today, i've been off my meds for two days and i went crazy. it's so weird, i was just tired of feeling sleepy. the med work but they make me so damn tired. i think i might go back to the mental hospital. i've only been out a week and i've threatened like five ppl. sometimes i don't get why i am so damn crazy. and my weight is dropping. i haven't eaten in like four days. but i've been drinking. sometimes i don't get this, but i know i have power in this.

Bipolar kid

I’m on lithium 50 mg, in the morning, two pills at night, Zoloft 50 mg once a day, and then serttraline, one a day, then twice a night, and the elavil, so I can sleep because I don’t sleep. My boyfriend makes me take it when I get home because he knows I will be up all night.


I woke up this morning and realize I need to take my meds. Because I went off them for two days, the last time I went off, I cut myself. I feel like cutting myself right now. But it’s the brain, that I need the recalibration. I need to not take it so far. I don’t want that edge it’s like loving the thug, when I’m 30. It’s like loving the rebel with no cause, when I’m trying to have the house in the suburbs. This is so crazy. I’m so crazy. This is whatever.

Part of me hates this. Part of me thinks that I just want to be normal. But what is normal considering all the shit I’ve been though.

Recovery is not going to be so easy

Accept this change, but I still love you. But I’m not going back, but I still love you. You see, I was a fool. I kept trying to figure out my life thinking I could I cheat. How does one cheat their life. How does one cheat their life. I’m the teacher and student. I take the tests and grade myself. But I was a hateful teacher to myself, flunking myself constantly, when I was student knowing that I passed. What the fuck was that about?

Now stop. Yes, I’m angry, because my childhood was fucked up. But that’s not why I’m angry. I’m angry because I’ve been a coward. I’m in therapy about that, me stop being a coward.

Who said our life wouldn’t hurt? There’s so much I want to say. There’s so much I want to do. There’s so much I’ve pretended. What I know for sure, is that I’m not going back to pretending. That got put me in a mental hospital. And now that I feel better, everybody thinks I’m going back to be a happy shiny person. Fuck that. I will never forget. I will never forget the rape. I will never forget the abuse. I will never forget when they told I was nothing. Accept this change, I still love you. But I’m no slave. I got free.

Freedom

What is freedom? Are you free? How would you know? When George Michael back in early 90s said he wanted Freedom, at the time we didn’t know he meant to cruise men’s bathrooms without getting arrested. Do you want to hear a crude joke?:
How does a guy know if he has a high sperm count?
If the trick has to chew, before he swallows. Too much?
It’s called freedom of speech that as an American I feel I can say what the fuck I want no matter who I offend. It didn’t work out so well for Don Imus.

Lately I’ve been pondering freedom. Our English word "freedom" comes from an Indo-European root that means "to love." In America, we constantly told we’re free, yet, we’re at war. Mohandas K. Gandhi said freedom can be achieved through inner sovereignty. He got a bullet to the back of the head by a close friend. No one said freedom would be easy. I think true freedom is in the words of Whitney Houston when you’re forced to say, “Hell to the no.”

This is how I got free. Sitting up in jail, I had lost my freedom. I questioned if I had ever been free. I knew there was the hell I was born into and the hell I created. Mama was a crack head. Daddy got himself killed. The foster care system. Grandma didn’t like me. It was like I was born into the first circle of hell, limbo. It was for those who would never know God. Who would never know real freedom. I couldn’t imagine what I did to deserve such a spiritual fate. Even if it was hell, all I ever wanted for it was to want me, maybe even love me.

I grew to treat myself like I knew a boy with a low self-esteem would. I got into fights. I made a lot of bad decisions. I felt suffocated being spiritually imprisoned. My soul just needed to survive for eternity. I’d gotten arrested for DWI. The cop just stopped to give me a ticket and all I had to do was sign it and hand it back to him. But I didn’t like his attitude. I thought he was picking on me. I knew everybody took that back road and I’d never seen anyone get pulled over. I jumped out the car to put my finger in his face when the vodka bottle fell out and busted. It was so stupid. I was one of those stupid people I’d seen on that TV show COPS.

To make things worse, they made a mistake. It was the weekend. My records got mixed up with some other guy with the same name. They said I was a convicted felon. The raised my bond significantly and put me on the floor with other murderers. I wasn’t getting out for a long time. I tried to tell them but everybody lied in jail. Everybody was innocent in jail. My friends couldn’t understand like Jail had a customer service department. My friends didn’t have enough money. My family decided that I got myself into the mess; I needed to get myself out. Ironically, jail is the one mess a person really can’t get themselves out of it. Help has to come from the outside. Somebody has to post the bond. Somebody has to get the lawyer. You’re helpless once you get arrested.

Sitting in jail, it scared me how normal I felt, in the handcuffs, in that cold room of concrete and metal, that too big orange jumpsuit. I didn’t feel that normal in college or my big city job. it was like I could finally be free, couldn’t get any lower and they told me what to do, what time to wake up, what time to eat, and what my choirs were going to be. It felt good to not think anymore. To let go of that struggle in my head of fleeting happiness. I had nobody to fight anymore or anything to prove. It was like I was meant to go to jail. Every male on both sides of my family had gone to prison. It scared me that it felt so normal.

They stuck me in some room by myself for five hours because I wasn’t being friendly. The room was cold and the uniform was thin and I had no shoes. I could only lie on the floor and bawl myself into the fetal position and close my eyes. I couldn’t understand why I was punishing myself. I was scared. Everybody was treated me like shit. The security guards said they didn’t like the look on my face. They said I was too cocky. In the silence I knew I was self-protective. I was hurt. And then there was the law of attraction. I knew I wasn’t safe anymore. I was going to last circle of hell of people who been hurt and hurt. I had “fuck with me” on my forehead. I was in trouble. They kill guys like me in jail.

I finally was giving a mattress and escorted to my final jail cell. I didn’t realize jail had so many rooms. It was like going further and further in hell. I was at the last circle, the fraudulent—those guilty of deliberate, knowing evil. It was the most violent. I got to my bed and some guy keep saying he smelled ass and then he would look at me and smile. I started to feel as if I didn’t belong anymore. There were worse fuck-ups in the world than me. I prayed I wouldn’t get raped. Yet, I wanted it. Not the abuse. I just wanted for the abuse to want me. Maybe even love me. Grandma when I was a kid would give us weekly beatings just in case we did something she missed. I stopped caring about the bruises. I only cried when I was innocent. It made me start purposely doing stuff because the punishment came anyway. No reward. Just punishment. That’s what got me in jail thinking the world was full of just beat downs. I hated intimacy.

I found myself flirting with my soon to be rapist. I needed to play with the fire. I’d been in jail for a week with no liquor, drugs or nothing. I was ready for my weekly punishment. I knew he had plans on attacking. I knew it would be violent. Him and his boys had be pointing and smiling at me for a couple of days. I wonder how it would feel the rape. I felt my dick get hard. I knew it was because they didn’t give a fuck about me. I knew they probably beat me bloody in the shower, stab me, and leave me for dead. Death made my dick rock hard. It’s that hurt that I always wanted to love me. Want me. It’s that hurt. It’s that hurt that I’d been trying to control, make it see me as human. It’s like those beatings I got growing up, that if I cried loud enough she stop. She’d take some pity on me. But if I didn’t cry, fought it, she kept going until she sprang her wrist, then she just get something bigger to break me. It seemed that it was always about breaking me and then she would say afterwards that it hurt her more than it hurt me. Yet, I would be the one standing there with the bruises and crying. She would then want to hug me and say she only did it because she loved me. Grandma beat us weekly because she loved me.

It was day eight, I stood in the shower, I felt the heat of new presence, and the men who had been taunting me had finally gotten me alone. They dropped their towels. It was five of them. I felt my dick get hard. I closed my eyes. I knew it’s going to happen, I prayed that it be slow. I wanted to feel my weekly beating. I hadn’t gotten so numb like a slave just getting beat one last time. And then I heard my name. The guard called my name. He said I made bail. I walked pass the men with my dick rock hard. They called me a freak. But I saw their dicks were rock hard too. I start to cry when I put on my clothes. They were going to kill me. I was going to like it. It scared me. What did it mean?

Processing out, I got my wallet, car keys and shoe strings back. I immediately think of my Grandmother again. I knew she lied. I remember one time she beat us kids for four days. She had lost twenty dollars and accused us. She was going to beat a confession out of us. She went back and forth for four days, but nobody had the money. She found her money at the bottom of one of her shoes. She gotten drunk and forgotten she put it there. She didn’t even apologize. I remember I never cried so much during those beatings. It was because I was innocent. I was just a kid and bad shit kept happening to me. I was just a kid. And it all began to make sense. Maybe I wasn’t a freak. Maybe I wasn’t a fuck-up. Maybe it was all just a lie. I was innocent. Maybe that’s why everybody in jail say they’re innocent. In court, the get dressed up in the Sunday best and look like wide eye children who couldn’t hurt a fly, yet they’ve robbed, committed fraud, or something worse.

