In 1999, the only feathers in my cap were a self-published poetry collection appropriately titled, Pier Queen, and some notoriety as an underground New York City based slam poet.

   I had been working on a novel but despite featured spoken word performances opening up for notable literary figures; people were more interested in the slam aspect of my poetry. 

   One of the first few authors who actually believed in me and deserves major props was gay Colombian writer, Jaime Manrique.  He introduced me to Bill Sullivan, who was starting Painted Leaf Press, a small independent publishing company that offered me the opportunity to publish the novel.

   Excitedly, I handed in the manuscript with no concept whatsoever of the editing process and relied heavily on Painted Leaf Press.  The book was soon published and, only a few months later, the company filed for bankruptcy and went out of business.  Christ Like has been out of print ever since.   

   I had been sucker punched but continued to focus on my work as a poet and eventually published my first poetry collection and went on to put together and edit other poetry anthologies.  I tried never to look back and forget my failed attempt at being an author.

   Interestingly enough, some of those who read the initial publication liked something about it.  They did not criticize me for being uneducated and inexperienced as a writer or mocked my humble beginnings as a slam poet.  The original version was even a finalist in a small category for a Lambda Literary Award.

   Throughout the past decade, I have come across fans who have told me the novel really meant something to them and they were not just trying to mack[1] on me.  Perhaps because it was the typical story of a journey to self-acceptance but told through the eyes of that rare mythological creature which sometimes appears in literature- the urban gay Latino. 

   Enter Rebel Satori Press.  The possible reprint of this book was in limbo thanks to the collapse of our economy.  As soon as the publication rights were back on the table, they swooped in and made this happen.

   Much like the main character of this novel, Christ Like got a second chance.  With that, as the author, I had certain decisions to make besides coming up with this introduction. 

   The most important and necessary edits, besides the spelling and grammar corrections, were the proper use of pronouns to refer to drag and transgender characters throughout the novel.  I also admit the original ending was regrettably trite but I have been known to “flare disappointment like a challenge dance” and I grew up watching telenovelas. 

   The other bonus feature I wanted to add (as you may have noticed from the bottom of the page) is footnotes.  With so much slang used throughout the novel, I thought these would be fun additions that would help the general reader get through the book.  However, the Spanish dialogue does not get the pop-up-video treatment as much of it uses a Nuyorican[2] slang specific to that part of Latino culture (and I also wanted to be a bit of a hard ass).

   With the opportunity to tighten up the novel, I have made it a bit more of a memoir, though it remains a fiction novel.  It was never a secret that I was the real Mikey X.  Names have been changed and situations have been exaggerated but, without the unnecessary Hollywood ending, what is left is the story of my life before becoming a writer.  I have watched many an author rise and fall for fabricating their lives and learned that, though I was not the best of writers, I actually had a genuine story to tell. 

   The main character of this novel is as melodramatic as people sometimes are in their teens and early twenties.  Mikey was, by all means, naive and thwarted emotionally.  He fell in love with a crack addict and eventually became a minor drug dealer and developed a bad habit himself. 

   Mikey was not interested in politics or the world around him.  He came of age during Republican rule when Ronald Reagan was still President of the United States for eight years followed by George H. W. Bush.  Around him- AIDS had already changed the way people engaged in sex; terrorists began hijacking planes; The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded within minutes of take off; savings and loan institutions went bankrupt; white police officers were recorded beating a black motorist leading to racially charged riots; and The USSR dissolved into individual autonomous countries.  

   Sometimes not caring is the only way to survive.  The most important thing for Mikey during this time was joining the House of X. 

   The House of X as portrayed in this novel was a group that emerged as a way of finding acceptance and community for a young adult estranged from his family.  However, because of some of the characters within the House that Mikey associated with, it also supported and reinforced his descent into decadence. 

   In a perfect world, no child would ever have to experience coming of age with so much pain and conflict.  This does not justify Mikey’s actions or absolve him from his crimes but it should at least grant him the permission to be angry and tragic.

   Writing Christ Like was a soul-searching experience.  Even while reading it over again for this reprint, I had to go back in time and realize how far I have come spiritually and emotionally. 

   Those of us who have survived sexual abuse understand our own difficult journey into acceptance.  Without poverty, prejudice and struggle, there is already enough to overcome as individuals.

