Angry Black Hoemo

Just a guy, striving to be a good person and an even better bottom

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The Loneliness of Activism: Feeling Like You’re Being Tolerated Instead of Embraced

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Can I fast-forward to the point where I’m fully surrounded by people who find my heightened interested in activism and justice to be an asset instead of a hindrance? Does that point even exist?

I’ve touched on this before, but as someone who might jokingly be called “newly woke,” I’m finding myself in a place where I’m owning how much I value social justice and activism in a way that I hadn’t, previously. Truth of the matter is, I’ve felt strongly about social justice and liberation for myself as Black, Queer person, even before I knew what the term “social justice” was. But just after the last year or so, I’m finding myself more fully invested in advocating for justice in more substantial and far-reaching ways.

I didn’t grow up immersed in the intersection of Blackness and Queerness…nor did I grow up in social awareness and activism. They’re all things that I had to go out and find and/or stumble upon on my own. And moving to Chicago played a big factor in that, as did finding my way back to spaces in social media like Twitter. I feel like I’ve grown a great deal in a very short time (I would NOT have been cool with calling myself “Angry” just a year ago…even in jest). It’s given me a much greater sense of clarity in how I view the world, but it’s also come at a price. [Read more…]

Why I Can’t Easily Trust White People

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This is originally from an entry on my Medium blog

A personal rant. Hear me out…I promise it’s not petty

Now, purely on a systemic level, there are many reasons to inherently be less than trusting of white people (and anyone who’s familiar with my writings so far is probably well-aware of that already). But that’s not what this piece is about. This is more on an individual, interpersonal level…and perhaps how that level relates to the systemic level.

So, I once had this friend who I felt very close with — we chartered and helped build a leather club together, traveled together, regularly had intimate conversations…he was even the first person I reached out to and confided in when I was diagnosed with HIV. Frankly, he could be a bit of an ass and would spread drama and bullshit wherever he went, but I always stuck up for him because I knew him through the bullshit, and felt like he would do the same for me. By just about any measure that matters, I considered him family, and I honestly thought the world of him.

…but that all changed as my social views continued to evolve. [Read more…]

The Relief of Getting Fired

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This is originally from an entry on my Medium blog

…that awkward moment when you realize you’re happily unemployed

FYI: This one is a bit more personal than the pieces I’ve written so far. It originally started as a simple Facebook post about my own situation, but it seemed to have resonated with a few people and what they’re going through, so here we are.

So, just one week and one day ago [from the time this piece was originally written], at around 5:30 pm CST, I was semi-enjoying a couple of bittersweet glasses of Cabernet in my job’s employee lounge, before I took a couple of old Walgreen’s bags full of all my belongings from work, and walked out of the office for the last time. A couple of hours before that, I was having a short meeting with said employer’s Director of HR, awkwardly going over some pertinent paperwork. And couple of hours before that, I sat down with my manager (who kept a noticeably somber look on his face from the second we entered the meeting room) for our weekly one-on-one meeting, where the first words out of his mouth were “We’re gonna have to let you go.” He then went on the list out all of the performance-related issues that led to my termination. As I was pretty much fully aware of the reasons (we’d discussed my performance-related issues in the weeks prior), I was looking at him from across the table, but I was hardly listening. But over the course of his talking, I felt a wave of panic…which was quickly coated over by enough relief to fill Lake Michigan.

[Read more…]