The last door in jail, there was a sign that said “Freedom.” You have to push through the door to get out of the jail house, to get out of hell. I pushed through the door. The sun was shining. The wind was rustling through the trees. The green grass in the park made me want to take off my shoes and run through it. She lied, my grandmother. It wasn’t freedom. That’s why jail felt so normal-- I had been in it my entire life. I put myself in it. When there weren’t any bars, I went to find them and built the walls. But it was all a lie.
I had to find that Freedom was inner peace: a proactive mind with rational understanding of consequences. I had been coward, afraid to say to the universe “I love.” Gandhi said “a coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.” A coward was incapable of being free. You have to demand it, and nobody said it would be easy. I got free when I pushed through that door labeled “Freedom.” My soul promised me a better life, I decided to take it. My soul promised me a life of no walls. My heart promised me of life of true commitment. I was going to love. I was going to live a life of love.

This is love. When I look back at the fact I’ve done this comic for two years, I know truth. Just like that day in jail, the door I had to push through; I had to be brave enough to say to the universe, I am writer. I had to push through my fear. Looking back, I think there was something I needed to know. There was something I had been trying to say. I needed to get myself happy. It was time I stopped the show. I wasn’t that fuck up. I was more than just a cute face and a nice body. I had a soul. There was someone I forgot to be caught up in the bassing music and streaming lights. I couldn’t look in the mirror the same anymore because I knew the wounds didn’t make the man. I knew the mistakes didn’t make the man. I knew I could get free. I wanted to be a free man. I knew I needed to take the lies and make truth somehow. It was my freedom. Thank you for sharing my journey these last two years.

What is freedom? Are you free? How would you know? “A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”---Gandhi

I was here

I was here
There
Trying not to be saved
Couldn’t save myself
I was at that party
At that club
Dancing on the dance floor
Sweat staining the tip of my jeans and underwear
Thinking I would be young forever
I was here
In dark corners flirting for erect favors
On my knees, pants at ankles
Cruising parks
Sniffing poppers
Puffing cigarettes
At Man’s country, the spa
Follies in DC
Studs bookstore
Couldn’t be saved
Wasn’t trying to save myself
Thinking I’d be young forever
Early morning free clinics before work on Tuesday
I was there
Here
Painful shots in the ass for taking it up the ass
Couldn’t be saved
Wasn’t trying to save myself
In the hospital for two weeks
Then back at the drug house after discharge
Trying to charge
Youth is just credit
Wasn’t trying to save myself
Couldn’t be saved
I was high
Smoking that 420, partying and playing 24/7
Up for four days
Drinking just to calm the nerves
On the streets
Asleep at the bus stop
Homeless
Selling body for a hamburger
I was there
Here
Decided I had enough
Youth was just a lie
Wasn’t so invincible
I was here
Razor blade to the wrists
Didn’t think I could keep living that way I was
And I was right
Killed that life
But my soul survived to breathe new life
In a body that tells its story on his skin
That I was here
Once pressed against his lips
Maybe we were friends
Maybe we just fucked
You were there

It really does feel like day one. To say my life came apart is understatement. I know the truth. My life never began. I remember graduating college very confused, going out into the real world without a fucking clue so I got into a long term relationship. I got the big job in the big city. I got the right clothes and friends. But I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t happy.

I feel as if I’m going through a divorce in my life right now. I’m no longer in my twenties. I will be thirty one years old in two weeks. I feel like I’m going through a divorce in my life.

It’s true, I’ve tried to commit suicide a couple of times in my life. My first suicide attempt I was sixteen years old. The world just seemed to much to deal with and I wanted out. The second time I was twenty four years old. The third time I was twenty nine years old. And now just recently. All those attempts and thinking about it, I never really fully understood what I was trying to accomplish. I don’t think those who attempt suicide are giving up, it’s just that they think they are trapped and refuse to get the help.

After my last suicide attempt, and I only talk about this because I think it might help somebody, spending a week in the mental hospital really helped me. I was able to talk through my problems. I didn’t have a support system in place. I had alienated myself from everyone I knew, so call friends and family. But in the mental ward, I found people just like me and professionals. I got a name to go with my problem. I got the medication. I got the help.

Saying that I wasn’t okay was the hardest part. I cried for like a week. I knew I wasn’t okay for a long time but I wouldn’t admit it. I was so afraid of being instittionilized. I was so afraid of the medication thinking it would take away my creativity or edge. I had fallen in love with my sadness. It was hard to let go because I liked hanging out with misery, the bitch loved company.

Things I know for sure, when you’re hurting, you will constantly find people who are also hurting and want to hurt you.

I’ve had this blog going on three years now. I’ve had other blogs, but I couldn’t keep a job, so I didn’t pay the monthly fee.

Now that I’m healthy or in-recovery? I think to myself what is it that I want from life. I really only thinking ahead to the next year.

Next year at this time, I really only want five things:

Free of my credit card debt – it’s only about five thousand dollars. I found out I had good credit like back in June in been on a spending spree.

Have my own apartment, that means getting and keeping a job.

Publish my two books and finished my memoir and first gay novel.

Understand my health, I mean everything and getting proper treatment. That’s the hard part because as a gay man I’m only supposed to think of HIV but I got high blood pressure also. It runs in my family.

Keep a year diary of my journey to mental health. I still got problems with alcohol, so I attend my meetings. I want to be sober. But I also want to feel alive. I’m taking my meds and two weeks later I’m really beginning to feel the change.

I’m really excited about this new journey in my life. At first I was scared shitless. I was sad my nine year relationship had reached its breaking point which meant I was going to have to get used to be single again. I haven’t been single since I was 19 years old. I went from relationship to the other. I was never faithful but I always had somebody to come home to at the end of the day.

I was scared shitless about going to therapy and taking medication. I thought it would turn me into one of the “shiny happy people.” I feel better but I’m no stepford wife. I like to see where I will be in a year from now.
A lot can change in a black gay boy’s life in a year. I hope the next year is a good year for me.

Black Gay Literature

Five o’clock in the morning and sober, I started surfing the net in between going back and forth on a4a and manhunt. I wanted to see if there was a list out there of black gay writers. I remember I put one together about four years ago that was when I was with my ex, the bastard’s name will not be mentioned. I put together such an extensive list of the published and unpublished, I called it the library. I’m so pissed that I deleted all my files off his computer and website. I can get really angry sometimes. I need to work on that. I guess I can put the list back together which will take so much fucking time that if I’m not drinking seems ridiculous because I mean who cares. I care. I fucking care. And I like to think that there is some black punk out there who wants to know his history. I always forget the lesbians. I really need to read more lesbians books. I mean women are great writers and story telling by nature. I wonder why men get more credit than women writers. HMMMMM.

Anyways, I woke up this morning thinking about what it meant to be a black gay writer. What it meant to be a writer of color and gay. I stand on the heels of people like Countee Cullen, Hughes, Baldwin, Hempphill. Lourde, so I should take my writing more serious. I think what it means to be a black gay writer is for me to tell my story. The story I know and connect it to the world. It’s for me to love my life and what a fucking life it has been. To be a writer is so many things, first I’m human, then I’m black, then I’m a male and then I’m gay. Lastly, I’m also fucking broke and curse a lot. But the stories I tell are just now beginning to make sense to me. I’m part of it. That feels to be part of something. I mean I ain’t getting no fucking check, but at least I’m part of it. I want to be part of it. I need to be part of it. I should put that list together and put my names in BOLD to remember my family.

I found this article on the internet and thought I share it:

