Larry Benjamin's Blog: Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life

Team Rayceen: Krylios interviews wordsmith & author Larry Benjamin

Check out my interview with effervescent storyteller, playwright, performer, emcee/host, producer, writer & creator Krylios. We talk about my new book, Excellent Sons: A Love Story in Three Acts, the creative process, love and death. Hell, we talked about everything. Oh yeah, and Gatsby made an appearance. WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK7eV... #SayGay

World AIDS Day: Remembering Their Names

Wayne, Bruce, Troy, Greg, Marcus, John, Dominic … I remember their names. Beautiful men — mostly young, certainly too young to die. Today for World AIDS Day I remember them and the early days of the epidemic in a column in Philadelphia Gay News. You can read the article here.

Thanksgiving: A Minefield of Emotion and Stress

Let’s face it—despite its designation as the “Day of Sharing and Joy,” Thanksgiving can be a a minefield of emotion and stress. Perhaps that's why I like writing about it--all that drama and revelation in a relatively small window of time.

To honor the day, below is an excerpt from my last novel, In His Eyes. In this scene, four old friends gather for thanksgiving. A fifth is added to the mix, upending traditions and leading to secrets being revealed. Hope you enjoy. Happy Thanksgiving!

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A Ghost Unseen

In honor of National Coming Out Day (October 11), which also happens to be my birthday (go figure!) I wrote this short story after attending OutFest Philly which is billed as teh largest event celebrating National Coming Out Day in the world.




My life: I have been a model citizen; a good son; employee of the year, year after year after year. I have lived in the shadows, a ghost, unseen.

And now, as my life ebbs away, eternity like a black moon rising, I felt his hands on my body, efficient and cool. My chest was tight, and I was uncomfortable, but I didn’t mind, not really. I had endured worse, much worse. I wished I could scratch my nose. I wished I could move.

“Does he not have any family—anyone we should call?” someone else was in the room with us, then.

“No,” he said, his hands working. “I suspect he was gay,” he added, speaking of me as if I was already dead. “And you know,” he continued, his hands working, working, “He was of that generation that kept in the shadows.”

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The Corporatorium: Headshots (Season 2, Episode 5)

Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP
I just gave the officers the head shots we had taken last week. *sigh*

Brooklyn Sudano @Brooklyn NY
Let me guess, they now want you to Photoshop them into their vision of their perfect selves?

Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP
Yep. Brett wants me to give him more hair.

Nigel Gale @MannequinMan
If he wants more hair, let him get it the old-fashioned way!

Prometheus @Theus
Let him join The Hair Club For Men!

Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP
Wait is that was a thing?

Nigel Gale @MannequinMan
Back in the day—it was.

Brooklyn Sudano @Brooklyn NY
Sy Sperling was not only the president, he was also a client! BTW, it still exists.

Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP
Ahem. TWO says the photos don’t do her blue eyes justice.

Prometheus @Theus
#WhitePeopleProblems

Nigel Gale @MannequinMan
You went there!

Brooklyn Sudano @Brooklyn NY
Well somebody had to.

Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP
Focus people! She wants me to make her eyes bluer, and Ivy is complaining the camera added 10 pounds making her look fat.

Prometheus @Theus
Isn’t it just video that adds 10 pounds?

Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP
I think so—also horizontal stripes

Nigel Gale @MannequinMan
Excuse me, but she IS fat.

Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP
You’ll love this @MannequinMan she says the stress of working with you has caused her to gain 50 pounds.

Nigel Gale @MannequinMan
And who’s she blaming for the first 250 pounds?

Brooklyn Sudano @Brooklyn NY
Oh! Kitty has claws!

Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP
Ahem. Back to me. So, you know that group shot with TWO surrounded by the Cerberus?

Brooklyn Sudano @Brooklyn NY
You mean the one Theus keeps calling “A thorn between thorns?”

Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP
Yes, that one. The Cerberus are complaining TWO’s head appears bigger than theirs, making her look smarter than them so they want me to make her head smaller!

