Charles Alexander
Parting Glances: Lost Language of S/he
As a post-pubescent teenager growing up on Detroit's Peterboro Street – just down the block from still-standing Burton Elementary School, recently turned movie and music theater venue – I spoke a made-up language called Quinish. I have no idea why [...]
Parting Glances My 10 Minutes in Heaven (Pt. 4)
I'm not quiet sure if it was 12:06 or 12:07 a.m. in my heavenly sojourn. It seems like a century between these 60 seconds. Believe it or not, two seemingly angelic things are happening to my earthly, cleverly planned obsolescent cellphone. It chimes [...]
Parting Glances: My 10 Minutes in Heaven (Pt. 3)
Footnote: Following BTL publication of Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, several big time book publishers called me with contractual offers. Modestly, I said that as a renegade Christian of ecumenical moral standards and far-reaching readership privilege, I was [...]
Parting Glances: My 10 Minutes In Heaven (Pt. 2)
My cellphone says 12:03 a.m. My second afterlife minute in heaven. (This brief account is probably an LGBT first.) DISCLAIMER: Unlike many straight accounts, my intent is not to make big bucks on the New York Times Book List. Tho' I'm tempted. I'm [...]
Parting Glances: My 10 Minutes In Heaven (Pt. 1)
DISCLAIMER: There are several accounts of afterlife experiences on the New York Times Best Seller list, including one by a three-year-old boy (with a little help from his dad). This is my account. Though tempted, I'm not writing for ready cash. Just [...]
A Feast With Green Carnations
Somewhere pressed in my book of memories is a green carnation, remarkably fresh with the passage of time. It's there with a wrist corsage I hadn't the courage to wear to my high school senior prom and some daisy chains I linked together at my coming [...]
Ambidextrous Fable
Dear Daily Journal: I've been using my right hand only during Lent. 40 days of penance, as it were. (See the block lettering. My p's look like q's. My i's blend into u's. Does anyone do cursive writing these days? Reminder: Get a laptop!) I'm [...]
PARTING GLANCES: Yo! Y'all. I'm 'Dude'!
". . . and I'm a gay basher . . ." Beloved PG Friends: I'm sitting in on a meeting of Gay Basher's Anonymous with – unknown to the bashers – my pocket-size recording device surreptitiously "taking notes." I'm disguised as a Gay Basher: sporting a [...]
Parting Glances: How Long Ago It Seems ...
In the mid-50s there weren't any nationwide advocacy groups. No newspapers like Between The Lines. No gay-friendly churches. No out homosexual celebrities. Zero. Gays and lesbians – considered a psychologically aberrant, innately suspect, very small [...]
Parting Glances: JHVH's Rainbow Scapegoats
It's something of a psychological truism that when problems seem insurmountable – too overwhelming to cope with – "smaller" problems are created as a distraction. It happens in life. It certainly happens in American religion. These so-called, more [...]
39, And Not Counting
At my advanced age I've come to realize I really don't exist. With the exception of the IRS, my creditors, my column's faithful baker's dozen fans, my friends, I'm a nobody, and an old nobody at that. Sigh. It happens. Of the seven billion persons [...]
Parting Glance: Stop! Look! Listen!
Shortly before retiring from the digitally enhanced combat called teaching I came across a bound volume of back issues of Detroit Public Schools news about students, teachers, and education, circa mid-50s. Flipping through the collection I was [...]