Note 2 Self:
Dear Randy,
You're a man now. A man with a son. Bout 'time you fully realized it. Yep. Boomer Dino Boyd is your son. He'll be eleven in April.
Your job: keep you alive and keep him alive, as long as you both shall live, as happily and healthy as you both can be. Period.
That's the game. Can you do it?
LOL.
You know you can. You already have. You've kept yourself and your dog alive since 1998, when you first laid eyes on one another.
A day at the shelter. Again. One more “one more try.” Maybe I'll finally find the One.And you did. We did. We done did it. We've both stayed alive. Boomer stay alive until one frigid
morning when a shelter volunteer found him in the parking lot of the drug store adjacent to the Indiana Humane Society in Indianapolis. Yep, the same place that gave you Clancy, your only childhood dog, your only dog before Boomer.
You yourself, young black man, survived years, decades, of being alone, living alone, loving alone, dreaming alone--while living with AIDS.
You and Boomer ...
staying alive, staying alive, staying alive ... until you could find one another in 1998. You couldn't let him go. You had to follow through.
Who is this guy? Is he spoken for yet?In
Good Will Hunting, Robin Williams had to go see about a girl and never looked back. In
Good Dog Hunting, you took one look at Boomer and you were like, “hold on little guy, I gotta go see a staff member about a dog.”
You claimed him then and there. A few days later, you named after the mascot of the Indiana Pacers, your all-time favorite sports team that was in their Reggie Miller Golden Years at the time. Now it's 2009. You claim each other, and that's the way life is.
I got your back. You're my boy. My beautiful eleven-year-old baby boy. You're mine. I'm yours.
Daddy loves you.
If a beautiful white person is all-American, what does that make this American and the rest of us? See life from my point of view in the blocks labeled Race Relating, now and forever at Randy Boyd's Blocks:
Note 2 Self:
morning when a shelter volunteer found him in the parking lot of the drug store adjacent to the Indiana Humane Society in Indianapolis. Yep, the same place that gave you Clancy, your only childhood dog, your only dog before Boomer.
When's the last time you heard anyone say, "I just need to find the right black gay man living with AIDS to settle down with?"
Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about queer literature since the mid-’70s. Here now: his review of Walt Loves the Bearcat, originally published in the San Francisco Bay Times (Jan. 2006).
Who can forget the collective horror movies in our minds from the 1980s, you know, after the world found out about AIDS, and everyone was, like, "oh, shit ... is that dreaded AIDS monster out to get ... me?"
See AIDS through my eyes in the blocks labeled HIV-P.O.V., now and forever at Randy Boyd's Blocks (.com):
He's the light of my life. He's also taught me a very handy trick: When In Doubt, Pet the Dog, a column or blog feature or periodic memoir thingy, now and forever at Randy Boyd's Blocks.
Two months after testing positive for HIV/AIDS in 1988, I took off for the warm, sandy beaches of Cancun, Mexico, for some much needed R&R. While there, I met two straight white teenage brothers who were on vacation with their single mom.
adventures. Many have shared their own stories of adolescent longing and friendships with "boys you can never hold onto."
