Larry Benjamin. Wordsmith. Writer. Author.

I've just finished reading Kathy Anderson’s short story collection, VAMOOSE and I wish I could give it all the stars in the sky. There’s something unexpectedly intimate about these stories, which carry the weight of memory. Yet, it is an intimacy that lacks the uncomfortable air of a confessional; instead, they are relatable, making you sigh with the knowledge that you have been seen , that you have been immortalized within these pages. And that is the allure of Anderson’s writing. The superb stories in this collection range from the introspective to the hilarious. These are stories of controlled chaos, leaving the reader to wonder who is in fact controlling the chaos, while also making it clear that Anderson is a master in control of the short story. The comedy is subtle and never ending: a pair of sisters named Tuesday and Wednesday; an aged stilt walker clip clopping down Broad Street; one woman musing about the horrible fad of women waxing off their pubic hair. These...

I read this article, “ We Didn't Say 'Gay' At My High School. It Almost Cost Me My Life ,” by HuffPost’s Noah Michelson and it took me back to possibly the darkest time in my life: high school. I tend not to dwell too much on the past so the last time I really thought about the hell that was high school was when I wrote my second novel, “ Unbroken ,” which memorializes a lot of what I experienced growing up. Like Noah it was always obvious that I was gay. Our stories are remarkably similar: the bullying, the name calling, the loneliness. But there are stories diverge. I didn’t grow up in a small town but in The Bronx; I didn’t have a gay uncle to show me that guys like me existed, that I wasn’t alone. I’m Black. Maybe being Black made it easier to embrace my gayness. Afterall both identities carry the threat of discrimination and suspicion. I’ve been called the N-word. In high end stores I was often regarded with suspicion and then curiosity when I laid down my Amex G...

I met T.A. Riddle years ago at the dog park. It was just after my first book was published. We began to talk about writing, and he shared that he had been writing a book for a number of years. “Dancing Like Nobody’s Watching: Contra Dance” is that book. Set in the late 1980s, the novel carries the weight of memory, but it’s a memory recalled through a 21 st century lens leading to a kind of literary dissonance. It’s a heavy novel dealing with serious topics—heartbreak, friendships, lives lost, religious trauma, the shadow of the growing AIDS crisis—even as it’s characters lose themselves and their cares in the pounding rhythms of the house music of the decade. Yet, for all its heaviness, the story is positive, powered by hope—hope that it really does get better; that we can love one another in truth and joy—the kind of hope that propelled Barrack Obama to the White House, twice. The prose is clean and sharp; it sings at times, like this evocative passage speaking of helplessnes...

I’ve written before about my writing being “found art;” that is composed of things I’ve seen, conversations I’ve overheard, people I’ve met, and dwelling in the general milieu of ‘gay chaos.” This is true of my latest novel, “He,” as well but HE is also heavily influenced by music. Kitt has a cat named Frankenstein: “…Taking her place, a ragged black cat with an angry-looking scar on his forehead hissed at us. “Frankenstein, come,” Kitt barked without turning around. The cat cast us a baleful glance then stalked away behind Kitt on its silent cat feet.” The cat wasn’t originally part of the story; he came into being after I heard Sam Cooke’s “Another Saturday Night,” on the radio while I was writing HE. Another fella told me he had a sister who looked just fine Instead of being my deliverance, she had a strange resemblance To a cat named Frankenstein In an earlier post , I wrote about how Whitney Houston’s “My Love is Your Love” a line of which chorus refers to the historic...

For song three, I’m choosing a song for Jackson which I think sums up how he feels about Oren and how he sees their love as reciprocal , their relationship as unbreakable. If tomorrow is judgment day And I'm standing on the front line And the Lord asks me what I did with my life I will say I spent it with you Oren is not just Jackson’s first love; he is his personal hero; Jackson sees Oren as his everything, loving Oren as his highest calling. If I lose my fame and fortune (really don't matter) And I'm homeless on the street (on the street oh Lord) And I'm sleeping in Grand Central Station (okay) It's okay if you're sleeping with me Oren relates this anecdote: We slept in Jackson’s truck last night at the edge of campus, which was still and dark by the time we arrived. “Are you sure this is OK?” I asked Jackson. “Are you sure you’re , OK? Do you need anything?” The calm I had felt as we left Locust Hollow behind now disappeared in the crampe...

