Magic Johnson's son is gay, and he's letting people know how thankful he is to have a family that loves and accepts him and didn't throw him out in the street like so many others. He credits his parents for helping to make him the strong young man he is today.
He points out that as LGBT civil rights victories continue to happen at a dizzying pace, hundreds of thousands of parents are still kicking their kids out of the house.
An estimated 320,000 to 400,000 LGBT youth face being homeless each year, Johnson points out.
I don't know about anyone else, but I find that number staggering. Painfully staggering. The fact is that there are still many homeless gay teens.
I wrote about a gay homeless youth in An Officer and His Gentleman who was thrown out by his parents and had to live as a victim of his circumstances in order to have a roof over his head. In this case, he lived with a nasty old man who made him walk around all the time without clothes. This book reviewer, Book Utopia Mom, didn't think that was realistic and she thought the character, Chance, should have found another alternative to those circumstances. This happened about five years ago, and the only reason I mention it now is because I still get a pain in my gut when I think that a straight reviewer would question my knowledge as a gay man, and the review is still up online as it was originally published. She even questioned the hero in the book who is the only person to help Chance out of his desperate circumstances. You can read that here. I can't blame her totally because her knowledge of gay men obviously comes from limited sources that aren't accurate, not even with regard to the erotic parts she questions. She obviously comes from a place of privilege. However, in this case, as the gay man, I think I should at least get the last word since I'm the one who has suffered the discrimination all these years. I think I've earned that.
Jonah Hill Remorseful
I posted about Jonah Hill lashing out at a reporter last week and using the word faggot. He's since apologized time and again, and now he's saying he doesn't deserve forgiveness and he's highly remorseful.
But he offered no excuses.
'How you mean things doesn't matter. Words have weight and meaning, and the word I chose was grotesque. And, you know...no one deserves to say or hear words like that.'
The actor's apology was in contrast to actor Alec Baldwin who used the same word in a paparazzi encounter last year. Baldwin has denied using the word despite it being captured on video by TMZ.
I know people who would disagree with me, but I actually think he deserves a break on this one. I think what he said is indicative of the way straight men are raised in the US and it came out offhandedly like it does with so many other straight men. These things are learned at an early age and I think that what happened with Hill will help to change things for the better. I also think his apology was sincere.
There's a lot of gay discrimination out there, and it doesn't always come in the form of words like faggot. A lot of times it comes in more subtle ways, like the way the book reviewer above questioned my experience as a gay men in An Officer and His Gentleman. I think it's important to understand where it comes from, and how sincere the apology is.
You can read more here.
Bonus Excerpt: An Officer and His Gentleman
I don't often post excerpts on Thursday, but since I mentioned this incident with An Officer and His Gentleman I figured I would post something else about it. I haven't done that in a few years.
From the raw version before edits...because HTML is hard to convert. I'd forgotten about this, but the title of the book in my original file was intended to be An Officer and a Very Gentle Man. The publisher wanted the change, not me, to make the book sound more like the straight movie title, An Officer and a Gentleman, even though very few things in the book are related to the film...other than the Cinderella trope. It's not fanfic. I'm not a fan of the film. It's more like a loose version parody, with many, many differences from the film, and few social and political statements.
But there is a very happy ending.
He got dressed and went down the back staircase slowly, then
out the back door and into the barn. Before he did anything else that morning,
he wanted to see if there were any squirrels in the traps. And sure enough,
there were four more brand new squirrels trapped in cages and barely moving
because they were so frightened. He shook his head when he saw the poor things
trapped like that, but he smiled when he took each cage out back, opened the
trap doors and set them free again. He didn’t want to spray their tails that
morning; it would have made Dan suspicious. He had to wait a few days so Dan
would think the squirrels he’d driven to upstate New York
When the
empty traps were back in the barn and reset, Chance went into the kitchen and
started to prepare his special for the day. Because he wanted some free time to
make a few notes for the recipe competition, he decided to do one of his
classic specials, a simple mac and cheese that everyone loved. Betty Shack had
pleaded with him to share his secret ingredient more than once: “There’s
something in there that’s different, but I can’t put my finger on it; please
tell me.” But he smiled and told her
he’d die with his secret. She never would have guessed that what made his
mac and cheese stand out from all the others was plain yellow mustard and
ground nutmeg (pre-ground, right from the can; you didn’t have to grate it
yourself with a pretentious tool).
