8/29/2008
8/27/2008
The Devil Inside
Perfect Catch or Pure Evil?
What if you had to figure out if your next date is the perfect catch or pure evil?
Kordell is a respected businessman. Mario is a childhood friend who reappears out of the blue. The two get along great, but Mario's memory is a little hazy, his behavior a little strange, and his dark secrets linked to a bizarre world that could become the gay community's worst nightmare (if you haven't read it, don't ask. If you have read it, don't tell).
Is Mario a dream lover or date from hell?
Should Kordell risk his business, his friends and his life to unravel the mystery?
They both have 72 hours to figure out who has the devil inside.
A Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Science-FictionA Gaylactic Spectrum Awards nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel
Critical Praise for The Devil Inside
"A wild ride into the thicket of political issues and psychological thrills. Boyd juggles his over-the-top plot with energy, glee, and ease. A highly satisfying roller-coaster-read of a book." Q Syndicate Book Marks
"Boyd carves out his characters like a sculptor. An excellent mystery from a terrific writer." 365Gay.com
"A taut thriller, loaded with fantastic twists, turns, and a cast of characters you won't soon forget. A page turner that will keep you guessing right to the end." The Texas Triangle
"A riveting, Hollywood-style thriller. The most refreshing part? For a change, the two heroes aren't white. Kordell is an African-American with AIDS, and Mario is, of course, Latino. A third major character is Japanese. Quite a nifty twist to your routine gay male adventure novel, making this a must summer read." The Letter (Louisville, KY)
"A psychotic little pulp novel about Kordell Christie, a square gay businessman who becomes part of a mystery that involves mind control, a bad man named Pizarro, and a place called the Facility where there are drug-enhanced masturbation machines." Unzipped Magazine
8/25/2008
Update from the Unlovable Nigger Faggot
Dear Therapist,Been a while since I had to sit on your couch and get your help shrinking my head down to a manageable size, but I guess that was the point of my coming to you in my early twenties. So I could get some help figuring out how to manage on my own.
I first sat on your couch as a 24-year-old, recent UCLA grad and told you: “I need help with my self-esteem.” For the next several years, you were there for me as needed, like an athlete's trainer.
At the time, I felt like the ugliest, most “unlovable nigger faggot about to die of AIDS unless he finds a man to be his miraculous cure-all” in the whole wide world. And then some.
As it turns out, I found neither the man nor the cure, but I did find myself, a miraculous
discovery in its own right. I also found a way to keep living and dreaming, even while doing so as my generation's worst nightmare: death by AIDS.You helped in tremendous ways. Thank you. But there was one question you often put to me for which I had no answer. “You must be doing something wrong,” you pondered aloud when I droned on about my loveless love life, “what is it that you're doing that makes you always single?”
After further review, the 46-year-old former patient has the answer.
What I was doing wrong was living under the false assumption that the people of my
generation--my peers, my classmates, my co-workers, the guys at the gym, the clubs, the bar--I was living under the false impression that they were open to falling in love with someone like me.Which me? Let me put it this way: when's the last time you heard anyone say, “I just need to find the right black gay guy with AIDS to settle down with?”
The hetero-identified see me as some pre-conceived, negative stereotype of “black” and “fag,” and couldn't care less about my romantic dreams. The homo-identified pretty much follow suit.
A lifetime of personal experience dictates: 85% of all gay men, regardless of race, don't date black men, which means 85% of all gay men, regardless of race, have pre-judged every black man alive, sight-unseen, as not worthy of love or sex, which means 85% of all gay men have already pre-determined my worth before knowing I even exist.To 85% of all available males, I'm neither a good catch nor a bad catch. I'm black, which in their minds means I don't even warrant consideration. I'm an invisible man living an invisible life. Most of the gay men around me refuse to even look my way.
"Not every single gay man is racist and AIDS-phobic, right?"
Quite visible, however, is the blatant prejudice of 85% of all gay men, regardless of race. Thanks to the digital world, that hatred is preserved in countless online profiles that reveal a truth many black men have suspected for decades: most gay men, regardless of race, are racists against blacks.Log on and behold the evidence: the infinite variations of phrases like WHITES ONLY, WHITES AND LATINS ONLY, NO BLACKS, NO ASIANS--it's all there for anyone to witness, quantify and study. The river of hatred runs deep. De facto segregation is alive and well in the hearts and minds of many a gay man.
