Framed for Being Black and Gay

Click here to read Update from the Unlovable Nigger Faggot

The Boyd Has Balls

Click here for College Football Players: Lighten Up on Your Gay Teammates!

Click here for Dear NFL Players: Tear Down This Wall

Bridge to Somewhere

Bridge Across the Ocean @ 20, Part 2
Bridge to Somewhere: Where the Boys Are Today
The second of a four-part blog series on Bridge Across the Ocean, Randy Boyd's second novel, and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Small Press Title

Twenty years ago, at the age of 26, I officially tested positive for HIV. Two months after the Test, I took off for Mexico. What happened next served as inspiration for my second novel, Bridge Across the Ocean, the story of a friendship between a black gay man with HIV/AIDS and two straight white teenage brothers during one magical summer in Cancun.

The “delicious ode to boyhood adventures” has touched many a heart. Bridge Across the Ocean has been the bestselling Randy Boyd novel to date, as well as being the one to receive the most fan mail. Turns out, Derek Mayfield, the main character, was not the only young man struggling with crossing the bridge from adolescence to manhood. Nor was he the only young man in need of a friend.

Many of the book's fans who have written have often extended what I consider to be a great compliment to an author: they didn't want the book to end because they wanted to spend more time with the characters. The other much appreciated compliment: the story stayed with them for some time.

As a writer, I'm grateful when anyone takes the time to read one of my books. Sometimes, I'm amazed people even find my books, considering most Americans have never heard of an author named Randy Boyd. Perhaps that's why it's all the more special when someone reaches out after taking a literary journey with me. Makes this little-known author feel very grateful.

But what happened to the members of the fictional Boys Club who played like boys but questioned life like men, all while getting to know one another under the hot tropical sun? Where would Derek and the two teenage bros be today, two decades after bonding on the beach?

If art continued to imitate life, the main characters in Beyond Bridge Across the Ocean would all still be alive and healthy in the modern world, and many of their deepest have come true. Derek and the boys drifted apart as their lives took them different places, but there was never a fallout. One of the boys is in touch with Derek from time to time, while one is not.

And Derek, the young black man who took off for Cancun thinking he'd be dead in a few years—my boy Derek is doing great. He even had a brief cameo in my latest novel, Walt Loves the Bearcat. Actually, Bridge Across the Ocean has a cameo in Walt Loves the Bearcat. You see, in that novel, this crazy quarterback and his cheerleader buddy buy their own Hollywood movie studio and their first project is the film version of Bridge Across the Ocean, a book by Randy Boyd, some little known author ...

Derek Mayfield of Bridge Across the Ocean is doing just fine. He's going somewhere. Derek Mayfield doesn't know it yet, but he's about to have a kid, more or less, in Randy Boyd's next novel.

• The second of a four-part blog series on Bridge Across the Ocean, Randy Boyd's second novel, and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Small Press Title

More Bridge Across the Ocean @ 20 NOW:
-Bridge Across the Ocean @ 20, Part 1

More Bridge Across the Ocean @ 20 COMING SOON:
-What Is a Lesbian 1988-2008
-Another Boy, Another Bridge (Young Jock God Offers Oral Sex for Magazine Subscription)

Get Bridge Across the Ocean now at Amazon.com

Black Man Hoping and Dreamin'

"Even in defeat, in the most chill despair, in the most boundless of cynicism, there had to be hope."

Once An Eagle, Anton Myrer

I hope Barack Obama is elected President of the United States of America. I hope Americans remember that Barack Obama is neither a black man nor a white man but a man born of black and white. I hope Americans remember that black and white aren't even colors. I hope Americans realize that Barack Obama's “race” is all in the mind.

I hope Americans fully understand that all men and women are descendants of the same ancestors. I hope Americans come to accept evolution the way Americans have come to accept CSI shows and the Maury Povich Paternity Test Hour, cultural applications of the science that proves that evolution is guilty of being the Baby Daddy of All Living Things.

I hope to live a very long and healthy life. I hope that by the end of my very long and healthy life, Americans won't be so blinded by colors, races, sexual orientations or what science tells us about the rock on which we live. I hope that I always have hope. I hope my dreams do come true.

More Randy on Race:

• Racial Profiling for Love
• What Kind of Black Man Can I Be?
• Model of Myself
• American All or All-American?
• More Love Than a Sex Club

Beware of the Poz People!

