Behold the AIDS Monster!

Living with AIDS in America is like starring in your very own monster movie. You get to play the sick and depraved villain, while everyone else is so afraid of you, they ignore you on the Internet and avoid you at all costs in real life.

The innocent victims in your monster movie are the townfolk living in your village. They've heard rumors about your kind. They've been warned by their elders about people like you.

The elders didn't give them much advice, just: stay away from those ghastly beasts, don't have sex with them and don't try to understand them. AIDS monsters are just plain wrong. Stay away from the AIDS Monster, kids! Make sure you stay clean!

"Anyone can become an AIDS monster."

And the townfolk got the message. They vowed to stay away from HIV-Poz People. They put up warning signs, like CLEAN and DISEASE-FREE ONLY, which means that AIDS monsters are dirty and disease-ridden.

But you don't feel dirty and disease-ridden. You, the monster of your own movie, feel misunderstood. You want to befriend the townfolk, maybe love one of them.

You want to tell the villagers that it's possible to touch an AIDS Monster and AIDS won't rub off. You want to show the world how people without HIV can have safe sex with people with HIV and the clean and disease-free can walk away ... still clean and disease-free.

You want to explain to the townfolk that anyone can become an AIDS Monster, if anyone has unsafe sex with anyone, even with so-called neg people. You want to teach them that everyone can avoid becoming an AIDS Monster, if everyone has safer sex with both poz and neg people.

But the townfolk turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the pleas of the AIDS Monster. They prefer ignorance. They'd rather reserve their compassion for others. Indeed, the townfolk would rather AIDS Monsters were a thing of the past.

But you are an AIDS Monster living in the present, and there are countless more monsters just like you living in America. And each dirty and disease-ridden soul belonging to the Poz People is starring in his or her own monster movie in the minds of the Neg People.

Why else would so many Neg People be so afraid of touching those who aren't CLEAN and DISEASE-FREE? UB2.

Are you afraid to look the AIDS Monster in the eye?

The AIDS Monster Movie Marathon, a Halloween tradition at Randy Boyd's Blocks. Ghoulish fun for the whole family, featuring the exclusive Interview with the AIDS Monster!

Before It Gets Better

A video campaign tells young gay kids, It Gets Better, meaning life gets better after you grow up and no longer have to be gay-bashed at school.

After you grow up, you realize all men think about sucking dick. But before it gets better, you deal with insensitive idiots who call you names. I should know.

Freshman year of high school, the star quarterback crushed my spirit by calling me, in so many words, retarded. It was the Day I Died in 9th Grade Gym Class.

Sophomore year, a basketball jock gave me a title much worse. Scott (Last Name Withheld) saw me alone in the halls and simply said: faggot. What I still wanna know, Scott (Last Name Withheld): Can We Be Faggots Together?

High School. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes you never forget the pain.

What Makes Being a Fag Worthwhile

A video campaign tells young gay kids, It Gets Better, meaning life gets better after you grow up and no longer have to be gay-bashed at school.

Take it from this 48-year-young gay kid: oh, how it gets better.

The best sign of better things: You'll be in the middle of some really great sex--hot, sweaty, passionate--and you'll think to yourself: This is why I'm a fag.

This is why I put up with all the world's shit about men who have sex with men: to feel this good with another man, this alive, this free, this connected, this content, this much on fire, this much in love with sex and life.

And men. And cock. Or ass. Or holding onto another man, kissing another man.

Or just lying naked together, talking about nothing or everything or anything. Or doing whatever the fuck we want.

This is why I'm a fag. This is what I survived my youth for, what fought for the right to be. Me.

This is me. This is where I want to be.

This is what makes being a fag worthwhile.

Cigarettes: the Real Gateway Drug

What makes an innocent little baby turn into a sweet playful kid who turns into a shy and quiet preteen who turns into a wayward youth who turns into one of the criminals on the long running TV show Cops?

Cigarettes, the real gateway drug to a life of crime and unproductive behavior: lying, cheating, stealing, the kind of shit lands you in handcuffs.

Most kids learn very early on that smoking is bad, as in not acceptable to authority, the law, your lungs. After all, if smoking were so universally righteous, we'd all be doing it everywhere all the time, like we do breathing, drinking water, eating veggies.

"No matter their crime, the criminals on Cops just gotta take a drag off their cigarettes."

Even if one's parents smoke, that's no out. All babies grow up in a world that doesn't let you smoke where you want, when you want. Otherwise, daycare workers would be doling out nap mats and cig breaks.

