Mr. President, Is Homosexuality a Choice?

"Uh, I don't know, Bob." Wait, Mr. B., would you do me a favor, first, and remove the spittle that has formed on the side of your mouth? I can't write more about the debate, because right about then was when my phone rang.

It was Alia calling, and the conversation allowed me a reprieve from the bad couple of days I've had. I went back to California in my head, wishing more than anything I was in Sacramento. Wishing more than anything I was sitting with Alia in her livingroom, drinking melon balls like we did when we studied our Victorian literature in Chico. Laughing like we did when the biggest problem we had was negotiating the amount of espresso to put in our lattes.

That's the only place I wanted to be tonight, but it's almost 3,000 miles away and an impossibility right now at best. Folks, I haven't been around for about a month. I haven't had anything to write about. I'm not in school anymore, so what will I regale you with? The people on the train? They bore me these days. Although the fool clipping his nails the other morning on the 6 deserved a good whipping.

The people on the street? Fuck them, too. Although the chick with long blond hair, wearing pink sweats, dribbling a WNBA basketball down 34th St. deserves some attention. It was enough to make me pause from a telephone conversation I was having and watch. I felt like challenging her. (She wasn't bending her knees; way too easy for even a half-assed defender.)

So the people bore me. Yet, they're the ones that inspire me. I'm not like them, thankfully, and they all want me to be like them. That's old news. Like yesterday when I caught a guy's double, no, triple-take when he saw me. I looked at him and smiled. Big like. Fool.

I considered just making shit up in this joint. It would get my fiction muscles flexing, sure, but I almost don't have to make stuff up, because so much happens on any given day. I just haven't been writing about it. I've been keeping it all in; seeing it through the browns of my eyes, which were full of sadness tonight. So it's a good thing, perhaps, that I didn't watch the debate. Oh, I'll watch it. I recorded it. I'll watch it if I can handle that spit. It was like I was sitting in a Dr. Lams lecture on Chaucer, ducking the foamy spew that came from the sides of his mouth.

So I've got nothing to write about. I started exposing myself more verbally. It had to go somewhere. And maybe that's why I've got nothing for this. But maybe I should just force it. Write about nothing. Write about the color blue. The black feeling of pain that collides inside with the white feeling of abandonment.

Together, they make the black and white of me, coming from nowhere as I did, and being destined for nothing as I was. Isn't that what I wrote once after seeing Antwone Fisher? None of us asked for this and none of us know where it's headed. But I don't care about none of us. This is my life.

But, ladies and gentlemen, I'm growing sick of my daily mantra. It's not really daily; nor is it really a mantra. But every now and then I think to myself: I'm here because of violence. Survived neglect and isolation due to the invalidity of my lone alcoholic parent. Welfare. Foodstamps. Those stupid fucking green stickers that I had to use at the doctor signaling I was po'. No one told me what to do with the color of my skin or what to say when I was called niggermonkeynigletdirty. As an eight-year-old.

Turn my epileptic parent's head to the left or right after she grandmalseized so she wouldn't choke on her tongue. As an eight-year-old. Then there's the gay thing. What, you ain't a boy? You look like one, freak. Are you a lezzie? As a nine-year-old in my shitty brown St. Elizabeth's jumper I fielded that question from a group of fifth-grade girls on the schoolyard. I had a crush on one of them, too. Oh yeah, that's right. I'm supposed to hate myself for all this. As a 10-year-old.

And how is it I'm supposed to express all this? By talking? To whom? Sometimes I can see the scar on my left wrist from when I tried to end my life as a 15-year old. But let's face it. I'm a big-ass pussy, so that wasn't going to happen. I chose instead to grapple with the despair responsible for that action. Year after year.

Niggermonkeynigletdirtymanorwomandykemotherfucker. Who was I supposed to talk to? When my words frighten? When I don't know even what my words mean? When I can barely see their effects through the tears in my eyes? I need this to stop. I haven't written in about a month, because I've had nothing to write about. And now, the sadness in my eyes is overwhelming my ability to keep them open. I have to try to sleep tonight. There's not much to like about this week so far, ladies and gentlemen. The astrologyzone lady says I have a trip in the middle of the month. If only I could run away. But besides it not being affordable, it's not my style.