They emerge from the depths of sin and depravity, invade your world by surprise, then take over your body, your mind, your entire being! Their goal: make you one of them, a terrifying, demonic, disease-ridden, sick and dirty excuse for a human. They have no morals, no values, no mercy! They must be avoided at all costs or you will perish like them!

What can a lone, helpless citizen do about the Poz People? You could avoid anyone who isn't clean and never go near a tortured soul who admits to having HIV/AIDS. Or you could use your brain and learn how to live with Poz People. You could even have sex with Poz People without acquiring HIV, but only if you educate yourself about safer sex. Which move will you make? How will you survive? What about those among us who don't admit to being one of the Poz People?

Now, go inside the mind of a Poz People and witness his desperate, depraved thoughts:

• Stop Calling Me Dirty and Disease-Ridden!
• Dear Whoopi and the View: What Am I, Dirty?
• Disease-Free At Last
• Would You Say That to Ryan White?
• On Being HIV+ Like Magic Johnson
• Half a Life with AIDS (Randy in Poz Magazine)
  
• Update from the Unlovable Nigger Faggot
• Randy Boyd in HIV Positive! Magazine

Randy Boyd is the author of four novels, nominated for a total of five Lambda Literary Awards. All his novels feature main characters who are Poz People.

Bridge Across the Ocean @ 20

Part 1
Cancun: Twenty Years Later
The first of a four-part blog series about Bridge Across the Ocean, Randy Boyd's second novel, and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Small Press Title

I am curious to know where my feet stand—
and what this is flooding me, childhood or manhood—
and the hunger that crosses the bridge between.

—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

So goes the preface of Bridge Across the Ocean, my second novel, first published in 2000, but inspired by events in my life that took place in 1988. Twenty years ago, at the age of 26, I officially tested positive for HIV/AIDS. Reality dictated it was a death sentence, a very public one at that. Two months after the Test, I needed a break from that reality. I took off for the warm sandy beaches of Cancun, Mexico, hoping for some much needed R&R. It was a solo flight. I was alone but not for long.

No man living with AIDS is an island, even when he tries to escape to one in his mind.

A day into my trip, a handsome young man wearing sunglasses passed by me, smiled and said hi, then proceeded to the nearby beach, where he spread out his towel and settled in for the morning. I followed and stepped into a dream. For the rest of the vacation, I was in starring in my own movie: black gay man with AIDS befriends a straight white teenage jock god he knows he can never have (and his younger brother!)

For one week, I wanted my biggest decision to be how much sunscreen to use or what pair of shorts to wear. You know, a change of pace from: what miracle can keep me alive and save me from this nightmare of death by AIDS? Instead, it was a week of: what am I going to do about these two gorgeous young brothers who are glued to me and hanging on my every word like I'm the god? Why me?

In retrospect, they were two suburban teenage boys with their single mother in a resort full of drunk adults twice their age. They had a choice of hanging with mom, who gushed on them, or taking a cultural field trip in their minds and hanging with their first-ever, real live black man, who just happened to look like a professional athlete.

“Yeah.” Rob laughed. “Skeeter and I both thought you were a pro athlete when we first saw you. Pretty stupid of us, huh?”

“Because I’m gay?”

—from Bridge Across the Ocean

When the boys discovered my sexual orientation, their exotic field trip took a shocking twist. Not only are we exploring the strange and curious world of the cool black dude, the cool black dude is also a homo! Talk about double the adventure! But while I may have resembled a pro jock providing a virtual tour of All Things Black, in truth, I was just an amateur human being who had turned his life around for the better, mentally and physically, as a result of a death sentence.

“I was learning to love myself and never felt better, mentally or physically, which was much more an affirmation of life than any virus in my body.”

—from Bridge Across the Ocean

Of course, when you're on a beach in a foreign country, trying to get away from being a newly-minted leper, you don't follow up “Hi, my name is Randy and I'm from LA” with “I just tested positive for the modern day plague, nice to meet you, Mom with your two lovely boys, the oldest of which, by the way, reminds me of all the straight white jock gods I craved in adolescence, which I'm still kinda in, more or less.”