More than a Fourth Novel

Walt Loves the Bearcat is much more than just a fourth novel for me.

Walt Loves the Bearcat is my breakthrough, my masterpiece, the culmination of my literary talents, endeavors, breath and growth. To date.

Walt Loves the Bearcat is my greatest achievement, during which I went to hell and back, poured out my heart and soul, examined my life like never before, wrote well over 1,500 pages of text and notes, came to terms with the events of my youth, hibernated from the world for months on end, lost my mind, got it back, finished a 700-page novel I had been dreaming of for 21 years, then died a little death.

"A lot of Walt Loves the Bearcat was written by the kid in me."

Walt Loves the Bearcat is the novel where I felt like a master of storytelling and the words that create them, where I exercised the rules, then broke the rules whenever it suited me, like a good and confident master of his craft. I was in the zone like never before.

More than a Jock Romance

The following review appeared in the 02/16/2006 edition of the Bay Area Reporter.

"What if" is a big theme in Randy Boyd's expansive fourth novel, Walt Loves the Bearcat.

Writer Marcus Coleman finds the nerve to call up a man he's never met, yet whom he thinks he should have known all his life, one Walter Yeager, former star quarterback.

They end up meeting through another bit of happenstance, and over the course of a few meetings, Marcus reveals to Walter his secret fantasy story about their romance that could have happened back in the 1980s

"Its lighthearted tone keeps the pace going."

With Marcus as Bear, a cheerleader who happens to end up inside the bear costume of his school mascot, a furtive kiss caught on film threatens to push their secret into the public eye before it's even consummated.

Boyd employs a number of fanciful devices to draw the story within a story out, frequently breaking the past tense with conversations between the older characters, as well as some "cosmic" almost cartoonish interruptions and revelations.

The tale is more than a mere jock romance, but a self-aware and expansive rumination on how stories can be told, why they are told, and how reality often interrupts its animated poetic idealism.

Fans of the exuberant spirit of the college football scene will appreciate Boyd's description of football games between the Georgia State Bulldogs and the UCLA Bruins. But those scenes are only part of the expansive story.

At over 700 pages, Boyd's epic tale may daunt light readers. But its lighthearted tone keeps the pace going, and offers a warm spirited take on the college romance that could have, and should have been, and what may be.

A long pass away from the painful realities of real gay football players, Boyd's expansive confection of existential characters reverberates with soulful queries into the nature of love and life.

I Couldn't Possibly Be Gay, Could I?

At superficial glance, many people assume I’m some sort of athlete.

Perhaps that’s because they see my skin color (black), my body (six-foot four, two hundred plus pounds), my voice (deep when I wanna be) and think of stereotypes.

People think that a black man who fits my casting description is supposed to be warming up for Super Bowls or shooting jump shots in the NBA, and so I couldn’t possibly be gay … could I?

See how I like to shock the world and teach people a lesson or two as a homo on a mission, now and forever at Randy Boyd's Blocks.

A River of Racism Runs Through It

When I ask gay men to explain their WHITES AND LATINS ONLY preferences, as stated in countless online profiles, I get the same responses white folk offered up fifty years ago while trying to promote their WHITES ONLY preferences for their schools, neighborhoods, water fountains, bus seats, etc.

Aw, man, nothing against blacks, don't get me wrong, just a preference. Dude, some of my best friends are black.

My response: But you've written those friends and all blacks off as possible objects of affection, just as your parents did, as your grandparents did, as your great grandparents did, as your great great grandparents did (quite possibly while owning blacks and interbreeding with them).

Coincidence that for you, too, it's NO BLACKS, NO ASIANS, a preference in ALL CAPS disclosed by countless gay men (of all races) in America in 2010?

Ask your black friends how they feel about your WHITES AND LATINS ONLY preferences.

Ask your Asian friends how they feel about your WHITES AND LATINS ONLY, NO BLACKS, NO ASIAN preferences.

Will you still have as many friends after you reveal your true nature? If the answer is no, consider yourself a racist in someone else's eyes, if not your own.

Getting Randy Right

Question? Comment? Click here to contact author Randy Boyd.
Randy who? Click here for Randy Boyd's bio.
Author of what? Click here for Randy Boyd's novels.

23 Years Old and HIV-Positive in 2010

To be 23 years old and HIV-positive in 2010 is not uncommon, but it's quite a shock to someone who was once 23 years old and HIV-positive. Twenty-five years ago in 1985.

