Living in Japan, I’ve developed a great respect for earthquakes. With my heightened gaijin senses, I am keenly aware that my beloved city is long overdue for its next “great” earthquake. And every respiration of the city immediately triggers my flight instinct only to later give way to the realization that it’s just the wind or the subway or…. anything but the end of the world disaster that I’ve so vividly envisioned in my mind.
But a month ago today, my worst fears were realized when I realized that that interesting fog of the Haitian capital wasn’t fog at all but the dust cloud covering a city of some 3,000,000 people in ruins. My heart sunk! Like most Black Americans I share a special affinity for Haiti. My affinity is even more personal because of my relationship with my fraternity and my resident Haitian old head, Etienne aka “Mr. Liberte or La Mort!”. Watching the sheer devastation of the city, my prayers were for my Brother and hiw wife, their families and all the people of Haiti who have too long been treated as the pariah of the Western Hemisphere.
Read more »
Yeah, I’m a day late but I was in-flight back to the City under Red Sun and didn’t get in until late…
So….. December 1st is (was) World AIDS Day! A day to stop and reflect on the plague of our time and the terrible toll it has taken worldwide. To date, this scourge has claimed the lives of some 28 million people, and another estimated 33 million people around the world are currently living with the disease. There is no cure!!!
By now, we all now the devastation this plague has caused. But today (and EVERYDAY), perhaps more than ever, we really need to stop and reflect on this disease and our lives in the shadow of AIDS/HIV. Too many of us see AIDS and HIV as an African problem. Too many of us see it as a African American problem. Too many of us still see it as a homosexual problem. Somehow we always manage to map it outside our spheres, outside of our personal definitions of ourselves. Perhaps it’s because we aren’t African, or African American. Perhaps we don’t live in DC, NYC ATL or San Francisco. Perhaps we aren’t gay. Then again, maybe we’re too young to remember those truly terrible days, before the anti-retroviral drug cocktails, when an HIV diagnosis meant certain death, and when we watched helplessly as our best friends and family and our idols wasted away and died.
Those days a gone! The fear has subsided, and in its place a terrible new disease has taken hold. This disease…. complacency. Here in the City under Red Sun, as elsewhere, people just aren’t very concerned with AIDS. More than anywhere else, it really is seen as something that happens to other people in some other place in some other other time. Too many times have I heard that AIDS/HIV is alternately a gay, Black, or foreigner disease. And if you’re a gay, Black foreigner (such as myself), then you’re the living embodiment of risk. Largely separated from these at-risk “others”, Japan is lulled in a false sense of security.
BUT AIDS/HIV IS EVERYWHERE. AND EVERYONE IS AT RISK!!!
What really scares me and where to get tested after the break
While some men here in Land of the Rising Sun may have lost their lust for life, others have really come into their own…. like literally! A great example of anti-herbivorous behaviour, meet one Masanobu Sato, crowned last month in San Francisco’s 9th Annual Masturbate-A-Thon as the world champion masturbator after a record setting 9 hours 58 minutes of going at it! Wow, how does he find to the time? I mean 10 hours! Really, 10 hours?!?
Read the, errr, gripping interview with the champ himself.
I wrote a post and made a video about, you know, foreigners finding their super powers here in the City. It seems that natives too find their powers in the light of foreign suns…. Super powers indeed!
News, Personal, Scene | young city extraordinaire | 
February 12, 2010 11:04 pm | 
Comments (4) 
Subscribe