African-American gay male tradition in literature--though it has yet to receive adequate scholarly attention--consists of a substantial body of texts, spans a period of eight decades, and includes some of the most gifted writers of the twentieth-century. It is a rich and vibrant tradition; its vitality emerges at least in part from the complexities of the black gay lives that it articulates and affirms. It is an intensely political tradition that offers relentless and simultaneous challenges to black as well as white
homophobia, to straight as well as
queer racism.
Yet its concerns extend far beyond social protest to engage a wide variety of issues that range from quintessentially African-American themes to universally human ones. Begun on a modest scale by a pioneering coterie of writers in Harlem during the 1920s, the gay male tradition in African-American literature was vastly strengthened by James Baldwin during the 1950s and 1960s. And since the mid-1980s, a host of talented artists have emerged to generate a veritable renaissance in black gay writing.
The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, celebrated as a most significant event in the African-American intellectual tradition, was also a crucial moment in gay literary history. Many of its central protagonists--such as Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent--were either gay or bisexual.
Locke, a professor at Howard University and one of the most distinguished scholars of the era, was an older gay man who became a mentor to many of the Harlem-based young male artists of the day. His intellectual presence and personal friendship--coupled with the fact that Nugent, Cullen, McKay, and others were at least peripherally involved in the then thriving gay and lesbian community of Harlem--perhaps encouraged them to explore, though discreetly, the subject of homosexuality in their works.
Richard Bruce Nugent's "Sadhji," a short story included in Locke's The New Negro (1925), is arguably the first gay text published by an African-American male. But it is his thinly disguised autobiographical narrative titled "Smoke, Lilies and Jade" (1926) that remains the most defiantly explicit gay text produced during the Harlem Renaissance. Unapologetic in its rhapsodic celebration of male beauty, it first appeared in Fire!!--an avant-garde journal published by the Harlem literati with the explicit intention of shocking the conservative black bourgeois readership. Nugent, unperturbed by the notoriety that his text earned him, continued to engage gay themes in many of his subsequent works.
Some of the other writers of the Harlem Renaissance, however, were more cautious than Nugent. Novelists such as Wallace Thurman and Claude McKay, both of whom were bisexual, introduced gay themes in their works though neither treated the subject with Nugent's exceptional candor.
Thurman's first novel, Blacker the Berry (1929), a poignant exploration of the psychology of the oppressed, has an unsympathetic bisexual male character. His second novel, Infants of the Spring (1933), a hilarious satire on the Harlem Renaissance and its major figures, has an important bisexual male character, and the friendship between two other male characters in the novel has obvious homoerotic qualities.
Similar homoerotic male bonding is a feature of McKay's Banjo (1929). And his Home to Harlem (1928), a sensational portrayal of Harlem life in the Jazz Age, has a minor black male character.
Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen tend to be even more cautious. Hughes, in fact, appears to have taken extraordinary measures to conceal his bisexuality; perceptive (gay) readers, however, may easily sense the
homoerotic undertones in poems such as "Young Sailor" and "Cafe: 3 A.M." as well as in the elaborate sexual silences that mark his major autobiographical works such as The Big Sea (1940) and I Wonder as I Wander (1956).
Like Hughes, Cullen too prefers to reveal his gay self only through coded language, as in poems such as "The Black Christ," "Tableau," "Every Lover," and "Song in Spite of Myself," among others.
The relative sexual reticence of the Harlem writers, however, has to be understood in the larger cultural contexts in which they lived and created art. Unlike their white peers who had the luxury of living in a society that viewed their whiteness as normative, the black artists had to confront in their daily lives as well as in their imaginative works the painfully problematic implications of their racial identity.
The issue of race, therefore, was a politically necessary and personally compelling concern for all the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Their art reflects this preoccupation. The demands of their audiences further complicated their predicament: Both black and white readers expected the writers to foreground the race-specific aspects of the African-American experience.
And the economics of the literary marketplace and the tenuousness of the black writer's position in the United States during the 1920s denied them the level of artistic freedom and personal autonomy necessary for forthright explorations of unconventional sexualities. Therefore, it is indeed remarkable that several gay and bisexual writers of the Harlem Renaissance, despite numerous daunting obstacles, managed to project discreetly into their art their private sexual concerns. The gay ambience that they helped generate did in fact succeed in providing a mildly subversive shape to the sexual and racial politics inscribed in the literature of the Harlem Renaissance.
James Baldwin
James Baldwin emerged on the American literary scene almost a generation after the collapse of the Harlem Renaissance. His entry marks a nodal point in the development of the African-American gay male literary tradition. An outsider in every sense of the term, Baldwin was poor, black, gay, and extraordinarily gifted. He launched from his marginal location an articulate and sustained attack on the dominant cultural fictions of race and sexuality.
Intellectually daring and fiercely eloquent, he became one of the most celebrated writers of his time. Although he occupies an important place in African-American as well as gay American literatures, the significance of his life and work in the specific context of the black gay male literary tradition is immeasurable. He continues to be its defining figure.
"The Preservation of Innocence" (1949), an essay that Baldwin published in Zero, a Moroccan journal, within months after his arrival in Paris, is an early signal of his personal willingness to engage the topic of homosexuality in a public forum. "Outing," a short story he published in 1951, is his first tentative attempt to approach the topic in fiction; the story is a gracefully subtle portrayal of adolescent homosexual awakening.
In his first major work of fiction, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Baldwin explores the adolescent consciousness on a more elaborate scale, and here he presents the youthful protagonist's emerging homosexual awareness as a subtle but integral part of his quest for personal identity.
By the mid-1950s Baldwin had earned his reputation as an important African-American writer; his readers and critics had come to expect in his works incisive analyses of the black experience. But in 1956 he disappointed a good many of them by publishing Giovanni's Room, a novel with an all-white cast that poignantly documented the consequences of internalized homophobia through its young protagonist's unwillingness to accept his gayness.
For a young black writer to publish such an openly gay narrative in the mid-1950s was an enormously risky endeavor: The political climate in the United States was hardly ready for such honesty, and there was a very real possibility that the publication of such a novel might permanently damage his career. That Baldwin took such a risk is a testament to his immense personal courage and artistic integrity.
He survived the controversy generated by Giovanni's Room and, in that process, earned his preeminent place in the gay American literary tradition. More important, its publication liberated Baldwin from the closet and enabled him to treat gay and bisexual themes even more vigorously and explicitly in three of his subsequent major works of fiction: Another Country (1962), Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), and Just Above My Head (1979). And through such works he helped create the necessary space for a new generation of talented young black gay writers who followed him.
Contemporary African-American Gay Male Writers
Even though Baldwin's influence on the current generation of African-American gay writers is a vital and enduring one, a number of other cultural factors have also helped nurture the new artists. The civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the Stonewall Riots, the predominantly white-led and often racially insensitive gay liberation movement, and the emergence of a confident black gay and lesbian middle-class gave impetus to the growth of political activism among black gay men and lesbians during the 1970s and 1980s.
The new personal and political consciousness led to the establishment of many black gay and lesbian organizations, to the publication of several specialized journals (though many were short-lived), and to the articulation of a specifically black gay and lesbian cultural agenda.
These developments inevitably affected black gay literary creativity. Initially black gay artists, rejected by straight- as well as gay-owned presses, published their works largely in black gay journals and in privately printed chapbooks. This practice still continues on a significant scale. However, given the recent phenomenon of many publishers' relative openness to gay material in general, some black gay writers, at least since the mid-1980s, have been reasonably successful in placing their manuscripts with major trade publishers and, on rare occasions, even with prestigious university presses.
Further, the growing interest of nonblack gay readers in black gay texts--as the commercial success of recent works by Essex Hemphill and Assoto Saint clearly suggests--has given additional stimulus to the production, publication, and circulation of black gay literature.
The literary styles of the post-Baldwin generation of black gay writers differ widely; they range from the innovative science fiction of Samuel Delany to the rich magic-realist narratives of Randall Kenan; from the revisionist Southern gothicism of Melvin Dixon to the campy elegance of Larry Duplechan; from the densely allusive academic poetry of Carl Phillips to the aggressive agit-prop lyrics of Essex Hemphill.
They engage a variety of themes as well: from the more private concerns of identity, love, family, and relationships to the larger political issues of racist violence and homophobic repression.
Major Themes
Although it is risky to make any sweeping generalizations about this diverse body of literature, it is possible to identify at least four major themes that dominate the works of contemporary black gay male writers: the complex relationship between the individual black gay self and the larger African-American community, the devastating consequences of racism, the pain and the possibilities of interracial love, and the tragedy of AIDS.
The relationship between the individual black self and the black community--a frequent theme in African-American literature in general--surfaces insistently in the works of many contemporary black gay male writers. Since a strong and enabling sense of racial self is necessary to cope with the psychological assaults of white racism, the black gay male protagonist can rarely afford to disconnect himself completely from the black community and seek total assimilation into the predominantly white gay community.
But the black community, with its heterosexist values, is often not prepared to accommodate his sexuality unproblematically. The tension that arises from these conflicting sources of black gay identity, therefore, constitutes one of the central features of black gay literature. Joseph Beam's defiant declaration in his introduction to the ground-breaking anthology, In the Life (1986), clearly reveals the potential drama inherent in this tension: "We are coming home with our heads held up high."
Similarly, Gordon Heath's autobiographical Deep Are the Roots (1992), poignantly illustrates the narrator's determined struggle to claim his racial as well as sexual birthrights. Even when a protagonist fails in his struggle to harmonize his conflicting subjectivities--young Horace in Randall Kenan's A Visitation of Spirits (1989), for example, commits suicide--the individual failure is also presented as a violent indictment of the community's inhumane rigidity.
Racism is another central concern in the works of virtually every contemporary black gay artist. Writers who are anthologized in Other Countries (1988), In the Life (1986), Brother to Brother (1991), The Road Before Us (1991), and Here to Dare (1992) not only challenge American racism in general but also vigorously expose the racism of white gay communities.
Some writers, such as Randall Kenan and Steven Corbin, offer broad historical perspectives on racism; others, such as Essex Hemphill, Craig Harris, and Assoto Saint, bear painfully personal testimony to racial injury. Even in the works of Larry Duplechan--someone who argues that his gay self is significantly more important to him than his racial self--there is considerable concern with racism and its maiming effects.
Despite the preoccupation with racism--or, perhaps, precisely because of it--interracial love is a recurrent theme in recent African-American gay literature. There are, of course, many writers who focus only on intraracial gay relationships and celebrate the black male body as a site of pleasure, but there are others who, with remarkable honesty, reveal their colonized sexual imaginations.
Robert Westley, for example, goes looking for "the last big-dick/White boy" ("The Pub" in Here to Dare), while Thom Beam writes a plaintive "Love Song for White Boys Who Don't Know Who I Am" (in The Road Before Us). Reginald Shepherd's "On Not Being White" (in In the Life) is an exquisitely painful statement on colonial desire, just as Essex Hemphill's "Heavy Breathing" (in Ceremonies [1992]) reveals his erotic longing for a white gay man who studiously rejects black partners. Assoto Saint's autobiographical Stations (1989) is a paean to enduring interracial love. Likewise, Canaan Parker's The Color of Trees (1992), set on the campus of an elite prep school in New England, affirms the possibility of love that transcends cultural and class differences.
But other writers sound far less sanguine about the durability of cross-racial connections. Duplechan's Eight Days in a Week (1985), for example, deals with the relationship between Johnnie Ray, who is black, and Keith, who is white. Their relationship ultimately fails: Their racial difference, which is the basis of their desire for each other, ironically proves to be too disruptive. More disturbing, Corbin's Fragments That Remain (1993) and Dixon's Vanishing Rooms (1991) suggest that a white man, even when he is very much in love with a black man, can remain fundamentally racist.
AIDS is yet another dominant concern of contemporary African-American gay writers. Without referring to AIDS by name, Delany examines in Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985) the distressing impact of the plague on the collective psyche of a frightened population. Duplechan, in Tangled Up in Blue (1989), explores the insidious effects AIDS has on individuals and on relationships by focusing on Maggie and Daniel Sullivan, a straight couple, and Crockett, their gay friend.
But even more compelling because of their emotional immediacy are the numerous testimonial narratives and poems--by writers such as David Frechette, Assoto Saint, Bobby Smith, Donald Woods, and many others--that bear witness to illness and death, mourn the loss of friends and lovers, and memorialize the many thousands gone.
Some of the most talented black gay writers of the post-Baldwin generation, including Melvin Dixon, Craig Harris, Joseph Beam, Essex Hemphill, and Assoto Saint, among others, have already died of AIDS-related illnesses. Still others are fighting personal battles against the infection. Contemporary black gay writing, therefore, reflects a mounting sense of emergency while it continues to give voice and visibility to black gay men living through these treacherous times.

