Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner... This and Other Hypocritical Bull----!

On May 9, 2009 one my best friends in the whole world suddenly died. In June he would have been 40 years old. He was diagnosed with HIV about four years ago and when he shared the news with me together we cried and prayed for a healthy, bright future for him. He was my big brother, my rock and my confidante. I told him things that I couldn't tell others. He was as nonjudgmental as a person could be. He’d calmly listen to you and then help you work out a solution. He also taught me a lot about life and people, seldom was he wrong, but he’d never preach to you or shove his opinions down your throat because he’d say ultimately you’re going to do what you want to do anyway. He was calm and patient and he treated his friends like gold. He was also extremely private.

A few months ago, when his health began to take a turn for the worse, his other close friends and I secretly began to call one another to discuss his health, progress and strategies to encourage him to get the medical attention that he needed. We did this in secret because he would tell each of us only bits and pieces of what was going on with him and besides that he would have killed us for discussing him behind his back. Well our little plan worked and he got the treatment he needed. When he was released from the hospital he was back to his old self. When I spoke to him on the phone he sounded vibrant and full of life that is until he went to fill his prescriptions.

He had medical insurance through his job but apparently it didn’t cover HIV medication. One prescription was $400 and the other $700. He only made about $25,000 a year, minus rent, car payment, and two wage garnishments he could not afford it. I immediately began researching national non profit agencies that were designed to help people like him get these critical medicines and forwarded the information to him. He called and was told he made too much money. Slowly, but surely, his health began to deteriorate once more.

It began with a persistent cough which he blamed on his allergies and other sinus problems. Then he would tell me he had follow up doctor’s appointments but wouldn’t tell me if he actually went or what the results were of the appointments. We friends began to call each another once more. The last time we all conferred with one another was the day that he passed away in his sleep… his best friend and roommate was preparing to take him to the emergency room.

I was devastated, we all were. Sometimes I still think that I can pick up the phone and call him. (We talked every Saturday morning for hours and sent each other text messages throughout the week.) I shared with my family and larger group of friends, some who knew him and others who didn’t, about his passing. There was an outpouring of love and support but I’ve also taken note of how people react when I say he had HIV. They make a little face or there is a pause in their conversation. It is judgment… about a man that in most cases they didn't even know.

What do they think they know about my friend? He was gay? He was promiscuous? He was a junkie? What? Or is it that they still consider HIV and AIDS a disease of filth… “Oh you must have been doing something nasty or wrong to contract it, so you got what you deserved.” He was a gay man, not a junkie and no more promiscuous than the average straight man his age. He contracted HIV the same way straight people do, by having SEX with someone who has it. HIV/AIDS doesn’t care if you’re straight or gay. If you have had unprotected sex in your lifetime you are at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS or an STD. Why? Well that’s because in some people it can take weeks, months or years to be detected in their blood stream and quite frankly alot of people don't get tested. Oh and before you start on how people shouldn’t be having unprotected sex with people they don’t know, shut up! If you have ever had sex with someone, anyone, without a condom in the last 35 years you may have been exposed to HIV/AIDS, period. It doesn’t matter that you’ve known your partner for 10 years or two weeks nor are now involved in a monogamous relationship or that you’ve turned your life over to Christ. There is a chance that you could have contracted the virus.

“But I know my partners and they’re all healthy.” Really… do you know what they did before they met you? Do you know everyone they’ve ever slept with? More importantly, do you know what they do when you are not around? Yeah, that’s what I thought. By the way, I know several people, straight and gay, with HIV and they look very healthy and if they never told you, you would never know they had the disease. So, looks can be deceiving.

