Larry Benjamin's Blog: Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life, page 12

Wednesday Briefs - Unbroken

This week's flash fiction was brought about by a graphic I recently saw on the internet.

It resonated with me because the idea that gay youth aren’t broken is the central theme of my semi-autobiographical, coming of age/romance novel, Unbroken. So this week I'm posting an excerpt from Unbroken. In this scene, fifteen year Lincoln, bullied at home and at school, is without hope until a teacher rescues him. It is a very personal story. In my case it was a female teacher who told me it was okay to be myself, that I wasn’t broken. Her name was Fran Scioli. She died without me ever being able to say thank you. So this post is really a way for me to thank her publicly.

Silence

I spoke late and when I eventually discovered words, I spoke to my parents of little things, childish things. Distracted, they paid no attention to my words but they noticed my hands. Stop it with the hands, they said. They flutter like little birds, they said. Boys’ hands don’t flutter like little birds, they said. They made me sit on my hands when I spoke. If I was standing, I had to clasp my hands behind my back. My hands stilled, my words failed. I grew quiet. Later when I had bigger, more important things to speak of, I remained quiet, kept everything locked inside.

I didn’t speak, but I listened. I learned to hear the words between the words, the words unspoken, written in silence.

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Revelations

In both my novels, Unbroken and What Binds Us, I introduced young men who fall in love and explored the resulting romance. This week, my newest flash fiction piece, "Revelations," explores the process of falling in love in reverse.

Read "Revelations" now.

Do You See What I See?

I once told a group of “creatives”—graphic designers and writers—that I see the world in words. Readers often ask me not so much about the inspiration for my stories but about how I come up with the words in my descriptions. The answer is simple, the world around me is what I describe in my writing, and I see the world in words.


When it comes to personality types , I am ESFP (Extravert, Sensing, Feeling, Perceiving) which means I look at things and I see what they could be, which explains why we bought two old houses. Actually, now that I think about it, it also explains quite a few ex-boyfriends; I saw possibilities, I saw what they could become given enough time and money, though in the case of the aforementioned ex-boyfriends, there wasn’t enough time or money in the world to rehab that group of losers. But I digress…


This ability to see possibilities also figures into my writing because when I see something that inspires me, I see not always what is physically in front of me but what it becomes set loose in my imagination. In this blog post are excerpts from my writing alongside pictures of what inspired the descriptions in the excerpts.

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Wednesday Briefs―My First Flash Fiction

This week, I join Wednesday Briefs―a blog hop where authors post 500-1000 words of free flash fiction every week.

I posted my very first flash fiction, a short-short titled "Sahel." Check it out and leave a comment telling me what you think.

Read "Sahel" now.

LGBT Black History Month Spotlight

In partnership with Philadelphia Black Gay Pride, every day throughout the month of February, G Philly Magazine will spotlight one of the most important black movers and shakers in the city.

Today, the spotlight is on local author Larry Benjamin.

Read the feature.

Dialogue from a Marriage

The Mister and I are getting married in June. We’d like to get married in Pennsylvania but of course marriage equality is not to be found here in our great state! So we will probably get married in one of our neighboring states, like New Jersey (gasp) or Delaware. We wanted to get married in the state in which we’ve chosen to make our home and build a life together but we don’t want to wait any longer. After 17 years we feel we’ve more than earned the right to get married, whether Pennsylvania law agrees or not. But that’s not really the point of this post.

Like I said, we’ve been together 17 years. My older brother, Michael, and Susie, his girlfriend visited us for New Year’s. Susie told us they’d met a couple who’s been married 34 years. She asked the wife what the secret to a long marriage was. The woman responded, “Yes Dear.”

Susie then asked us what we thought the secret to staying married was. We’ve been together so long, we each have our roles; I’m the designated family spokesman, our joint voice. I don’t remember exactly how I responded but later in the day, I said something teasingly mean to Stanley and Susie laughed. Stanley didn’t hear me but knew I was making fun of him. When he asked me what I’d said, I responded “Nothing, honey.”

I turned to Susie in triumph. “There ” I said, “The two secrets to a long marriage: ‘yes, dear’ and ‘nothing, honey’.”

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What Christmas Means to Us

Neither of us spend Christmas with our family, spending it instead with each other and the ad hoc, unlikely family we have assembled here in Philadelphia—good friend and dog walking buddy, Shirley; Daniel who is a pain in the ass but who I have known since God first coughed the universe into existence; Lloyd and Sandy who used to live across the driveway. They are the core group. The rest is an ever changing mix of new friends and acquaintances. This year we had a colleague from work and her son.

When they arrived, I hugged Wendy and shook 5 year old Levi’s hand. “Merry Christmas,” I said.

“We don’t celebrate Christmas,” Levi responded.

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Lost & Found

We were out for our before bed pee walk. As usual, Stanley was trailing a half block behind Toby and me. I hate the dark and the cold so we were moving at our usual brisk pace thus I was surprised when Stanley suddenly appeared at my shoulder. “Hey,” he said, “There’s someone sitting on the curb back there crying.”

I turned to look back at the corner, could make out a huddled black form and on the still chilly air, I could hear sobbing. Toby was pulling at his leash so we walked on, turning to look back every few feet, the sound of crying falling around us like rain. Finally I stopped and asked, “Do you think we should go back and check on them?”

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The Sissy Triumphant

My brother outed me to our 88 year old aunt. I was stunned, shocked. I’d never told her even though we are fairly close and talk at least once a week. Still, with uncharacteristic restraint and reticence I never told her. We just didn’t discuss that aspect of my life. It’s not that I was ashamed. I was just unsure. Maybe it wasn’t really true. Why agitate everyone and then say, “Oh never mind, I made a mistake?”

Now, at the other end of the phone my aunt was saying she knew. Michael had told her. She didn’t ask why I hadn’t told her myself. Or why my parents had never mentioned it.

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Bourbon and Tears

On Saturday we had to put our 14 year old Lhasa to sleep. It was a hard decision to make but it was the right decision. She was deaf. She was arthritic. She suffered from stage C mitral valve insufficiency with controlled congestive heart failure.. She was on Lasix, Vetmedin and Viagra for her heart; Proin for incontinence; Rimadyl for her arthritis. 10 pills a day in all.

I understood—her heart was enlarged, she was losing weight, her kidneys, from the combined effects of heart disease and many meds, were dying. She was failing. My head understood this but my heart, breaking, did not. The heart wants what the heart wants and there in her vet’s office, my heart was tumbling over in my chest in a fit of want. I wanted Coco to stay, even as I knew she could not.

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