The Greatest USC-UCLA Basketball Game Ever

"Both SC and UCLA were doing well enough to be talking March Madness on February 28, 1985, when they met at Pauley Pavilion, UCLA’s historic gym.

In the match-up earlier in the month, SC beat UCLA by a point in two overtimes. This time, they slugged it out in four overtimes before UCLA missed a couple of free throws and lost.

I’ve been to countless basketball games in my life, as a fan, as a player and as a cheerleader, but that was the greatest basketball game I’d ever experienced.

The arena was packed--both bands, both cheerleading squads. Everyone stood for hours, leaning in so intensely, the gym felt like one of those high school barns you see in the movie Hoosiers. And I was right there, knowing it was my last USC-UCLA battle of any kind as a participant.

Even though we lost, it never mattered. I had just witnessed the collective energy of two universities move through my soul, starting with the 13,000 people in the joint that night. Moments like that were why I chose a big-time school. Times like that were why I had been a cheerleader."

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

"Warm-spirited ... resonates with soulful queries into the nature of love and life." Bay Area Reporter

America, Get Your Trikke On!

It's the joyride of the 21st century and the coolest invention since the humans invented the wheel. It's freedom like you've never experienced, plus a great workout that feels more like fun than exercise.

It's a life changer, folks, and I'm not alone in my childlike giddiness for my favorite new toy.

See what the fun is all about in the blocks labeled Trikke Randy, now and forever at Randy Boyd's Blocks.

O Canadians

"Canadians possessed an inner peace most Americans didn’t. Canadians weren’t always looking over their shoulder, or glancing sideways, or through you.

"They had ambition but weren’t power-hungry. They enjoyed modern comforts but not to the point of obsession. Canada was like America with the edge taken off."

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

"Warm-spirited ... resonates with soulful queries into the nature of love and life." Bay Area Reporter

Best Photo of My Dog Ever

It happened by accident, as do many of life's greatest moments.

I was playing with my new digital camera, taking pictures of a blank white wall. The dog comes in and begins nosing around. He sniffs the lens, which is level with his face. The camera captures him in extreme closeup.

One look at the results and I'm convinced: My dog Boomer is America's Next Top Dog Model.

Where the Boyd Is

Comment? Question? Friend? Media Request?

Click here to email author Randy Boyd

When Essex Speaks

Essex Hemphill is the late poet whose musings about race and sexuality resonate well into the 21st century.

Perhaps the best evidence of his legacy is the numerous times his name appears in online profiles under favorite authors.

All the more reason it gives me great pleasure to digitally preserve my Q&A with this literary legend in Interview with Poet Essex Hemphill (1957-1995).

Hey, Oprah, What About Me?

"We live in an age where we are inundated with countless images from countless sources, from TV to movies to pop-up ads. A huge percentage of those images deal with love, sex and romance. Still, rare or nonexistent is the occasion where I encounter an image that reflects who I am and what I dream of. Even rarer and more nonexistent is the occasion where I encounter an image that might encourage another soul to dream of loving someone just like me."

—from Walt Loves the Bearcat

Click here to read Dear Oprah: Please Read "Walt Loves the Bearcat"

On White Supremacist Dicks

DATELINE 2010: Circa 148 years after blacks are emancipated from the American Institution of Slavery.

A white American pop singer says he has a white supremacist penis and the world is shocked, as if we now live in a society where love and sex are colorless and unaffected by our collective past.

These people don't know My Racist Gay World, where Blacks are Least Wanted and gay men are quite vocal about their preference for WHITES AND LATINS ONLY.

Unaffected by our past? Is the past really past?

See life from my point of view in the blocks labeled Race Relating, now and forever at Randy Boyd's Blocks.

Proud of Being Alive

I see it all the time: young men sharing their HIV-positive status with the world in ways that denote shame and embarrassment. As if revealing one is poz is like saying, "I've got something very bad to tell you. Brace yourself ... I'm ..."

