of…
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…
Two of my greatest musical idols were born on April 29. Duke Ellington, in 1899 and the doyen of the tabla, Ustad Alla Rakha in 1919. As the world celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of this musical colossus, who brought the tabla to a higher level of respect and dynamics, I reflect upon…
Terri Lyne Carrington was born in Medford, Massachusetts in August of 1965. Her father played sax and her grandfather played sax and drums. (Her grandfather once played drums for Duke Ellington.) Ms. Carrington says that her grandfather died before her birth, but that his drums were still in the house. So around age 7, she…
Diamond Cut, the latest album by saxophone great Tia Fuller, received a Grammy nomination this year in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category. A well deserved acknowledgement. Ms. Fuller used the platform accorded her by this honor to speak on sexism in the arts in general and in jazz in particular. In a thought-provoking piece…