I kept my health private (so did everyone else, come to think of it), and got to know the Velardes (their fictional names). In addition to being in great physical shape, I was feeling pretty good about myself and my life. When not working, I was either at the gym shoring up my physical defenses against disease, or I was somewhere else shoring up my emotional defenses against disease (therapy, learning to love myself, Louise Hay's Hay Rides, etc.). In the early years, science didn't offer much for Persons with AIDS. For many of us, exercising our bodies and our minds was the only real lifeline. As a result, the Velardes met a bright, confident, strong, intelligent, physically fit, “articulate” young black man in Cancun.

“The boys really look up to you,” said the mom. “Last night in the hut, they couldn’t stop talking about you. I think it’s really nice of you to let them be around you.”

—from Bridge Across the Ocean

What the Velardes didn't know was: that was only part of who I was. I was also a young black man who was battle-fatigued and scared to death of dying and soon. There was no known scientific way out of this. In Cancun, I wanted to get away from life, not get caught up in a family drama with me at the center. I didn't venture all the way to the Yucatan Peninsula to confront the demons of my youth (while still in my youth, at that). But to the lost and lonely little boy inside my soul, the straight white jock gods were the winners in life and I was a Loser.

“Even in all their unrestrained frolicking, [the straight white jock gods] still managed to capture the career, the wife, the family, defining success and the all-American experience for the rest of us.”

—from Bridge Across the Ocean

I understood that “Rob Velarde” and I were not having sexual relations or becoming lovers from the moment I met him. But I was hoping for some kind of miracle. What kind? Where from? Involving what? Meaning? I wasn't sure. I just knew I needed a miracle, the same way I needed a miracle to keep me alive, the kinds of miracle you never thought possible and reside beyond your wildest dreams. But those miracles happen because life is so much bigger and much more miraculous than any single soul could possibly imagine.

When my feet landed on the warm sandy beaches of Cancun, I had lived on this earth for 26 years. I spent my childhood years trying to survive a violent and loveless world with no real ally. I spent my adolescent years trying to survive a hostile school environment while feeling like an unlovable, big black fag who was too retarded to be the great athlete he should be. I spent my college years running away to California, where I tried to be the happy-go-lucky, articulate, non-threatening, nonsexual, Negro cheerguy. My post grad years were spent, well, dealing with AIDS, which infected my life one month outta college. My mindset from that moment forward: keep AIDS a secret until absolutely necessary and act like nothing's wrong (and I'm just getting fit because I love myself! and I love to work out!)

That was the prequel to Bridge Across the Ocean. Cut to the official HIV test in 1988, then cut to me landing in Cancun, a socially-retarded young black man trying to get a grip on life and take a moment to breath ... and oh, by the way, to make the trip more trippy, here's two young jock gods you won't be able to live with or without. They're gonna hero-worship you on the last vacation your dying ass is ever gonna take.

What else does a desperate man hope for but a miracle: my own straight white jock god who falls in love with me, because unlike the jocks of my day, this jock god sees a great person in me. He doesn't call me fag like the gods of my day, the ones who severed my adolescent heart, then laughed about it. Rob Verlarde was different. I was gonna die soon. Why can't a guy have two miracles in one lifetime? Why can't we be platonic “boyfriends” until he's no longer a minor, then buddies for life? I wanted to live and I wanted my miracles. It's all meant to be! We were seeing UFO's in the Caribbean sky. Anything was possible.

My therapist called it “grabbing at straws.” He was right. A drowning man will grab any floating object, even a straw, to save himself.

Twenty years after Cancun and the death sentence that preceded the trip, I no longer feel as if I'm drowning. And I'm not dying of AIDS, I'm living with AIDS. I crossed the bridge. I made it to the other side. At times, the water still gets deep and throws me off balance, but the 46-year-old man is much better at handling the occasional flood than the 26-year-old kid I used to be. And I no longer grab at straws, or unavailable heterosexual white jock boys of any age. The pedestal was toppled. Picture the bronze statue of Saddam falling in Baghdad. Now, no descendant of the great apes stands on a pedestal in my mind.

The journey to manhood was long, winding and challenging. Some of that journey is documented in Bridge Across the Ocean and my other writings. The road wasn't easy, but now I know exactly where my feet stand: in a world where no human monkey is better than any other human monkey. More to the point: we are all equally clueless about what makes the world go 'round and why we even exist at all.