And then there's AIDS. There was a time when the gay community reacted to the pandemic with compassion, a time when so many of us were infected, we had little choice other than banning together. That time
has passed. Now, like the rest of the world, the gay world treats AIDS like leprosy and people with AIDS like lepers.Never mind the fact one can have a healthy, safe-sex life with someone HIV-positive. For many, the preferred method of safe sex has become: avoid anyone who isn't “clean” and “disease-free” (online phrases as popular as “whites only.”)
Where does that leave a black man who was disease-ridden before some nervous gay guy coined the term “disease-free?”
"To walk in America as a black homosexual living with HIV/AIDS is to walk in hostile territory."
me, personal experience dictates: of the gay men who date black men, 90% (or more) of those men are self-described “bottoms” looking to be “topped” by a big black Mandingo dick (attached human being optional).As if the sole worth of a black man is his penis and its ability to morph into a dominant, mindless pummeling tool.
Cultural implications of this near-sighted fantasy aside, that's not me. Simple as that. Where does that leave a black man who has zero interest in playing Mandingo?
None of the above factors make me single. They just make not being single all the more
challenging, especially when one is a young, hopeful black man full of headstrong ideas about finding love and living some kind of American Dream. Truth is, in the sea of life, very few humans even consider dating and loving someone who's black, HIV-positive and not a big black Mandingo machine.For me, the pool of available men is miniature. The odds of finding a good catch are downright infinitesimal. And that's before getting to the compatibly round, where two people discover what, if anything, they have in common.
"Very few eyes are open to dreaming of or caring about someone with my credentials."
the “deadly virus” that first rocked our world when we were sexually-active young people.Never before have I been so aware that the fear, hatred and ignorance comes from both heterosexuals and homosexuals. To walk in America as a black homosexual living with HIV/AIDS is to walk in hostile territory and feel that hostility in some way every signal day.
As a young adult, I was foolish and naïve enough to think that as I made my way through the world, I was being evaluated on my own merits, looks, accomplishments, smile, hopes and dreams.
Turns out, I was being evaluated by narrow minds that have yet to consider dreaming with me at
all. Those minds were, and still are, for the most part, minds that view me through their own preconceived notions of blacks, gays and persons with HIV.Didn't mention it much during my time on your couch (too busy dealing with AIDS!), but my childhood was violent and lonely. The world outside wasn't a much better place. Like most teens with faggy tendencies in the 70s, I had zero social life, limited social learning and no “BFF” to help work out life's equations. Ditto for college.
A month after college, the AIDS bomb exploded within, infecting all
social and sexual development in my twenties and thirties. Like most gay men, I was just trying to survive the war until medical reinforcements arrived in the late 90s.Cut to my late forties, the only real time I've had to breathe and work out who I am. Now that the air has cleared, I see the surrounding landscape with clarity.
I grew up dreaming the dreams of the kids my age, equally schooled on life, love and romance by the Brady Bunch, Happy Days, etc. Like
a good little boy, I thought that I, too, could play the game of love and all the rules would apply to me. I thought that I, too, had a fair and equal shot at the American Love Dream, especially if I brought out the best in myself, inside and out.But that was not the case. That was never the case. My male peers, the candidates for my affections, most of them dismissed the possibility of me before ever laying eyes on me.
Sure, some of them only look at women that way. But some of
them look at women and men. And some of them only look at men.Many eyes may notice me. Who wouldn't take note of a tall black man in one's line of sight? But now I understand: very few eyes are open to dreaming of or caring about someone with my credentials.
I'm happy to say I've been cured of the false assumptions of my youth. Now I walk through the
world with a realistic view of the way many, if not most, Americans feel about another American who happens to be black, gay and living with HIV/AIDS.The truth angers and frustrates me but it also empowers me, like an athlete who better understands the rules of the game. Now I look in the mirror and see a much different person than the world sees. I see a beautiful boy. I see an amazing man. I see courage and strength beyond my deepest imagining. Best of all, I see a head that fits perfectly on my shoulders.
