Hoosier Author Makes Good in California

Born and raised in Indiana, now dreaming in California. Click here for Randy Boyd's bio. Plus: check out Randy Reprinted, a collection of previously published essays, stories and interviews:

Sometimes I Forget I'm a Nigger
Homo on a Mission: My Gay Agenda
First Gays, then Animals, then More Cock-Teases
NFL Coach Dungy's Homophobic Dreams
Interview with Poet Essex Hemphill (1957-1995)
The Man Who Pegged Amaechi and Hardaway as Gay Speaks Out

The Search Is On!

Now you can search Randy Boyd's Blocks with the search box, located at the top of the sidebar (to the right). And just in case you were losing sleep over it, lol, here's some Blocks you may have missed:

No Longer a Homo
Whatever Happened to that Big Black Cheerleader?
Randy Boyd in HIV Positive! Magazine
How to Stay HIV-Negative in an HIV-Positive World
College Football Players: Lighten Up on Your Gay Teammates!
Could You Fall in Love With This Face?
When In Doubt, Pet the Dog

Black Man Confesses: I Love America!

This is the greatest country on earth. The best democracy. The most freedom. America is the greatest place in the entire universe!

That's what I've heard from the mouths of white people my whole life. That's what I read in the school books. That's what I hear in the national anthem. That's what I see on television and in the movies.

All my life, the assumption that America is the Greatest Country Ever has permeated my world as if it were another element in the air we breath.

Now I get it! All those white people were right!

I have officially deleted all my skepticism about the United States of America and its great democratic experiment. America is the greatest country on earth! Anyone can rise up and become president of the United States! A man born five months before me, President Obama, is living proof!

"America is more than the sum of the actions and beliefs of any one person, race or group."

Before President Obama, I couldn't relate when white people said things like, “I support our president,” or “I'm doing it for America because I love this country.”

Now I get it. I love America like every white person who has ever loved America!

More than ever, I'm grateful to have been born in America.

America is more than the sum of the actions and beliefs of any one person, race or group.

America truly is the great democratic experiment, the first place in human history where human rights have had this much dialogue at the table, pretty much at all times.

Consider this: the fact that our founding fathers talked about and struggled with the issue of slavery was actually progress. A breakthrough even.

Given what we know about successive generations becoming more tolerant than previous generations, think the grandfathers of America's founding fathers were as conflicted about things like slavery?

Before America, human rights for anyone, let alone everyone, was an alien thought, relatively speaking.

Before America, kings, queens, warlords (and other religious deities) created the law of the land (because it is written in the stars).

Before America, there was little or no upward mobility in society for anyone, regardless of skin color or personal aptitude.

America was not only a new world, America was a new way of thinking, a new way of looking at the world, a new way of looking at human beings and their individual rights. Those bold ideas have evolved to become more and more inclusive and universal, which is why the world still looks to America as its beacon of hope.

Now I get it.

By becoming a living example, President Obama has shown me that America is a beacon of hope for all of us, even us black folk who are the descendants of the men and women who were slaves but a few generations ago.

I, too, am part of the American Dream, even as I feel the sting of old-world, WHITES AND LATINS ONLY racism in My Racist Gay World.

I love America. I no longer feel like its stepchild. I love my president. I support my president. I feel the same as every white person who's ever heard utter the words, “I love my country.”

That as much as anything makes me proud to be an American.

Get In Touch with Randy Boyd

Comment? Question? Friend? Media Request?

Click here to email author Randy Boyd

Infatuations: The Most Perfect, Perfect

One dictionary describes infatuation as "the state of being completely carried away by unreasoned passion or love."

In Walt Loves the Bearcat, a Latino gardener claims infatuations have a deeper meaning. But then again, he also claims he's wearing a magical red baseball cap, although no one can see it (unless they believe!)

Here's what the Latino gardener tells Walt and Marcus, aka the Bearcat, about love and infatuations in Walt Loves the Bearcat. Roll clip!

The Infatuations

“Do you know what infatuations are, young man?” asked the Latino gardener. “Try to remember your very first one.”

Walt and Marcus stood motionless.

“Now unless you met as teenagers, you probably weren’t each other’s first infatuations,” said the Latino gardener, “but no matter ... go back in your minds and remember the very first time your heart burst with something you didn’t know existed until you felt it coming alive from deep within your soul ...

“But your heart wasn’t big enough to hold this joyous burst, which gave you a joyous feeling. So the joyous feeling burst from your heart, and filled your entire body, head to toe.

"But that still wasn’t enough to contain the joyous feeling--this brand new life form that kept feeling you like helium filling a balloon, expanding until the feelings and the filling seeped out into the air around you ...

“If you fed the feeling, gave it enough love and energy, that feeling ended up filling your whole world, and your whole world became that feeling. What filling was that again? Infatuation. What is infatuation? Pure. Unconditional. Love.

"He’s perfect. He can do no wrong. Every single thing he says and does is the single most perfect thing he can say or do at any given moment in time. His voice alone can bring tears to my eyes. The idea of him using his lips to form the sound of my name is enough to send my senses reeling toward the stars on a fantastic voyage from which I never want to descend. And stuff like that there. You feel me?”

“Yeah,” said Walt with a mild laugh. “I’ve had a couple of those in my lifetime.”

“Ditto for the me,” said Marcus.

“So why do we get infatuations?” asked the Latino gardener. “What’s the point of them, supposing you believe everything has a point?”

“So you can go around thinking someone is absolutely perfect for you,” said Walt, “before you rejoin the real world after knowing ’em a couple weeks.”

“Nah,” said the Latino gardener. “Infatuations are here so we know what the most perfect, perfect is like. You see, once the feeling becomes your world, everything in your world becomes the feeling. That means everything is perfect, every song, every task, every situation, everything anybody around you does.

"When you’re infatuated, the world makes perfect sense, down to the last detail. That, boys, is pure unconditional love. The receiver of this love can do no wrong, say no wrong, be no wrong. That person, in your eyes, is like—”

“God,” said Marcus, lost in his own headspace.

“The most perfect, perfect,” said the Latino gardener. “And that person stays like God until the infatuation leaves you. Then the receiver becomes a normal human being, capable of doing wrong, saying wrong and being wrong.”

“Because you get over the infatuation,” said Walt.

“Get over?” asked the Latino gardener, “or forget about the feeling, which makes the filling inside start to deflate, like a helium balloon you don’t keep feeling from time to time.”

“So what good are the infatuations?” asked Walt, followed by a mild laugh. “That outta be the name of an old-fashioned singing group.”

“Glad you asked,” said the Latino gardener. “In the game of life, when you ask questions, you always get answers. The Infatuations ... you nailed it. They’re a musical group. They’re just about every single musical group that ever existed. They sing songs just for you, you and everybody else in the world, songs that remind us how it feels to be filled with pure unconditional love. Otherwise known as infatuation. You feel me?”

“This is crazy,” said Walt.

“No doubt,” said the Latin gardener.

The Bay Area Reporter says Walt Loves the Bearcat is "warm-spirited" and "resonates with soulful queries into the nature of love and life."

For more soulful queries, read Walt Loves the Bearcat, a story of love, football and some very potent infatuations.

A Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Romance, available wherever book are sold.

Get Walt Loves the Bearcat at Amazon.com
More excepts from Walt Loves the Bearcat
More about Walt Loves the Bearcat