Tag sexuality

Babbling to Andrew Gurza

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

One of the very first things I did when I opened my bank account for my business, Parisian Phoenix Publishing, was to buy my art director Gayle a pastry at my favorite pie shop. But the next thing I did was head to Patreon and support Andrew Gurza, a queer man with cerebral palsy who records the podcast “Disability After Dark.”

I requested to join him on the podcast, thinking it would be a great way to promote my business and share my experiences. I wanted Andrew to know how much his honesty means to me and how much I leaned on his support– even though he didn’t know me– in my journey to accept my identity as a person with a disability, in this case spastic diplegic cerebral palsy.

I had to reschedule once due to a doctor’s appointment with my current hand injury, and he had to reschedule once due to his IBS flares. He even started a podcast to talk about various GI issues and he called it, “This Shit is Real.” And I admire him for that openness. A recent and very occasional complication with my CP has been incontinence. Sometimes I can’t feel when I have to pee until it’s the very last second. And that is scary.

We finally had our chat today, and we barely scratched the surface of what both of us could say, and I know by the end I was talking too fast. Nala even behaved, but then my parakeet Yo-yo starting singing.

I hope he can salvage the audio.

I was so excited to have that chat with him as I have listened to the podcast for more than a year now. And he asked if he could contact me again so we can talk about book publishing.

Andrew can contact me anytime! The world needs more people that force discussions that we all need to have. We need to release ourselves from sensations of shame, anxiety and insecurity and accept each other and the perspectives we bring to the table.

I had a notebook because I wanted to write down the brilliant insights I knew we would have together and we had a great, great talk. But I babbled. And now I don’t have much to share with you.

So I guess we’ll have to wait for Andrew to release the episode.

Summer Reading Review: Karamo, My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing & Hope

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

My daughter and I used to binge-watch the reboot of Queer Eye on Netflix— she loved the home makeovers, Bobby’s energy and style; we both loved Antoni and the food. Tan was adorable. And Jonathon is just a lovable force. And then there was Karamo, orchestrating something not quite identifiable as “culture expert.”

When his memoir, Karamo: My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing & Hope came out (pun?) in 2019, Karamo Brown visited Lafayette College. The teenager’s father had him autograph a book for her and we excitedly attended a public lecture he gave on campus that night.

Almost two full years later, I finally finished the book.

I have recently resumed reading in general so the fault does not lie with Karamo.

The book is light, simple in phrase, and mimics Karamo’s speech.

It’s a coming of age story. It’s the experience of a Black gay man, son of immigrant parents, struggling to find himself, share his voice and help people.

He has handled so many situations others know well— issues of addiction, relationships, family, sex, parenting. He spent so long yearning to reach out into the world that he nearly self-destructed in the process.

He’s very respectful of other people, only talking about himself— not violating the privacy of his kids, his extended family or fiancé. He doesn’t share glorifying tales of his wild boy days, focusing instead of why he was behaving that way and what he learned.

He structures the chapters not chronologically but thematically which makes it easy to understand the building blocks of who he is and how he came to be.

And even before George Floyd and #BlackLivesMatter, he begged us as a society to listen to each other and be kind.