My AIDS...a Comedy by Daniel Horrigan

MY AiDS
TO BENEFIT SEVERAL LGBT ORGANIZATIONS

Broadway Cares Equity Fights Aids,
Anti-Volence Project, Hetrick-Martin Institute, Men’s Sexual Health Project, Trinty Place Shelter, Gay Men’s Health Clinic and the Ali Forney Center

The 30th Street Theater
February 13 - March 1

At Hand Theatre Company (Justin Scribner, Executive Director) announces that its production of Dan Horrigan’s MY AiDS will benefit several LGBT organizations at each performance.

Hetrick-Martin Institute February 14th
The Hetrick-Martin Institute creates a safe and supportive environment in which LGBTQ youth, ages 12 to 21, can reach their full potential. Through a comprehensive package of innovative and creative after-school programs, supportive services, and referrals, Hetrick-Martin, with its experienced professional staff, is a leader in caring for our most vulnerable at-risk youth. We are also host to the Harvey Milk High School, an inclusive voluntary New York City public high school focusing on the educational needs of children who are in crisis or at risk of physical violence and/or emotional harm in a traditional educational environment.

Anti-Violence Project February 15th
The New York City Anti-Violence Project is dedicated to eliminating hate violence, sexual assault, stalking, and domestic violence in LGBTQ and HIV-affected communities through counseling, advocacy, organizing, and public education. The New York City Anti-Violence Project was founded in 1980 in reaction to neighborhood incidents of anti-LGBT violence and the failure of the criminal legal system to respond. AVP remained an all-volunteer organization until 1984, when the first full-time Executive Director was hired. With the addition of full-time staff, AVP was able to broaden its services to provide professional counseling to victims and survivors of hate violence. AVP also began expanding our work beyond bias-motivated violence to include services for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and HIV-related violence. Today, AVP provides free and confidential assistance to thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected (LGBTQH) people each year from all five boroughs of New York City.

Men's Sexual Health Project February 20th
Bellevue Hospital Center and NYU School of Medicine now offer free, confidential testing for HIV and sexually transmitted infections at two bathhouses for men who have sex with men in New York City. This innovative project, under the direction of Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, combines the Bellevue clinical service of HIV testing with NYU research in sexually transmitted infections and prevention. Accesible testing hours and a judgment-free environment streamline the availability of testing for infections impacting our community. The Men's Sexual Health Project offers the following on a walk-in basis: Rapid HIV antibody testing, with results available in 20 minutes, HIV PCR/viral load testing to identify recent HIV infections, Testing for sexually transmitted infections, including Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, and Syphilis, and Risk reduction counseling with a doctor or trained HIV counselor.

Trinity Place Shelter February 21st
Trinity Place Shelter is a non-sectarian, 10-bed transitional shelter that is open all year to provide LGBTQ youth with a safe place to sleep, eat, store belongings, and have access to transportation. Through strong local community partnerships, we are able to provide access to comprehensive medical services, case management, education, career counseling, art classes and mental health services. All youth referred to Trinity Place have been identified as interested in, or are actively seeking, employment or schooling. We provide a unique, family-like environment where the youth receive the respect, individualized care, and basic services so often denied them. There are as many as 10,000 LGBTQ youth currently living homeless in NYC and only 250 beds or fewer that are specifically available for this population. These youth often experience abuse in other shelters. Our goal is to expand our program to provide homeless LGBTQ youth with the basic services and skills necessary to make independent living a reality, and to make a positive difference for as many as possible in the midst of this crisis.

GMHC February 22nd
GMHC is the world’s first and leading provider of HIV/AIDS prevention, care and advocacy. To end the AIDS epidemic, we need comprehensive solutions that promote education, increase awareness, improve care, reduce stigma, elevate policy and build strong, supportive communities. Whether it’s getting tested, living with HIV/AIDS, succeeding at home and work or elevating our voice for policy change, we provide answers that give hope. We understand the root causes of the disease and take a holistic approach to care — from medical treatment and counseling to legal services and job placement — that promotes total well-being for your whole life. We help you develop meaningful relationships within the GMHC community, receive support and give back to others along the way, so you feel a sense of confidence and pride that empowers your life on your terms. AIDS is not over. In fact, awareness is down as new infections are up — including among women, people of color and men who have sex with men. The roots of the epidemic are wide and deep, from stigma and misinformation to the increasing cost of care. At GMHC, we believe we can end the epidemic by addressing the underlying causes, shifting cultural beliefs and promoting smart behaviors that empower a healthy life for all of us. In 1981, six men united against fear and death from a disease then known as the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. The group set up an answering machine in the home of Rodger McFarlane and the first AIDS hotline was born — receiving over 100 calls the first night. Today, GMHC continues to pioneer HIV prevention, care and advocacy. Fight AIDS. Love Life. Since before AIDS had a name and until the epidemic is over, GMHC will continue to fight AIDS and love life.

The Ali Forney Center February 28th
As the visibility of LGBT people grows in our society, more and more LGBT teens are finding the courage to come out of the closet. Tragically, as many as 25% of these teens are rejected by their families, and many end up homeless on the streets. Homeless LGBT teens are more likely than straight homeless teens to be subjected to violence on the streets, and in the homeless shelter system. They suffer from inordinate rates of mental illness, trauma, HIV infection and substance abuse. The Ali Forney Center (AFC) was started in June of 2002 in response to the lack of safe shelter for LGBT youth in New York City. We are committed to providing these young people with safe, dignified, nurturing environments where their needs can be met, and where they can begin to put their lives back together. -- Ali Forney was a homeless queer teen who was forced to live on the streets of New York during the 1990s. Ali was dedicated to the safety of other homeless queer youth; he was a committed HIV prevention worker, and aggressively advocated that the NYPD investigate a series of murders of the homeless queer youth he had befriended. Ali was an inspiration to those who knew him. In December of 1997, Ali was murdered on the streets. His tragic death called attention to the atrocious conditions for homeless LGBT youth in New York. Ali's murderer has never been identified.


Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS March 1st
BC/EFA is one of the nation’s leading industry-based, nonprofit AIDS fundraising and grant-making organizations. By drawing upon the talents, resources and generosity of the American theatre community, since 1988 BC/EFA has raised over $175 million for essential services for people with AIDS and other critical illnesses across the United States. BC/EFA is the major supporter of seven programs at The Actors’ Fund - including The AIDS Initiative, The Phyllis Newman Women’s Health Initiative, The Al Hirschfeld Free Health Clinic, The Dancers’ Resource and three supportive housing residences. BC/EFA also awards annual grants to over 400 AIDS and family service organizations nationwide.

My Aids a comedy will run February 13 – March 1 and is set to open February 15 at The 30th Street Theater (259 West 30th Street). Dave Solomon (NYMF’s Marrying Meg) will direct the 80-minute solo comedy
Synopsis
Armed with only his wit, storyteller Dan Horrigan does battle with evil bosses, loses true love, and confronts being HIV positive... all while searching for the perfect set of kitchenware! With humor and candor, he shares his story about grappling with growing up and accepting himself.

Best known for POP!, their annual production of short plays, At Hand Theatre Company has previously presented the plays Lila Cante, One Nation Under, Silence!, Trickster at the Gate and Cake and Plays...But Without the Cake

MY AiDS plays February 13 through March 1
Saturdays at 10:30pm;
Sundays and Mondays at 7pm at The 30th Street Theater (259 West 30th Street)
Tickets are $25 and can be purchased by phone at (212) 868-4444 or online at www.smarttix.com .


www.AtHandTheatre.com
Dan Horrigan

Raise My Taxes Please!

A brilliant woman that I do not know half as well as I would like, but I do love and appreciate for her work supporting queer families, Betty Tisel, posted on her Facebook page a status that read

I was thinking about Republicans today - and the tea partiers — and I was thinking that they have FREEDOM and GREEDOM mixed up — please speak up if you disagree. I love good infrastructure and the only way we have good infrastructure is with taxation. BRING IT ON.

I totally agree with Betty, and more than that, I have always maintained that I am delighted to pay out most of my earned income in taxes if I have a short list of 10 things guaranteed by the federal government.

Let me state publicly that if the U.S. government in partnership with the states and local municipalities can guarantee the following 10 items, I will gladly pay out 80% of my income in taxes, and I will do so with a smile:

1) Anyone in the United States regardless of status would receive full and free healthcare including unlimited mental health care including drug/alcohol treatment,

2) An extensive mass transit system in every major metropolitan that was quick and affordable including FREE transportation for the homeless and the working poor,

3) Rapid rail lines connected every major metropolitan region of a state AND bullet trains in between major metropolitan areas from state to state connecting the entire nation in a web of super fast/green travel,

4) Free, quality, elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education through the PhD level (with every school receiving even a single federal dollar required to enact a decision making structure, including financial decision making, with equal representation from community and school based constituencies: students, instructors, professional staff, union staff, administrators, and representatives from the geographical locale in which the school is located),

5) Federally guaranteed maternity and paternity leave, for each parent or a guardian of the parents choice, with two months fully paid salary with the cost to be split between the federal and state governments with a 1/3 covered by the employer.

6) During recessions or other economic emergencies anyone that loses his or her job would immediately qualify for state funded re-training in a new vocational field OR a new post-secondary degree in a field substantially different than his or her original and/or one full year of unemployment payments for any employee that wishes to remain in his or her field of choice but is let go from a position for anything short of willful malfeasance that would qualify as materially damaging to the organization/company or is punishable as a criminal/civil offense,

7) A minimum livable wage requirement with mandatory cost of living adjustments AND merit pay increases except when a company could prove to a labor relations board comprised ENTIRELY of wage workers and union representatives that it would be an undue burden to the company to increase wages (also, in any year that a company has laid off workers, executives in that company would be banned from any level of bonuses including long term stock options,

8) Any military expenditure would have to be matched dollar for dollar by domestic entitlement, federal grants to nonprofit organizations, block grants to states, aid to local governments, and social safety network spending that directly supported the lives and well being of U.S. residents specifically excluding now and forever abstinence only education programs,

9) Long term low interest or no interest loans for first time working class home buyers REGARDLESS of credit history as long as a steady income stream is proven and has been maintained for at least two years, and

10) A constitutional amendment to ban anyone from public office for all time that voted for, is related to, or ever had a relaxing dinner at home with anyone connected to the Bush family. (I am willing to be flexible on this one).