A modern day leper? A sinner? A dumb-ass who's no longer disease-free? Destined to die of AIDS? No longer desirable?

I once felt all those things, until I realized: I'm even more remarkable for having survived over two decades with HIV/AIDS. With my mind, body and spirit still intact. Still believing in my dreams. How amazing is that!

Bio de Boyd

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.

Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Randy graduated from UCLA in 1985, and has been writing professionally his entire adult life. His four novels have been nominated for five Lambda Literary Awards.

Click here to read full bio.

The Year was 1983 ...

The year was 1983. Madonna was not Like a Virgin yet, just on the Borderline. Prince was cruising in a Little Red Corvette, and had yet to baptize the world in his Purple Rain.

And the king of the day, without needing an official proclamation, was Michael Jackson, who was providing a Thriller of a reality shift in how we felt music, especially on that other fascinating new reality shift, MTV.

Politically, the country had agreed to let President Reagan do anything he wanted, as long as we saw him awake in a few meetings from time to time, and as long as he kept us feeling good about being strong Americans again after the international bitch-slapping the USA’s pride took during the previous administration.

"Television was putting more TV cameras on more sporting events than ever before."

There were whispers and jokes that some of the nation’s citizens were being neglected, or failing altogether to feel any of Reagan’s trickle-down economics, but the country was too busy getting high off of savings and loans and cocaine to really care.

As long as Grandfather Ronnie kept the Commies and evildoers at bay.

And in sports ... professional athletes were starting to make “serious money,” as more and more jocks were crossing over to careers and endeavors the guys of the leather helmet days could only dream of.

Years before, shooting stars like Joe Namath and Jim Brown had paved the way for athletes marketing themselves as entities to be parlayed into ventures as diverse as pantyhose commercials and black cowboy movies.

The 80s, in its toddler stage, was beginning to see an even greater sea change, as more and more athletes were crossing over to careers and endeavors Joe Namath and Jim Brown could only dream of.

Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were building an East Coast/West Coast rivalry that would save the NBA, and create global superstars able to sell and be anything to anybody anywhere in the world as we knew it.

The NFL was abuzz with talk of brand new stadiums to replace barely old stadiums in order to take advantage of the nascent concept of luxury boxes, club seats and personal seat licenses.

And television, led by the sometimes amateurish Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, was putting more TV cameras on more sporting events than ever before.

As a result, college and pro athletes in all sports dreamed dreamier dreams. Football players started asking for big salaries. Basketball players dreamed of living even larger, demanding bigger salaries.

And thanks to a black athlete named Curt Flood--who dared to dream the biggest--baseball players had been emancipated altogether.

By 1983, some professional athletes were earning over a cool and dreamy one million dollars.

Life was on the move in every single way possible.

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

"Warm-spirited ... resonates with soulful queries into the nature of love and life." Bay Area Reporter

Party Like It's 1947

There's no doubt in my mind history has been kind to what it was really like for Jackie Robinson, the first black player in Major League Baseball in 1947.

The soft, fuzzy focus of America's collective memory, along with baseball's canonization of the man, has let seep through the cracks of time the details of hardcore hatred and ignorance embedded in white America at the very idea of a colored man playing baseball.

It's not hard to imagine that every single word, gesture and action by the black man was challenged, scrutinized, seen as un-American and a radical change from all that was good and sacred about this great country of ours.

"Will it take decades before a black president is considered equal to a white president?"

White men did not want to be on the same playing field with the black man, let alone acknowledge that the black man had any positive contribution to the game, the team, their individual lives.

Just because the black man was allowed to play didn't make all that hatred go away. Players had to be forced by owners to play with the black man. And while the black man played the game, the black man was still not considered equal.

The black man was criticized like no other player before him, booed like no other player before him, spit on like no other player before him, called names like no other player before him, blocked from playing like no other player before him.

It took decades before a black athlete would be considered equal to a white athlete, in that they both have an equal shot at greatness, based on ability.

