Larry Benjamin. Wordsmith. Writer. Author.

This week I am contemplating the smile and the nature of happiness. Sunday I was walking in Carpenter’s Woods with our two dogs, Toby and Riley. As we swept around a curve in the trail, I spotted a thin androgynous figure moving towards us. As the person emerged out of the shadows I saw it was a young woman; her hair, bleached to the color and consistency of straw, stuck out at almost right angles to the red wool cap pulled low over her forehead. On her face, she wore an expression as devastated as Nagasaki after the bombing. She continued walking towards us with heavy steps, seeming to sink further into the soft earth with every step, the weight of the world’s woes piled on her back. She stared at us approaching through eyes dulled by the twin cataracts of sadness and disappointment. Riley, spotting her, ran towards her. Her mouth was a thin line of grim determination as she regarded him with a mixture of dread and suspicion. What new hell this? she seemed to be thinking. ...

In honor of ‪‎National Coming Out Day (which also happens to be my birthday),‬ my ‎LGBT‬ coming of age/coming out novel, Unbroken is just 99 cents! If it's been on your To Be Read list you may want to buy it now . Coming out for me wasn't hard--I was never "in," by which I mean closeted . I could never see the point. I mean what was the point--you just had to look at me to know; I've discovered that people see what they want to see so if someone didn't know, it wasn't my fault. I didn't see the point of hiding. I mean, sure people might dislike me because I was gay, they might even try to hurt me, but the same could be said of me being black—just look at the number of black people being hurt and killed by the police—the very people they are supposed to look to for protection . So was I supposed to hide myself away? never leave the house lest I walk into a store and be followed as a potential shoplifter? Or wrestled to the ground and tasered for ...