Raise My Taxes Please!

A brilliant woman that I do not know half as well as I would like, but I do love and appreciate for her work supporting queer families, Betty Tisel

A Prediction

Call me Miss Cleo or believe that I am channeling the spirit of the now deceased Zelda Rubenstein (aka Tangina) but I have a feeling that some shit is about to break off up in this piece sometime very soon.

We got angry white men flying airplanes into IRS buildings and the media refuses to call it what it is: Terrorism (fucking racism)

We have angry ass white men in Tennessee calling for a return to Jim Crow (fucking teabaggers).

We have an angry white woman in Washington State calling for the lynching of U.S. Senator Pat Murray (more fucking teabaggers)

Finalists are being eliminated from American Idol for shenanigans and skulduggery (fucking FOX)

And I got the shits.

Oh yeah...something real is about to break off up in this piece.

Obama has reached up inside himself, grabbed his nuts, and pulled them out of his abdomen and is letting the Republicans have it.

The Republicans are firing back a full 41 gun salute in the Senate (damn you Massachusetts). And Nancy Pelosi is off getting Botox when she should be in Harry Reid's office slamming his forehead into his desk.

And Carnie Wilson has gained all that weight back that she lost from gastric bypass surgery.

The world is going straight to hell.

The good news is that the economy has rebounded, some. And I know a lot of gay boys in finance that are making money hand over fist or fist inside anus, however you want to phrase it.

But even with that...my Spidey Sense tells me that something for real for real is going to break off this week. Something unexpected or perhaps some shit we should have expected but thanks to a gaff by the CIA, NSC, FBI and PBS we are going to be caught with our pants down, our cheeks spread, and a baby Jesus butt plug in some hard to explain places.

Call me Nostrahomodamus....but grab your implants boys and girls...we are in for some real shit, really soon.

Tom Tancredo Rhymes with Jim Crow

To invoke the power of the great blogger Divine Grace, former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo is a douchenozzle.

He is also a racist bastard that, during his opening remarks at the Tea Party (I calls 'em Teabaggers) Convention, stated that "Obama was elected because we don't have a civics, literacy test in this country before people can vote in this country." (Read the Alternet.org article)

Jim Crow say what?

Speaking in the Nashville, TN, in a South that has never healed from the physical, spiritual, and psychic wounds of slavery and Jim Crow, Tom Tancredo said in his "outside voice" that Jim Crow era voting barriers should be reinstated to keep the ignorant from participating in Democracy. And by ignorant he meant to say niggers. Teabaggers are ok but carpet baggers will not be tolerated.

And wouldn't you know it, the crazy ass fuck nuts in the audience applauded. Holy shit.

When I first read this story yesterday, my jaw hit the table so hard that I left a dimple imprint in the Formica. It is a new fucking day and a great big leap backwards when white folks are no longer afraid of backlash or severe outward consequences by saying uncoded racist shit in public. Pre-Obama it would have been the immediate death knell of the Tea Party if a speaker at their "convention" aka "klan rally" said anything resembling what Tancredo said. There is no way in hell a former Vice Presidential candidate would have kept her appointment to give the keynote speech. Republican legislators would have immediately decried the organization, and it would have quietly broken apart or pulled their sheets back over their heads and returned to burning crosses in colored folk's front yards.

Not now. There's a nigger in the White House. The coloreds done got uppity and forgotten their places, and it's time for Granny to pull up her knickers, rub on some extra Fixodent, and get to kicking ass and tying nooses.

I am listening to NPR this morning, and they were reporting on the convention, and low and behold there wasn't a word spoken concerning Tancredo's remarks. WTF man? Oh yeah....they get money from the gubernment, and there is a recession don't you know. Can't rock the boat by doing any real reporting.

Wake up people. The true measure of the state of racism in this country is not the fact that a black man is in the White House. The true state is measured by what the opposition says and gets away with impunity. Racism is alive and well, and it has taken off its white robes, put on a suit and started a new white power movement called the Tea Party.

The Being of Facebook

There was a time when I felt that I was surrounded by brilliant individuals, and I wondered how it was that they came up with the ideas, thoughts, and reflections that I heard them speaking. I was once a member of a group called Visions Collective, which was a multi-racial/multi-gender/age diverse/sexuality diverse cohort of organizers/artists/academics. Some of the most brilliant people from the Twin Cities made up this group, and for almost four years we met on a regular basis, struggling together on a range of issues that began with the Israel/Palestine conflict and covered everything from war to sexuality. One of the most beautiful things about that group was that we permissioned ourselves to let the journey and the discussion be the outcome without requiring any tangible product. Growth, challenge, synthesis, confrontation, and conflict were the products and they were valued. But, even as a core member of that group, I felt like a fraud. The rest of the folks in the group seemed as if they thought deep thoughts and spent their waking hours dreaming up a better world. It seemed that their brains were always at work behind their eyelids.

I have never been a great thinker. I have always been a feeler and have let my emotions guide my tongue. Often I didn't know what I believed until I heard others espouse their beliefs. I would let their statements feed my emotions and based on my reactions to what others were saying, I came to an understanding of whether or not I agreed or disagreed. And my thought process started when I opened my mouth. And though others found value in what I was saying, I always felt like a charlatan. I didn't sit at home and think about the issues of the day. I didn't and rarely do now, ponder anything. But I am always feeling, there are always shifting morphing tides inside of me that, from time to time, erupt into a thought or idea that I spill out onto this blog, into an editorial, an article or in some other written format. Now and again I find myself in spaces that I once thrived in, those groups of great thinkers that are still trying to figure this world out and make it a better place, and in those places I am given the gift of being able to think out loud.

I have come to understand, though, that now adays my regular engagement with thinkers and philosophers, artists and academics is through the medium of Facebook. Folks like Staceyann Chin often pose questions that provoke long "conversations," artist like Isauro Cairo post photographs that stimulate everything from inquiry to outrage to lust and force me to rethink myself as a man, as queer, as an artist and my relationship to my body, masculinity, and desire.

And I don't feel as if I am a charlatan anymore.

I feel as if I am constantly surrounded by people that think deep thoughts and feel deep feelings, and I have come to understand that I think through feelings. Like an ant, which uses a complicated set of scents to communicate information and ideas, my body mass produces layers and layers of feelings that, in my own internal language, translate themselves into ideas and positions on myself and the world around me. And the world around me and myself seem to become more and more connected.

I find myself drawn, without judgment or expectation, to amazing new and exciting people from my partner David to my colleague Bill Martin, and all through a medium that allows me to engage with the little cues and stories that they tell, sometimes with intention and other times subconsciously, through the things that they post and the glimpses that they share into their lives, likes, dislikes, pains, discomforts, art, and celebrations. And I find myself, on a daily basis, falling in desire, lust, intellectual rapport, extreme distaste, hate, and downright rejection with people that I often do not know or only know through a small picture through a tiny window made up of fancy coding and ones and zeros on a commercial networking site.

But I know that so often the connections I have made in the real world are deepened through the online interactions, and I have made significant and meaningful connections that began as online admiration (or down right flirting) and transformed into real life friends and lovers. And throughout it all I have come to learn more about myself as a thinker and feeler, more about myself as an artist, and more about the world in which we live and the people that are also out there trying to make sense of it all.

The State of the Union Is Tore Up

Last night, I sat on the bed with David. David was playing Scramble on his iPhone, and I had my computer on my lap, iTunes tuned to WNYC, and my Twitter open. As President Obama gave his State of the Union address, I live Twittered the experience, and I joined thousands of others that were giving their responses, analysis, and transcription of/to the address.

I have to say that there were a number of times during the speech that more than one "hell yeah" came out of my mouth. Obama had some great things to say, with some witty one liners, and some pointed jabs at both the left and the right. I am behind him with putting his foot in the asses of banks. I am with him on fixing health care. I am with him on job creation. I am even with him on closing the gap in import/exports. I do not advocate militarism, but I do advocate for the right of queer folks to serve openly in the military, though I would prefer that the military, as we know it, would be disbanded and reconstituted using a just defense framework.

I can not get behind Obama on some of the relativist imperialism that espoused. I don't believe in the actions, policies, and necessary oppressive actions that are necessary for the USA to remain #1 in the world. I lamented the lack of a more harsh criticism of the Supreme Court's recent decision on corporate personhood, and I really wish Obama would have stopped his speech, left the podium, and punched Justice Alito in the face when he had the nerve to mouth, "that's not true."

I wish that Obama had spoken about New Orleans and demanded that Congress commit the money to really rebuild the entire Gulf area. I was listening for an acknowledgment that we are not post race or class or sex or gender or oppression. I wanted to hear something about the rebuilding of our social safety network, which the current economic crisis has exposed as a colander and not a net.

I am happy that Obama owned that clean energy and green jobs and industry is the way of the future, but I reject the notion that there is anything such as "clean coal" technology, and I stand firmly against any expansion of nuclear power. How many Chernobyls and Three Mile Islands to we have to have before we understand that nuclear energy is never and will never be safe.

And there was too little about foreign policy. What about Israel and Palestine? What about Afghanistan and Iraq? What about Haiti? What about the climate change treaty? What about IMF reform and World Bank reform?

In the end, I think that Obama did well in his speech. I wasn't looking to agree with everyone he said. And I know that the State of the Union is political positioning at its finest. I think that Obama put some fire under the Republicans. Now, I can only hope that he will use the bully pulpit and channel his inner angry black man and get some real shit done or at least go down in a glorious ball of righteous flames in the effort to make real change and create real hope in the USA.

The Supreme Court Decides that Wal-Mart is a Person

Fuck me three ways til Tuesday.

Today has been a hell of a day. First the racist, classist, and ugly young woman working at the Genius Bar at Apple, without looking at my brand new iPhone 3Gs, suggested that "some people," fall and smash their phones on purpose when new ones come out, so that they can get an upgrade. Therefore, she was going to have to charge me $200 to replace the glass front of my phone...which...by the way...was the only thing broken on the damn thing...the LCD and touch screens worked just fine. And I did my research, the glass costs $24. So I guess that's $175 for labor. Fuck you Genius Bar.