(I used to work for the Family Health Council of Greater Pittsburgh in the mid 90’s and I remember talking to nurses at Alma Illery Health Clinic in Homewood and one said that she saw a pregnant 16 yr. old girl who’d contracted the HIV. She refused to tell the nurses and the health department who the father of her child was out of shame and fear but she did say he had multiple children in the community. I’m sure he didn’t look sick either or she wouldn’t have slept with him. )

You don’t choose to get this disease but your choices may lead to you contracting this disease. It doesn’t mean you are evil, dirty or deserving of this disease no more than a cancer patient deserves to have cancer. As my beloved, now deceased, friend would put it, “it is what it is.”

My friend’s sister asked his best friend/roommate if her brother was gay, without thinking he said yes. She paused… but then she said I really wish he would have felt comfortable sharing this information with me but my parents, if they knew, they would have cut him off. Needless to say, my friend also never told any of his family that he had contracted HIV or that he'd been ill in the last few months.

After his body was released from the coroner in New Jersey his family quickly had a funeral. We were told about the funeral on Friday and the funeral was Monday. Though his sister didn’t think her parents knew about his sexuality, we all know they did. At nearly 40 yrs. old your son has never brought a girl home or talked about being in a relationship… come on! They’re older but not dumb. Our group of friends began wondering if the family had a speedy funeral so that most of his friends, which includes me, couldn’t attend the funeral. We suspect they didn’t want a certain element to attend but alas we’ll never know. What we do know is that our friend deserves respect in death as he did in life.

"Judge not lest ye be judged."

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

"Hate the sin but love the sinner" now that’s just bullshit! Why hate?

Dedicated to:
Rayfield Johnson, Jr.
“The Lord will make a way.”
June 1969 - May 2009

Read his obituary at: http://www4.vindy.com/content/records/tributes/294489040750190.php

Somebody should have told Sharon Stone…

It is the duty of a woman’s best friend to let her know when she needs a mint because her breath smells remarkably like fresh shit, when she’s had way too much to drink because she completely missed the toilet and pissed directly down the back of her pants, and when she is way too old to play a sex kitten even when you made the role famous 14 years earlier. Where the hell were Sharon Stone’s friends when she was asked to make Basic Instinct 2?

As a recent transplant to LA money is tight and I have found really great ways to save money, one of them is renting movies at my local library instead of Blockbuster or subscribing to Netflix. This often means that I watch movies that I have no real interest in but they just happen to be on the shelf. When I saw Basic Instinct 2 on the shelf I knew it was probably going to be bad, really bad, awful in fact but, I still picked it up. I was hoping it would be the kind of bad that makes something good, a masturbatory delight filled with great and lurid sex. Instead, I got an over the hill, robot like Sharon Stone whose acting consisted of icy stares and a throaty monotone paired with a hunky David Morrisey who looked uncomfortable having sex on screen. But I digress this is not a movie review.

This is about knowing when to stop. Did Sharon Stone really need the money they offered her for Basic Instinct 2? In our celebrity obsessed culture surely the story of her cash shortage would have been all over the press. So, if it wasn’t the money what possessed this grown ass woman (pardon the African American colloquialism but Sharon’s been an adult for quite some time now) to take all her clothes off for the camera, again? Okay, she is in great shape if you like that too thin waif look popularized by Victoria Beckham and The Olsen twins. But it was hard for me to appreciate her great shape in clothes that were too young for her to pull off, white shirts that showed off her nipples, and tight pants that showed that she had no ass. It was sad. I felt bad for Sharon… even her character Catherine Tramell could have told her that as women age what made them sexy in their twenties is not what makes them sexy in their forties. Having a great shape helps but women in their forties no longer have to solely rely on their bodies to attract men and the old adage “less is more” applies. (A hint of skin and a whole lot of experience and innuendo is all she needed.)

I see these older women out sometimes, clearly in their 40’s and beyond, wearing outfits from the junior’s section of Nordstrom or worse yet Forever 21. In clubs they are often the loudest and/or the drunkest. They usually hang out with much younger women and offer unsolicited sexual advice. They are the widowed, divorced, or never married women whose children are finally old enough to take care of themselves. And they spend so much time trying to look young that they actually look older.