Twenty-five years ago this month, Rock Hudson died of AIDS. The entire world was gripped in the AIDS Panic. The AIDS Monster was the number one terrorist worldwide.

At the time, I was 23 years old and HIV-positive. I was an AIDS Monster and couldn't tell a soul. I heard the AIDS Panic in people's daily conversations. I heard the AIDS jokes. When the entire world was obsessed with AIDS, I had AIDS and the world didn't know it.

And I survived, twenty-five years and counting. I survived to witness a second AIDS epidemic, currently infecting the youth of America. The difference in 2010: the AIDS Monster gets no hype, no media attention, no buzz.

But young kids in America are being infected daily, mostly because they possess very little training in the survival tool known as safer sex. The result: I, a longtime survivor of HIV/AIDS, now see young men and women on the net who are 23 years old and HIV-positive, as I was 25 years ago.

My heart breaks a little each and every time I see someone who's young and HIV-positive.

You can live a long, full life, I tell them, giving them a brief recap of my success story. Anything is possible. Keep dreaming big.

Thanks, they'll tell me. Many of them tell me that it helps, hearing my story. Seems to make them feel a little better about themselves and their chances for a happy, healthy life.

That alone gives me comfort when I think about the young men and women who are 23 years old and HIV-positive in 2010.

New American Dictionary for Angry White People

Once upon a time in America, the world was a-changing and a lot of (mostly) white Americans (who viewed themselves as conservatives) were very upset about all this change.

They wanted no part of change. They wanted the world they inherited from their parents and grandparents. No a-changing here.

So they revolted. Threw a tea party to express their anger. When that didn't work, they declared, fought for, and won their independence from the King of England.

"Restore America [to an earlier time when white man ruled and darkies didn't aspire to be President.]"

Along the way, they created an entire mythology around the war, obscuring one of the reasons they went to war: England was ridding itself and its empire of the institution of slavery and Americans wanted no part of it. The world was a-changing.

And that is the lost reason for the American Revolution.

Trikkers Love Trikking in Long Beach

The following article appeared on Long Beach Trikkers website.
The urban beach town of Long Beach, California, got its Trikke on during Labor Day weekend at the first-ever Labor Day Ride of Long Beach.

On Saturday, September 4, 2010, twenty trikkers rocked and rolled their way up and down the long beach of Long Beach, giving holiday weekend beach-goers a first hand look at the joyride of the 21st century.

That's twenty trikkers racing up and down Long Beach at one time, showing off the great new way to have fun and stay in shape.

The ride, sponsored by SouthBay Trikke, covered a 10-mile course (Shoreline Village to the end of Naples Peninsula and back), and drew riders from as far away as Ventura, Orange and Riverside Counties. Some trikkers said the best part of the ride was the applause and encouragement given to the riders who finished last.

Post-ride, the good folks at SouthBay Trikke handed out gift bags and a raffle-ticket's chance at winning some cool Trikke-related prizes. Later, more than a dozen trikkers continued the After Trikke over food and drinks at the 33 Degrees Harborside Pub in Shoreline Village. The main topic, of course: Trikking.

For some trikkers, the Labor Day Ride was a first chance to meet and commune with other passionate trikkers. For others, it was yet another chance to experience the power of riding in a group.

For SouthBay Trikke, it was another opportunity to sponsor a great Southern California Trikke ride. For Trikke itself, it was another milestone in the growth and popularity of this newfangled bike.

For Long Beach, it was a chance to show off its sparsely-populated beach path to So Cal trikkers, and judging by their reaction, So Cal trikkers love trikking in Long Beach!

When I Was Young, Gifted and Black

Nowadays, I'm 48, gifted and black. Once upon a time, I was young, gifted and black.

See how I looked in my younger days, plus see what I would say if I could travel back in time and tell myself: 15 Things I Wish I Knew When I Was Young, Gifted and Black.

Plus: go back to school with High School Highlights: 30 Years Later and College Daze: 25 Years Later, now and forever on Randy Boyd's Blocks.

America's Next Top Dog Model is

Two beautiful dogs stand before me, but I only have one photo, and this photo represents the dog who is America's Next Top Dog Model.

I will only call one name. The dog whose name I do not call must pack up his bones and go back to the doghouse.

America's Next Top Dog Model is ... revealed in When In Doubt, Pet the Dog, a periodic blog column or memoir or journal thingy, now and forever at Randy Boyd's Blocks.