The most
important ingredient he always included in all his recipes was love. The love
of food and the ability to love the food enough to know how to choose the
perfect combination of ingredients that made a recipe stand out. Ah, he’d seen
too many cooks try to follow a recipe that never turned out very well; they
didn’t have the love; everything they cooked tasted like sawdust. So when the
large pans of mac and cheese were baking in the oven, he began to work on his
presentation for the food network. Though he still wasn’t sure he’d even be
selected (that was random luck; and he wasn’t lucky), he figured it was best to
be prepared. The lasagna Bolognese was simple enough to set up, but he wanted
to show the people at the food network it was a recipe where the entire family
could participate. Small children could mix and knead the pasta dough while an
adult arranged the Bolognese sauce and the béchamel sauce. Then, when all the
ingredients were prepared, the kids could help layer the lasagna pan because
there really wasn’t a wrong way to put it together. He sat back and smiled when
he envisioned young children with spots of flour on their faces helping adults
create something wonderful for the family meal. He missed that living at Dan’s
market; there was no family and no love.
He thought
it was important for young children to learn how to get around in a kitchen,
too. Cooking was fun, but it was also serious business. Young children had to
understand that only adults could handle sharp tools, and older kids had to
know how to use sharp tools safely. There was nothing more fun that family
cooking, but you couldn’t take anything for granted either. He made notes that morning,
carefully imagining how children might react during the cooking process; the
animated expressions on their faces when you taught them how to crack an egg or
mix a bowl of cake frosting; the way they smiled when they licked a cake batter
bowl. And most of all, he wanted people to understand that the ingredients for
basic family oriented recipes, whether it be lasagna Bolognese or Beef
Wellington, did not have to cost a small fortune. When he watched cooking show
hosts on TV, there were times he shook his head and squeezed the sofa pillow as
hard as he could. They used outrageously expensive ingredients, like saffron
and truffles. Most families watching couldn’t afford to buy things like that;
they weren’t cooking in expensive restaurants. He even threw the sofa pillow
across the room more than once when one particular cooking show host enforced
using “the best cocoa money can buy; always use the most expensive ingredients
when baking a chocolate cake,” she said. She made the audience believe they had
to buy an outrageously expensive imported cocoa, when regular old Hershey’s
would have done just as well. He’d learned, through experience, using the most
expensive ingredients money can buy is nothing more than hype and myth in most
cases. It was all about the love of food and how you incorporated the
ingredients that really mattered; not how much they cost.
When Dan
walked into the market that morning, he wasn’t banging his fist on the counter
and giving orders as usual. Though he wasn’t actually smiling, the squirrel
traps were empty and all was well with the world. But he did stare at Chance
for a moment when he saw the band aid on his neck. “What’s-a wrong with your
neck, you?”
Chance was
leaning into the deli case and turning the potato salad over so it would appear
fresh. He looked up and said, “I cut it shaving this morning. It’s no big
deal.” But he bit his bottom lip and prayed the bruises on his ass would go
away by the time he had to go upstairs and walk around naked.
“Ah,” Dan
said, “I’m going out to get new tires on the truck today. I’ll be back by
lunchtime.” He didn’t bother to ask how bad the cut was or if he needed
stitches. Chance hadn’t bled to death and that was good enough for him.
Sarah walked
through the front door at nine. When she looked at Chance, she was smiling so
wide he saw all her teeth from across the market. He had just finished slicing
a quarter pound of Swiss cheese, extra thin, for Mae Conklin and he was
wrapping it up. Mae was a soft spoken, mousey woman in her seventies, the last
old maid left in town. He handed the cheese to Mae and then followed her to the
cash register so he could check Sarah’s cash drawer. When he looked at Sarah, he
pressed his palm to his throat and stepped back. She was wearing a very low
cut, tight tee-shirt that morning: her large tits were busting out. It was
black, which created a severe contrast against her pale white skin. At the
bottom of her neck, and just above her ample line of cleavage, there were two
large, obvious love bites. The one on her neck was the size of a quarter; the
one on her bosom was two inches long and an inch wide, with small red teeth
marks.
Chance
ignored the marks. He opened the cash drawer and started counting the money
while Sarah rang up Mae Conklin’s Swiss cheese. But Mae leaned back when she
noticed the offensive love bite on Sarah’s neck; she actually gasped when she
saw the larger one on Sarah’s bosom. Poor Mae, she started to rock on back and
forth in her brown vinyl mules, and her bottom lip started to quiver when she
reached into her little brown change purse for money; she tried to look away
when she handed Sarah three one dollar bills and thirty-nine cents in exact
change (older women were always exact change), but Sarah’s big tits were
practically in her face. There was a small crumpled piece of blue foil leftover
from an old pack of lifesavers attached to one penny, but Mae didn’t bother to
remove it like she normally would have. Sarah took the money and Mae grabbed
the Swiss cheese and ran out the front door without even asking for a bag.