Conjuring Black Funk, my review

I hate during reviews because I feel as if I read on a different level than most people. I feel as a writer, I know how difficult it is to put a book together and then release your baby to the world and hope it survives. That being said, not every baby is cute or special. Not every book is brilliant. Personally, if I spend my liqour and weed money, I feel as if I got a right to my review.

That being said, Conjuring Black Funk at first I decided was a release spell. Old voodoo magic, speak its name and remove the power. I felt it would challenge my stale gay existence, tell me about sex I hadn’t considered. That didn’t happen.

I know there is so much in the black gay community that goes unspoken. The silence gives it power. It’s why the “down low” and its after effects were so damaging. It just didn’t terrorize black gay men, think of all the gay bashings, the fem queens who couldn’t get laid, the gay murderers, the violence, that black gay men went further into the church closet, and we didn’t even speak its name, not even to ourselves.

The first fifty pages of Conjuring Black Funk got me excited, because I felt like finally somebody was putting in print what I’ve been saying for years. It’s what we’ve all been thinking at the black gay prides, the black gay clubs, when gay life becomes more than just the next fuck. But of course, on many levels, I felt as if it attacked me personally, my obsession with my body, my obsession with youth, and the porn I watch and some suspicious black gay men I support. I wrote a blog a long time ago, “Porn isn’t sexy” so it didn’t say anything I didn’t know, but it didn’t go farther.

I remember when I wrote the article “I hate Frank Leon Roberts” and the response I immediately got back from people who didn’t even read the article. I had attacked a representative I didn’t chose. And the article wasn’t about me hating Frank Leon Roberts, it was about how a name and its association, how Clikque magazine used a name and its association to attack basically it’s demographic. That’s how I feel about Conjuring Black Funk, it forces the average black gay man to go beneath the surface of mediocrity even if it’s seemly confrontational. That being said, it didn’t go far enough for me. I was pissed when I wrote that article. I wanted the book to be more pissed.

In the end, I wanted more from Black gay Funk. I just didn’t want it to state the obvious: the coldness of free clinics, that Keith Boykin is soft porn, that HIV is a pimp and a ho situation, I wanted it to be angrier. I didn’t get the fire I craved from Conjuring Black Funk. I didn’t get any new insight into sex I hadn’t considered. Even the BDSM snippet, because that’s what each chapter was, a snippet. I was like why didn’t he go into the history, why didn’t he talk about how BDSM can be therapeutic, why didn’t he talk about the abuse of black gay men. It was like a tease and I found out 240 pages later we weren’t fucking. It was telling me all the right things to get my dick hard but it never got me off. It was too damn polite.

Yet, I would recommend reading the book because it's provactive. I still think it's a release spell. I decided that i like my six pack and like my man having one. I will never find round bellies attractive unless he's paying me. I plan one day to get botox around 35 years old. That doesn't make me dumb or unaware. I probably keep watching those stupid porns even if i personally have been kicked out of a porn shoot.
Personally, I got nothing new from it. I didn’t get it.

But I would recommend it to someone coming into the life. It’s like an introduction book. Must admit is a very difficult book to review. I liked it and was some what confused by it. I would first have to ask myself would I recommend it, hmmmm.

This time around, not starting over, but starting

I think my suicide attempt was my wake up call. After I plunged the razor into my veins and saw the blood crying, I knew I had made a mistake. I wanted to go back. I wanted to call somebody. I knew I would have to wear the scars for the rest of my life. I had too many scars on such a young body. So many years of self-mutilation to feel better. So many years of reckless behavior to punish myself. Funny, I treated myself like I knew I would.

I had my first therapy appointment today. I had my first AA meeting this past weekend. I’m looking forward to life again. I don’t want it to get that dark every again.

My therapist asked me where do I see myself a year from now. A year from now I would like to be alive. I like to be coming off a year of celibacy. I think I’ve misused sex and I need to get back in touch with my body. I like to be sober. I like to be in my own apartment. I like to bring the smile back to my eyes.

I know it’s going to be hard work coming back from the dead, again. The dead never come back the same. The last time I came back, I thought it was for love. I didn’t want to die without ever feeling love. This time, I got everything to prove to myself. I know I’m not the fuck up I can sometimes be. I know I can do something really special in this world. I know I can be healthy and proactive. I can be somebody.

Every time I’m embarrassed, I just tell myself this too shall pass and look into the future when nobody remembers I fell down. I know the road ahead of me will be difficult, but I smile because I look into the future when I’m happy and healthy.

Yes sweetheart, I do want to get healthy.

AA confession

I want to drink. It’s been six days since I tried to kill myself. It’s been on day since I got out of the mental ward. I thought I learned. I was feeling good. The pharmacy didn’t have my meds, gave me something for seizures. I don’t trust what they gave me. I’m not taking it. I will want until Monday to see my therapist. Can I survive until Monday? Can I survive until Monday? I feel like I’m all words now. I’m all fear. I know it’s irrational. I know what I’m feeling is irrational. I feel so damn ALONE. I feel like I’m never going to be happy again. I just want a fucking drink. I want to taste the rum on my lips and under my tongue and against the inside of my cheeks as I slowly swallow as it dances down my throat. I want to feel the dance. I want to feel the sunrise in my eyes. I want to feel the blood pumping my veins. It’s only been six days. It’s only been six days. I lost that guys’ number from AA. Was that faith? How did I lose it? I want to take to somebody. I want somebody who has been through tell me it’s going to be okay. It’s like I’m sick. I feel it in my stomach. I just want to cry. I just want to ball myself up in a fetal position and just cry. I want to hit. I want to yell. I want kick a hole in the television because everybody is drinking on it and I’m not. I’m watching some stupid comedy and all I can see is liquor.

I never felt so weak in my life. I can’t call anyone. Who am I going to call? Who am I going to call. I have no friends anymore. Nobody knows what this is. Nobody knows what this is.

I know the bar serves weak drinks. I should’ve gone to the store earlier. I waited. I waited yesterday. I just feeling like I’m waiting to break. I want to break. I want to break into a thousand pieces. I want to bleed. I want to fall down. I want to come undone. I want to break. Why do I want to break? That makes no sense.