And then, I come home, and lo and behold I log into Facebook only to find that the Supreme Court has all the balls that seem to be missing from the Democratic members of Congress. Against 100 years of precedence, the Roberts Court (may your dick shrivel and fall off) went right on ahead and said it was unconstitutional and the court saw no compelling argument for limiting in any way the right of corporations (oh and unions...throwing the left an old, run down, and chewed on bone) to speak freely and spend freely to promote their speech during political campaigns.

Excuse me?

The U.S. Supreme Court has lost its damn mind. This is what I love...it was the Supreme Court that magically decided way back in the 1880s and 1890s that corporations, which didn't really exist in 1776, were actually entitled to all the rights and privileges of a living, breathing human being. Successive court rulings places some limits on the ability of corporations to engage in direct political speech and advocacy. But the Bush Supreme Court that we now have went on ahead and bucked 100 years of court precedence and said...what the fuck...Wal-Mart can run America...party on Exxon Valdez and Dow Jones why don't you and DuPont just go on ahead and pick a couple of your stock holders names out of a hat and they can be U.S. Senators.

Basically, the judges wrote a total of five different opinions on the ruling totally 175 pages. I can boil all that down for you into one short letter.

Dear U.S. Democracy,

Fuck you. Go buy a McDonald's Happy Meal.

Love,
SCOTUS

And you see, thanks to our wonderful system of checks and balances, which, since Bush took office, really hasn't worked worth a damn...this opinion rips apart state laws in roughly half of the states and writes corporations a blank check signed Chief Justice Roberts.

I think I am going to vomit.

The midterm elections next year are going to ridiculous. Special interests, labor unions, and corporations spent $1 billion in the 2008 presidential elections and that was WITH spending limits. Every CEO on Wall Street just got a fat dripping chubby when this news came down.

I can smell the end of the farce that has been called "democracy" in the United States. But, let me be clear, this country has never been a democracy and now, finally, the mask is coming off and the corporate dictatorship that has run this nation for the last century is going to show its true face. Time for the American Revolution Part Deux.

(Though I would rather pretend this didn't really just happen, here is a link to an article with more and less angry details.)

And, if you are as pissed off as I am, there is something you can do. Sign this petition asking Congress to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban corporate personhood.

Hey Democrats! Grow a Pair

Yesterday, the people of the Massachusetts, in not their finest moment, replaced the venerable Ted Kennedy, the last Prince of Camelot, with Scott Brown, a Republican. Not since 1972 has that bluest of blue states elected a Republican to the Senate.

Shit happens.

All of the pundits that are not on FOX are very clear: this was not a critique of the Democratic candidate, Martha Coakley, but it was a comment on the continuing frustration of the slow pace of economic recovery and the even slower pace of real change in the lives of everyday people. Basically, the anger at those in power continues, and the people will shift their anger to whoever is in power, Democrats or Republicans.

Why oh why people continue to flip back and forth between two options that have gotten them nowhere fast for a long ass time is beyond me. A year ago, Republicans were evil. This year, Democrats are evil. Wake up people, it's time for a viable third party system in the United States.

But I digress.

What is really annoying the hell out of me is all the woeful tears around health care reform. Oh no! The Democrats have lost their filibuster proof majority. I have a few things to say about that.

1.) The Democrats never had a 60 vote majority. The had 58 votes in their column. There are two independent Senators: Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Idiot Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. That smegma sucking Lieberman demonstrated very clearly during the health care reform debate process that he had no issues with jumping the Democratic ship when necessary or whenever he had an itch in his saggy nuts. Maybe now that the illusion of the filibuster proof majority in the Senate has been shattered, Harry Reid will smile, pat Lieberman on the back, and then strip that bastard of his chairmanship and let him try his luck with the Republicans. Good morning, Joe and fuck you very much.

2) Since when has a filibuster meant death and destruction? Senators have grown soft. Let me tell you a story. Back in 1963, President Kennedy introduced a bill called the Civil Rights Act. At the time, the Senate was controlled by the Democrats and the Democrats were split between Northern and Southern wings. At the time, also, it took 67 votes to invoke cloture and cut off debate, thereby ending a filibuster. Northern Republicans and Northern Democrats felt so passionately about the Civil Rights Act, particularly after the assassination of President Kennedy, that they called the oppositions bluff. Debate on the Civil Rights Act took place, non-stop, for 57 days. But, in the end, justice and patience won out. Enough pressure was applied on those that opposed the Civil Rights act that they caved. This was done both by internal doggedness by bill proponents, and external pressure by the Civil Rights movement.

Yes, indeed. Real change happens when the public demands real change. When oh when will we learn this lesson?

So yes, Democrats, the "easy" passage of the health care reform bill (and what a compromised fiasco it is already) is now out of your grasp, unless you plan on railroading it through before Senator-elect Brown can be sworn in. But passage of the bill is NOT impossible, it just requires your courage, conviction, and commitment. Unfortunately, I believe that he days when Lions walked the Senate halls are dead. Now only angry ghosts and fainting goats leap from hearing room to hearing room, bleating loudly, and falling over at any loud sound.

Sleeping Pills or New York, NY

Right now I feel as if I downed a bottle of Nyquil, chased it with a bottle of vodka, and then topped it off with a hand full of valium.

Holy Spaced Out Batman.

Last night, I had one of those NYC moments. I started off the evening at the fucking fantastic 48 Lounge in the McGraw-Hill Building on 48th Street between 6th and 7th avenues. This upscale lounge caters to the corporate crowd during the week and the show goers in the evenings and on the weekends. It is right in the heart of the Theater District, and it is conveniently located right off of several major train lines. The decor is chic and there is a breathtaking giant photo of a rock formation from the Arizona desert that dominates the back wall of the lounge. The ceiling in the VIP/bottle service area features lighting that mimics a constellation in the shape of an infinity symbol. The music was a PERFECT blend of some of the best music from the1980s-today with remixes of Susanne Vega, Michael Jackson, Sade, and others. There wasn't a single song that came on that I didn't love. Check out 48 Lounge, but be prepared...the drinks are flawless but they come witha hefty price tag.

I met my friend, Jamila Anderson, another Minnesota ex-pat living in NYC for drinks. Jamila is one of the most brilliant actors I know. She also has a soulful voice and is working on some big things, so you all should keep her name in mind. So Jamila and I met at the 48 Lounge, which is being managed by my friend Jason. We chilled, talked about boys and dick, and had an all around great time. Jason checked in on us and made sure we had impeccable service, plus he ain't hard on the eyes himself.

My plan was to have a few drinks with Jamila and head home but NYC had a different plan for my behind. While we were sitting there, my girls Shelley and Lisa texted Jason, as they may all become roommates together, and my two favorite sorority girls popped up from the Lower East Side and met us from an end of the evening drink. Then, my friend Karlo called and said that he was going out with a friend from LA, and he swung by and picked me up.

Good lord. I meant to be home by Midnight, but I stumbled in the door around 6:30am. We ended up going to two more bars last evening for a grand total of three.

Now don't let the gays fool you. We can get just as rowdy at a bar as our straight counterparts. We just look better when we do it. While we were at Barracuda, a friend of one of Karlo's friends, said something to a porn star that really pissed off the porn star and the porn star's man. Not sure what was said, but that 7' tall power bottom looked like he was about to lay a hurting on the black queen that was Karlo's friend Scott's friend. And when voices get loud, my PTSD kicks in, and I gots ta go.

That situation, having simmered down, was replaced by Armahn getting into a row with one of the servers at Barracuda. Things got real tense for a moment when the bouncer was brought in. I was all ready to believe that the server was being a major diva, but she was nice to me, so I downgraded her from Super Bitch to Stressed Waiter, which comes with certain allowances.

I was so wired and jacked up from such a fun night that I absolutely could NOT sleep. I laid in bed begging the Sandman to swing by and punch me in the face, but he refused to cooperate. Finally around 7:30, I got up and took two Tylenol PM, but my body refused to process the damn drugs. Finally, around 10:30, after eating a bowl of spaghetti and downing two more "sleepies," I passed out until 2:00pm.

Let it be a lesson to you all that trying to shut down your bodies manic energy with four Tylenol PM ain't cute. I didn't want to while away my whole day in a chemically induced coma, so I forced myself to get up and make out with my dog a little bit (and David too). But when those damn little pills say allow for 8 hours of sleep, they are not lying. My eyes keep unfocusing while I type this, and I am about to run outside, butt naked, to try and wake myself up.

In the end, it was an awesome NYC night. There are very few places where you can have a such a night. And where else can you start the night with an actor/hip-hop artist and end it with two high end make-up artists and a former Associate Director of the Ice Capades. Only in the Big Apple. New York....I got to be a part of it!

Letter from Indiana University Regarding Murder of Dr. Don Belton

A friend of mine from undergrad at Warren Wilson College, Abbie Hantgan, was loving enough to send me this letter today. This letter was sent out by the Provost at Indiana University regarding the murder of Don Belton. I deeply appreciate the university's remembrance of Dr. Belton and also recognizing that his murder has reached far beyond the IU community.

Letter from Indiana University Provost Regarding the Murder of Professor Don Belton

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students,

As the campus begins the new semester, we must acknowledge a terrible loss.
Some of you may just now be returning to campus after the holidays, and I am
very sad to inform you that the Indiana University community lost a dear
colleague during the semester break.

Don Belton, a faculty member in the English Department, was slain at his home
in Bloomington on December 27. (An arrest has been made in the case.)

In his relatively brief time at IUB, Professor Belton earned the admiration
and affection of his colleagues and students. He was a gifted writer and a
highly-valued member of the faculty of our distinguished Creative Writing
Program, in the Department of English. He was very well liked and very
well-respected. His death is a loss not just to his family and friends, and
our academic community, but also to the extended world of arts and letters and
to all who value the humanistic traditions. His absence will be profoundly felt.

The murder of Professor Belton has evoked strong emotions throughout the
community and indeed the nation. I trust that all members of our community will
exhibit tolerance, compassion, and respect in the wake of the loss of a valued
colleague. Let us also show respect for one another and for the many and varied
ways in which we express our grief over such a tragedy.