I took our dogs for a walk at the pet cemetery at Laurel Hill today. The visit left me oddly emotional. Now, we go to the people cemetery for walks fairly often and those walks don’t make me emotional. As I stared at the little grave markers, tears burning, refusing to fall, I wondered why. As a writer of gay romance , I write about love in all its expressions; yet it occurs to me that the purest expression of love is that of a carer for their pet. Love for a pet is almost entirely altruistic , for the adopted is unlikely to elevate one’s social standing or increase one’s financial bottom line. For our part, we lay no expectations at their feet—there is no expectation of a college degree earned, nor of grandchildren produced. Instead, we embrace our pets in all their cat and dog-ness. Their being is simply enough, the very hallmark of unconditional love . And when their time is up and the loan that is their life with up is called, they go, leaving behind a little dagger in our...

With just 18 days until the release of “He,” I thought I’d share the second song on my playlist—Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s "Didn't It Rain?"  For me this song is atmospheric , a sepia-toned watercolor “painting” of the small, dusty farm town where we first encounter our protagonists Oren and Jackson. That it is sung by a queer Black woman who is widely regarded as “the Godmother of Rock 'N' Roll” is especially fitting for a novel centering queer black love. “He,” like my previous novels, blends romance and history, which makes the inclusion of “Didn’t It Rain?” feel necessary and significant. WATCH: Sister Rosetta Tharpe "Didn't It Rain?" Learn more about Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her impact on music HERE . Missed the first song on the playlist? You can read up on it HERE . "He" will be released on October 11, 2025 but electronic advanced release copies are available in the US and the UK on Netgalley. Request your copy HERE . Photo by Jake B...

I create a playlist for all of my books, because music appears in all of my stories, mostly as a way to place the story in time, but often to reflect how the characters are feeling. Sometimes the songs are just meant to tell us something about the characters. My October release, “He,” was no exception but in the case of this book, the first song on the playlist was especially freighted as it underscores a key scene, and it tells us something important about one of the main characters and colors his relationship. Here is the first song from the playlist for “He.” Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man,” was an obvious choice for a few reasons, one of which is her status as a gay icon—a gay woman who came out and stood up in the 70s saying, yes, I am. Famously, she was deported from South Africa for performing to an integrated audience, which was prohibited by the South African government at the time; her contract specifically excluded segregated performances, which made her ...

Each year since the pandemic, my husband and I (along with my younger brother) take our nephews, Max and Xavier, aged ten and seven rspectively, for a week each August. We call it “Uncles’s Bootcamp.” It was originally conceived as a Christmas present for my oldest brother and his wife to give them a break from their two kids, both of whom are on the spectrum. We planned the vacation as bootcamp because their parents are “free-range,” and thus have pretty lax rules. During their week with us, the boys have a schedule: there are set bedtimes and mealtimes during which they are expected to sit at the dining table and eat. There is an itinerary of activities, combining outings and free time. We’ve visited the zoo, farms; The Natural History museum; the Please Touch museum; went for pony rides and; we’ve fed bison and giraffes and chickens; and petted goats. We’ve been on merry-go-rounds and rides at Sesame Place and watched them on trampolines and in ball pits at Urban Air. They’ve g...

I was one of the judges for the 2023 Lambda Literary J. Michael Samuel Prize which Christopher Tradowsky won for his novel in progress, “ Midnight at the Cinema Palace ,” so I was beyond excited when his publicist offered to send me a copy of the now-completed book. I was anxious to see whether the novel lived up to its early promise. Cinema is one of those books—all too rare in my humble opinion—in which the journey—not the destination —is the point. Within its pages, there is no mystery to solve, no star-crossed lovers to root for, no battles to be won or lost. Instead, reading this novel is like taking a meandering train trip across a landscape that is at once known and unknown but undeniably beautiful, in one of those plush 1930s private coaches pulled by a stately gleaming steam engine: you feel relaxed, slightly outside of time. This novel is many things: a love letter to San Francisco and old movies, particularly film noir, and the magnificent palaces they were once shown i...

Today, my husband and I celebrate twenty-eight years of commitment, and eleven years of legal marriage. During our twenty-eight trips around the sun together, during which we witnessed and weathered The Great Recession and the pandemic and Trump's first reign of terror and incompetence. I look back on our journey with gratitude. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather walk through life with. It hasn’t been all champagne and roses—though in truth it has probably included way too much champagne, but I find popping a bottle to celebrate things big and small—even opening a bottle to toast being able to have Sunday morning breakfast together—helps balance the heavier side of life. We have helped and supported each other through the loss of his grandparents, my parents and four dogs. Together we have built a life and an art collection; we have bought—and renovated—two houses, seven cars, rescued six dogs, planted a dozen trees and countless shrubs and flowers; welcomed the birth of ...