There's no doubt in my mind history will be kind to what it's really like for President Barack Obama, the first black president.

The soft, fuzzy focus of America's collective memory will let seep through the cracks of time the details of hardcore hatred and ignorance embedded in white America at the very idea of a black man leading the country.

Every single word, gesture and action by the black man is challenged, scrutinized, seen as un-American and a radical change from all that was good and sacred about this great country of ours.

Republicans and Tea Partiers do not want to be on the same playing field with the black man, let alone acknowledge that the black man has any positive contribution the country, the congress, their individual lives.

Just because the black man is allowed to be president doesn't make all that hatred go away. And while the black man acts as president, the black man is still not considered equal.

The black man is criticized like no other president before him, booed like no other president before him, called names like no other president before him, blocked from running the country like no other president before him.

Will it take decades before a black president is considered equal to a white president, in that they both have an equal shot at greatness, based on ability?

I wonder if Mr. Robinson's second year in the big leagues was any better than his first?

When Will the Walls Come Tumbling Down?

Will there ever be a time when black athletes on the down low can be on the up high?

I examined the possibilities in the following article, which appeared on Outsports.com on March 15, 2002.

When Will the Walls Come Tumbling Down?

In November 1991, Earvin “Magic” Johnson came out on the Arsenio Hall Show. Came out as a straight person, that is. Days before, Magic had announced his HIV status to the world and retired from basketball.

With the world still reeling, the Lakers star with the billion-dollar smile sat on his buddy’s studio couch and promptly reiterated something he had already reiterated in Sports Illustrated: “I’m far from homosexual. Far from it.”

Arsenio’s audience went ballistic, cheering, pumping their fists in the air, howling, “woof, woof, woof!” You’d think Magic had just wiped out famine or discovered a cure for breast cancer. Nah, he had just reassured the straight world that, although one of its biggest sports superstars was infected with the deadly virus, he was still a Man.

"Whenever an athlete is backed into a corner, he comes out with those ultimate fighting words: faggot."

During that same week, longtime Lakers announcer Chick Hearn looked a TV camera dead in the eye and warned, “Don’t think he got it the wrong way.” Translation: Magic was a slut, a ho and a freak, but he was a Man. There is a right way to get HIV and a wrong way.

Living in a World that Fears People Like Me

I use to live under the false assumption that the Americans of my generation were open to falling in love with someone like me.

Which me? Let's 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?”

No longer do I live under that false assumption, and neither does my former therapist, at least not since he received an Update from the Unlovable Nigger Faggot.

Becoming My Own Man

"In those first months after my night of enlightenment, I gave up smoking pot and started dieting and working out obsessively. I lost seventy pounds in four months. Losing so much so fast was dangerous to be sure, but with each passing day I only felt better, about my body, about my life.

I still had bouts with the fear of God, being gay, and getting tested, but in the heat of the battles within my mind, I’d affirm to myself the most important thing I was learning: no matter what I did, said, thought or felt, I was a good person.

And when I believed this, I was able to let go of the eternal inner debates and do things like come out to my friends and co-workers, go out to bars without feeling like a criminal, love and accept myself for everything I was."

—from Bridge Across the Ocean
by Randy Boyd
Inspired by a true story
A Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Small Press Title

"A great escape and very important work."
—XY Magazine

White Boy Exposes Black Girl's Breast!

Once upon a time, America went bonkers, all because of a certain wardrobe malfunction.

Here's what this writer wrote about that finer moment in American history in Bad Week on the Boob Tube, as it appeared on Outsports.com on February 12, 2004.

Bad Week on the Boob Tube

Damn rock stars. Just when you let down your guard and put your “lock up your daughters” attitude towards all musicians on the back burner, they go and desecrate the greatest game on the greatest day.

How dare that skinny blond punk and that fading Jackson diva infiltrate sex into the Super Bowl? Sex is only for the commercials. Only then should we give our attention to Hooters and erections, and whether or not Levitra, or Cilias is a better Viagra than Viagra.