A memorial service to celebrate the life of Professor Belton will take place on
Friday January 15, at 5 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Fee Lane
in Bloomington.

Our heartfelt sympathies go out to Professor Belton's family, friends, and
colleagues.

Karen Hanson
Provost and Executive Vice President

Avatar: Great White Hopeless But See It Anyway

So, on the surface (and beneath the surface) Avatar is what David Brooks describes as a "White Messiah" movie a la "Dances with Wolves" and a dozen other popular cinema, literary, and animated fables. The movie is of course about a white man that goes native, and in this movie he literally goes native in the end swapping his human body for an alien body, and leads the indigenous people to salvation. He falls in love with an alien version of Malinche/Pocahontas/Sacajewea/Insert Any Other Woman's Name Here Blamed for Giving Access to Her People By the Colonizers. And, of course the indigenous people are at one with the natural environment, have perfect bodies, exist without war amongst themselves, and live in a big tree. They are the noble savage perfected.

I should have hated this movie for all of those reasons, but I absolutely loved it.

I won't allow that James Cameron was sophisticated in his race analysis. He wasn't. But what he did was provide a very clear depiction of what corporatism and white colonization has done and continues to do to indigenous peoples and populations around the world. He doesn't represent the corporate/military industrial complex on Pandora as having some sort of benevolent intentions...he strips away the niceties that are often present in these movies that portray the "bad white guys" as simply misguided or doing evil in the name of good or higher intentions. He tells it like it is and shows how decisions are really made in the real world when indigenous communities are sitting atop a valuable resources that is desired by the industrialized world. And, the part that won me over, was that James Cameron, for the first time that I can remember in a major world wide cinema piece, directly and clearly makes the connection between capitalism, corporatism, and the military industrial complex. He shows clearly and definitively that they are conjoined, something many of us already knew, and that they can not and will not exist separate from one another. He pushes all of his characters to their illogical extremes. But in doing so gives a more realistic view of the "bad guys" than one is likely to get in a corporate backed theater in the Western World.

He also does a weak critique, but a critique none-the-less, of the clash between Western scientists and indigenous science and technology. Let's be clear, indigenous communities have had and continue to have technology that is culturally appropriate and may not look like Western technology but is still technology. Unfortunately, Western science fails to understand or understands incorrectly indigenous knowledge, medicine, science and technology. And, in this movie, they fail again. Except Sigorne Weaver, who magically comes to a complete understanding of the indigenous science and faith system just before she departs to live with Eywa. Pullllleaassse.

One interesting side note is that Cameron did something interesting. He used a derivation of the Aramaic word for God, which is Elaw. I know this because I use that name for God in the novel that I am writing. Score one for Cameron actually opening a book and doing some research.

In the end, I found value in watching Avatar, but not for the reasons, I am sure, that James Cameron wanted. The plot was thin, but it did communicate some messages, starkly, that the world needs to hear.

On another tip, entirely, I fully believe the special effects in this movie will redefine special effects in the way that the Matrix did almost a decade ago.

In the end, I support folks going to see Avatar. Walk into it knowing that it will again be a storytelling of the Great White Hope. If you accept that up front, you will be able to get past it and enjoy the movie for what it does offer in terms of originality. If nothing else, see it in 3-D...cuz...really...the special effects are fucking cool.

Indiana Professor Don Belton Murdered

Another week, another queer person of color murdered. Indiana University Professor Don Belton, who I knew from his time in Minneapolis, though I did not know him well, was murdered by Michael Griffin. Mr. Griffin accused Don of sexually assaulting him "twice" on Christmas Day. So he went to Don's house, with a hunting knife, and when Don didn't apologize, he stabbed the man at least five or six times in the back and then several times in front.

I call that premeditated murder. You don't go to someones house for an apology and bring a knife.

The reporting also included that the police found a journal in the professor's apartment that had an entry which read that he was "very happy" that someone named Michael entered his life. Now, I could be wrong, but unless someone is a pathological or serial rapist, they generally do not write journal entries about individuals they assaulted.

This sounds like someone got their dick sucked a couple of times, couldn't deal with their internal homophobia, and killed an innocent man. There is an investigation that will dig up the facts, but I am going to go ahead and say that based on the age difference, the obvious physical fitness of Mr. Griffin, and knowing Don's commitment to justice and community, it would be very difficult for Don to assault Mr. Griffin. And even if he had, inappropriate touching does not qualify anyone for a death sentence.

I am an assault survivor. I was assaulted twice as an adult. I understand that assault between men can happen. My heart and understanding goes out to assault survivors, particularly those that are men as we are made almost completely invisible in the domestic and sexual violence movements unless we are the perpetrators.

But I don't believe for a fucking second that Michael Griffin was assaulted by Don Belton. The facts, as they stand, do not add up. Perhaps my opinion will change, but I doubt it. Even in supposed gay panic cases, the murderer has killed while, during, or just after the sexual encounter. They don't go back, days later, with a bowie knife. That is the sign of a fucked up mind and some fucked up issues.

And, of course, who values the life of a black man? Let alone a queer black man? Who thinks twice about murdering those that society still often fails to value? Why do people still think, use, and triumph with the gay panic defense? If I murdered the woman that grabbed my dick at a nightclub in Virginia over the Thanksgiving holiday, would I have been able to get off based on a straight panic defense?

I am exhausted.

Rest in piece Don. Thank you for your contributions to education, your writing, and your spirit. You will be missed.

Ganymede #6 Released Featuring Poetry by Brandon Lacy Campos and Charlie Vazquez

GANYMEDE #6 issue now out
6x9² perfect bound paperback book, 272 pages

--DAVID SEDARIS on loving his man
--British gay author DENTON WELCH (1915-1948), enjoying a big cult following
in the UK, returns to America thanks to Ganymede: SIX sample stories over
three issues!
--The Dirt on the Duchess: From Charles Higham's new memoir, learn what
Chinese vaginal technique the Duchess of Windsor used to cure her man's
impotence. Who needs the throne of England when your wife makes you cum?
--EDMUND WHITE¹s new memoir ³City Boy² and other book and film reviews
--MY DIVA: six gay authors on the great divas they love
--a rare homo-erotic mystery story by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
--14 gay poets, 5 gay story writers, gay photographers and artists

POETRY by Edward Field, Walter Holland, Steven Cordova, Gregg Shapiro, R.
Nemo Hill, Stephen S. Mills, Brandon Lacy Campos, Jeff Mann, Lee Houck, Eric
Norris, Bryan Borland, Christopher S. Soden, Sergio Ortiz, Mark Milazzo
FICTION by Denton Welch, Charlie Vásquez, Cyrus Cassells, Wayne Hoffman,
Eric Karl Anderson, Andrew J. Peters
ART PORTFOLIO: Today¹s Painters of the Male Form
PHOTO PORTFOLIOS: Yannis Angel, Kent Mercurio, Jannis Tsipoulanis, Eric
Phillips, Lars Stephan

Details and readable sample pages:
http://www.ganymedenyc.com/

Purchase (print or download):
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1308479
If you order print or download before Dec. 31, Lulu offers 20% off by using
this code in checkout: HOHOHO

Contributors can receive a free electronic version of the compete issue
provided their email service can handle very large attachments of 10+ mb
(gmail and Road Runner can; most others cannot)

Shits and No Giggles

Let me tell you, spending a week and a half alternating between taking 40 shits a day to all of a sudden being backed up like the 101 in L.A. during rush hour is enough to make a man say fuck it and carve into his own intestines to install a homemade colostomy bag. Then just as I thought all was well, I developed a waterfall of snot down the back of my throat and what felt like a Satanic Christmas elf with a red hot dagger in the junction between my ear and my throat that went berserk every time I swallowed anything, including the snot fountain.

Of course, all of this happened as David and I threw our holiday party, which drew about 40 guests, and our holiday trip to Connecticut to spend time with the in-laws.

And that's when "stupid man syndrome" kicked up in my butt. Now, most normal human beings, around day three of peeing out of their anus, would get thee to a doctor's office. Not my stubborn ass. Since Urgent Cares are not popular in New York, I decided to tough it out the first weekend, so as to avoid the $75 co-pay at the ER. By Monday, the fountain had dried up, and I thought...MAN WINS AGAIN! Of course, the day we leave for CT, my ear decides to go Sarah Palin rogue, but at that point it was too late to go to the doctor, as we were on our way to CT. I figured it was just a little earache, and it would go away, so I ate about three bites of Christmas dinner (I must be the only idiot in the Christian world that lost weight with about 20 lbs of ham staring him in the face). Day before last I decided to self medicate. Turns out that enough vodka heals all wounds, or at least least numbs them to the point where you just don't care.

Oh but I did care yesterday morning.

When I woke up yesterday, the ear pain was back with a vengeance, and this time the mucus waterfall was non-stop, yum. Unfortunately, "stupid man syndrome" was still in full effect. I decided that I was going to tough it out. I laid back down to take a nap. Finally, when I realized that the Hell's Elves had built a full on mosh pit in my ear/throat, I decided to suck it up and ask David to take me to urgent care.

I rose only to discover that David had been summoned by the Spirit of Martha Stewart Past (before jail), and he was off to the yarn store. I offered up a great lament, as David is a big old Uptown Girl when it comes shopping. That one can disappear into a craft aisle for three days and sustain himself with the water he keeps in the nick knack hump on his back.

Thank the lord that he made it back swiftly.

We trucked to the urgent care and then got to sit in the waiting room for 45 minutes. Once in the back, I got to tell a crotchety nurse about my various systems, and then she asked me my doctor's name. I blanked. I seriously blinked at her and said ummmm, "Steve." And she said, "umm. Last name." I totally could not remember. Then I mentioned he was in Chelsea, and she gave me that, "Oh you are from the CITY," look and shuffled out of the room. By the time the doctor came in, I was eyeballing a tongue depressor and a bottle of rubbing alcohol wondering if I could just fix the situation myself. The doc listened to my chest and then stuck one of those giant swabs down my throat, which came out bright red and bloody. I almost fainted off the damn examination table. I hadn't realized that the Elves weren't moshing, they were butchering my throat and selling the flesh to Dwarves as beef jerky.