8/20/2008
Interview with Poet Essex Hemphill (1957-1995)
The year was 1992. Those of us living with HIV/AIDS had no real hope of surviving on anything but sheer will and determination. Some of us were pouring out our hearts with words. Some of us were just trying to live another day. Essex Hemphill was a man doing both. An acclaimed poet, Hemphill granted a fledgling reporter an interview on a sunny afternoon one brief moment in time, opening up about topics as diverse as the controversial movie Basic Instinct, white men's obsession with the black penis, and the idea that Madonna pirated her Vogue act from a marginalized community. At the time, both the poet and the reporter were living with the virus. Only one of them made it to the 21st century.I have no idea why Essex didn't survive and the reporter did, but I feel privileged to present and digitally preserve that interview, as published in the July 3, 1992, issue of Frontiers magazine (thank you, editor David Kalmansohn). Energies live on.
Ceremonies and Young Men
Interview with Essex Hemphill
His honesty is brutal. No time for shame. The intensity of his fluid images has led people like Martin Duberman to compare him to “an Old Testament prophet exhorting us with ethical passion.” A one-time National Endowment for the Arts fellowship recipient who now lives in Philadelphia, Essex Hemphill has authored two books of poetry, Earth Life and Conditions, as well as editing Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men, stepping in when original editor Joseph Beam died.
His new book, Ceremonies (Plume, $10), is solely and purely Essex. It represents the culmination of his rise as a major player in the black and gay literary worlds. Through poetry and prose, he tackles urban life and the black gay experience, from straight homeboys having sex with white men to Robert Mapplethorpe objectifying the black man's penis. It's a collection that doesn't mince words. At 35, Essex Hemphill doesn't have time to mince words. He's HIV-positive.Boyd: One of your running themes is making the black gay man a visible entity in the black and gay communities. Has that happened yet?
Hemphill: It's happening and it's been a long time coming. In a literary sense, it's happening in
a tremendous way, the numbers of [black] men who are for the first time struggling with creating poems or fiction of their experiences. And this is all in the context of confronting AIDS and the deaths around us. It's almost like a fierce resistance that says, “Before I die, I'm going to say these things.” That's why Brother to Brother picking up the Lambda Literary Award [for best gay anthology] wasn't an award for me to take sole satisfaction in. It's an award that goes to 37 men who were willing to come forth, [even] posthumously. We're trying to say everything we can.
Boyd: To what do you attribute the creative explosion?
a tremendous way, the numbers of [black] men who are for the first time struggling with creating poems or fiction of their experiences. And this is all in the context of confronting AIDS and the deaths around us. It's almost like a fierce resistance that says, “Before I die, I'm going to say these things.” That's why Brother to Brother picking up the Lambda Literary Award [for best gay anthology] wasn't an award for me to take sole satisfaction in. It's an award that goes to 37 men who were willing to come forth, [even] posthumously. We're trying to say everything we can.Hemphill: You can sit back and see that the momentum has been building. The motivation is to represent ourselves. We're still hungry. I'm hungry still. I know that's why I write and keep writing.
"The protest around [Basic Instinct] was misdirected. The argument needed to be larger than just the representation of lesbians."Boyd: You've said that in gay culture, blacks are mostly looked upon as “the big black dick,” and you've called for blacks to return to the black community from whence they came instead of trying to be part of a gay community that never wanted them in the first place. Are you suggesting blacks separate themselves?
Hemphill: [He laughs.] Not necessarily. The return I call for is so we can do the work that no one else can do for us. The white lesbian and gay community can't come in and interrogate our black churches about the homophobia. We have to do that. We're already singing in the choirs, we're already on the usher boards, but then to accept homophobic diatribes from the podium ... I'm not expecting the white community to interrogate black intellectuals, writers and cultural activists about their homophobia. We have to do that first, and the only way we're going to do that is to really consider and understand how important that home space is for us.
Boyd: So black gays need to break the silence in their own black communities?
Hemphill: First and foremost. It's crazy and rude and wrong to expect white people to do that for us.
Boyd: Most would agree to the principle that the more united gays are, the more powerful they become. Can black and white gays unite yet remain individual?
Hemphill: Let me give you a parallel: I went to see Basic Instinct--
Boyd: Did you pay for it?
Hemphill: And I paid for it and rightfully so because [the issue continues to come up]. And I was disappointed. I think the protest around it was misdirected. The argument needed to be larger than just the representation of lesbians. It needed to be, “We're sick and tired of the representation of women coming out through Hollywood and the popular media—period.” Then we have the potential to work with numbers of communities that are also sick and tired, be it lesbian women, black women, working-class women. That's your protest. That's the way we have to begin to deal with each other.
