Rick R. Reed WRITER

 What are you talking about? You might ask. How could the state be involved?

 The answer is quite simple once you know the story. It boils down to a few hard facts. In September 2008, Foote and his partner of 13 years, Alex Chavarria, were minding their own business walking along a street in Mount Vernon, a Baltimore neighborhood just north of the downtown. Witnesses have said that the man who stopped Footman to ask him a question and went on to shoot him twice was earlier overheard saying, "I'm going to kill myself a gay tonight." As of this writing, Baltimore police have classified the murder as a possible hate crime but have not made any arrests. Footman spent months at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, then a rehabilitation center, then at home. He died November 9, almost a year after he was shot.

To compound the tragedy, Footman died too soon to get any of the state dollars available to victims from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. According to Peter Hermann, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, "A spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, which oversees the panel, told me an investigator had put the application on the docket in early November, but the board wasn't due to vote until a week after Footman died. And because Footman, 52, had no spouse and no dependents, there is no one for the state to give the money to."

No one to give the money to? How about Alex Chavarria, Footman's partner of 13 years? Surely, he's grieving and could probably use some help with the cost of caring for and trying to save the man he loved over the course of nearly a year? Oh right, Maryland doesn't allow same-sex marriage. Ergo, Chavarria is not eligible for any compensation from the state board. If they were a straight couple, it would not be a problem. Here's a good example to give to your right-wing friends when they say they just can't approve of same sex marriage.

Chavarria is angry over this, but according to the Baltimore Sun's coverage, "he is angrier with what he calls bureaucratic fumbling by the board, which he says repeatedly delayed dealing with the case because of lost faxes, missed information and poor record-keeping. He said one clerk told him she had misplaced his file and that it had to be redone and resubmitted.

"'I am upset and disappointed that this program never helped us and is not organized to work, even for those who do it right from the start," Chavarria said in an e-mail. "Why does the board not recognize that the victims include the family and/or caregivers who are truly the ones supporting everything financially?'"

The compensation board, created in 1968 to help 'innocent victims of crime' has paid out more than $100 million to victims and their families. The money does not come from taxes, but from court costs and fees paid by offenders.

The board was set up to help victims like Footman.

 According to the Sun, "The only help (the board) is now offering his friends and family is up to $5,000 in funeral costs. That money is not restricted to a spouse or dependent, but can go to the person responsible for the burial. It is money the state said Footman's partner has not applied for and it is money Chavarria said he doesn't need nor want.

 "Chavarria said Footman first applied to the board for compensation on Feb. 7, 2009, (he sent me [Hermann] a copy of his original form dated 2/7/08, explaining that his partner got the year wrong but did send it in February of last year). It typically takes about 180 days to complete a review and vote on a claim, and based on that date, a decision should have been made before Footman died." Although Footman applied in plenty of time to receive compensation and officials even concede his case was "well-documented" time still ran out on his application for aid. Footman could have applied for up to $45,000, but was asking for only $12,000, his out-of-pocket expenses not covered by insurance. Rick Binetti, a spokesman for the state prison system that oversees the compensation board says it's possible Footman's file could have been "misplaced."

 And I sit here, shaking my head in sadness and dismay, with a lump in my throat, over the death of a man who was shot to death in the street simply because he loved someone else's idea of the wrong person, a state who has a system to help victims of crime but who fumbled things on their end for so long they got out of providing that help, and for a damaged survivor of hate crime, having to go on...with the cold knowledge that if  he had been legally married to his life partner, this compensation would not even be an issue.

 

 

 

 

 

"Years ago it would have caused me great pain to even write the word gay on paper to describe myself... Writing has allowed me to change my self-hatred and doubt into true self-esteem and self-love."

--The late E. Lynn Harris in his 2003 memoir, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

 

Wow. I was just having a little breakfast, a copy of Entertainment Weekly devoted to celebrities who has passed during 2009 open before me on the table when I came across that quote. To say it resounded would be putting it mildly. It was like someone had stepped into my own mind and eloquently sorted the emotions, memories, fears, joys, and hopes brewing there and instilled them into a few spare, eloquent words.

I am like E. Lynn Harris. Beyond being gay men and writers, I don't know how much else we have in common. But I have traveled that same territory of self-loathing Harris describes. For so many years, I wore a mask and hid my true self in a closet. For most of my young adulthood, I was a married man, associated only with other straight people, and did not know what the inside of a gay bar looked like. I pondered checking out those vile groups that profess to change gay people into straight. I saw therapists, one of whom told me I could change and that my attraction to my own sex was simply my longing for the loving father I never had. My journey told self-acceptance was long and rough, and it pains me to think I was not the only one hurt on that journey. It now either makes me shake my head, laugh, or cry, when I hear people talk about the gay "lifestyle" or that being gay is a choice or a preference. When I think of how hard I struggled not to be gay, it's hard for me to fathom how someone could view this as a choice. These narrow-minded souls have only themselves to ask the question: when did you make the decision to be straight?