Bitches.

The doctor was about as pleasant as Nurse Evil. And then I made the ultimate mistake as I left the examination room. I wished him a Merry Christmas, to which he did not respond. Then I read his name on the prescription sheet. Score one for wishing a Merry Christmas to a Jew. I am so awesome.

I got my drugs, headed home, and evicted the elves. Stupid Man Syndrome gave way to No More Blood in the Throat Common Sense.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a phlegm free night.

Precious

Yesterday, Mo'nique received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role in the movie "Precious," the film based on the novel Push by Sapphire. She deserved it. Indeed, Mo'Nique, Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz, and Gabourey Sidibie should all just be handed Golden Globes and Oscars right now.

This movie was so good and so hard and so raw and so real that at times I felt as if I were a voyeur inside the real life of any number of young women that I see on any given day walking the streets of New York.

Precious deals with a range of issues from incest, physical abuse, teen pregnancy, literacy, HIV/AIDS, poverty, and race. The truth is that the American cinema rarely deals well with ONE of those issues, and most films that attempt to not only address more than one of these issues but also to demonstrate the very real interconnections between these issues and their attendant oppressions, usually the movie falls flat or has to resort to being a musical (Rent anyone?). This movie not only addresses these issues but maintains a realism that for anyone that has struggled with any of these issues, you feel as if your story is being told to you from the silver screen, and it is not always a comfortable feeling.

I saw this film with my friend Kenyon, and at one point, he just laid his hand on my leg in comfort, and I was glad to have him nearby. Watching this film with another person of African descent, someone that I know understands many of the issues discussed in this film, made all the difference. When the two young black women walked out of the movie after a particularly difficult scene, I didn't wonder why. Watching it is not for the weak of heart or for anyone that is not in a good head place and soul space.

But it is a movie that everyone should see. I think what made the movie work, and I came to this conclusion after a Facebook conversation with my friend Cindy, was that everyone in the movie was ridiculously humble. With the stars attached to this movie, it could have easily have become a Divafest. Anyone one of the megastars attached to the film could have out shined the newcomer, Sidibie, but they all understand that the story they were telling was greater than themselves. Hell, to be real, I knew Mariah Carey was in the movie, and I was staring right at her and did not register the woman on the screen with the pop star.

Do yourself a favor. Go and see Precious. I guarantee that no other movie that came out in 2009 is anywhere near the quality of this movie. Prepare for an Oscars sweep.

Judy Shephard's Statement on Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado's Murder

I received this statement from Judy Shephard via Christopher Pagan, the amazing man that broke the story of Jorge (George) Steven Lopez Mercado's brutal murder to the world. Judy Shephard is the mother of Matthew Shephard. Matthew was murdered in Wyoming in 1998.


Statement from Judy Shephard on the Murder of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado

Dennis and I, and the entire board and staff of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, stand with all who are grieving the loss of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado in one of the most shockingly brutal hate crimes in Puerto Rico’s history.

While we are grateful to the local law enforcement officials for their swift work to apprehend the suspect in this terrible crime, we remain deeply saddened that yet another family should have to suffer the pain of such a tragedy, and that such breathtaking violence continues to be directed at gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people who are simply trying to live their lives honestly and openly.

For another young person to lose their life and be taken from their family and community due to fear, prejudice and hatred is simply unacceptable. Each of us who believe in freedom and equality must remain vocal, active, and unrelenting in calling for justice.

Our thoughts are with Mr. Lopez, all who knew and loved him, the members of his community and the millions worldwide who have been touched by his senseless death. Our family and the Foundation will continue to work to prevent similar tragedies in any way we can.

To learn more about the Matthew Shephard Foundation click here.

Jason Mattison, Jr. Murdered in Baltimore

I am sitting at my computer, drying tofu and waiting for a college friend to come over, so we can have dinner, drink wine, and enjoy each other's company. Up until I opened my Facebook a moment ago and saw an article posted by my friend and fellow blogger Andres Duque, I took every single moment of my day supremely for granted.

Today Jason Mattison, Jr. reminded me to pay attention and to be grateful. Yesterday it was George Steven Lopez Mercado. Both of the lessons came at the cost of these youth's lives.

What the fuck is wrong with motherfuckers in this world?

I mean come on. Jason was raped, stabbed in the throat and face, gagged with a pillow and shoved in a closet in his Aunt's house. He was murdered by a friend of the family known to be a violent criminal and yet somehow they let him in the house and left him alone with this boy? WHAT THE FUCK! I might love the hell out of a good friend or relative that snaps and does violent harm to someone, but you can bet from that day forward that person will NEVER be alone in a room with anyone that is precious to me...especially a child.

And what really pisses me off, once again, is that since this was a black child that was murdered in Baltimore in a poor neighborhood, there will be no massive Matthew Shepherd outcry. There will not be massive candle light vigils around the country. There will be no massive legislative intervention by the HRC or NGLTF or any other national advocacy group. I am so tired of the fact that OUR children, our beautiful brown and black children, are continuously sacrificed and pass out of this world without a tremendous roar by every breathing loving person that understands that every single human being is precious. FUCK YOUR RELIGION if it tells you that a gay child should not complain when he or she is killed. FUCK YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD if people get off by harassing and slamming queer kids just trying to grow up. FUCK YOUR SCHOOL if it does not immediately boot anyone that thinks its ok to bully or shame someone because of their perceived sexual orientation or perceived gender identity.

THIS IS NOT JUST A QUEER PEOPLE OF COLOR TRAGEDY. THIS IS A TRAGEDY.

I want to see white straight male Republican capitalists that own overseas assets crying on TV about this child's murder. I want WHITE LED LGBT ORGANIZATIONS to organize the marches and vigils and remembrances of this baby. I WANT A GODDAMN NATIONAL ACT TO ELIMINATE POVERTY in this country called the JASON MATTISON JR and GEORGE STEVEN LOPEZ MERCADO ANTI-POVERTY AND WELFARE RIGHTS ACT that also includes a provision that provides for Puerto Rico to become a free and independent nation with a guaranteed annual no strings attached AID package of 100 billion dollars a year for every year that Puerto Rico has been a U.S. Colony, which is 110 years and counting.

Remember Jason Mattison, Jr and his family in your thoughts and prayers. And once you are done praying, call someone and tell them about his murder, then call your neighbors, your schools, your legislators, your ministers, your police force, and anyone else that needs to be called and told that our youth are inherently sacred, valued, loved, cherished and no one has any right or reason to dim or put out their light.

George Steven Lopez Mercado Murdered in Puerto Rico

Say his name: George Steven Lopez Mercado. Say his name every day, out loud, until he receives justice. George Steven Lopez Mercardo was brutality murdered, his legs and arms ripped off, his body partially burned, decapitated, and his torso ripped in half near Cayey in Puerto Rico. Thanks to an iReport by Christopher Pagan we know about this tragedy. No thanks to CNN or any other major U.S. News Source.

Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. Since 1898, the U.S. has owned Puerto Rico and used it as a fat cash cow. Each year the island pumps more than $20 billion in tax and other revenue into the U.S. economy, yet the island exists as a third world country, its per capita earnings each annum is about half that of Mississippi or roughly around $8,000. As a colony, the island is required to follow federal laws, the FBI has jurisdiction on the island, and the U.S. is responsible for enforcing basic human rights standards. The fact that there has been almost no coverage of this heinous murder of a well known queer youth in Puerto Rico is endemic to the role of Puerto Rico in the U.S.: most people don't know we own it, it's a cheap vacation spot for U.S. tourists, and we don't care about the island unless the islanders get restless.

I do not support the recent hate crimes legislation signed into law by President Obama specifically because it is going to increase sentences for people of color. But, since it has been passed and signed into law, and since Puerto Rico is under federal jurisdiction, the law needs to be applied thoroughly to this case. And since every damn news outlet in the country covered the murder of Matthew Shepherd, here is a chance to set racism and colonialism aside and remember George Steven Lopez Mercado.

It's bad enough that this young man's life was brutally ended, but the detective, Angel Rodriguez, in charge of the investigation has basically said that based on George's sexual orientation, he deserved what he got. Excuse me?

I am willing to bet that the police detective has had his cock sucked more than once. Bugarrones make me sick.

I lived in Puerto Rico. I know that the queer community there is vibrant. I also know that I met more "straight" men that liked to take it up the butt than anywhere else I have ever been.

First off the F.B.I needs to take over investigation of this crime.

Secondly the police detective that made the fucked up comments regarding this tragic murder needs to be fired and charged with compromising an investigation, obstruction of justice, and intentional assholery.

Then the individual or individuals responsible for this crime need to be locked in an iron cage and dropped off the tip of El Morro Castle directly into the ocean.

Thank you to Christopher Pagan for bringing this to our attention, and thank you to www.towleroad.com for ensuring that Christopher's iReport has gotten the coverage it deserves.

George Steven Lopez Mercado, you will not be forgotten.

Shit Talk

I had a tremendously satisfactory poop this morning. While power turds were shooting from my bottom with tiny glorious splashes in the toilet bowl, I thought about how much I love to take a poop.

Now let's be clear. I am not into scat. If you shit on me, you had better meet at least three of the following four criteria:

1) I gave birth to you
2) You are less than a year old
3) No court in the world would declare you mentally competent
4) You have amoebic dysentery

If you do not meet three of those four criteria and you shit on me, kiss your Mama goodbye and prepare to meet your maker cuz I am going to put you directly in a hole in the ground with a shape that exactly matches my fist in your heart. I will start chanting "O Num Shabyum," like that crazy mo'fo' in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and snatch your blood pumper straight up out of your chest.

But, for real, I love to take poops. Next to sex and writing, it is my favorite pastime. The good Lord knew what he was doing when he placed more nerve endings in your anus than anywhere else in the human anatomy except the clitoris (if that isn't a selling point for butt sex, I don't know what else could be). And when you have a gloriously poopy morning when your body decides to give itself a colonic, well that is generally a sign that your going to have a good day.