   While I was out on the streets being ‘Mikey’, I did my best to find love and keep it alive in my heart.  In writing this novel, it was my hope that others could learn to forgive and love themselves whatever challenges they may have had to face while coming of age.  In reprinting Christ Like, it is my hope that we can also look back and laugh at ourselves.  We often put ourselves through so much shit but, in the end, we all deserve to find peace and happiness.

-Emanuel Xavier

May 2009

[1] The art of seduction or flirtation for the purpose of sex.

[2] A blending of the New York City and Puerto Rican diaspora.

LEGENDARY

by Emanuel Xavier

There are Gods amongst us in these ghettos

so black, so fierce,

so brown, so beautiful,

Their time on earth may be as oppressive as ignorance

limited to the demons flowing in their blood

but after safely passing over back to the clouds

the wind will still carry their auras and prophecies

their bones will still beat drums for their children to dance

the phoenix will still rise from the flames of Paris with hope in womb

There are Gods amongst us in these ghettos

so brown, so fierce,

so black, so beautiful,

If you spend too much time caught up in yourself

You just might miss Him that is goddess,

She that is god, they that are legends

Working the runway as if walking on water

Reaching the stage to that promised land

where 'peace' is not ridiculed and the only war worth fighting for

is protecting your child from the terrorist acts of a mainstream America

where 'reading' is an act of learning

not degrading words used to disguise fragility and fractured dreams

where 'shade' is a shadow you walk in to avoid the light

but who wants to stay out of the warmth of the sun?

If you waste your time trying to be a false prophet

robed in attitude and labels to obscure the insecurity

you may fail to recognize their divinity and miracles

parting the crowds, resurrecting from the floor,

scoring tens of commandments,

because trophies will not feed the hungry,

coat the homeless, hide the scars,

Grand Prizes will not bring Lazarus or LaBeija back from the dead

they will just sit in your closet, fake idols gathering dust,

before the gold paint chips away

You cannot sell them for freedom

You cannot trade them in for love

There are Gods amongst us in these ghettos

so black, so fierce,

so black, so beautiful,

so brown, so fierce,

so brown, so beautiful,

Watch them carefully and say your prayers as they enter the ballroom

angel wing feathers decorating skin

recrafted over silicone and martyred colors

See the Gods dream, see the Gods give, see the Gods live,

They exist in the spaces where white

is not the only hue that represents purity

They will not battle to your rhythms and beats

click, spin and dip simply for amusement

They will not teach those who share their souls and names to hate

Their heartbeats are louder than the blaring speakers

You want realness . . . look at your hands

are they red from the revolution or from the blood of your own sisters

There are Gods amongst us in these ghettos

so black, so brown, so fierce, so beautiful,

so bright

Look up towards the heavens and pray

then look at yourself in the mirror and say

'Stars are not only found out in the sky but in ourselves'

Copyright 2005 by Emanuel Xavier for Suspect Thoughts Press.

All rights reserved. 

Taken from Bullets & Butterflies: queer spoken word poetry.

CHRIST LIKE : TENTH ANNIVERSARY REVISED EDITION

a novel by Emanuel Xavier

Rebel Satori Press, 978-0979083853, $16.95 

OFFICIALLY RELEASED JUNE 1,2009

ADVANCED COPIES AVAILABLE NOW EXCLUSIVELY ON AMAZON.COM

(make sure to order the 2009 edition with cover as featured)

AMAZON.COM- CHRIST LIKE: TENTH ANNIVERSARY REVISED EDITION

About Christ Like:

Mikey is a spirited but self-destructive survivor of sexual abuse, a gay Latino native New Yorker caught somewhere between Catholic guilt and club kid decadence looking to fit in as part of a family. Instead, Mikey delves into a demimonde of petty thieves, prostitutes, and pushers. Haunted by a father that Mikey has never met, a difficult childhood, recurring nightmares, the reality of death, and Christ, the story unfolds through the ‘80’s and ‘90’s following him on his journey through a fascinating world filled with Santeros, transsexuals and voguing queens.