• The first of a four-part blog series about Bridge Across the Ocean, Randy Boyd's second novel, and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Small Press Title
  

Stay tuned for more Bridge Across the Ocean @ 20, including:

-Where the Boys Are Today
-What Is a Lesbian 1988-2008
-Another Boy, Another Bridge (Young Jock God Offers Oral Sex for Magazine Subscription)

Get Bridge Across the Ocean now at Amazon.com

Boomer's Got Skills

Boomer's got skills. Even though he's a canine, his quickness reminds me of a panther, his cuts and turns reminiscent of the moves only the greatest of athletes can emulate. He's showing off some of them tonight, running circles around me on the beach, daring me to try and catch him. It's one of the ways we dogercise. I give chase. See Boomer run like a great running back dancing his way around the field in his sleep. Me, my dog and a moonlit beach. It's a dream come true for a man who once wondered if he would live long enough to ever own a dog.

The best part: Boomer and I have been dogercising like this for ten years and counting, and even though Daddy's Special Little Buddy is now a senior dog, he can still run circles around me. Maybe he can't do it every night, but my Fat Dawg is still thriving, just like me.

Note 2 Self: Get started pronto on When In Doubt, Pet the Dog, the weekly memoir or column or blog feature or periodic journal thingy about my life with Boomer. Now is the time to remember.

Randy Boyd in HIV Positive! Magazine

HIV Positive! Magazine calls itself the most widely circulated HIV publication in America, with 160,000 copies distributed free of charge through clinics, testing sites and other AIDS Service Organizations. This author calls them a positive point of light in a sometimes dark journey. Recently, I had the privilege of being the subject of their Positive Profile feature. In the interview, I was more candid about my anger as it relates to living with HIV/AIDS than ever before. I also opened up about the productive ways I deal with that anger. Here now, my appearance in the June/July 2008 issue of HIV Positive! Magazine.

Positive Profile: Randy Boyd

Randy Boyd found out he was infected with HIV on the night Rock Hudson announced he had AIDS.

"I was a 23-year-old, one month out of college," Randy remembers. "It was a very repressive time, but I was a kid and I had to get my nut. So I had sex with strangers in the dark. A few weeks later I started getting night sweats, although I didn't know what to call them at the time."

"I graduated in June, 1985," Randy says. "In July, Rock Hudson held his famous press conference with Doris Day. One of the experts they had on TV doing commentary mentioned that one of the first symptoms of AIDS is night sweats, and they come shortly after exposure. So that's how I found out."

In 1985, AIDS was a death sentence-there was no effective therapy available. Randy fully expected to die of the "modern day leprosy."

"I had no support, no one I could talk to," Randy says. "It was a crazy time, a very panicked time. There was talk about quarantining people with AIDS. All I could do was keep it a secret and hope it wasn't true. I would go to work, and everyone was talking about AIDS. I compartmentalized my life. I walked and talked like everyone else around me. But a part of me knew I had AIDS."

"Randy's advice to those newly diagnosed with HIV? 'You have a choice,' Randy says."

When he finally got tested, Randy's first course of action was to hold off on taking HIV drugs, which were still experimental. "It was still at a time when there was a lot of skepticism about the drugs," Randy says. "I didn't start using pharmaceuticals until about 1996, when they had more to offer. But I wouldn't be alive today if they hadn't come up with effective therapies in 1996."

Twenty-three years after he was infected, Randy is still alive and kicking. "It feels a little bit like being the only house that survives in a neighborhood hit by a tornado," Randy says. "Why am I still here as opposed to the guy who was sitting next to me in the doctor's office?"

Randy hasn't been wasting the time he has been given. He has a lot of anger about the hand he has been dealt in society as a black man, as a gay man, and as someone who is HIV-positive. As an avid sports fan, he's also angry at the level of homophobia in sports. One way he works through his anger is by writing, and he has published four novels so far: Uprising, Bridge Across the Ocean, The Devil Inside, and Walt Loves the Bearcat. All of his novels feature HIV-positive main characters, and they have been nominated for a total of five Lambda Literary Awards. You can learn more about his novels here.

"Yes, I do have a lot of anger and bitterness in me over the way the world treats blacks, gays, and people with AIDS. I wouldn't be human if I didn't."