Boyd: In the title story in Ceremonies, you talk about the oppression you faced from your so-called straight black friends. What advice would you give to a black kid who is facing that same kind of homophobic bravado you endured?Hemphill: I'd give him In the Life, Tongues Untied, The Road Before Us, ... that's what this is all about. Joseph [Beam] talked about making ourselves from scratch. There's not been a precedent in history for this time, not just for us as black gay people but for any of us moving through lesbian and gay and bisexual experience and politics. All of us are constructing lineage and antecedents from various places. because the silence has been so deep and unyielding, we really represent the beginning of it all, the beginning of no masks, from Stonewall forward, and each decade we're throwing away more masks.
Boyd: Speaking of no masks, you're very open about your HIV status.
Hemphill: One has to be, I think, to a certain extent.
Boyd: How has that made your life different?
Hemphill: It's been more internal than external for me: How do I date, how do I fuck, how do still see myself as being worthy and beautiful, yet I'm infected?
Boyd: How do you negotiate all that?
Hemphill: It's ongoing. It's something I haven't even begun to really articulate yet. At the most I've come forth in the public space and said, “Yes, I am too,” and I've said that because other men have come forth. Joseph [Beam] already showed us one way, and that's not the way I want to go, with the secrecy—though I don't judge him for that.
Some of [my dealing with HIV] has been leveling it, so I'm not out there all psychotic and crazy, you know, “I”m gonna die in a minute, move out of the way.” No, it's just one more thing, dear, and you will live. You just have to pay more attention. You can't run out every night and suck up all the liquor in the bar and drag home every boy. Not that you ever needed to be doing all those things—but we have our moments.
Boyd: How is your health?
Hemphill: It's pretty good. I've had mild disturbances, but I've been fortunate so far, and that is the qualifier: so far.
Boyd: Is there anyone special in your life?
Hemphill: There's things happening in the air. [He laughs.] I am trying to be happily married. I'm not tired of being alone; I rather like alone. I've always been a loner so I have no problem keeping myself busy. But there are intimacies I want to share with another person.
“'Oh, I want to suck your big nigger dick.' Who the fuck wants to hear that?"Boyd: In Ceremonies, you criticize Madonna for pirating voguing, for not crediting black gays. But hasn't she already done a lot for blacks and gays in her act?
Hemphill: But that's just an act. That's just window dressing.
Boyd: What should she have done?
Hemphill: I don't know what she should have done, other than acknowledge more forthrightly that, “I've taken this from this transgressive community composes of Puerto Ricans and blacks who see themselves marginalized in society.”
Boyd: Most artists don't credit the people they steal from.
Hemphill: But Madonna's not like most artists. Madonna's a white artist who's appropriated and pillage from a marginalized culture and there's a long history of that already and that's what's hard to reckon with. Think about the fact that nobody black benefits from all the Billie Holiday [records] we buy because Billie Holiday left no black heirs. So what does Columbia doe with that money? I don't hear them saying, “We set up a program specifically under her name for the black colleges or the music schools in this country.” There's an accountability, that's all I'm challenging.
Boyd: You've criticized the late Robert Mapplethorpe for lopping the heads off black men in his photos, thereby presenting the black man as a mindless sexual object. Would you have been satisfied if he had included faces?
Hemphill: I would have probably challenged it less. He for me represents how I interacted with the white gay community, even in the bathhouse situation, having to hear, “Oh, I want to suck your big nigger dick.” Who the fuck wants to hear that?
Boyd: Are there any white artists our there who do the black man justice?
Hemphill: That's a good question given that I've been more concerned with black art. I guess I'm already doing the very thing I'm articulating—turning my gaze inward, back onto us—so that's cutting out a certain level of concern about other people's representations of us.
Boyd: Are you optimistic about the future?
Hemphill: It's incredible to think about being alive. I'm thankful for every day I get up, every day I affirm myself when I awaken—which doesn't mean that I rush to the mirror and say, “I'm here,” but it's a deeper affirmation that I give myself.
It's wonderful meeting this [new influx of black artists]. It's witnessing many of the things I did not know would come to pass. This work we've been doing is having an impact. It's inspiring. It's getting people to stop and think.