What will happen if I do drink? What will happen? Will last week happen? Will I find myself in the bathroom the box cutter again slicing my wrists because I’m such a FUCK UP! Will I have to go back to the mental hospital? I don’t want to go back there. I hated it. I learned a lot but I hated being on suicide watch. You can’t even shower alone.


If I drink tonight what will happen. Will I survive this time and what if I do survive? Wouldn’t that make me want to survive again? It’s coming again. Why do I want to know what will happen? I know what has happened/

I just want to drink. I want to feel it on my tongue. I want to hear the music. I want to dance. I want to feel good. I want to feel good. I want to get rid of this anxiety. I want to get rid of this loneliness. Nobody is answering my calls. I think I will drink. I know I already am. I knew it on Tuesday. I’ve just been buying time.

Funny, just a minute ago I realized I’ve gotten some growth in my recovery. I do want to recover as much as I want a drink. I called as many friends as I could. I didn’t call them to stop me from drinking. I actually called them because I knew there relaxed response or lack of answer the phone would give me more of a reason to go out and drink. I talked to my sister. She still doesn’t know I sliced my wrists six days ago. She still doesn’t know I spent a week in a mental ward. She’s clueless. Everyone is clueless. I called her because I knew she would be bothered I interrupted one of her shows. I knew she would treat me like a brush off. All my friends do. I expect it. I used to think getting louder gave me more attention but I was just acting out. I called my sister because I needed a reason or permission to drink. It’s called reactionary defense mechanism. If she ignored me causally, not take what I had to say serious, gave me more irrationality to do what I wanted to do and that was get pissy drunk. I recognized it immediately. It’s my worse coping mechanism. I attracted people in my life so they would give me reason to escape. Give me reason to drug. For the first time in my life I’m realizing if I’m going to surive, I need a better support system. I need more.

so much has happened

so much has happened in the last week. I attempted suicide on Sunday and found myself in a mental hospital for a week. Very intersting. I went to my first AA meeting. I'm now on mood stablizers and Zoloft. I like them both. I will write about all of it soon enough.

But more importantly, what i thought was teh end of the world was actually the beginning. Wenesday i wrote a letter to my ex-Tom who has helped me through the very rough year of my life of drug overdoses and binge drinking and suicide attempts while trying to look for God.

The best part about being admitted to the mental place was that finally i got a name for my disease. I think i'd been misdiagnosed for years. I think i've been misunderstood for year. Some people just thought i was a tempermental artist. Some people thought i was just a dramatic queen. Some thought i just needed attention. Some thought i just needed to stop druging and drinking. I would get messages that "Are you sure sweetheart you want to get well."

I needed help. I needed help for years. I would go to clinics and different therapists and just get the same results. i'd try to get into relationships hoping that would change me or go to church hoping that would change me or whatever. I have a blog called "Light" when i asked god for light and not another chance. I was tired of chances. You can get as many chances as you want fumbling around in darkness directionless. What i needed was a fucking flashing light or moonlight or some type of light to go a specific direction.

When i was kid, I was constanly asked what i wanted to be when i grew up. I think all kids want the illusion of happiness. the stable home, to be a mom or dad live in a nice house with a picket fence, the fairytale and have a good job. I told my fifth grade teacher i wanted to be the president of the United States. I don't know why i said that. Some kids said they wanted to be lawyers or firemen. Kids always want to be some type of superhero. I wonder what that means. Nobody ever wants to grow up to be divorce. Nobody ever wants to grow up and keep getting fired from drops. Nobody ever wants to be the high school drop out teenage mama. But sometimes, often times, we do grow up to be those people. I didn't want to grow up to be a bipolar paranoid schizophrenic alcoholic wannabe writer.

But as kids, do we really get much choice what we're supposed to grow up to be. With all the fairytales and family sitcoms and walt disney, isn't it a set-up for failure? My mother was a crack whore and father was a drug dealer that died wheni was five. My mother was never around. I was molested. I grew up constantly terried of if i would eat or have a place to sleep or be attacked. I grew up constantly terrified. I went from one foster care to another foster care to another family member house to be a runaway at 15 years old. I wonder why i wanted to grow up to be a hero. I cause i wanted to grow and be invincible. I think that's the attraction of superman and batman. I wanted to grow and be able to fight the bad guys and win. But the bad guys became my demons. The bad guys were the demons of my childhood.

Maybe in a way i'm getting to grow to be the superhero. I have to fight those voices in my head that constantly what to destroy ever that i love dear like the villian in the cartoon. Maybe on some subconsious level children understand the need for good to prevail. It's for life to prevail.

i suddenly found my meaning in life. I used to think cartoonish villains were teh bank robbers, the rapers, the murderers, the jokers, the dictators and those people are real. But what's also real is the pain we sometimes never get over as kids when were touched by real evil. Superhereos always have a purpose because they've experience real evil really young in life. clark kent and lex luther. need i say more.

Day 5: The purpose Driven Life

Chapter 5

“Seeing life from God’s View”

This is my most favorite day. I thought about this day for two days. I understand this day. I understand how I think I am and what I must do.

I wrote about it a little in Day 3. I wrote about how I turned my back on god.

“How do I see my life” In the last couple of days it’s been so complicated. In the last month it’s been so confusing. I was trying to prove so much to so many people. I wanted them to know that I was a good writer but they weren’t reading. It wasn’t until I understand that Steven Fullwood hadn’t read my book that I begin to understand “how do I see my life” because I wasn’t attractive to him: he didn’t want to suck my dick or fuck me, nor did he want to read my blogs or get into me. I couldn’t understand the manipulation. I couldn’t understand what he wanted from me so I had to threaten him. I had to make sure he understood I was leveling him. I had to make sure that we would never speak again.

And I was angry. I read his shit. I read his book. I read his website and he didn’t even take the time. He bought my book and that would be cool if he was just another trick. But he bought my book as writer and he didn’t even read and that was the worse insult.

I couldn’t understand it. Something I still can’t understand. I can’t understand how I love someone who did everything he was supposed to do. Why did I stay when I knew to begin with his heart was someone else? Why did I stay? Why did I make a case? Why am I not letting it go? What point am I proving? More importantly why?


I’m trying to see life from God’s view. Yes I fell in love with a preacher’s boy, but he didn’t’ teach anything about God. Sunday morning and I got fat lip.



I want to see my life differently. I have been thinking about my life differently. I’m beginning my life differently. I don’t see myself in the prison anymore. Because understand the prison now. I don’t see myself in the prison anymore. My rebellion is not about the prison anymore. I see my life in the university. I don’t understand why others don’t want the education anymore. I don’t understand why others keep the education from me. Is it not because they’re no teachers. Is it because they are spies. They are dictators. I don’t want those people in my university. We will not get along.
Day 5 I accept what god view of me is. It’s like a wrestling match. To think I actually fell for a preachers boy when I was preachers boy, told I would grow to be a preacher. But we are not the same. God will give me another door. I just hope for him he can live with who he is. I can’t live with

Day 4: The purpse Driven Life

Last night again tom and I got into it. I’ve been reading old blogs about our relationship and how it’s been so volatile. Last night he split my lip. He said it was an accident like me putting a hole in the wall was accident. That was no accident. I got an interview on Monday and he accidentally hit me in my lip and split it, I don’t understand my life anymore, and I keep trying to get him to read the purpose driven life. Maybe he doesn’t want his life to have a purpose. Maybe my time with him is spent.


Day 4

Made to last forever

I’m not for sure if I will last forever. I know my soul will go and do different thing but I comprehend the process.


It seems my life at the moment is full of so much drama within itself that I can’t think about eternity or whatever. I just want to make it to tomorrow. I just want tom to forgive me. I just want to forgive him.

It seems so easy to say I’m preparing myself to be by god side when there is so much bullshit going on in my life. Why do I still get angry? When did I start punching holes in the walls? When did I start holding on to the anger. I want the forever. I need to remind myself I’m more than this life. It’s so hard to forget. I don’t like chapter four. It’s not telling me what I want to hear.

Day 3: The Purpose Driven Life

"What Drives my life"

Day 3 or chapter 3 was the easiest of the questions. I know i'm mostly driven by anger, hurt, my past, more haunted than anything. It's very hard to let go. i remember i was at the dentist for a tooth cleaning and she made the comment that when i was a child i must've not gotten very good nutrition because the enamel in my teeth were very weak and soon all we have to be replaced.

I remember sitting in the chair and tearing up when she stepped out the room. It was as if my past was coming back for me again. I grew up poor. The first time i went to a dentist i was in college. I never got my teeth cleaned as a kid. Nobody cared what happened to me as a kid. I didn't go to doctors. If something happened, I was told to just deal with it. I needed a hearing aid for my right ear since i was five years old. My grandmother woudl tell me that i was faking not being able to hear and every year when we had to do those day physical tests, they sent the same report home. I couldn't hear in my right ear.