Seriously, sometimes when I am on the Porcelain Power Seat, I get real upset if I run out of crap before I finish the chapter of the book I am reading. Ever since I jumped into exercise high gear and built up my abs, I have been pooping much more efficiently and quickly, so I have not been getting my good reading time in lately, and that is messing with my Book-A-Week average. Hell, I read the entire Bible on the toilet. I kept a good old Precious Moments Newly Revised King James Version that I got for Christmas when I was 12 on the back of the toilet for a couple of months, and my Revelation was that God made Poop and saw that it was good. Amen.

I am also fascinated by the changes in my poop from day to day. Like when I eat a bunch of collards, I basically shit "hooker green" poop for the next two days. If I eat a lot of rice Chex it comes out grainy and stringy, and if I eat Lucky Charms it turns bright green from the dye in the marshmallows. And since I love hot peppers I also get a nice warming sensation in the morning after a night of extra spicy deliciousness.

1-2-3-4 It Is Pooping I Adore! GO TEAM GO!

It's the little pleasures in life that will sustain us in this crazy shifting world of ours.

Minnesota!

So I love Minnesota. I betcha could never guessed. My beloved homeland has been in the news quite a bit lately. From electing Al Franken to the Senate and giving the Democrats the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster (that is if Lieberman's dumbass doesn't go all Sarah Palin rogue) to once again being at the top of the healthy, livability, education, arts, and economic recover lists...the land of 10,000 lakes (actually 11,842 lakes) is pretty much the best state in these here United States.

I even found out recently at a party with a professor of linguistics that the Minnesota accent is the fastest spreading in the country and can now be heard as far south as Kansas and Missouri, east to Ohio and west to Nebraska. BOOOOOOOOOYA!

Sure the state is frozen over from mid-November to mid-April. And yeah I remember once it snowed on May 1st, and there was that one time that it snowed four feet over night on Halloween and I went trick or treating with a sled, but other than the time when the air temperature with windchill was -90 degrees and the Governor shut down all the schools in the state, Minnesota is awesome.

Minnesotans are also the toughest creatures on the planet.

I mean I just explained to you that other than Polar Bears and Penguins, no other living creatures roam about in -90 degree weather except Minnesotans. And not only do we roam about, we throw parades. There is a parade called the Holidazzle that runs every night from Dec. 1 until December 31 at exactly 6pm along Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis. That is after nightfall ya'll. Almost every January we build a LIFE SIZE castle out of giant ice blocks and put on a festival we call the St. Paul Winter Carnival. Every year the city of St. Paul buries a golden medallion in the snow somewhere in the city and thousands of people search for weeks for the medallion...the lucky winner takes away $15,000. The longest dog sled race in the world outside of the Iditarod takes place in Northern Minnesota. Those cowboy boot wearing pansies in Texas ain't got nothing on Minnesota pride or Minnesota tough.

It also helps that we have several of the top public and private higher education institutions in the world in our little old state. My high school, Patrick Henry, in North Minneapolis has been named one of the top high schools in America by U.S. News and World Report every year for about a decade, and who else has the Mall of America...no one else that's who. Shoot.

Oh yeah, and we were the first state to include gender identity in our state's human rights act. DOUBLE BOOOOOOOOYA!

We've elected six independent governors in our state's history, and Minneapolis has 22 lakes within the city limits. Sure, we have a ridiculous shit stain asshole of a governor that would have sucked whiskey from George Bush Jr's tit if he thought it would get him into the White House, but, you know, we can't be PERFECT otherwise those nasal talkin' cheese eatin' Sconnies would want to move into Minnesota. I would have to hire some Minutemen to move to Minnesota and guard our Eastern Border. I welcome undocumented immigrants to Minnesota. It's Wisconsinites I can't stand.

Minnesota is the shit. You betta recognize!

Ragtime on Broadway Fucked My Ass Up

So I basically spent the last two hours being angry as hell and crying like a little biznatch that got beat in the face with a morningstar dipped in acid.

Ragtime is the best piece of theater I have seen in a long damn time. It's better than Wicked, and since I named my penis Gregory McGuire after seeing Wicked...that should tell ya'll something.

Ragtime is a revival of a play from the late 90s. It is officially re-opening this Sunday at the Neil Simon theater just up the street from my house. Today was a preview matinee. A friend of mine, that I met through David, had extra tickets to the show and sent me a text earlier this afternoon to ask if I would like to see the show.

I had already had a midday cocktail as today was a day off for me, and I was debating whether or not I should go. Ragtime was on the top of my list of shows to see, so I figured I should get my lazy ass up off the stool and go check out the show for free.

I haven't decided yet if it was a good choice.

So, in a vacuum it was an excellent choice. The show was fucking phenomenal. The music was incredible, the performers were outstanding, the story was great and original, and the stage/sound/lighting are going to win this production a Tony.

In relationship to my mental health after two days of intense labor and already being soul tired before I went, it was probably a poor choice.

I didn't know what the show was about before I signed up to see it. I knew it had black folks in it, and I knew that it must be set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as that was the hey day of ragtime music.

In actuality the show wove the stories of two Jewish immigrants, a well-to-do white American family, and a black woman and her child, and a Harlem based successful ragtime musician. The play addressed issue of workers right and industrialism. Emma Goldman figured in prominently as did JP Morgan and Booker T. Washington. The gist of the play is that a poor black woman abandons and then is reunited with her infant. What she thought was an itinerant musician tracks her down and tries to build a life for her. Unfortunately, she is beaten by whites and killed. As often happened, the legal channels of justice did jack shit to remedy the situation, and the musician goes ape shit and kills three white men. And I say halle-fucking-lujah to that.

Of course in the end, the black man is shot down by the authorities, and Booker T. Washington's assimilationist and white washed negro ass advocates for the wronged musician to trust the wheels of justice which roll right over the musician.

The entire story is told through brilliant musical numbers and frankly I cried from sadness and ridiculous anger.

I am so tired of being angry. I wasn't sitting in the audience angry at some historical injustice, I was angry because the EXACT SAME SHIT HAPPENS RIGHT NOW EVERY DAY AND NOT A FUCKING THING HAS CHANGED fundamentally. Sure, overt racism in the criminal justice system is no longer permissible but violent crimes against black men by the police have not substantially dipped in a generation, white cops that kill black men almost uniformly get off no matter HOW obvious it is that the shit that went down was a case of fucked up white men shooting down a black man who only had a wallet in their hand, and institutional and structural racism, though mitigated, remains rampant in so many ways. I love Obama but his election has meant little to jack shit in the substantive day to day realities of black folks living in America.

Didi I mention I am tired of being angry. I really am. I am so emotionally drained. I know that when I came home pouring a delicious vodka drink was probably not the best answer, but it was a readily available one. I know that my man is going to come home in an hour or so, and he should not be subjected to the ridiculous and irate feelings that are pumping along with adrenaline through my veins. But, seriously, right now at this juncture I am utilizing every tool that I have to just survive this rage without reverting to old drugging patterns or pulling out a hatchet and going Jason Voorhies on the asses of whatever poor white souls I meet on the street below.

I am sure tomorrow I will be my old chipper self again, but today I am pissed as hell.

Oh, and btw, go see Ragtime. It is worth the ticket price.

Homohop star Tori Fixx to release digital greatest hits album!

NEW goodies coming SOON for DIGITAL distribution from Big Milo Records/VYJ2!!

It's the premier Big Milo Records/VYJ2 release from:
Tori Fixx..."The Fixxology" (VBIG-CD-1402 / 8 12782 81402 3)

Tori Fixx’s Digital Only “The Fixxology” Release Slated for December 8

(Los Angeles, CA) Big Milo Records announces a new Tori Fixx release set for December 8, 2009. The project is a DIGITAL-only release entitled “The Fixxology” and is a completely remastered compilation anthology of Tori Fixx’s decade of work...plus remixes and two new tracks that indicate his new musical direction.

“The Fixxology” highlights fan favorites from his decade of work and also familiarizes others to the artist’s older material that many new fans may not be aware of. “The Fixxology” features remixes of “Respect the Situation,” “Take Care of U,” “1 Mo’ Nite,” and a completely transformed “Reciprocity,” which is the first official radio single. All tracks on “The Fixxology” have been completely remastered and brought up to modern production levels. This is Tori Fixx today, yesterday...and yet to come!

“The Fixxology” will be released on December 8, 2009, with an MSRP of $9.99 for the full release of 21 tracks. Certain songs will only be available with purchase of the entire “The Fixxology” release.

Tori Fixx is a producer and out hip hop artist who has released over 7 albums in his career - his music is a blend of hip hop, funk, soul, and pop. He has been profiled in The Advocate and Out Magazine. He has also appeared on the Tyra Banks Show and CNN's Paula Zahn Now. He was just nominated for two Outmusic Awards for material released in 2008, ("I'm the Same," also on "The Fixxology") as well as Producer of the Year for his remix of Guy B's "Co-Exist."

Doggy Style

I am totally, absolutely, totally, head over heels in love...with a dog.

Her name is Mimzy, and she is the boss of me.

About six weeks ago, David and I were talking about how we missed having a dog around the house. David spent hours flipping through webpages on Jack Russell Terrier adoption sites. One day, he sent me a picture of this little face staring up at me out of a red blanket. I was frickin' hooked. I ran into the studio, and I told David that this was our girl.

We took the train to Central Connecticut, and then we borrowed David's Dad's truck and drove to Boston on a rainy day when I had the flu in order to get our new girl, Mimzy.

It has been a love affair since then. Now, I know I am biased as a parent, but literally people stop us on the street because she is so damn cute. She has unusual markings for a JRT, and she is basically so laid back that sometimes I wonder if she's dead. She is generally ridiculously delicate and very inquisitive...actually at the moment she was sniffing the cacti in the window sill.

She is also smart as hell.

So she hates/loves the canned air bottles I have and use to clean my keyboard. But it's not just the cans she flips out about. If the can is sitting by itself on the shelf in her view, she is absolutely ok with it. She knows that the can isn't a threat unless I touch it. But let my hand stray near the can or touch it, and she loses her mind. And she does one of two things: She either snaps at my hand OR she grabs the can of air via the straw attached to the nozzle and drags it away from me. She does the same thing with the self-inking address stamp I have for work. As a matter of fact, yesterday, I looked over my desk and she was on the bookshelf. She grabbed the stamper, very softly, dragged it onto her sleeping pallet, and stood over it looking at me as if it dare me to try and touch it.