Harris's quote made me think about all of the above and why, today, my stories revolve almost exclusively around gay characters. And, with one exception, most of those stories show gay characters for whom sexuality is simply a part of their lives and not their exclusive reason for being. I try, with my work, to affirm my gay characters and to give them lives worthy of respect. It is only my gay villains--twisted, tortured souls--do I demonstrate not that being gay is unhealthy or wicked, but that not loving oneself can be incredibly damaging. I think that's why some of my gay antiheroes, such as serial killer Timothy Bright in IM, want so much to be understood because they are beyond understanding themselves.

In my ebook short, Through the Closet Door, I write about a young man who was, very much like myself, in a straight marriage with a woman he loves (emphasis here is important) who struggles to accept something he doesn't want but can't escape. Toward the end of that story, he begins, just barely, to love himself for who he is and not who he thinks he should be.

It's been about twenty years since I was a young man similar to the one in that story, and I think the reason the quote I began this blog with resounds so much with me is that I never realized until today how much the things I write have enabled me to grow and develop not only as writer, but as a gay man. I can see how my increasingly turning to gay themes and characters has mirrored my own self-acceptance. I am lately writing a lot about love, and romance has taken a huge role even in my horror/suspense stories. That, I think, is more of a statement than I realized.

I have finally cast aside the chains of self-loathing that once bound me. I no longer hide that I am a gay man. And maybe, just as important, I can stand proud and say, "I write gay fiction...exclusively. Because these are my people..."

So yes, I was online, on one of those hook-up sites. And lest you think I was on there cruising, get your mind out of the gutter. I don?t really know if I?m ready to admit why I was on there, either to myself or to you, but let?s just call it a little social experiment.

One thing that will let you know I wasn?t online for naughty purposes was the dispassion I felt as paged through the site with its come-ons, its cries for help, its attempts at wit, and its leave-nothing-to-the-imagination photographs (or pics, I guess you would say?I really must get with the times one of these days!). Like the hopeful in A Chorus Line, I felt nothing. But this allowed me to view the site somewhat objectively and what stuck out to me and what really caught my eye?over and over again?was a little shorthand that many guys had chosen to include in their ads. This shorthand made this newly diagnosed HIV positive man feel excluded, hurt, and alone.

The term? NEG UB2.

So short, so to-the-point. So cutting. So cruel. It?s equally as bad as a few other key phrases designed to keep the ?unworthy? at bay, phrases like ?No fats? or ?No fems?. But it?s NEG UB2 that really got to me.

Do the people who put that in their ?what I?m looking for? realize how casually hurtful that phrase can be? Do they stop for a moment to consider that someone?or even many someones?out there reading this hateful little phrase may be newly diagnosed and struggling? Or maybe they?re not new to HIV or AIDS itself and came to this online community looking for a little love, a little companionship, and maybe a feeling of being included? Do they stop to think how very STUPID the phrase is? Not just in its cruelty, but also in the fact that if they think it?s some kind of magic phrase to screen out all potential suitors who are HIV positive, they?re using something that?s probably as effective as a condom full of holes? Just saying you?re negative and asking someone else to be the same way does not make it so.

Trust me, I know.

I also know that maybe, in their misguided, unthinking way, these guys are just looking to protect themselves from contracting a disease that may seriously impact the rest of their lives. Even though my doctor tells me that an HIV diagnosis no longer has to be viewed as a death sentence, it still is a life-changing illness, albeit one that?s not quite as life-threatening as it once was. If you don?t have it, you don?t want to get it.

Trust me, I know.

But even if you put that phrase in your profile as a means of self-protection, consider what you?re doing and how it might affect someone else online. Someone, like me, who already feels singled out and, in his worst moments, like damaged goods that no one will ever want again. That phrase makes my lowest moments plunge lower.

Whatever your intentions, ignorant, self-preservative, or just plain callous, consider this: you can make the same message without making someone feel so bad. By simply stating what you believe is your own status?healthy negative and would like to stay that way?is a gentler way of getting across the point: ?I?d rather not get involved with someone who is HIV+ because of the risk.? And it?s certainly kinder than saying NEG UB2.

Or maybe?and here?s a radical notion?maybe you should just do away with phrases like NEG UB2 or a gentler variation and say nothing at all. Take your chances. Make your connections based on things other than someone?s medical history. There are ways to protect yourself. There are couples out there who are one half poz, one half neg?and they make it work.

And besides, if you?re looking for sex online, isn?t it wise to simply assume everyone is POZ? And then you can really protect yourself?rationally and thoughtfully.

The above excerpt is from main character, Ethan Schwartz's, blog, OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD OF POZ, which figures prominently in NEG UB2. I happen to agree with him.

What do you think?

Get your own copy of NEG UB2 here.