- Randy Boyd is five-time Lambda Literary Award finalist and the author of Walt Loves the Bearcat, the epic sports novel, and three other books. In addition, Randy's fiction has appeared in Blackfire magazine, as well as the following anthologies: Certain Voices (Alyson Books); Flesh and the Word 2 (Plume); Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS (Other Countries); Flashpoint (Masquerade Books), MA-KA: Diasporic Juks (Sister Vision); and Freedom in this Village: Black Gay Men's Writing 1969 to the Present (Carroll & Graf). His nonfiction has been featured in the Indiana Word, Frontiers, Au Courant, The Washington Blade, The James White Review, The Gay and Lesbian Review, The Lambda Book Report, BeyondChron.com and the anthology Friends and Lovers: Gay Men Write About the Families They Create (Dutton). Randy is also a contributor to Outsports.com and the publications of the Black AIDS Institute.
Essex Hemphill on Wikipedia
Essex Hemphill on Poets.org
Tribute to Essex Hemphill
Books by Essex Hemphill on Amazon.com
8/15/2008
So I Thought I Could Dance
Half a lifetime ago, in a whole other galaxy known as college, I was a two-sport participant for four of my five years. I gave my all on the football field and basketball court every single game; I worked my ass off in practice, and made a concerted effort (most of the time) to be a model student, all for two different major universities. Two crosstown rivals, in fact. Perhaps you've heard of them, USC and UCLA?What positions did my 6'3”, 200 pound black ass play? Cheerleader.
That's right. I was a cheerleader for both USC (1980-82) and UCLA (1983-85). As far as I know, it's a distinction held only by myself and the late great Lindley Bothwell, the longtime Trojan Yell God of the 20th century. Yep, that's me on the sideline when Marcus Allen of USC romps away with the Heisman. That's me again on the baseline when Reggie Miller of UCLA wins the NIT in New York. That little black head you see is me, a cheerleader who was constantly mistaken for a football or basketball player, even when surrounded by the other members of the (mostly-white) cheerleading squad. If I had a buck for each time a stranger assumed I was on the team, only to laugh in my face after learning I was a cheerleader, I'd be one very rich black ex-cheerleader.
How I became interested in cheerleading is a story I recreated for my novel, Walt Loves the Bearcat, the tale of a lifelong romance between a college cheerleader and quarterback who becomes the first out superstar athlete. The Bearcat—that's the cheerleader, he's telling his buddy about the day he became fascinated—we've got a clip? Cool. Roll clip ...Ah, what a sweet clip. Well, anyway, the seed was planted, and since I was the youngest kid in a sports family, I had plenty of chances to watch cheerleaders. But in a black family in 1970s Indianapolis, a young black boy dreaming of being a cheerleader was not a dream well received. It was more—we have another clip? What a coincidence, roll it!“You know how I first became interested in cheerleading?” asked Bear. “I was seven. My parents wanted to get us out of the inner city to a better school system, so they moved us here. On the day of the move, the rest of the family left me and my sister here to wait for a delivery. My sister was 12 and excited about junior high cheerleader tryouts. We were right here in this empty room in this empty house for hours. She taught me the cheers she was learning at tryouts. That’s all I needed. An empty space, my sister’s dream, my sister and me. From that moment on, I became conscious of cheerleaders at every sporting event. Cut to me now, back where it all started.”
“So I have your sister to thank,” said Walter. “If she hadn’t shared her dream, you might have never become mine.”
So I was primed for college cheerleading, right? Wrong! In college, I had to learn a whole new technique: cheering like a man (pause for laughter). Roll clip!Bear Coleman’s cheerleader dream had been born in his formative years, and had seeped out around his family and caused countless hours of commotion. As a young boy, he would watch sporting events on TV, and during appropriate moments, including timeouts, he would cheer because that’s what cheerleaders did. His two basketball brothers, both older, gave him hell for it until he put the dream back in the bottle of his imagination, knowing he would uncork that bottle at a big-time school someday.
By college, cheerleading was as natural to Bear as sitting at home and watching a sporting event. Now, unlike his brothers, he had been involved in big-time games between big-time schools; he had traveled the country; and most importantly to everyone back home, all it took was a half-second shot of his small Afro on national TV for the Coleman phone to start ringing as if Bear had just appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Bear’s dream had come true after all, and the whole family was feeling better about the harassment they’d subjected him to for all those years, all those years ago. Now, even his brothers possessed a certain amount of admiration and respect, if not pride, for the youngest Coleman. Upon further reveal, Bear had won that particular civil war. Despite their early attempts to crush his dream, he had become what the family used to deride him for pretending to be: a cheerleader.