I've blamed my family for a lot not just the childhood abuse, physically and mentally but also not preparing for adulthood. It was as if i became a slave after my mother abadoned me. That's how i began to see myself, trapped. I saw my entire life as a fucking prison. I couldn't trust anyone. Not anyone. Not even myself. I only saw life as bars and walls and prision guards and thieves and hustlers and overseers. I couldn't even trust my heart because i knew if it accepted any kindness it would make me weak. I told myself very young to never fall in love. I saw how men in my family loved. I saw them beat their wives and cheat. I also hated my mother. I told myself to never fall in love because if i did and it didn't work out, i didn't know what i would i do. I knew i probably kill.

hopesslessness has driven my life. i figured a person like me was never supposed to be happy. happiness for teh shiny happy people. I could only feel artificial happiness. i knew i could only feel happiness if it wasn't real. If i knew it wasn't real. I had no friends. I had no family. I could trust that. Everyone left me. Everyone was selfish. Everyone wanted something or needed something and i could trust that. That was my jail. That was my sentence. I didn't know what i did but i knew i was born into it and i could survive within it.

i've been a terrible friend. i've been a terrible brother and son. I have to curse everyone out. I have to fight everyone. I've been a terrible employee. i've been living my entire life like i'm in prison and there's no way out. It's been frustrating.

the only way i've known how to escape is mentally: alcohol, drugs, sex. Every day i've waken up i've just wanted to scream. I walk down the street and i feel everyone watchign. I feel as if everyone making sure i don't escape. So i stay quiet. I disappear. I plot because i feel everyone is plotting against me.

So what does this say about waht i feel about God today? I felt god forsaken me and i never understood why. I've actually felt as if God hated me, wanted me to fail or was just setting me up to fail just to fuck with me. To give me just a little and then take it all away. Or if God gave me anything, I was just going to destroy like an ungrateful child.

i'm begining to realize my relationshiop with life has been like my relationship with God(universe), very tempermental. It begs the question, what would it take for me to forgive God. I i used to think to myself it would take money, fame, recognition, soberity but honestly, what is that i think i need to forgive god for? My life. What is it do i think God owes?

I used to be driven by anger and underneath the anger was loneliness. I thought god abadoned me a long time ago. I thought that before i decided with a whole heart if i believed in god or not.

Now that i'm older, wiser, i know that God has never abadone me, i abadoned God. I turned my back. I stopped living my purpose.

Day 2: The Purpose Driven Life

"You are not an accident"

Beginning day 2 in the purpose driven life it was nice to know that i'm not an accident. I first had some issues with accepting my mother and father. I always considered myself somewhat of a mistake or life as somewhat of a mistake given all the bullshit that happened to me in my childhood. It's very hard to accept or even consider that my rape, abuse, abadonment, more abuse, neglect was all for a reason. I didn't know if i could believe in that type of god.

chapter 2 in the purpose driven life talks about long before i was conceived by my parents, i was conceived in the mind of god. I decided to stick with my orginal train of thought and take the book philisophically rather than literal. There's so much bad shit going on in the world. The other day i read on the CNN website that some five year old kid was beaten and then burned alive. HE survived but would have to live the rest of his life with the scars:mentallly, phyiscally and spiritually. I think that child would always question god. I think that child when it's older will alway ask if god thought of him before he was born why didn't god protect him. Why doesn't God protect many of us?

I'm gay and wasn't the most masculine kid on my block, why didn't god protect me from the harassment? and now that i'm grown, i've been the victim of gay bashing a couple of times, why wasn't i protected? If god concieved of me before i was born, he obviously knew what i was going to be, so why is it the so called conversative christians always question thier own God?



I think the second chapter is more about trust, that no matter what man does with my life, my life was never an accident. I think God in itself it's not the pain or reaction of life, but life itself, how it doesn't discriminate, that there are no illegimate children. We are born. We didn't ask. We are born. It's the living that makes it hard. It's the living that tests faith. I think the second chapter gave me great insight to understand teh difference between god and man.

THe question i'm spposed to consider is "I know that God uniquely created me. Qhat ares of my personality, background, and physical appearace am i struggling with?"

As a black gay man borned in the ghetto, the answer should be simple. I don't think i ever struggled to accept my physical form and it's characteristics, I think it's always been faith. I don't ever think i considered myself or life an accident, i questioned the reasoning for some of the pain. I questioned why my father had to die or why did my mother get addicted to crack. I questioned the poverty.

I don't belive everything happens for a reason. I believe there's a difference between god and man. I no longer think of God as the details, like war or racisim, i think of God as the universe, that its big and getting bigger everyday and we're just specks of dust in it, none of it accidental.

This is love

This is love


That night on the streets
The lights dimmed
The folks didn’t call the cops
Didn’t know my selfish heart was so confrontational
But before that
On the dance floor
Something so real
Even if it’s ending
No one will ever love you like I loved you
Sometimes I think love is just fucking with me
Because love is god
The world can begin or the world can end
Life can having meaning or everything must end
Love is like accidental
You can bring it up with respect or you can drop it off like a coward
And never care how loved survived the abandonment
You can listen to the song on the radio
Or drink or drug until you pass out\
You can sex all night
Or asked for half of life

Some of us
love
getting high on
that chemistry with a sticky dollar bill
But it interacts with you
Your passiveness
It’s still loving you how they didn’t love you
And you must go back and correct the math
Correct the soul
In the clouds behind closed lids
Interacting and loving what you think you can’t love
Addiction
Pulling you under water like crocodile to a zebra that got to close
But it’s all love
Even if it’s the devil
But what if I choose heaven
Maybe we have the problems we have
Some things I do, make it clear
I love you
Some addictions are good
Because I’m not afraid of dying
Because I love you

Day 1: The Purpose Driven Life

The first sentence in the first chapter states “It’s not about you.” That made me laugh out loud. Supposedly it’s all about God. It’s not about my happiness, family or career but God.

I must admit, the first chapter confused me. If everything is about God and god’s plan, why the fuck does he need me? Am I just a rat in a maze teased by the smell of cheese so that I could bump in corners and hallways, so some scientist could document how long it took for me to figure out the puzzle for the prize? Why does God need anybody? If god knows all and sees all and already plan it before I was bored, wouldn’t that be boring? I mean if he knows all and see all; he’s going to know those who just going to say “Fuck you.”

I mean if god knew all , why didn’t he see the devil coming. The devil was once one of his best angels. And what about Eve. I mean didn’t he know Adam and Eve were going to eat that damn apple. Maybe god doesn’t know all and see all. I would think knowing what’s going to happen next would be so boring.

Which brings me back to why the first chapter in "the purpose driven life" pissed me off. I first had to decide if I believed in God and then I had to decide if God was an asshole. I mean I have no desire to spend eternity worshipping anybody. If god is that lonely, he should get a dog.

I decided god is not that lonely. Not my god. I think god is individual like I believe God isn’t taught, he or she is discovered. I don’t think you can teach anyone god. I think you can teach rules and rituals but that’s not God. Growing up we were made to go to church five times a day, eat the cracker and drink the wine, pray at night, but that didn’t teach me anything about god. It taught me that when I grew up the first thing I was going to cut out my life was church. I hated the ritual and all the hypocrisy. I hated that I couldn’t question anything.
Growing up I realized quickly that others exploited and manipulated the word of God for their own personal gain. If god was all knowing and seeing and I had questions, wouldn’t god allow me answers? I mean he knew I was going to question, since he was all knowing.

Funny, at the end of the first chapter the question I was asked to consider “In spite of all the advertising around me, how can I remind myself that life is really about living for God, not myself?”

I laughed because the book itself I figured was some form of advertisement for its own personal gain. At least that was my first impression. I wasn’t going to go into the book with fearing god or any of that bullshit. I was going to go into the book that if I believed my life was purposeful; I was interested in seeing how I could fulfill its meaning. I was ready to read more.

The Purpose Driven Life: The prequel

By no means am I religious. I’ve only been to a church in the last twenty years for a wedding or funeral. I only bought the book, “The purpose driven life” because a good drinking and drugging friend of mine suddenly decided one day to find Jesus. I’d known Myron since our freshman year in college. We spent the next ten years of our life cruising bars, clubs, bathhouses, drug dealers houses and etc. He was a great club friend, the type that would tie the rubber band around your arm to find a vein and shoot you up with the latest drug. One day he decided to get sober, which I thought meant he was just going to let the hard stuff go, but he meant actually sobriety, not even valium. Because we were friends for so long, I decided to entertain what I considered his latest phase like when he fell in love with ecstasy and xanyx.

I bought the book so that we could have something in common. I grew up on the bible so talking about God was nothing new to me. I was actually intrigued. I never considered Myron one-dimensional because I always enjoyed his intellect and humor, so I was excited to see where the new adventure would take us. But Myron wasn’t having it. He decided he was conservative Christian despite the fact he was gay. I knew underneath he was just trying to protect himself and his new decisions. Actually, my interest was only to discourage what I considered his newest annoyance. I wanted the old Myron back. I wanted the “fuck up” that made my life seem somewhat normal. We stopped speaking. Ten years of friendship gave us too many issues. That’s the thing about some friendships—the longer the relationship the more shit to be rehashed. “Remember when you did this, and I did that” bullcrap.