Randy's advice to those newly diagnosed with HIV?

"You have a choice," Randy says. "You can keep it real and adapt to a new life. Or you can stay however you are that got you this way, and probably not have a very happy and rich life."

"The whole world is about adapting," Randy says. "If you have to cry, cry. And then make a decision. Do I want to live? How do I want to live? What HIV does is bring you face-to-face with your own mortality. It gives you that 'deathbed perspective' a little sooner. When your time comes, what will you look back on and say, 'I should have done this, or I should have done that?' Do it now!"

"Yes, I do have a lot of anger and bitterness in me over the way the world treats blacks, gays, and people with AIDS. I wouldn't be human if I didn't. I had no idea there would be so much racism in the gay community. Just look at the gay personal ads that say, 'Attracted to whites and Latins only.' Eighty-five percent of gays will not date a black man, and 99% of the 15% that will are just looking for their fantasy of a big, black 'Mandingo.'"

"One way I work through my anger is to express it," Randy says. "But you can't express it until you acknowledge it. You've also got to laugh-you've got to have fun. You've got to have your little passions that help you embrace life. Mine are for my dog (a Lab-type mutt called 'Boomer' after the Indiana Pacers mascot), writing, sports, sex. I have a passion for laughing. I watch One Life to Live, because I can count on it every day for one big-ass laugh."

"The will to live keeps me going," Randy says. "You wake up in the morning, it's up to you and you alone to make it through the day. That's been my daily goal since 1985-to make it through the day, and hopefully make it productive and worthwhile, and then go to sleep in a safe place. Everything else is on top of that."

Copyright 2008, Positive Health Publications, Inc.

Read more Positive Profiles at HIV Positive! Magazine.com.


Also check out:

Randy Boyd celebrates Half a Life with AIDS in the April 2008 issue of Poz Magazine.

Got AIDS? Next Stop: Cancun

“For the first time, I felt the reality of AIDS invade my body, my mind, my soul. It was here. It was real. I could no longer deny the terror I felt. 'I’m too young,' I cried. 'I wanna live. I wanna live. I wanna live,' I repeated over and over and over. I had a notebook with me; I wrote it down dozens of times, big, shaky scribbles.”

—from Bridge Across the Ocean by Randy Boyd, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist

In 1988, I officially tested positive for HIV/AIDS. My reality was: you're 26 years old, you have a fatal disease, the entire world fears you and all you have to look forward to is a slow, agonizing death. My next move? I took off for Cancun, Mexico. What happened next was an adventure that served as inspiration for my second novel.

Bridge Across the Ocean tells the story of a young black man who tests positive for HIV, then escapes to a resort in the Yucatan peninsula. While there, he meets two white teenage brothers and their single mom. Derek, the black man, is attracted to Rob, the oldest brother, who reminds Derek of the golden jock gods of his youth. It's a summer vacation that changes all of their lives forever.

Back in '88, neither Derek nor his creator dreamed of being alive in the 21st century. But miracles happen. Yes, people can live long productive lives with HIV/AIDS. Yes, I can be one of them. Stay tuned for more about those miracles in a blog post celebrating Cancun: Twenty Years Later. Coming next week at Randy Boyd's Blocks.

Bridge Across the Ocean, a Lambda Literary Award nominee for Best Small Press Title.

-Get Bridge Across the Ocean at amazon.com

-Read an excerpt from Bridge Across the Ocean

Critical Praise for Bridge Across the Ocean:

"A delicious ode to summer boyhood adventures." Stonewall News Northwest

"A funny, sexy and very poignant summertime novel." Gay & Lesbian Times

"Sincere and suspenseful, Bridge Across the Ocean is a great escape and a very important piece of writing." XY Magazine

"The sexual attraction and the conflict it poses are beautifully handled." Lambda Book Report

"Not your typical gay fiction fare. The subject matter is fresh and seriously stimulating. Boyd has a knack for the controversial." Between The Lines

"Racism, homophobia, attraction to younger men, dealing with HIV are all handled without preaching and without excess moralizing." Gay and Lesbian Review

"Reading Bridge Across the Ocean was, on some level, a growth experience. This is an incredible piece of work that tears down stereotypes." Friends and Family Magazine

"Groundbreaking ... Boyd not only crosses race, social and gender boundaries, but touches on the much-needed-to-be-openly-discussed subject of men mentoring boys in all ways in society and the world." Wisconsin IN Step

Email Randy Boyd

Comment? Question? Friend? Media Request?