My mother had a friend once who told anyone who would listen how she used to be a “baby doll” and how men used to love to take care of her. Her nickname was Legs Diamond. When she met her common law husband he was married to someone else but as she tells it she “had to have him.” Legs hunted him down… she went where he worked, to places he hung out and even called his house, where he and his wife lived. (Talk about a bitch.) Legs won, she got pregnant, he got divorced and they moved in together. They shared a home for over 18 years. He had other affairs, she had an affair. Eventually, like all good things it had to end. Legs lost her job and went from full time school administrator to freelance consulting. She got her own place and she started hanging out with my mom more. Enter my 26yr. old brother.

My brother can be an asshole by his own admission. He is 6’3”, big and black, and has traveled the world, living in New York and California at one point. Women, young and old, love him. He and Legs’ son (a couple of years younger than my brother) were friends. At some point they, Legs and my brother, started fucking each other. When I found out I was horrified much in the way big sisters are always horrified to find out who their brothers are fucking. My other brothers and I began joking that the one brother was a Geritol Gigolo. By the way, Legs at this point was in her late 50’s and she looked great with lovely silver gray dreadlocks.

Most everyone knew about the affair and we all knew it wasn’t serious, except Legs. My brother was seeing at least three other women that we knew of. All of the three other women were in their 20’s. Legs had met all three of the women before in various social and religious settings and slowly, before out very eyes she began to transform. She went from dressing in blouses and slacks to low-rise jeans and thongs. Her locks transformed from regal gray to dark brown and she got a tattoo.

To my brother and his friends smoking weed is damned near a religious rite and Legs Diamond openly partook. She also began giving my brother money and driving him around town in her very new and expensive car and for a time things were good. Until my brother decided to cut her loose for a younger woman.

My mother, bless her soul, actually thought she was going to stay out of this debacle until Legs began calling to tell her about how my brother was doing her wrong and used her. Immediately my mother began fussing at my brother who, of course, didn’t want to hear it. When my mother called me to vent I told her what I thought. My brother is an asshole and Legs is an idiot. Sounds harsh, I know. I didn’t then and I still don’t doubt that my brother had used Legs but she also used him… for sex and self worth. She could not have had any expectations of monogamy with my brother who told her and anyone who would listen that he believed in polygamy. (Don’t ask…) As for the money, hey, you can’t buy love and as a woman in your mid 50’s I would expect her to know that.

Her mistake was in thinking that transforming herself into this younger version of herself that my brother would choose her. But, why we he choose a copy of youth when he had access to the real thing. She forgot her power and it isn’t her sex but her experiences and wisdom.

What made her beautiful was her poise and grace not how young her face and slender her waist.

Straight Woman Needs Wife for LTR with Husband & Kids

I have always, for the most part, wanted a wife. No, I am not a lesbian… and this is not my “coming out” essay, for I have nothing substantial to declare. Nor am I a woman who wants to become a man. In other words I like being myself, I like women, but I don’t “like women.” All that being said, I still want a wife. No, not one of these modern women who work and have careers and dreams for themselves outside of the home… no, that chick is me. Thirty –five and unmarried, I recently moved to Los Angeles following my dreams of stardom as a writer and director. I have never been married, never had children, and have never been in any significant long term relationship. But I want to, I want to get married, have a handsome, loving husband and beautiful, smart children and I want us all to live happily ever after. Except, I’m afraid I can’t do it, that I am completely incapable of doing it, which is why I need a wife to do all the things I feel I cannot do. I want my very own, 1950’s style, June Cleaver, wife for my future husband, children and I to share.

