Off Wednesday

16 April

It's afternoon, about 3 PM, my day off. I am trying to relax.

Two days ago I made what felt like a cracking good beginning, writing up what I'd hoped would be a blog contribution, the first perhaps of many, to the new Chicago Public Library's website. A combination essay and review of two books I have been sort of reading lately, both of them unsparing examinations of African American homophobia.

Sort of reading because I pick up these books, get absorbed in pages and pages... and then stop. Start and stop. Start and stop. Dropping them to wander back to Beatlemania, grizzly bear attacks, Windows 8.1 tutorials, and Barbra Streisand (specifically Hello Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand by William Mann). But after a while something, some need, draws me back to The Greatest Taboo: Homosexuality In Black Communities, edited by Delroy Constantine-Simms, and Homophobia In The Black Church: How Faith, Politics, And Fear Divide The Black Community by Anthony Stanford. I read avidly, hungrily. But not for long.

I don't know. Momentarily I'm hampered by technology; I don't know how to create a blog on the new CPL website or upload images of books I'm reading to it. But I'm hampered by something else as well, a creeping sense of dread and sadness and anger as the words reveal the ignorance, denial and cruelty that--

I don't know. I can't even finish the sentence. These books are well-written and compelling. But at some point they feel like taking bitter medicine that is good for you, all this documentation of black man--and woman's--inhumanity to black man and woman. It's frustrating. And hurtful. I read, and then I get angry, and then I have to put the book down.

I'm distracted also by thoughts of Michael, who called me this afternoon to tell me he was terminated from his job yesterday. From Mike's description of the meeting, the new HR manager who fired him seemed almost to be enjoying the process. More than almost. Actually.

Quisling asshole.

I feel such worry and sympathy for my friend.

Okay and I also envy him his freedom, however temporary, from managers and bus schedules and workaday grind.

I hope it is temporary, and Mike doesn't find himself sliding into the precarious existence my cousin found himself in, when the financial company he worked for collapsed in 2011 thanks to the incompetence and greed of the CEO. Both my Michaels, used by men and women that called their employees "family" and then tossed them away like so much used Kleenex.

The world is shit sometimes.