Click here to email author Randy Boyd

Not So Gay About Being Gay

Some of us have been feeling a little less gay about being gay, because gay, which use to mean happy, then came to mean homo, is now something altogether different, which doesn’t make this gay man very gay at all. Confused? Join the club! And check out No Longer a Homo, now at Randy Boyd's Blocks.

Boy Jock Becomes Cheerleader

How does a black kid who played football, basketball and baseball end up becoming a college cheerleader for both USC and UCLA? Was it in the genes? Or did a crafty young mind figure out a way to shine in the spotlight? And what's cheering got to do with the reality dance shows of today?

Find out in So I Thought I Could Dance, only at Randy Boyd's Blocks.

Also check out College Football Players: Lighten Up on Your Gay Teammates!

Disease-Free, Whites Only, Please

Read Update from the Unlovable Nigger Faggot

What's My Lifestyle?

“ ... labels like gay, straight, bi. My soul has never spoken its True nature with those words. I was born a boy slash man. Later, I came to understand my desire to bond with another boy slash man, but not so that we could become gay men or straight men. The closest anyone else has come to articulating the bond my soul desires is the buddy duo. Starsky and Hutch. Martin and Lewis. Butch and Sundance. My soul craves a buddy, not a lifestyle. Of course, my buddy and I are sexual together, make no mistake. But labels and lifestyles with labels are not part of any dream born within my soul. We make our own lifestyle and rules.”

—from Walt Loves the Bearcat by Randy Boyd, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Romance

• Get Walt Loves the Bearcat now at Amazon.com
  
  
• More excerpts from Walt Loves the Bearcat.

Fields of Better Dreams

Many consider fall to be the greatest time to be an American sports fan. Between baseball and football, with a whiff of basketball on the horizon, there's plenty of great action, great characters, compelling storylines, big games and heroic champions. That's a lot for any lover of sports to love, but not so much anymore for this sports lover.

Now when I watch a sporting event, I can't help thinking about how the men on the field are still living in a world where homos have to stay in the closet or the sky will come tumbling down. Or all men will somehow lose their manhood, whatever that means. For this author, it means going to work, and turning the issue of homophobia in sports into the idea of homosexuality in sports. Here are some of those ideas, so far:

-NFL Coach Dungy's Homophobic Dreams (source of quote in photo).
-Dear NFL Players: Tear Down This Wall
-College Football Players: Lighten Up on Your Gay Teammates!
-The “Out” Pro Athlete Dream

Randy Boyd is the author of "Walt Loves the Bearcat," the story of a lifelong romance between a college cheerleader and quarterback who becomes the first out superstar athlete. "Walt Loves the Bearcat" was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Romance.

Bio

Randy Boyd is the author of four novels, several short stories and many essays, all from the unique point of view of a black man who has been living with HIV/AIDS for more than half his life.

His novels have been nominated for five Lambda Literary Awards, including his latest release, Walt Loves the Bearcat, a Lambda Literary Award finalist for Best Romance.

Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Randy graduated from UCLA in 1985 and has been writing professionally his entire adult life.

His 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: Gay Male Sexual Writing (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.

An avid sportsman and fan of his hometown Indiana Pacers, Randy lives in Southern California and has a dog named Boomer, named after the Pacers mascot. Boomer is the inspiration for When In Doubt, Pet the Dog, a periodic blog column.

Politics Aside

Read "Political Survivor: Obama or McCain?" by Randy Boyd

College Football Players: Lighten Up on Your Gay Teammates!

Dear College Football Players,

Back in the 80s, I was a UCLA cheerleader who was constantly mistaken for a UCLA football player. I was also a closeted fag, homo, gay guy, bi curious?— whatever you wanna call it. I wasn't sure. On the inside I was dazed and confused. On the outside I looked like one of you guys.

I played football before I ever dreamed of college cheerleading. Growing up in a sports family in Indianapolis, I played the Big 3 and went up against little league and junior high kids who later made names for themselves, including the late Oakland Raider Stacey Toran.