In college, cheering was about representing the university and doing right by the teams. To get the drunken frat boys to cheer, I decided to be a man about it. And I loved being a man about it. Roll clip ...Of course, as a young cub, Bear had always pretended to be a female cheerleader. More precisely, a cheerleader who did the things female cheerleaders did. Those were the only cheerleaders Bear ever saw as a child. But for Bear, it wasn’t about being a female. It was about being able to feel comfortable in his skin. He couldn’t impersonate great athletes, whose greatness comes from spontaneous creations on the fly. Bear’s body didn’t work that way, for the most part. The cheerleaders, however, offered an alternative for his physical spirit. Their movements were playful, exuberant creations that were repeated over and over, game after game. He could learn the routines. He could rehearse. He could mimic. He could still run free on the very same basketball courts and football fields where he was a clumsy player never afforded the spotlight.
In his own world at home, when he was alone, Bear cheered and it didn’t matter how clumsy he looked. His head was up high, proudly commanding an imaginary crowd that gave him the perfect response every single time while watching the games he loved. On top of that, athletes valued cheerleaders, the team’s vital link to the in-game fuel reserve that was the crowd. It was a perfect match, and a way for Bear to be a shining star.
As much as I enjoyed expressing my spirit through spirit leading, I now understand my desire was about more than cheerleading. It was about moving with freedom through that which most resembles dance. The little boy within wanted to learn how to move in all kinds of magical ways: jazz, tap, ballet, ballroom, swing, contemporary, African, and so on. And the desire went beyond the many forms of dance. I wanted to learn gymnastics, surfing, diving, skateboarding, anything my body could dream up. But those were not options for a little black boy growing up in a sports family in 1970s Indianapolis.Bear clapped along to “Sons of Westwood,” his aura juuuuuust this side of robotic and demonstratively masculine. Being a college cheerleader wasn’t about censoring the feminine cheerleader from his boyhood. It was about setting free the masculine cheerleader within his manhood. It was about being a participant, not a spectator, a leader, not a follower. And yet he felt the same exact joy he had felt as a child, dancing in the imaginary stadiums of his youth.
So even though I thought I could dance and find fulfillment, I didn't dare tell the world. As it was, I put the cheerleader dream on hold until age 18, when I could pursue it 2,000 miles away from home in secret. (It was only after I made my first yell leading squad that I informed my family I was interested in college cheerleading.) Imagine a big-ass, athlete-looking black boy like me with dancing aspirations. At least cheerleading was related to sports, and I did love sports. Still, being a cheerleader was challenging. As the Bearcat puts it, “at some point in time, at least 110% of the population will question your sexuality based on the fact that you once were and always will be: a male cheerleader.”Fortunately, the world has evolved to the point where kids of all races can follow their dancing dreams on television shows like So You Think You Can Dance and Randy Jackson Presents America's Best Dance Crew. Oh, to have been able to look at television as a kid and say, “Mama, I wanna learn how to dance like that!” and not feel as if I were putting my life at risk. To look at television nowadays and see two black street dancers (Joshua Allen and Twitch) battling for supremacy on So You Think You Can Dance. To witness the ethnic diversity on Dance Crew, where “masculine” dudes and “feminine” dudes dance side by side with abandonment. Oh, to have been part of a group like Fanny Pack, the eclectic wonders of Dance Crew.
We've come so far in such a short time: men can now dance without cultural implications about their personal life. Of course, we all haven't evolved on the same scale at the same pace. Both Joshua and Twitch spoke of resistance to their ambitions, but they danced on, becoming inspirations for countless boys who want the same freedom to dance without implication and character assassination.One could argue that the 1970s gave birth to the “sensitive” modern man. During that hazy decade, it became acceptable for athletes and “all lesser men” to concern themselves with looking good with the assist of shampoo, hair-care products, cologne, aftershave and so on. Madison Avenue said men could de-cave and men followed. Since the 70s, buying grooming products doesn't make you a fag; it just makes you a consumer. Today, thanks to a shift in the cultural winds, dancing doesn't make you a fag either!
Now, if we could just work on cheerleading ...
- Randy Boyd is the author of Walt Loves the Bearcat, the epic sports novel featuring the first out superstar athlete. A Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Romance, Walt Loves the Bearcat is available wherever books are sold.
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