I feel silly for feeling nostalgic about Summer 2024 and its adventures—feeding the giraffes and a bison at the Elmwood Park Zoo; ziplining for the first (and last) time at Urban Air; watching our crepe myrtles release their blooms the color of cranberry sauce; listening to the songs that would form the summer’s soundtrack. It’s September.   The calendar tells us there are 20-some-odd days of summer left; yet we all know—Summer draws its last breath each year at midnight on Labor Day. School buses are back on the roads, tangling traffic; college campuses are buzzing with activity; people are closing up their shore houses; radio stations are rushing to name the songs of summer 2024. The latter has made me decide to name my own songs of this summer. More on that in a minute. Perhaps it’s a sign of getting older, but time seems to be passing lickety-split. June marked ten years of us being legally married. My brother and his wife will celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary this...

“She is gone,” she said, “She is dead.” “What?” I asked, wondering how this could be. She was only 35. She was the most alive person I’d ever met. She vibrated with life to the tips of her exquisitely painted acrylic nails. When I think of her, many adjectives come to mind: tacky—she loved red and black and leopard prints, unfortunately often in combination, and false eyelashes that perched like tarantulas over her big brown eyes, and lace-front wigs in blonde and Lucille Ball red, and lipstick in bright red and the dark colors of mourning—promiscuous; combative. She was unapologetically herself. She was raucous and raunchy. She had a heart of gold; sterling silver pumped through her veins. She was funny and clever and caring and supportive. When I first started working with her, she cheerfully took me under her wing sharing with me what I needed to know—things that weren’t mentioned in HR’s dry and out-of-date PowerPoints, or in my vague, slightly misleading job description. Of...

Today we’ve been married 27 years, using the date of our “commitment” ceremony, which was the only option available to us at the time—and our tenth (legal) wedding anniversary, thanks to the Pennsylvania state legislature who granted us the right to marry a year before SCOTUS declared in the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision which ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. From the time I was 12 years old, I knew I would marry a boy. I didn’t have a plan or a road map but, even then, I had a vision and no doubt that one day I would. June 28, which is the date of both our commitment ceremony and legal marriage, is also the anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion which kicked off the modern-day gay rights movement. We didn’t choose that date originally for its historical significance, rather it was a practical decision; we didn’t want to...

I remember as a kid hearing that getting old was like entering a second childhood. Well, I’m here at the ripe old age of 64 to tell you that’s not true; getting old is more like going through a second adolescence. My body is changing in unexpected ways: I have arthritis in my right index finger, me knees creak and crack; my blood has decided to store iron. Like an adolescent, I think I know everything, except now in this second adolescence, I really do know everything—or at least a little. Here’s what I know : It will get better. If you find yourself going through hell, keep going; it’s a “passthrough” town. He’s not going to change. You can just say no. As I did back then, I find myself imagining my future self—what will I look like—and my future. Back then I’d tried to visualize my collegiate life: Where would I go to college? What would I study? Would I make friends? Would I find a boyfriend. And my post-collegiate life: would I drive a BMW or a Porsche? Would I real...

Kristi Noem wrote a book. I read an Associated Press article about it. And almost cried. I pulled my dogs, Atticus and Gatsby, onto my lap. I would never hurt them. I would kill anyone who tried to hurt them. Apparently in her book “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” Noem recounts the tale of Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer she was training for pheasant hunting. (I won’t even address the grossness and cruelty of pheasant hunting here.) When Cricket turned out to be a dud at pheasant hunting, she admits she hated her and thought she was untrainable. By her own account, she led Cricket to a gravel pit and shot her. When we had to put my first dog, Channing, down, I was in the room with him. I stepped away so he wouldn’t see me cry. Weak and sick as he was, he lifted his head to see where I’d gone. In that moment I felt all the trust he had in me hanging in the balance. I went back and knelt in front of him, holding...

I called him Mark Stephen (his first and middle names); he called me “my little Rusty Dusty,” a reference to my reddish hair and freckles and my skinny frame that was so much smaller than his broad-shouldered muscular one. He was dark-skinned with large luminous green eyes. Looks wise he was way out of my league. Still, he had been the one who approached me . He was my first boyfriend; the first man to tell me he loved me; the first man I loved; the first man to break my heart. He once dared me to hold his hand as we walked across campus. When I did, he admired my bravery. I was a junior in college, he was in his second year of law school when we met. He gave me his phone number. (I still have that piece of paper somewhere.) He stared at me for a minute in stunned silence and then said, “So you gonna give me yours?” “Oh,” I said embarrassed. He took me to lunch on the Mosholo the next day. That night he asked me to go for a ride. He parked under a tree and leaned over and kisse...