I got nipped in the man titty today for teasing her with the spray can. Mimzy ain't no joke.

In the last couple of weeks her personality has really come through. She is sweet and playful. She's a trickster, and she is a lover. And she has totally captured my heart and the heart of Michael Urie the dude that plays Mark on Ugly Betty. He hasn't more than nodded in my direction but when Mimzy enters the dog park, he is all about her royal cuteness.

20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall

I remember November 9, 1989 very well. I was living in Brainerd, MN, and I was a 7th grader at Washington Middle School. Though I can't remember the name of my 7th grade civics teacher, I do remember a few things: 1) He was hot, 2) He expected us to know what was going on in the world, 3) He gave me extra credit for reading Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, which fucked me up emotionally, 4) I found the first modern fantasy novel I ever read, Spellfire by Ed Greenwood, underneath my chair in his classroom, which has led to a life long fascination with Sci Fi/Fantasy, and 5) it was that Civics teacher that informed me that the Wall had come down.

He walked to the front of the class in some jeans that made his booty do a double bounce, and he said to us, "The world has changed forever, the Berlin Wall has come down."

Sometimes I take things a little too literally. I immediately looked out of the classroom window expecting to see something amazing...Unicorns humping in the middle of Oak Street, my church, which was just across the way, glowing with heavenly lights, or my Civics teaching floating on a cloud, naked, asking me to join him.

Instead my heart full of anticipation became a hard on of disappointment, the world looked exactly the same. But it wasn't was it?

By the end of that year a whole host of new countries or old countries with new freedom emerged in Europe, and I was pissed. I had just memorized all the countries of Europe and their capitals, and all of a sudden a half dozen new ones showed up without as much as a "How do you do?" Cheeky.

Later that night I returned home, and I watched video of the Knight Rider aka David Hasselhoff singing some stupid song on top of the Berlin Wall. The world had changed indeed.

20 years later Europe has moved to the edge of becoming one unified political structure, most of the European Union has adopted a single currency, old enemies are now new friends, and the new political closeness has bred an atmosphere where questions that were once taboo (such as the Armenian genocide) are now being asked and answered. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Near Universal Health Care vrs. A Woman's Right to Choose

Last night the United States cleared a major hurdle and took a huge step towards near universal health care coverage for all U.S. citizens. (Please dissect this sentence: near universal means 96% of Americans covered, it is not a singer payer system, and it will only cover citizens and not undocumented workers...which leaves huge amounts of work to do).

Of course, in grand U.S. fashion, there is also direct and immediate work to do in that in order to pass the House version of the bill last night, an amendment passed that would restrict any federal insurance programs from providing abortion services to any woman except in the case of rape, incest or a direct threat to the health of the mother. Conservative Democrats and Republicans banded together to add this piece of Religious Right assault on a woman's right to choose to the health care bill. The hope for the amendment was two fold: 1) conservative Democrats and GOP members hoped that by restricting a woman's right to choose more liberal Democrats would change their vote and the whole bill would fail or 2) the bill would pass and the amendment would survive through the Senate version and make it into law.

Thank God that liberal Democrats stuck to their guns and passed the bill. I hate the attempt by the Right to restrict a woman's right to choose, but I still support the House bill. Here's why:

The Senate version of the bill does not include the language restricting abortion rights nor will it. The make up of the Senate simply does not require that the language be included in order to gain 60 votes. Frankly, no Senate Republican, except perhaps the two women Senator's from Maine, will back the Senate version of the bill. The fact that it is two women from Maine are moderates and Sen. Snowe has supported reproductive rights for women. I am not sure what the viewpoint of Sen. Susan Collins from Maine, also a Republican, happens to be on the issue.

Now let's remember how a bill becomes a law. In general the House takes the lead in the legislative process. Traditionally the Senate will not debate or vote on a bill (other than treaties, Presidential appointments or other Constitutional procedures that need action by the Senate only) until the House has passed a version of its own. Both chambers often work on bills simultaneously but the House acting as the chamber of the people is given first dibs to present their bill. Once a bill has been passed by the House, the Senate goes into debate mode. In general, the Senate does not consider the content of the House Bill other than in broad generalities. The Senate is comprised of individuals with tremendous power that have all sorts of interests. The Senate then passes its own version of the bill at hand (or fails to pass a bill, which either kills or restarts the process from the beginning). Once the Senate version of the bill has passed the for real for real work happens

Here's the part that most U.S. citizens really do not know or understand: the Conference Committee.

The Constitution requires that both houses of Congress pass IDENTICAL bills. Both houses pick members of a conference committee. The Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, specifically, choose these people. In general there are a few token members of the committee from the minority party in each house and a larger delegation from the majority party. Now pay close attention here, the conference committee almost has carte blanche to re-write the bill into the form that is most likely to pass both chambers. They, themselves, can add or subtract provisions of the bill...it is during this most undemocratic of processes that all kinds of pork barrel projects end up getting inserted into bills. The President, also, tends to have folks in or near the room to make sure that the key provisions in the bill backed by the White House are in the final bill. The committee then sends its final version of the bill back to both chambers for a final vote. Often, but not always, big differences in the two bills are axed.

This is why we have to act NOW. First of all, we need to put pressure on our U.S. Senators to get a good final Senate bill passed and make sure that there is no anti-choice language in the final Senate version of the bill. Once the final version of the Senate bill is passed, it will then be our work to make sure that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid know that whoever they appoint to the conference committee better know damn well to make sure the anti-choice language does not end up in the final bill.

The Republicans, which are in the minority, know that they will not be able to pass any anti-choice stand alone legislation themselves. They also know that right now the only branch of government firmly in their control is the judiciary. If, God help us, the anti-choice language makes it into the final bill passed by the House and the Senate, it will be the best chance since Roe v. Wade that the Right will have to strike a blow, at the Supreme Court, over abortion rights. Simply put, the restriction worked into the bill would, most likely, under Roe v. Wade be declared unconstitutional. Except, of course, if in reviewing that section of a new health care law the Supreme Court decides that, in fact, the Roe v. Wade decision was wrong and reverses it.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the insidious and diabolical intent behind forcing the language into the House bill, and it is why we all need to do what we need to do in order to make sure it doesn't end up in the final bill and become law.

Even with the language in the bill, I believe that covering nearly all U.S. citizens with health care is worth it. It is my commitment as a man to fight like hell to make sure that the final bill that becomes law does not, once again, create a win on the backs of women's rights.

Ganymede Poets One Anthology Hits Bookshelves

GANYMEDE POETS, ONE
first annual anthology of all 38 poets published in the first six issues of
the gay men¹s quarterly GANYMEDE
172 pages, 6x9² perfect-bound paperback book, illustrated throughout with
thematic photos
Purchase link, details, sample pages:
http://ganymedepoets.blogspot.com/

"...an innovative, nearly overwhelming new player among poetry
anthologies."--AssociatedContent.com

"There is more queer life between these covers than in virtually any gay
novel..."--Top British gay poet GREGORY WOODS in Chroma

"First in a promised series of annual collections, this strong debut sets a
high bar of quality."--Rainbow Reviews

POETS: David Ayllon, David Bergman, Bryan Borland, Brian Brown, Brandon Lacy
Campos, C.P. Cavafy, Matt Cogswell, Sean Patrick Conlon, Steven Cordova, Ron
Curlee, Jase Donaldson, Edward Field, Christopher Gaskins, R.J. Gibson, R.
Nemo Hill, Matthew Hittinger, Walter Holland, Lee Houk, Jee Leong Koh, Matt
Loney, Jeff Mann, Dug McDowell, Mark Milazzo, Stephen Mills, Michael
Montlack, Robert Kulovec Müller, James Newborg, Eric Norris, Sergio Ortiz,
Jon Rentler, Gregg Shapiro, Christopher Steven Soden, John Stahle, Matthew
Stradling, P. Viktor, Ocean Vuong, Cyril Wong, Zhuang Yisa

CURRENT ISSUE: Ganymede #5
Edmund White, Oscar Wilde, Glenway Wescott, Paris at the birth of
photography, 10 poets and 8 gay artists featured from around the world
http://www.ganymedenyc.com/

My Name is Peaches

I am sitting in my living room, after dark, listening to Four Women by Nina Simone. For those of you not familiar with the song, you can listen to it here. In the song she sings the story of four women: a slave, a prostitute, a mixed girl, and an angry post-slavery woman.

Alice Walker wrote in the Color Purple that when you first see the shores of Africa, it's as if someone strikes a chord inside of you. This song does that for me.

Nina Simone sings with such soft power, boiling down four caricatures representing epochs in black history yet encapsulating in four minutes the reality of a 400 year period of history.

The first three verses are matter of fact, and then she sings the last verse:

"My skin is brown. My manner is tough. I'll kill the first mother I see. My life has been rough. I'm awfully bitter these days. Because my parents were slaves. What do they call me? My name is Peaches!"

No other song I have ever heard in my entire life has ever compacted into such simple verses a vitriolic anger that simply, radically, and unapologetically holds the anger of all those held in bondage plus the weight carried by and lived with by their descendants.

Slavery ended 142 years ago, and I am still pissed off.

I have heard so many times from so many people (almost uniformly not black) that they don't understand why black people are so angry. They don't get why we still carry a burden "laid down" by ,at this point, our great-great-great grandparents. In fact, the only people that I have met that actually understand are Jews. Genocide whether 142 years ago or 60 years ago is carried in the DNA of those that survive it.

When I hear Nina Simone sing "Black is the Color" or "Four Women" or "Strange Fruit" or any number of her songs, I can hear the pain and anger that is carried and is righteously held in her for all of us that share those same terrible roots. And like all things grievous it can be healed, but never has the United States shown the will or the willingness to go beyond an apology to the amends necessary to heal those old yet still fresh and festering wounds.

Nina...my name is Peaches as well.

One Liner of the Week: Joshua Mandelbaum

So Mr. Joshua Mandelbaum is the boss of me. Literally. He is my boss.