For me, she can be my new live-in best friend. She can listen to all of my gripes about work and people I know and give me the neighborhood gossip I miss when I go to work. She can also go shopping with me and tell me what shoes to buy and what jeans make me look like I have a juicy ass, smaller thighs and trim waist. More importantly, she can do the laundry, making sure all of our whites stay white and all our socks have a mate. She can grow herbs, vegetables and fruit in the garden to make organic nutritious meals for our family. Oooh, and she can bake bread and cookies and pies other delicious treats for me and the kids. She also makes the best lunches and the kids never complain and the low fat diet she has me on helps me lose 20lbs. She is my help-mate. So, when I have long stopped being attracted to my husband she can takeover all sexual duties… pretending that 1 minute 30 seconds is all the lovin’ a girl needs or desires.

To my children she is the woman who drives them to ballet class, piano lessons and soccer practice. She is the one who never misses a game and cheers the loudest in the stands. She stays up with them when they have a fever or the flu or just a bad dream. She is the one who sews their costumes for the school play and bakes goodies to sell at the bake sale. Besides my husband and me, there is no one else in the world who loves them more.

To my husband she is the woman who gets his slippers and his paper when he walks in the door. She makes a mean scotch and tonic or whiskey and rye or whatever manly thing it is that husbands drink after a long hard day at the office. She balances the checkbook and never spends a dime without asking him first. She watches sports, plays poker, cooks for him and his friends and cleans up after them without complaint. At night she rubs his feet and tells him how special he is, how that job is lucky to have him and how cool he’d look on that motorcycle, Porsche, or boat. She tells him that she hasn’t noticed his paunch, love handles or receding hair line. She never ever complains about anything.

She is not me.

I cook about three times a week and most of what I call cooking is a sandwich and chips or fish and salad and on a bad night a bowl of whatever cereal was on sale. While I try to watch what I eat and have gotten significantly better I still suck at living the healthy lifestyle… I can’t put kids through that; at least I don’t think so. My mom stayed home when I was younger and she made everything from scratch… cinnamon rolls, zucchini bread, carrot cake, you name it. We had fresh fruits and vegetables either from our garden or the open air West Side Market in Cleveland and she varied our diet by feeding us exotic foods like Falafel, plantains, Fufu, and tofu (unheard of in the early 80’s on the east side of Cleveland). What’s more, we weren’t even allowed to drink Kool Aid because simply put, according to my mother, it was “nothing but dye and sugar.” And while she wasn’t necessarily the best laundress… I had many a faded jean and shrunken shirt to prove it; she did do loads and loads of laundry for my brothers, father and me. I can’t imagine it… seriously, I can’t. (At this very moment I need to go do laundry but I am choosing to write instead.)

Furthermore, some nights when I get home I don’t feel like talking. I just want to take off all of my clothes and lay across my bed and watch a little TV. Can you have moments like this with a husband and children? My married friends who have children only talk to me right after the children have gone to school/bed, husband’s at work or while running an errand to the grocery store. Our conversations can best be described as AOL headlines… one sentence descriptions of what’s happening in our worlds. Talking to them while their kids and husbands are home is nearly impossible. What you get is, “Uh huh… hey what did I just say?” “No… I said no!” “I’m talking to Najaa… __________ said hi.” “Girl, let me go.” Am I willing to put up with that, my life being constantly interrupted?

Moreover, I can be completely self absorbed at times. Obsessed with my own feelings and heartache and laboring over what my future holds or if I still have toothpaste in the corner of my mouth. The list goes on and on, it’s like some internal tape constantly running, only blocked out by the occasional voice of someone else and even then, more likely than not, my internal tape is still playing while I’m supposed to be listening to them. If marriage is supposed to be a partnership how can I not be listening to my partner 80% of the time? And what if I miss something important said by one of our kids, like Dada or… Mama?

Lastly, I desperately want to make it in the film industry, hence this crazy move cross country. Do I, can I, put my dreams on hold for the wants and needs of others, my own family? If the studios called tomorrow and asked me to direct a feature film and the man of dreams showed up in my life proposing a blissful future of marriage and children which would I choose? The truth is both… but I would postpone the marriage and children. But since neither has happened I guess I have nothing to worry about. But when it does happen, and it will, I’d better start writing a personal ad for a wife.