 
Praise for Christ Like:

 
“Christ Like is the harrowing first novel by Emanuel Xavier.  When it was first published ten years ago, it announced the arrival of a unique and important new voice among both gay and Latino/a writers.  Ten years later, the novel retains its compelling power as it takes the reader on a jagged journey though the New York club scene; in theme and naked urgency, it may be justly compared to Dancer from the Dance and Last Exit to Brooklyn, but its heartbeat is puro latino.”

-Michael Nava, author of The Little Death and Rag and Bone

 
"The emotional honesty of Emanuel Xavier’s writing grabs and holds you like a vice.  For more than a decade, Xavier has been an essential voice for an urban, queer aesthetic that has much to teach the world about creativity, resilience, and unflinching love.  In re-issuing this rare work, he has given us all a gift.”

-Kai Wright, author of Drifting Toward love 

 
“An open hearted novel from the soul of New York City.  From the Valencia Bakery to Club Escuelita, a first generation American is forced to the edge by other people's prejudices.  There he finds love, hate, pleasure, and danger with a wide array of men whose lives are never recorded in American literature.  This novel will not come out of an MFA program or be optioned for HBO because of the censorship of experience in our current arts and entertainment industry.  But its story of people valued, thrown-away, losing, and surviving is central to understanding who we are and where we live.  All of us.”

-Sarah Schulman

http://www.queermojo.net/index.php?id=7

BY Alison Gendar And Scott Shifrel
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

When murder suspect Keith Phoenix confessed to the hate crime slaying of Jose Sucuzhanay, his shocking first words to cops were: "So I killed somebody - that makes me a bad guy?"

Phoenix give a full confession - but showed no guilt - for the deadly beating he and his pal gave Sucuzhanay, 31, mistakenly thinking the immigrant was gay because he was walking arm-in-arm with his brother Dec. 7.

Phoenix was caught on surveillance video laughing just 19 minutes after the murder.

Phoenix's partner in the crime, Hakim Scott, 25, was caught earlier this week and expressed some remorse, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

"He felt bad and was glad to finally get it off his chest," Kelly said.

But the 28-year-old Phoenix, who continued to wielded the bat even as Sucuzhanay lay twitching on the ground, felt no guilt, police said.

"No remorse whatsoever," Kelly said.

Sucuzhanay's relatives said they were relieved by the arrests.

"The cops just called and told me they caught the second man," said the victim's younger brother, Diego Sucuzhanay. "He is the one who was the real attacker - who beat my brother with the bat.

"I saw the video of him, laughing. It is a great relief to know this person is behind bars because he would continue to commit crimes. Now there will be no more victims."

Phoenix was hiding in the Yonkers apartment of a woman who had once run a group home where Phoenix's girlfriend lived.

NYPD detectives - as many as 30 from Brooklyn North, Hate Crimes Task Force, and the NYPD's Bronx apprehension unit - had been working the case since a taxi driver jotted down a license plate of the fleeing attackers' SUV.

Investigators staked out Phoenix's friends and family across the Bronx, Manhattan and Connecticut.

One of these stakeouts paid off when someone told cops Phoenix may be holed up in the Yonkers apartment.

Phoenix, an unemployed ex-con, had spent much of the time since the murder playing video games, police sources said.

"We have to be on guard. We can not stay silent when people are attacked because of their sexual orientation or their race, their gender or whatever it is," said Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.

"Clearly, these young men were attacked because these people, these cretins, thought they were gay and it makes it no less despicable that they weren't gay."

NEW YORK (AP) — Police said Wednesday they arrested one of the attackers who yelled slurs as they beat an Ecuadorian immigrant to death on a city street, and investigators were looking for a second suspect.

Hakim Scott, 25, was arrested in the Dec. 7 attack on real estate broker Jose Sucuzhanay, which ignited outrage from New York to Ecuador. Police and prosecutors said he was beaten with a bat and kicked by men shouting anti-Hispanic and anti-gay slurs as he walked arm in arm with his brother to keep warm.

Scott was expected to be charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime on Thursday, authorities said. Messages left at two possible telephone numbers for his Bronx home weren't immediately returned Wednesday night. Authorities didn't know if he had an attorney.
Police were looking for a second suspect they identified as Keith Phoenix, 28, also of the Bronx. No working telephone number could be found for him.

