ON BROTHERHOOD

John-----I never did know his last name----is a drag queen.  Flamboyant to a fault, he is at times hard to take.    The disease has pulled him down to the point that he is all black skin stretched tight over bones.  This time his hair is clipped tight against his skull. Still there is some gray showing.   He does not wear a shirt today.  He wears a huge multicolored earring.  He is defiant.  His voice is strong and it carries.  Oy, does it carry.    His mind wanders.  I think perhaps it always has.

          

 People stare at him as they pass on the street while I stand talking to him..  Almost all of them do.  Sometimes I meet their stares.  They quickly look away.  John will not acknowledge that he is glad for the short visit.  Yet I know he is.

I always talk to him.  I have known him for years.  He is my friend.  We all need all the friends we can get.  He has always treated me well.  He has never said or done anything mean or spiteful, unlike some of the people I have known.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.