Chance
closed the cash drawer and said, “Why don’t you just wear a sign that says, ‘I
got fucked last night.’”
“Hey,” she
said. Her voice became nasal and loud. “I had fun. Mike played with my tits for
so long I thought they were going to fall off! And if you think these marks are
bad, you should see the ones in other places. He bit me so hard down there I
thought I’d scream.” Then she reached for the top button on her jeans and
pulled it open.
“No,” he
said, “I’ll take your word for it.” He raised both hands in the air. The last
thing he wanted to see was the love bites on Sarah’s ass; he didn’t want to
hear any of the details either. He was very happy for her, but Chance didn’t
believe in gossiping and bragging about sexual escapades. Certain things were
private, and should remain that way.
Sarah raised
her right eyebrow and put one hand on her hip. “Don’t get so high and mighty with
me. I see you’re wearing a band aid on your neck this morning.”
“I cut
myself shaving.” He smiled and left her standing there so he could get back to
work. As he crossed toward the deli counter, it occurred to him he could still
feel Brody’s penis in his body; he could still feel the fullness and power. He
smiled and stared at a large barrel filled with long sticks of pepperoni. Then
he took a deep breath, smoothed out his apron and went back to re-organize the
spice shelf.
Later that
day, while Dan made him move all the heavy produce stands from one side of the
market to the other, he fell back against a tall metal shelf stacked with
pretzels and potato chips. He didn’t hurt himself; it wasn’t an accident. He’d
been planning to fall back against something, when Dan was in the market
watching, so that when he removed his clothes later that night he’d have a good
excuse for all the bruises on his ass and the backs of his legs.
And it
worked, too. When he took off his clothes and walked past Dan that night, the
old man clutched the arms of his chair and leaned forward. “You had some
fall this afternoon.” He rubbed his chin and ran his fingertips over Chance’s
bruised ass. “You got some good bruises back there; but it’s good you
didn’t really hurt yourself. Then you would have cost me money.”
“I’m fine,”
Chance said, “They look worse than they are.” Thankfully the red handprints had
faded during the day and now they looked more like authentic bruises from a
fall. He shrugged and sat down on the sofa to watch TV.
Chance was
dying to watch the food network, to see if they would mention anything about
the recipe competition. But Dan wanted to watch a show on the discovery channel
about monkeys. He loved sit in his chair, scratch his balls, and watch monkeys;
he thought they were comical. And his eyes became glued to the screen when he
saw a show about little people and dwarfism. At eleven o’clock he scratched his balls, lifted his leg and
farted; and slowly stood to hobble back to his bedroom. He said he had a
headache. “I’m going to take a sleeping pill tonight.”
Chance remained on the sofa for another half
hour, but he couldn’t find a comfortable spot; he moved from one side of the
old leather sofa to the other and kept sighing out loud. When he looked at the
candle stick on the coffee table, he started to think about Brody. And when a
chef on the food network began to prepare a boiled dinner of Kielbasa and Sauerkraut,
his penis started to grow. The old man was snoring so loudly he could barely
hear the TV chef speak; all he saw were the guy’s great hands holding a mammoth
Kielbasa. So he stood up and crossed back to his bedroom to get his car keys
and a clean white apron.
It was dark out because the sky had been
overcast with clouds all day, and the car was facing in a downhill position. He
slowly inched his way out of the gravel driveway in neutral. He was sitting
behind the wheel in his bare feet, wearing nothing but a white chef’s apron.
When he was far enough away from the market, he started the car and clicked the
light switch. He squeezed the steering wheel tightly and took a deep breath; Brody
might get mad at him for showing up unannounced, and wearing practically
nothing, but he needed to take that chance…he needed Brody to fill him up
again.
When he pulled up to the big old house, the
front light over the door was on and Brody was sitting on the veranda in a
rocking chair. While Chance opened the door and stepped out of the car, Brody
put his hands on his hips and walked down the front steps. He was wearing the
same sweat pants that Chance had washed; his feet were bare and he wasn’t
wearing a shirt. He took one look at Chance, standing there wearing the apron,
and rubbed his chin. “I was expecting you tonight,” he said.
Chance
smiled. “You were not. You were just sitting there holding your dick because
you couldn’t sleep.” He was younger than Brody, and by no means as worldly. But
he didn’t want to come off looking like a sex starved slut.
