What My First Reading Taught Me

-
Arriving early for the Lammy finalists reading
I talk a lot about always feeling other, always feeling alien. For the most part this feeling of otherness is something that envelopes me like my skin. I tend not to think about it unless something irritates me, sort of how we tend not to think too much about the skin we’re in until a blemish erupts, or a mosquito makes a meal of us.
Tuesday night I had the great honor of participating in the Lammy Finalist Reading at the Leslie + Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York (Yes, Virginia there is such a thing, and if you haven’t been there I urge you to go check it out.)  It would be the first time I ever read in public and I admit I was a tad nervous—okay more than a tad. Also New York itself unnerves me: all those people, all that crackling energy, all that movement. My brother met me at Penn Station and we went to a diner for lunch. And then it was 5:15 and we were walking into the museum. I was the first reader to arrive. They were setting up a display of finalists’ books for sale and there it was—on the left at the front—Unbroken. My Unbroken. I stepped back. Was this really happening? I pulled out my phone and took a picture in case it all suddenly disappeared like a dream.
I was fourth to read. I listened to the first three readers and thought Oh crap, I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that. And then I was on stage reading. “I was twelve, and in seventh grade. He was the new kid…”
And then my three minutes were over and I was stepping back down to the ground, the sound of 
Look there it is--Unbroken
applause ringing in my ears.  As I’d glanced around the crowded room after my last sentence, I suddenly realized for once I didn’t feel other, didn’t feel alien. I felt embraced, supported─by my brother and his fiancée, by the listeners in the room, by the other finalists. Wrapped in words, in an art we’d each created, I felt included. And that was a heady feeling.
At the end of the evening I talked to everyone, offered congratulations, praise, promised to meet up in June at the Awards ceremony. I hugged a mother and daughter, Sophia and Rosette, who came from the Bronx and who’d bought Unbroken then came back to shyly ask me to sign it for them. I hugged them both, feeling warmth and acceptance and encouragement, and the pull of my Bronx roots.
As I sat on the train making my way back to Philadelphia where my adored partner and our dog were waiting up for me, I reflected on a simple truth: sometimes the walls we see around us, walls that keep us out, are walls we built to protect ourselves from a world that might welcome us if we only gave it a chance.
Watch the video of me reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE55cf9mReU&feature=youtu.be

Find out more about Unbroken here: http://www.larrybenjamin.com/Unbroken.html

Follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 3, 2014 at 9:53 AM

    Well deserved applause Larry Benjamin, well done!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Larry BenjaminMay 3, 2014 at 11:11 AM

      thank you Ann! I'm doing another reading in Philly next week, I'm wondering if I'll be less terrified. LOL

      Larry

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Catching Up With...Stacey Thomas, the Philadelphia Wedding Chapel

-
Image
If you read this blog regularly, you know that I recently married my longtime partner (see Musings Stanley (left) and me with Stacey Thomas of a New Husband, June 29, 2014 . Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of marrying some bright prince. And as a writer of gay romance, I’ve written gay weddings into two of my books, brilliant, extravagant affairs both. The wedding in What Binds Us ,  included a groom on horseback and “Ten thousand pale pink roses—an entire crop from Holland flown in that morning,” while at the comparatively simpler wedding in Unbroken “it seemed everyone in the world was there” including a flock of startled peacocks. Yet, when it came to my own wedding, panic set in. I didn’t know where to start. I knew I didn’t want to get married in a church and I knew there wouldn’t be hundreds, or even dozens of guests in attendance. In desperation—at that point we only had two weeks to get married on our 17 th anniversary—I goggled “weddings in Philadelphia.” The Phila
Read more

A Fatherless Father's Day

-
Image
Max as reluctant to let Dad go as we were. I remember the accident as if it was yesterday. I had been living in Washington, D.C. for three years. That particular morning, a Saturday, I was running late for work. It was a gray, wet morning at the edge of Winter. Heavy rain, like molten white gold, fell from an aluminum sky as I blazed along at 80 mph. A gray car merged onto the roadway from the right, then proceeded to move into my lane without signaling. The car was moving so slowly it looked like it was moving backwards. I pressed the brakes hard, pumping steadily with increasing pressure, my right hand tight on the gearshift ready to down shift. Realizing collision was inevitable, I glanced at the speedometer: 60. The impact sent my little car spinning towards the concrete divider separating west-bound traffic from east. The world seemed upside down. I remember thinking, I’m going to die and I never got to be friends with my father . I glanced up at the sky, oddly unafraid,
Read more

Notes From an Old Man: Old

-
Image
Old. A word innocuous enough, and certainly useful at times. We’ve all heard it and used it and read it without any particular feeling. But recently the word became attached to me and… whoa boy …I have feelings. It started last year when I found myself suddenly unemployed. Being one to pick myself up and dust myself off and get back on the horse that threw me, I mentioned to a retired friend that I was looking for a new job. “Aren’t you too old to get a new job?” she asked. “No,” I answered, probably somewhat cockily. After all I was a catch . I have decades of experience and there is practically nothing in the arena of corporate communications that I hadn’t done, or experienced. I’m an award-winning fiction writer, for God’s sake! Then of course, my friend turned out to be the frickin’ Oracle at Delphi . I climbed off my high horse, decided to focus on my writing and got a job that would allow me to do just that. Pretty quickly the young people there attached “Mr.” to my name,
Read more