It very hard to forgive people you’ve known your entire life.

A year and something after I stopped speaking to Myron, I re-discovered “The purpose driven life;” mostly because I hate having books in my library that I haven’t read. I hate going to those people houses and they have books on their shelves and when you ask them about them, they haven’t read them. I refuse to buy books I don’t read. Every book on my shelf I’ve read from cover to cover and if I like it, it goes in my reference collection to be quoted and re-read.

Anyways, beginning the “purpose driven life” beget a question I hadn’t considered seriously in a long time. I had to ask myself, did I actually believe in God. I knew I didn’t believe in my childhood God, or heaven or hell. I got over that the first time I sucked dick. I had to ask myself did I believe in God which mean life had purpose. I used to be very dark. Very dark where life was just fucking meaningless. I read every existential book. I wore black. I constantly fantasized about my death. I remember making the decision in my head that I was just going to piss my life away. I wasn’t going to do anything with it. I was just going to get high, have sex and fun. That seems romantic when you’re twenty two years old. Turning thirty years old and surviving my twenties gave me a different perspective on life. Just having fun suddenly seemed stupid. Anyways, I had to ask myself if I believe in God. I thought about the big bang theory. I thought about evolution. I thought about Adam and Eve. I thought about the trees and wind and the human body and how it all seemed so specific and planned. I couldn’t ignore the sun rises for a reason. I couldn’t ignore the purpose of bees and ants and even the germs on my body that I can’t see. I couldn’t ignore purpose. That everything on this planet in one form or another has purpose. And if there was a purpose, meant there was an intelligent mind behind it, that someone planned this. That someone decided it. I knew I wasn’t an atheist. I grew up a church boy, there was no way I can ever be an atheist.

Indirectly I believed in God. Which mean indirectly my life had some purpose? That was new. I never even thought of my life having any purpose. Yet intellectually I couldn’t deny the fact I wasn't0 exempt if 99% of life on this planet in some small or big way had purpose. The wind blew despite the fact if I wanted to feel it on my face or not. So if my life had purpose, I needed to figure out what that was.

I knew part of me would have a difficult time digesting some of the crap written about the bible. And I’ve read ever self-help book on the shelves at Borders, so I knew it probably wouldn’t tell me anything I already didn’t know but I was up for the challenge.

The book begins with I must take forty days out of my life and read each chapter and process it slowly and sincerely. I knew I wasn’t going to take forty days to read a book. But I did decide to dedicate individual blogs for each chapter. I call it my purpose driven blog.

Now that I know I believe in God, the first chapter is “It all Starts with God”

The worse day ever

Yesterday was probably the worse day ever. I went to the doctor for an inner ear infection. This is were speaking up for youself is important. I told the bitch I might be allergic to Batrim but she prescribed it anyway. The last time I took Batrim I was in the hospital for a two weeks. It wasn't for sure if it was Batrim that turned my eyes bloody red or the infection or whatever. I just know, the second i swallowed that pill my temp rose like five degreess and then finally to 106.

I don't know why i didn't listen to myself yesterday. I don't know why i didn't push the issue. I know my body not my Doctor. I took that pill again and spend the last twenty four hours in agony, again. My head was spinning, my eyes turn bloody red, i got such a massive fucking headache i thought my head was going to explode, my breathing slowed down, my temp rose to a 103.

I'm still suffering the side effects. But the lesson is to speak up for myself. Authority figures don't know it all. Just because she wore a white coat didn't mean i should allow the bitch to kill me.

But as i lay in agony like a year ago when i laid in that hospital bed, i discovered there's a lot about my life i need to change. I was alone going through the agony. Tom was there but he barely paid attention. He probably just thought i was being dramatic. Whatever.

New

I woke up this morning feeling new. My therapy is going great. I don't know why it took me so long to get help. I guess growing up a baptist boy in church five times a week i thought all i needed was Jesus.

The main reason i dediced to get help in the first place was because of Hurrican Katrina. I'm from Lousianna. I know that poverty. I know that racism. Shit, help never came quick enough in the ghetto. I wasn't surprised by the goverment response. Part of me wanted all those n****** to drown. I figured the world would be better off because i only felt the ugliness of the crackheads, drug dealers, welfare moms, gangbangers, thieves, hustlers, just the fucking poor.

Funny, i used to be one of them. Funny, i'm still one of them, i get foodstamps. But that was self hate. That was a past i still haven't healed from. That was from growing up in the ghetto and feeling worthless. I had to face my dark skin and nappy hair and love it and see humanity. I had to face my own blackness watching Katrina and not allow rationalization to make me turn away. I had to face all the uncles and cousins in prison. I had to face my mother who is a crack whore. I had to face my father who was drug dealer. I had to face the desperation of too many poor black people in this country. I had to face slavery, segregation and oppression and not allow it to take my heart again, not this time. I had to help. I sent money. I still send money when possible. It's not much, five dollars, sometimes twenty, but i also send my heart and tears and prayers. I keep talking about it until we're all free.

I've been thinking alot about my past. Why i am the way i am. I remember screaming at my sister, "I CAN ONLY TELL YOU HOW I GOT HERE." I now can tell everyone where i'm going.

My life has been full of so much self hate. So much destruction. I got out the ghetto but didn't go very far. I got out the ghetto but my soul stayed behind. That soul that was told he was too dark, too smart, got his ass kicked for wearing the wrong colors in the wrong neighborhood. That soul that had to grow up with a mother who prostituted herself for drugs and then abadonened. That soul that got hard and wouldn't let anybody in, not sexually, not emotionally, not nothing. That soul that walked around the earth with his fists balled. I thought that was how i was going ot get into heaven, with my fists balled. I don't know why it took me so long to get help.

I thought i was prepared for life. I was just prepared to survive at any means necessary. That's not a life. I was prepared to hustle, steal or whatever to get to the next second. I was prepared for instant gratification. And then add in gay.

You see the thing about trouble kids they are always looking for some validation for their pain. They usually want to be models or actors or something in the spotlight to rationalize in order to believe in God. As if God owes them. I used to believe God owed me. I owe God for this life. It's the living that makes us forget.

I think in the beginning the only reason i wanted to be a writer was for the fame. I wanted the attention. I got a book published. I sold like sixty comics, but it wasn't enough. I wanted more attention. I wanted more money. I didn't realize i was that empty. And the more attentino i got the more destructive i behaved.

There's a movie called "El Cantate" with Marc Anthony and it spoke to me. It's when Jennifer Lopez said, "The more love Hector got, the more he sanked into his sadness. It was as if he couldn't feel it or want to feel it. I guess the sadness was too deep."

I understood what she meant. I never had the words before but i had that same sadness. It was a moment i was stuck in. It was that childhood quicksand i fell I was pushed into with being raped at five, abandoned by mother crack head mother at eight, foster care and then the neglect and physically and emotional abuse i would endure because daddy was dead and mama didn't care anymore. That sadness, quicksand, was thick and unforgiving, and more love people showed me made my heart heavier and it sunk me more. I decided if i rebelled agains the love, i feel lighter. i wouldn't have to struggle because the more you struggle in quicksand the faster you sink.


It's hard not worshipping the wound. The sadness is the quicksand. I've been in it for a long time. Trying not to move or breath. Getting high to forget that i was drowning. Not calling for help because being ashamed that i was pushed into the quicksand. And the more people tried to save me, the more i rebelled or pulled them in. some of them saved themseves. Most of them save themselves and left me. They couldn't understand. The quicksand was the only home i knew, and i was going to give it up so easily. They couldn't understand so they yelled at me, they tried to punish me, they stopped speaking to me, they ran away, they shook thier heads, they read thier bible verses, they promised to pray for me, they tried to love me, but i kept sinking and that made them frustrated.

the thing about that sadness is was stubborn. The thing about that sadness it stop trusting a long time ago and i called it home. It was the only home i knew. I wasn't going to leave it so easily. Ironically the sadness gave me protection. It was how i was suriving. The older i got in that quicksand the more lonely it got. Soon i was alone. I was alone. Nobody but the darkness and the cold nights and the addiction. Everyone had given up.

But sometimes we have to leave home to grow up. I didn't want to spend my entire life a child. I wanted to be part of the world. I wanted to see more than beyond my block. Funny again, I thought when i left San Antonio Texas, i got out of the ghetto. I thought because i've been all over the US and overseas, i did more than many in my family. Yet, my heart never left the ghetto. My heart never left the quicksand.

I ask myself, how does one rebuild the ghetto. You don't. You uplift. You educate. You inform. You give people choices. You get some in therapy. You tell the story.