Today we visited the amazing Eastern European Hottie Zone (the name of the real site has been changed to protect the innocent) on the upper East Side. Recently remodeled, this place is stunning, and it is where we are having our annual benefit dinner next week.

We met a lovely staff person there by the name of Michael. Michael was a hotty Eastern European man wearing tight jeans. When I got back home, I IMed Joshua and told him that I had a crush and Michael and that Michael and I would be making out in the coat closet during the benefit.

This was Joshua's response:

"Either he has the soul of a fawn or he was crushing on you too."

I almost peed on myself. Oh my straight boss how funny ye be. And that, ladies and trannies, is the One Liner of the Week.

United States of Afghanistan or NYC Democracy Dies

Welcome to New York City, the capital of Venezuela...or maybe it's Ecuador....or perhaps Cuba...or maybe Haiti....could be the Central African Republic....might be Liberia...pick a place that has had a dictator that has engineered an overturn of constitutional or legal term limits...and had themselves re-elected...and that is what New York has become.

The next time that someone has the nerve to say some shit about a "Latin American dictator" engineering their own perpetual electoral victories over the will of the populace, I am going to punch him or her in the face and scream "BLOOMBERG" at the top of my lungs.

I am a wee bit depressed.

Last night, I spent a couple of very chilly hours on a street corner in Astoria encouraging folks to cast ballots for Lynne Serpe. At the site where I was standing, more than a dozen people passed by letting me know that they had, indeed, voted for Lynne. The people that voted for Lynne were damned excited. It's rare to see people that are happy about voting. Other than Obama voters, I have never really had that experience (well, people that voted for Peter Hutchinson in the Minnesota Gubernatorial election in 2006 also were extremely confident in the justness of their votes).

Lynne last night managed to bring in 23% of the vote against an extremely popular incumbent. Lynne was the Green Party candidate, and she out fundraised, out organized, and out shone Peter Vallone, so much so that he launched an attack direct mail piece days before the election in which he did NOT attack Lynne but instead attacked the Green Party on an issue of "national security."

Vallone was one of the diabolic cadre of fucknuts that voted to overturn TWO popular referenda that established CLEAR term limits for city wide office holders in the city of New York. I swear to Sweet Jesus that if a Latin American leader used a parliamentary vote to overturn two popular referenda in order to hang on to power, there would be screams and shouts and bellows and condemnations from every "democratic" corner in the world. France would tsk tsk, the UN would issue a statement, and the U.S. President would have harsh words for X President that would instantly become a "dictator" in the popular imagination.

Yet, just as with the election stealing of George W. Bush, when dictatorial anti-democracy behavior happens in the United States it is chalked up to the wheels of democracy turning and Divine Providence.

FUCK THE DOUBLE STANDARDS THAT WE APPLY TO THE WORLD.

I am so fucking pissed off today. I was so depressed last night that I ate two McDonald's cheese burgers, an order of fries, three fried chicken wings, a slice of cheese pizza, two empanadas, and three mini pigs-in-a-blanket. Talk about stress eating.

It so deeply fucks with my mind that the general populace so readily and blindly accepts the "Do As We Say Not As We Do" philosophy without thought. The same douche nozzles (thanks Gracie) that scream about the vagaries of young democracies are the same ones that hop, skip, and jump to participate in the gutting of democracy right here in our own back yard.

Last night was a democratic sham. Michael Bloomberg is a fucktard billionaire that proved once again that the rules of democracy do not apply to the mega wealthy. Peter Vallone is a small dick bastard that should be strung up by his nutsac with chicken wire dipped in sulfuric acid for his crimes against democracy and his electorate.

I declare again that America is about as much of a democracy as I am the Prince of Wales.

As the French would say, "FUCK YOU BLOOMBERG AND VALLONE."

PS Minnesota once again proves that it understands democracy as St. Paul, the state capital, has joined Minneapolis in approving Ranked Choice Voting as its preferred election process. THANK YOU FAIRVOTE MINNESOTA!

Everyday Heroes: Divine Grace

She's creepy. She's kooky. She's a smart ass. And she's spooky. The Divine Grace Family *snap* *snap*

Just playing, well except for the smart ass. That's just the God's and the Grace's own truth, and I love her for it.

Divine Grace aka Chad Pace is a bright and shiny human being wrapped inside of a drag queen cocoon, and I am hard pressed to think of a more gifted writer and more brilliant person walking around this planet.

Technically, I met Chap Pace just shy of 15 years ago when I was a freshman in college and living in Asheville, NC. More recently, I reconnected with him, originally, through the "Are You Interested" application on Facebook. I had no idea that I already knew this individual, I just thought he had pretty eyes, and over the last couple years of Facebooking, I have come to reknow and love this amazing human being.

Let me tell you why.

Divine Grace is a truth speaker. In her writings and her rantings, she uses comedy pushed to the edges and astute insight and an absurdly powerful gift of stripping the shit from the shingle and serving it up as a delightful cocktail for your funny bone in order to dissect the ugly of the world and reveal it for what it is. I am in awe of Divine Grace.

I am humbled by Chad Pace.

Chad Pace is a sweet man that moved home to the Blue Ridge mountains to be with his family and take care of his sick father. Far away from his chosen home, he has managed to remain spiritually strong at a time of intense pain. He has put on the back burner what, from what I can tell, has been a thriving career as a performer in New York, in order to be there for a man he loves dearly. And while I have a deep and treasured love for Asheville, North Carolina, being an out queer in Western North Cackalacky ain't nothing like being oneself, in all its drag glory, on the streets of New York (btw, it is no fluke that Divine Grace is one of the fiercest Queens in NYC...no place I have ever been...not even Atlanta...has produced the quality of performers as has that Gay Bermuda Triangle from Hickory to Asheville to Charlotte).

Chad Pace and Divine Grace are a testament to how to live rightly in the world. He doesn't hide his pain, but he shows us how to live with it and to embrace it. He speaks truth when it is difficult and looks damn good doing it. He is a brilliant thinker, a tremendous performer, and if the bitch doesn't get his ass on Project Runway with his home sewn recreations of shit like Idina Menzel's dress from Wicked, I am going to personally kick his ass back to Appalachia when he finally does return home.

Like many people in the world, I love you Gracie. Kiss your Daddy on the cheek from a colored stranger he has never met. Take good care of yourself, and come home when you can.

Faith

One of the greatest blessings of my life is that I have never doubted the existence of God. Though I have lacked faith in the moment, my belief in a power greater than myself, yet intimately connected to myself, has never foundered. Lord knows I have been angry at God, and each and every time the anger was misdirected, I have always had the steadfast certainty that there is a God, who goes by names and many faces, but a Creator that is love and was there in the beginning and will be there in the end.

Most recently, I have started a faith journey in the Nichiren Buddhist tradition. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Nichiren Buddhism, it is a Buddhist path championed by Nichiren Daishonen, a 14th century Japanese monk that espoused the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha (Siddartha Guatama) and taught that the Lotus Sutra, the last Sutra developed by the Buddha and taught by him in his last three years of life, was the highest form of Buddhist thought and was the most direct path towards enlightenment.

In fact, unlike other schools of Buddhism, Nichiren Buddhism teaches that one can reach Nirvana and the end of the cycle of birth, death, rebirth and suffering in a single lifetime through study, faith, and practice, which is embodied in chanting nam-myoho-renge-kyo, the translation of which is "I dedicate myself to the mystical law of cause and effect as expressed through sound." Basically, what you do comes back to you.

Now, in attending local meetings in Harlem and gongyo at the Cultural Center, I have met amazing people, and I have met zealots. Zealots from any faith path are a huge turn off to me no matter how noble the faith or how pure the intentions. Zealotry only exists in the context of dogma, and, officially, Nichiren Buddhism is non-dogmatic. Meaning, it is a faith without a moral code of conduct, as the code is embodied in the choices made by each individual, and, jointly, an individuals salvation is also a personal responsibility--there is no magic prayer that can be said to a deity that will result in absolution and evolution, your forward movement is your responsibility.

Many of the people I have met in SGI, the lay organization of Nichiren Buddhism, are former Christians that either were turned away from the faith through the hateful or hurtful acts of its adherents or failed to find meaning in Christian worship for themselves. Officially, Nichiren Buddhism is atheist in practice but accepting of those that believe in a higher power. By atheist, I do not mean that Nichiren Buddhism denies the existence of God but it believes that whether or not there is a God a person may find Nirvana through their own works and faith and practice. Indeed, Nichiren Buddhism is based on the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha who did, indeed, believe in gods.

Officially, in its writings, SGI welcomes people of duel faith. Unfortunately, I have encountered one too many people that have been disdainful or discounting of my choice to continue a faith in God. I personally believe that the teachings of Christ and the teachings of both the Buddha and Nichiren Daishonen are in accord. The Christ and The Buddha both taught personal responsibility. Both taught that you are responsible for your own salvation and your own actions. It is only the Church, created as a temporal agency with an eye towards power and control, that created an external path of salvation that is dependent on the Church.

SGI members know first hand how an institution can corrupt a faith, which is why in 1991 SGI was excommunicated by the Nichiren Buddhist priesthood for refusing to bow to an institution that claimed hegemony over a faith's teachings. It is saddening that some individual members of SGI practice a personal dogma that attempts to undermine the faith choices of other practitioners walking the same path.

Thankfully for every overzealous individual I have met in SGI, I have met 10 others that are perfectly willing to allow me to understand God and my spiritual practice, including the incorporation of Nichiren Buddishm, in my own way.

I believe in God, and I believe in the power of nam-myoho-renge-kyo. I do not see them as mutually exclusive, and I do not see any conflict in my Christian upbringing which has been critically examined and critically deconstructed through my own faith practice and the new faith practice I have found in SGI Nichrien Buddhism.

Zealots of any kind are welcome to keep their puritanism to themselves. There are no gatekeepers in Nichiren Buddhism and those that I have found that have espoused a dogma and cultishness that has no place in Nichiren Buddhism need to reflect on their faith instead of trying to manipulate that of others. I am a Christian Buddhist, and I plan to continue that faith journey without permission from anyone.

God bless us everyone, and may the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin and Shakyamuni Buddha guide our steps.