Copyright © 2018 Larry Benjamin

D I S C L A I M E R
The characters and events described in this blog post exist only in its pages and the author's imagination.

Missed Season 1? Catch up here.

The Corporatorium: A Platinum Gay (Season 2, Episode 4)

“Ask them?” I whispered fiercely.

“No! You ask.” Elvis practically whistled out of the side of his mouth.

“But you brought it up—”

“You agreed.”

The vet, who was the sort of woman who’d drunk Brandy Alexanders in her youth, and then later in life, divorced, and resettled, had adopted a pair of Lhasa Apso pups and named them Brandy and Alexander, cleared her throat. Now, she asked, “Is there something else?”

Our dog, who just gotten a series of vaccinations trembled on the stainless steel table, her big brown eyes pleading for escape. She’d only been with us two weeks and didn’t fully trust us it seemed. At this moment, I can’t say I trusted us either.

“Um…yes…can you look at her um…her privates?”

“You mean her vulva?” The vet tech, young, blonde, perky with bright compassion, asked briskly. If not for her love of animals, she’d have been a stewardess: bubbly, unflappable, unmoored.

“Yes!”

She rolled our dog onto her back and we all peered at her, squirming.

“What are we looking for?” The two women asked simultaneously, looking at us in perplexity.
Elvis developed a sudden fascination with the floor, leaving me to stutter, “Uh. Is she—that is...I mean...”

The women glanced at each other then at me and Elvis who had inexplicably backed up against the wall, arms splayed out; with his eyes enormous with embarrassment, he looked like a pinned insect.

“Is it supposed to look like that?” I finally blurted.

Both the vet and the vet tech looked down at our dog who, exhausted, had stopped squirming and trembled gently. They looked at us, then at each other, and I could almost see the light bulb go off. They looked back at us. “Yes, the vet said, not unkindly, while the vet tech tried, not altogether successfully, to stifle a giggle. “Yes,” she looks perfectly normal.”


“How was yesterday’s vet visit?” Diana asked.
We were sitting in the conference room waiting for TWO and the Cerberus who were still in the monthly Officers’ meeting so we could begin our weekly exercise in futility: the production meeting.

“Fine,” I said.

“Oh, tell them what happened,” Nigel encouraged.

I instantly regretted telling him the story; I wanted to throttle him.

“Oh, I’ll tell them.” He turned to the expectant faces around the table. Diana slouched in her chair, dangling her pen, without interest.

“Elvis and Theus took their new dog—who’s female—to the vet because they thought her coochie was abnormal—”

“I didn’t say it was abnormal. We just weren’t sure it was supposed to look like it did.”

“Huh?” Diana asked sitting up straight, her interest caught.

“Well, hell it’s not like either of us had ever seen one up close before,” I snapped.

“You’ve never seen one? Barbara the second asked in disbelief.

“Nope. He and Elvis are both solid gold gays!” Nigel chortled.

“Elvis is a gold gay,” I corrected, forgetting where I was, “I am a platinum gay.”

TWO entered the room like lightning; the Cerberus followed like thunder.

“What are you all talking about?” TWO asked sitting at the head of the table, the Cerberus surrounding her as usual.

“Gold and platinum gays.”

“What are those?” TWO asked with uncharacteristic curiosity.

“That’s what we want to know!”

I shot a murderous glance at Nigel who looked like a trapped rabbit. He shrugged. “A gold gay,” he said, ‘is a gay guy who has never been with a woman. A platinum gay is a gay guy born by Cesarean section.”

“Huh?” Diana asked again. “What does that have to do with a—”

Diana ‘s head swung from one of us to the and back like someone watching a particularly vigorous tennis match.

Nigel sighed,” Never been with a woman, born by Cesarean section so never any contact with a—you know…”

“Indeed,” TWO said drawing her lips together in a thin line.

“That’s so offensive,” the Cerberus most easily offended, declared.

It’s misogynistic,” another declared.

