Larry Benjamin's Blog: Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life - Posts Tagged "lgbtq"

My new short story, “The Christmas Present,” is now available as an individual eBook for just $0.99. All proceeds from the sale of this story go to benefit The Trevor Project.

“The Christmas Present” is part of a holiday anthology which brings together 24 authors from the UK, the USA, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. When my publisher and friend, Debbie McGowan, first approached me about joining the project, I knew I wanted mine to be a story of hope, because so many of our youth, so many of the youth The Trevor Project works to support, feel they are without hope. And I knew it would be set at Christmas, the season of hope.

When I was a kid, hope was what got me through. But for me the season of hope was always in September. At the start of each new school year, I would be filled with hope: the hope that the bullying would stop, the hope that this year I would make a friend, the hope that this year the boy I liked would like me back.

I remember during the last presidential campaign, one of Mitt Romney’s taglines was, “Hope is Not a Strategy;” it isn’t but it is sometimes all we have.

When Aidan, the main character in “The Christmas Present,” arrives at his family’s compound in the Caribbean islands, he doesn’t even have hope.

BLURB: At Christmastime, a mother, unhappy her teenage son is gay, turns to an Obeah practitioner to change him with surprising results.

EXCERPT

They passed a great many whitewashed houses built in the style of the plantation houses of the American South; low slung and broad, they seemed to clutch the ground tightly. The houses were genteel yet incongruous in their gentility, planted as they were in the savage landscape of beaches, fields of sugarcane and rain forest as alien as spacecraft. Each house they passed, Aidan noticed, had a name, and each name, he later learned, told its own story: Whim, Work & Rest, Peter’s Rest, Princess, Jacob’s Fancy.

At the foot of a road that began a sharp descent to the beach, stood a sign: Anna’s Hope. Dale made a sharp right and followed the road in its downward spiral.

Dale swerved to avoid a magnificent mahogany tree that had been struck by lightning and now lay across the road, spilling its magnificent red blood onto the cracked earth. Jarred out of his thoughts, Aidan could just make out the house up ahead. Covered by a fine webbing of bougainvillea vines, it was a two-storied whitewashed structure with weathered shutters that lay crooked and flat beside the open jalousie windows. The brilliant blooms of the bougainvillea looked like blood stains, its whitewashed walls like bleached bone, its red tiled roof like blood caked upon its monstrous back. The house lay in the burning sun like carrion. A short distance away, the Caribbean Sea boiled.

In the middle of a broad open lawn was a flamboyant tree in full bloom, wearing a crown of blood-orange flowers. Long, feathery leaves pointed like accusing fingers.

The jeep skittered to a halt. This was it then. This was to be Aidan’s home for the Christmas holiday.

Clive, seated beside Dale, turned to look at Aidan, who tried not to shudder at the lifelessness of the house, at its hopelessness. Anna’s Hope? What had Anna found to hope for here?

***

“The Christmas Present” is just one of 23 stories in Boughs of Evergreen, a two-volume collection of short stories celebrating the holiday season in all its diversity, from Beaten Track Publishing.

The proceeds from the sale of Boughs of Evergreen also goes to The Trevor Project, the leading U.S. organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people ages 13-24.

Back in July 2012, I wrote a blog post about an LGBT film, “Prince and Ekaj,” which was being made by Mike and Cati Gonzalez. (Read the original post here.

The trailer was very promising and I was excited to see the film giving voice to LGBT youth who often remain invisible, voiceless. So, I was delighted the other day when I got an email from Cati telling me they had completed the film, now titled, “Ekaj,” and asking if I wanted to preview it. My answer, in a heartbeat, was, “heck yeah.” And I am so glad I said yes. The movie covers topics not often seem or spoken of—homeless youth, finding a way to survive and love in a harsh world. Happily the film doesn’t dwell on any one thing but it covers a range of very real issues that are seldom spoken of anymore, and when they are they are it is in whispers, or spoken of as if they existed in the distance past: AIDS, drug abuse, domestic violence, rape. This is a socially responsible film that is never pathetic or preachy.

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ernest!, unrelenting in his criticism, and unwilling to bend, had accused the company of using money instead of true action to try and dissuade others from the veracity of his accusations. In response, Lizzy Borden started sponsoring all sorts of events combating discrimination of every stripe, sending an army of employees and leaders to parrot scripted messages of support and decrying white privilege while marching in lockstep, in flawlessly tailored suits, with Social Justice Warriors. Ted Talks, conferences galas and balls were financially supported indiscriminately and with equal zeal.

This worked relatively well until Lizzie Borden ended up sponsoring a high-profile gala for an LGBTQ social justice organization, Community Advancement Coalition (CAC), nicknamed Caviar and Champagne for their penchant for throwing $1,000 per plate fundraisers. Having sponsored the gala, and purchasing a table for 10, she had discovered, to no one’s surprise but her own, that scraping the barrel of leadership she couldn’t come up with 10 people who weren’t racist, or homophobic, or who gave a shit, thus Brett, Nigel and I were pressed into service as the company’s gay emissaries. And that is how we found ourselves at the annual Community Advancement Coalition Gala.

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