I woke up this morning feeling "new." I'm finally in thirty years telling myself the truth. I'm in fucking quicksand and if i don't get out, a bitch is going to drown, die, stop existing. And nobody can save me but me. Funny, the entire time, a fucking tree had been leaning over my head. I thought it was just shade. All i had to do was reach up and pull myself out. I don't know what i was waiting for. I know what i was waiting for. I was waiting for it to love me. It's never going to love me. I was going to have to redefine love. The love i knew was going to let me die without my life having any meaning. The quicksand would've let me die. I wasn't ready to die.

I don't want to be a writer anymore because of love, fame or attention. Shit nobody reads the blog except for like five people. I want to be a writer because i get to tell the story. I want to be a writer because it's my soul. I want to be a writer because it's how i'm saving myself, therefore, it's my proliferation. Somebody will be reborn again because of my words.

I trust myself, that's new. I'm out the quicksand, that's new. I'm learning to be careful. I don't want to go back.

Now I must face the wreckage. Being in quicksand for thirty years takes its toll on the body and mind and spirit. I must learn how to love again. I must teach the world who i am now. I know it'going to be difficult and lonely. That's why i asked GOD for LIGHT. I can tell you where i've been and now i can tell you where i'm going. I'm walking out the jungle. I walking towards the sea. I'm going to build me a new home where the sun rises. I'm going to live by the light.

Silence

I've been sleeping alot. I think i'm gathering up strength. I don't go out as much as i used to. I don't drink as much as i used to. I don't feel the need.

All i need now is silence. I asked God for light. that was a mistake. i just wanted to know why i had been fumbling around in the darkness for so long go every direction but the right way.

I asked God for light, and got a flash. I saw the road ahead of me. It was more like climbing a mountain. I suddenly felt like Sympus. I read that book by John Camus, loved it. My favorite line "there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."

Why do we do anything. Why get up in the morning. Actually, two years ago i tried to kill myself. It was the sixth time. But two years ago was the worse. I still have scars. Two years ago one day i just didn't feel like getting up anymore. I didn't call in to work. I stopped paying all my bills. I just laid in the bed for like five months. I just walked away from all of it. Of course i regretted it.

That's the thing about suicide they don't tell you about. It's what if you fail. What if you get to that point and change your mind. It's hard coming back because you know rock bottom. Suicide was like accepting my death. It was so beautiful. But not dying is like figuring out why to live.

After the last suicide attempt i became very afraid of me. I gave up. I knew i could give up again. It makes it harder to rebuild knowing another storm may be in the new future. I guess you can compare my last suicide attempt to Huricane Katrina. It's not just the storm that happened in New Orleans and its devastation its how to rebuild the ghetto. Can one rebuild the ghetto? Isn't the ghetto the very essence of devastation and poverty. That's the real issue with New Orleans nobody is talking about and when i think of my last suicide, it's like how can i rebuild a broken soul. The storm was only the symptom. The storm only brought attention to what was already brewing.

Maybe that's what i'm most afraid of, that my soul is the ghetto and what happens if another storm comes into town.

So i dedicate this to silence.

Day 2 of light

I asked god for light and i still acted up. Am i that hopeless or helpless. That voice in my head started acting up again yesterday and i listen to it. I didn't have any money but yet i found somebody to buy me liqour. what the hell is wrong with me.

The last fuck up standing.

I’m not sure if that’s the title I want to bear but it’s the truth. Back in college and afterwards, I was surrounded by other fuck ups. We went to the bars and clubs six days week. When did recreational drugs. We constantly complained about how our lives weren’t coming together.

Friend by Friend got into rehab or found religion or became really great liars. We each became liabilities to each other. We used to be each other’s family: myron, edcoco, Miguel, paul, mita, Sha, Crystal, Curtis. I mean these kids had problems. Myron family hated him. Always hated him. He was so ignored. He grew up to go to college, get his masters and sustain a very expensive cocaine and ectasy problem. He used to be one of my best drinking buddies along with Johanthn. WE used to call ourselves “Trash.” We even got t-shirts.

I remember when Edcoc was in the free clinic every other weekend. I got tired of going with him. He always had something. He always called me over to his apartment and asked me what this or that was or if he should do something about it. They all used to call me if they got sent to jail or got in a fight or needed to find whatever drug dealer in whatever city.

I remember when Sha became a stripper. I knew she only did because Cyrstal had been stripping all throughout college. I didn’t like Crystal. I found her ghetto. She liked men who beat her. She also loved her cocaine. We all loved our cocaine. She kept her’s in a vile she wore around her neck like she seen in the mover Dangerious Liasons. Crystal was the type of girl who didn’t like to wake up sober. She kept drugs on her nightstands to do when she woke up in the morning. I loved her for that. I just didn’t like her attitude.

Sha became a stripper. Such a typical tragic girl looking for a man in all the wrong places. She loved men like her father. The men she grew up knowing that cheated on her mother and then abandoned them. She never dealt with her childhood rape. She grew up to like the liquor. She was also the coolest in the group. I love Sha the most because she was an abandoned child like me. I thought we had more in common. I never thought she would become a conversative housewife after the stripping career ended.

And then there was poor, sad, pathetic curtis. I’m still pissed at him, so I will say nothing more but fuck that bastard.

There was a time I only hung with the strippers, escorts, drug dealers, addicts, alcoholics, but all that had to change. We got older. We grew up. We started looking at each other as liablities. First there was my Sister and suddenly I was any good anymore. Then curtis who told me that night in the grocery store when I vomited in the baby aisle and thought it was funny because I was high that I was pathetic. And he meant it.

I’m the last fuck up standing. Maybe I was too loyal. Maybe I didn’t get the memo that I was to report to Rehab. I tried going out into the world and getting more fuck-ups but my heart wasn’t into any more. I also didn’t like what I called the “shiny happy” people. The normal people. People I reblled against. People I told myself I would never become. But things change. The rules change. It hurts. I couldn’t go out in the world and get more fuck-ups because it’s like trying to recreate Woodstock. Those things, clikques, only happen once in a life time. I couldn’t recreate it. That’s when real addiction begins. It’s when the people you used to party with begin to disappear and you’re still at the party dancing on the dance floor by yourself. Maybe I needed it more. Maybe I wanted it more. Maybe I still need to make it make sense.

I’m the last fuck up standing from the class of fuck-ups from 1996-2007. Thad went to jail. Will got killed by his boyfriend. Frederick went to jail. Gaylon died in a car crash. Mita died. Rick died of an overdose. It’s just what happened.

And when I’m out now, I see the new ones. The new class of fuck-ups. They don’t know it yet because they’re drinking they techno-colored drinks, dancing, fucking, thinking they have all the time in the world. But when it’s over, they will come looking for me. Like I went looking for Tim, the ex-drug dealer party boi, like I how I found Emanuel Xaxier, how I found those people who would allow me to have peace with my past.

So dance baby, dance the night away. I’m baking cookies so when you get tired of dancing, we can talk.

The beginning of accepting the wreckage

After my much to do about nothing rants for the last two weeks I started thinking about chances. We always pray to god when we figure out world is going right asking for another chance. I’ve been asking for chances for years. I’m on like my one millionth second chance; but last night I decided to do something different. I didn’t ask for another chance. I was referring to the fact I missed out on a very important job last week because I didn’t check my email or phone messages because I went on an alcoholic binge and drug rant. I missed out on that job that one paycheck would’ve got me back on my feet with my bills. I’m really pissed about that.

So last night I asked god for light. I asked god for some common sense. A year from now my life will be completely different. I will either be dead, homeless or free. Those are the only choices. It’s funny how life really hits that fork road in choices that you either die or live. I know I stopped living a long time ago. But that’s another subject. A subject that will aptly be called “Wreckage” in the future. I know longer care about becoming the best seller writer extradoinare. Last week I was watching the movie “El Cantante” with Mark Anthony. It was a pretty good movie but the story about Hector Lavoe was just sad. I decided I didn’t want a life I didn’t get. I didn’t want a life where you supposedly get everything: money, fame, legacy but you don’t get sanity. I wasn’t going to be one of those artist boozing and drugging my life away and everyone after I die say how brilliant yet tragic I was, that used to be romantic to me, now it’s just sad. It’s sad not to get your own life, your own brilliance, your own purpose.

So I asked God for light.

A year from now I will not be Dead or Homeless, but I will be enlightened. I will be on my own in my own apartment. I will still be trying to get it together. And I’m not afraid of the loneliness that comes with getting healthy.

I asked God for light because I no longer wanted to act like the victim or as if I don’t know consequences. Life is just a bunch of choices and some of them lead us in the wrong direction that we’re lost for years. I’m in the dessert, I know that. I’ve made a LOT of bad decisions. I’ve been fumbling around in the dark like I could feel my way to salvation. I should’ve asked for a damn flashlight a long time ago.

I write this not for my self, but for you, you who will come looking like I did when I started asking questions and couldn’t find answers. You are not alone.

Writer in Exile day whatever: let there be light

This little light of mine
i'm going to let it shine.