I can tell you the hardest part of writing in two words: getting started. Whether it's an initial getting started as in the beginning of a novel or story, or the daily getting started of beginning to toil on a current work in progress, this is the hardest part. Actually getting started on a new project is actually easier for me, and less daunting, than starting work on something that I've been writing for a while.

Take this morning, for example. I am more than 80,000 words into my latest book. Yesterday, I wrote four pages of notes about the remainder of the novel, mapping out details of what will happen and how we will arrive at the ending and, I hope, closure. I am all set to go. And I do not have the bar set high: 1,000 words is all I ask of myself.

Yet here I sit, writing a blog. Did you notice I am NOT writing a novel? Yet here I sit, updating Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, answering e-mails, playing solitaire (just ONE game!), taking care of loading the dishwasher, throwing recyclables into the bin outside, walking the Boston Terrier, marinating chicken for tonight's dinner, taking a picture of myself to accompany this blog (see above). Should I wash my hair? Blow my nose? Sometimes, I think I'd do just about anything to avoid the kind of writing I profess to love the most.

Why is that? I wonder. Is it performance anxiety? Good Lord, I think I wrote my first story when I was all of six years old. I have written innumerable short stories, poems, essays, plays, novels...some published, some not, some good, some "what was I thinking?" bad. The point is: could performance anxiety be what's causing me to drag my heels? It shouldn't be, but there it is. One never knows the precise time or date when the magic well will run dry.

Or is it because I fear the slipping under that accompanies writing fiction? See, I do go into a kind of "state" when I write (I met a professional hypnotist once who told me that creative people actually may self-hypnotize when they're working, and this made a lot of sense to me). And maybe I'm afraid that slipping under will further reduce my already tenuous hold on reality. Perhaps one day I will disappear into my imaginary world, never to return. And if you know some of the things I write, that prospect is downright terrifying.

Or is it just because I am lazy? Maybe avoiding work, rather than working, is what I do best?

Who knows? I only wrote this to avoid working on my current novel a few minutes more and now I am really out of things to say on the topic. So, now the manuscript looms before me and I am about to plunge in.

Oh, wait, I see by the tab above I have seven new e-mails in my Gmail. I better check those first. Then I'll get started. I promise.

When the Bram Stoker Award finalists were announced the other day, I couldn't have been more pleased. Although I share the credit with a passel of other fine writers, two of the anthologies that featured my work in 2008 were named finalists for the most prestigious award in horror literature. And that's out of only four finalists in the "Superior Achievement in an Anthology" category.

The two books are Like a Chinese Tattoo, edited by Bill Breedlove (and featuring three of my short stories, along with the twisted work of Cullen Bunn, David Thomas Lord, and JA Konrath) and Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, edited by Vince Liaguno and Chad Helder (and boasting the talents of Kealen Patrick Burke, Sarah Langan, and many others, including yours truly). Unspeakable Horror is a groundbreaking collection of queer horror, and I'm so happy to see it make the final cut.

Winners will be announced in June in Los Angeles. I am very proud to have been a part of these two collections and have everything I can possibly cross that one, or both, will take the prize. Hey, a tie could happen, right?

Meanwhile, why not pick up your own copy of one of the nominated books and give yourself hours of reading terror:

Click here to purchase Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet

And here to purchase Like a Chinese Tattoo.

Here's a little sample from my story, "Sublet" which was in Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet:


And then the boy moved, walking in a kind of lazy, jerking fashion across the floor to the other side of the room. He reached up to some bricks in the wall and it looked as if he were trying to move them. He turned then and looked at Ian with such a plaintive, woeful stare that Ian was shocked by the emotion he suddenly felt: sympathy. There was anguish in the boy?s gaze as he ran his hands ran over the bricks.

And then the boy was rushing toward him and Ian was so terrified, he squeezed his eyes together, collapsing back against the bed, and curled into a fetal position, waiting for the touch of the stranger.

But there was no touch. Ian lay still, every muscle tight, in the little ball for what seemed like hours, but was, he realized, only minutes. Slowly, his breathing returned to normal and he allowed his body to uncurl, to relax the muscles a tiny bit. He allowed himself finally to open his eyes.

And the room was empty.

And a taste of "Moving Toward the Light" one of three stories featured in Like a Chinese Tattoo:

There is only darkness. She blinks, trying to focus, but the black presses in: a warm presence, engulfing, suffocating. She reaches out, wondering if she is floating in a vast, starless sky...and her hands connect with wood. Reaches up...and her hands connect with wood. Hard wood, she realizes now, supports her back. She takes in a great quivering breath, wondering how much air is left for her. This is too unreal, she tells herself and once more reaches around herself, fingers groping like subterranean insects, sensing only by touch.

The box in which she has been trapped is little bigger than she is. At best, there is only a few inches on either side of her, above her. Before the panic sets in, she touches the holes drilled in the top of the box.