The third just clucked her tongue.

Ruminations on Home

Last Thursday, August 16 marked 11 years since we moved into our house. I have lived in this house longer than I have lived anywhere else since I left my parents’ home to attend Penn back when Ben Franklin was still on the faculty. The day we moved in, perhaps sensing I was home at last, I told my mother, who always wrote my addresses in pencil in her address book, to write this one in ink.

I used to dream of buying Lucy Ricardo’s farm house in Connecticut. Later, I dreamed of buying the Brady Bunch split level. As a kid, I‘d spend hours pouring over the Sears catalog imagining the kitchen in which I’d install Avocado Green—or perhaps, Harvest Gold—appliances.

In eleven years, we have battled contractors, mice, squirrels, termites, and floods. Yet, I feel safe—at home—here, in a place whose rooms are decisively painted—let’s face it, it takes commitment to paint rooms red or pea soup green or chartreuse—and hung with non-mass-produced art including local artist and good friend Brenda Howell.

Every time I walk into the sun room, I can see my dad cradling a beer, wrapped in lacy sunlight that had fought its way through the Royal Purple Smoke tree’s tangle of leaves, “You know,” he said, “this is my favorite room in your house.” This is the house our family gathered in for our first Thanksgiving without Dad.

I look forward to our nephews, Maxwell and Xavier, running up and down the stairs shouting, and romping in the yard with our dogs, and one day inheriting the house that has brought us so much joy; I hope they will love this house as much as I do.

In the mornings, I wander through bright rooms, the sun’s bounty piled at the windows like bullion. In the evening’s mauve light, we watch TV in the library, redolent with the smell of leather and old paper, as dust swirls in the breeze from the open window and we try not to notice the cobwebs on the iron chandelier above our heads.

At night the trees sway against the house, whispering their adult’s lullaby, and as I prepare to sleep, I must admit to myself that this house, this work in progress, this gorgeous ruin, like a stately dowager in hard times: crumbling and utterly charming; this fool’s folly, this money pit, has been everything I dreamed of, and nothing I expected.

The Corporatorium: 500 Below (Season 2, Episode 3)

It was my birthday. Actually, my birthday had been three weeks earlier, but Ivy, who was responsible for my birthday celebration, had forgotten, thus my actual birthday slipped by unnoticed. Until today, anyway.

We would be going to lunch at 500 Below, she informed us—a chic new eatery which reached new heights on the Richter Scale of pretension and snobbery. Imagine the St Regis recast in black rubber, copperplate and plastic. They did not take reservations, but when you arrived for lunch at 11:45, the maître d’, would look down from his unreasonable height, over his glasses and down his beaked nose, and peck a message of unwelcome out of your flesh: “Unfortunately, there’ll be a wait of at least forty-five minutes. You can wait in the bar.” He would say this in a tone that was both haughty and mournful; he would say this despite the fact that you could see the restaurant was empty.

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The Corporatorium: Gala (Season 2, Episode 2)

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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The Corporatorium: The Ernestness of Being (Season 2, Episode 1)

Nigel Gale @MannequinMan
Have you seen ernest!’s column today?

Barbara @Harvard06
No, not before my morning tea!

Prometheus Jones @Theus
I just read it. You may want to read it on an empty stomach

Just Plain Terry (JPT) @FierceQueen
Honestly, ernest! is always seeing racists under the bed.

Prometheus Jones @Theus
Well, in his defense, when your only tool is a hammer, everything tends to look like a nail.

Barbara @Harvard06
Well, for someone with a degree in journalism, he doesn’t follow any of the rules of impartiality.

ernest! had gone to the same Ivy League institution as Barbara the first, but he’d managed to circumvent accusations of privilege and access by casting his undergraduate years not as a stroll through hallowed, ivy-covered halls, but rather as an unavoidable incarceration in a PWI—Predominately White Institution. Barbara wore her Harvard degree like a gold star; ernest! wore his like a Purple Heart.

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