So you see, like you, I was a kid with sports dreams who played competitive sports against the best talent available. Like you, those dreams led to life lessons and lifetime highlights, like playing in a hoop tournament in Lexington, KY, at the old Memorial Coliseum, and scoring a defensive touchdown in junior high, when my bad ass sacked the QB, grabbed the ball midair and scampered 20 yards to the end zone (or was it 70?). I had my moments. I had my dreams.

"Your dads' generation couldn't bear to think about the subject of gay guys, let alone talk about it."

But homophobia in sports was too big a monster for a confused kid like myself. So this confused kid bowed out of competitive sports circa age 16, you know, around the time a man's body is working on his orientation. My body was telling me I was a fag. My greatest fear was my teammates finding out. To avoid persecution, I quit sports, forever confining my abilities and ambitions to the sideline.

One time, I was at an alumni function as a UCLA cheerleader and this UCLA recruiting coach told the audience that it was all about getting guys with prototype bodies like mine. The rest of the cheer squad laughed. They were used to the comparison.

In the 70s and 80s, I wasn't the only kid in America who felt he had to choose between playing sports and being gay, and were I a young athlete today, I wouldn't be the only kid in America who still feels he must make that same choice. Does this seem right in your heart? Any college football player ready for a change?

Imagine the young men of today, dazed and confused by the choices, labels and consequences of playing the Sexual Orientation Game in the Internet age. Some of those young men went to college to play football instead of cheerlead. Imagine their prototype bodies being molded into great athletes. Imagine them receiving great coaching on the field and solid support off the field. Imagine those young prototypes practicing, studying, laughing, smiling, growing, indeed, living with the joy of knowing full acceptance for who he is. Imagine him knowing you've got his back no matter his sexual orientation.

You've already pumped iron with a gay teammate. You've already taken a knee together and listened to Coach. You've already been sequestered together, eaten together, showered together, traveled together, dreamed of a great season together, made a commitment to working together as teammates for the greater good of the team. You've already survived practicing, studying, laughing, smiling, growing, indeed, living with and dreaming with men who think of themselves as gay, bi, homo, swingers, undecided, and so on.

"You are part of a new generation of jocks who view sex and sexuality in a whole new light."

You know how fucked up your mojo gets when your girl messes with your head and the next thing you know, you're in a crazy argument? You know the madness of a really bad breakup? Your gay teammate could be going through some of the same drama. Think it would help if he could acknowledge his life the same way you do when you're bullshitting over beers?

Which is doing better by your teammate? Ignoring who he his? Refusing to accept who he is? Not permitting him to talk about who he is? Or are you being a better teammate by acknowledging him for who he is? Accepting him for who he is? Allowing him to be who he is in the exact same ways that you allow your other teammates to be who they are? How do you support your bros? Your dawgs? Your teammates?

Your dads' generation couldn't bear to think about the subject of gay guys, let alone talk about it. But that's not you, young jock of the 21st century. You've been exposed to homosexuality in ways unprecedented in human history. Today's college football players are part of the first American generation to come of age watching Ellen on television and porn on the Net. The jig is up. You've seen it all. You've all seen men being men and it's not as big a deal to you. You all know any kind of man can be the kind of man that (fill in the sexual blank).

You are part of a new generation of jocks who view sex and sexuality in a whole new light. So lighten up, dudes, about your teammates traveling their own unique path through the Sexual Universe. Fags, gays, bi's, goy, down low, drunk one night, poor one month, horny one minute, talked into it by your girlfriend, whatever. None of the labels really matters. What matters is your teammates being able to focus on football, their studies and life in general without feeling lost and alienated because of their sexual journey.

Twenty-five years ago, I was a young black man gifted with a body built for sports. Given the chance, I would have chosen football over cheerleading. Unfortunately, from the moment I identified myself as a lover of men, I never imagined I had a choice.

To the newest generation of young men who play football: you have a choice. You can do better than your fathers and their fathers. As the world evolves, put your true and lasting stamp on sports history by being the first college football athletes to lighten up on your gay teammates. The power to change the sports world is in your hands right now.

Randy Boyd is the author of "Walt Loves the Bearcat," the story of a lifelong romance between a college cheerleader and quarterback who becomes the first out superstar athlete.

"Walt Loves the Bearcat" was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Romance.

Excerpts from Walt Loves the Bearcat

Dear NFL Players: Tear Down This Wall