"Anybody who commits a hate crime, we will not rest until we find them," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference.
Sucuzhanay (pronounced Soo-KOO'-suh-neye), 31, and his brother Romel were accosted on a Brooklyn street after attending a church party and stopping at a bar. Phoenix and Scott were sitting in a sport utility vehicle at a red light when they came upon the brothers, police said Wednesday.

After "exchanging words" with the brothers, Scott got out of the SUV, hit Jose Sucuzhanay with a beer bottle and chased Romel Sucuzhanay with it, separating the brothers, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
Phoenix then got out of the SUV, took out an aluminum baseball bat and "savagely beat Jose about his shoulders, ribs and back until he fell to the pavement," Kelly said.

Then Phoenix struck the victim "several more times ... with crushing blows to his head," the police commissioner said.
Romel Sucuzhanay was able to run and call police.
The attack left Jose Sucuzhanay in a coma. He died five days later as his mother was en route from Ecuador to see him. He was buried in Ecuador.

Investigators used information from witnesses about the SUV's license plate to trace the vehicle to Phoenix's girlfriend, who wasn't involved in the attack, Kelly said.

They linked Phoenix to the SUV using information from an Oct. 20 accident report; he was driving it at the time, police said.
Investigators have surveillance video from the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge showing Phoenix and Scott going through a toll 19 minutes after the attack, Kelly said.

Police took Scott into custody for questioning Tuesday near his home, he said.

Phoenix is on parole for an armed robbery conviction, Kelly said. There is a $22,000 reward for his arrest and conviction.

After the attack, hundreds of people gathered for a demonstration in Brooklyn condemning it, and officials in Ecuador monitored the investigation and discussed urging the U.S. Congress to back a campaign of anti-bias education.

The attack on Sucuzhanay came about a month after another Ecuadorian immigrant, Marcelo Lucero, was stabbed to death in Patchogue, on Long Island. Prosecutors said seven teenagers charged in that assault had set out to find a Hispanic person to attack.

A small survey of young black men from the South who tested positive for HIV in their teens and early 20s found that most had engaged in risky sexual behaviors but thought it unlikely they would be infected, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than half of the 29 gay or bisexual men surveyed said they had engaged in unprotected anal sex in the year before they were infected and had had sex with slightly older men, the survey found. Both are risky behaviors, yet the vast majority of the young men said they had not thought that they would ever be infected.

Young black gay and bisexual men are becoming infected with H.I.V. at alarming rates, particularly in the South, and health officials are trying to analyze their risk factors in order to refine education and intervention
strategies.

“We need to make sure that H.I.V. infection does not become a rite of passage for young black men who have sex with men,” said Dr. Alexandra Oster, one of the authors of the survey published last week in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

After the Mississippi State Department of Health notified the C.D.C. in late 2007 that the number of new H.I.V. diagnoses had spiked at a sexually transmitted disease clinic serving Jackson, Miss., the agencies teamed up to do the survey. The number of newly diagnosed H.I.V. cases among all black men in the Jackson area had increased 20 percent between 2004-2005 and 2006-2007, but infections among those ages 17 to 25 had jumped 45 percent.

The agencies surveyed 29 black men ages 17 to 25 who had tested positive for H.I.V. between 2006 and 2008 and who reported having sex with other men. Twenty reported having unprotected anal intercourse with a man during the year before their positive H.I.V. tests, and 16 reported having male sex partners who were 26 or older.

Having older sex partners increases the risk of infection because older men are more likely than younger men to be infected.

Only three of the 29 men thought it likely they would acquire H.I.V. during their lifetime. More than half thought it unlikely or very unlikely, the survey found.

Health officials were particularly concerned about the lack of routine H.I.V. testing in this group of young men. Six of the men had not had a single H.I.V. test in the two years prior to testing positive, and five had had only one test in the two years before the positive result, the survey found.

“These men may have taken what they believed were reasonable steps to reduce their risk, but unfortunately the rates of H.I.V. infection are so high in this population that sometimes people have partners who are H.I.V. positive and do not know it,” said Richard Wolitski, director of the C.D.C.’s division of H.I.V./AIDS Prevention.

Sexually active men who have sex with men should be tested at least once a year, C.D.C. officials say.