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BITTER BASTARD FROM THE BRONX



THE IVAN VELEZ JR BLOG



THE UNDERGROUND UNDERGROUND



JUNE 17th, 2021





SO last weekend I binge-watched the first 9 episodes of The Underground Railroad on Prime with my mom. This was after I had already seen the first 9 with my partner, a Korean immigrant who just loved it. I enjoyed it as well, but II will tell you, its was very hard sometimes. That first episode was so painful, that I almost gave up. It was my partner who pushed me to the next one to follow these characters' journey. I let that literary part of my brain kick in, and was patting myself on the back for recognizing the clues of the books that were presented Gulliver's Travels and The Oddysey. I was ready to follow along that symbolic path and parallel journeys they would take, all flavored by those books. Then that 3rd episode happened and forced to throw out all that bullshit out of my head. This was no tale of Lemuel Gulliver experiencing the stupidity of human society. This was no tale of a man's epic journey throughout the magical realm to reunite with his love. This was a story about the horror of America.

So I watched it with my mom, a light-skinned Puerto Rican woman born on the island and moving to the States at the age of 7. There was a weird disconnect between what was happening to Clara and her compatriots and her own experience. I asked my mom if she knew that this was a story about our own history. At first she didn't understand what I was saying. But a few moments into the discussion, something clicked and she acknowledged it. These slaves were our family. These stories are our stories.

My grandfather moved his family to Florida first. My uncle Juancito was the oldest, and the darkest. My grandfather's family was very dark and very light all at once. Everybody's children just ran the gamut of shades. In a place like the Caribbean, the fact of skin color was not connected to the education and social systems. People did not learn about the Indigenous folk except that they all died from disease. They did not learn about slavery except the little they were taught about the European expansion. To talk about race (together than to mock it) was considered very rude and vulgar. But certain words would creep into the language. Indio, Blanco, Negro, Chino, Trigenia, were all ways Caribbean folks described themselves in nick-names or common identifiers. More elaborate and meaning-laden names like Mulatto or Mestizo were not used in polite company. Prieto, the blackest identifier, was often used as an insult or fighting words... yet 'Negrito' was the sweetest word you could use for a loved one. How many times did my grandmother see me crying and reach out her arms , "que paso, Negrito'?

Always. When. I was. Crying.

All this was, of course, colonial as fuck and Latino as hell. Columbus was the great hero who brought civilization to the savages. The horse shit was real and in the school history books, and the colorism found its way into every aspect of our lives. My uncle, Juancito, was very popular with the young girls, and that was trouble. This was the 50s in Florida, and he could not walk down the White side of the street with the rest of the family. When my grandfather witnessed a lynching, he packed his family (all six kids and my grandmother) and left to the Bronx. He loved his son. This whole color thing and accepting of shared past with the Afro-Americans was always tricky and scary. In the Bronx, we lived in the same spaces, saw the same movies, watched the same tv shows, ate and partied together... but whenever the shit when done (the assassinations of leaders, the riots, the anger and demonstrations) there was a disconnect. A lot of older Latinos would see that as outside their problems. There was a perceived safety in not getting involved in all that noise. The colonized learned early one that the noisy ones are the ones to suffer first, and they would be made examples. The church made all that part of our morality and social structure. Shit like that erases massacres (countless) from memory.

But the younger ones, the first who came here as kids and teens, they mixed in like they could feel the connection. We all ate the same food, lived in the same spaces, partied and raged together. Shit, we created new music together. What do you think SalSoul, Disco and Hip Hop are, anyway, if not our blended sounds. The Young Lords marched with the Black Panthers and got shit done. Duh, we hung out with Fred Sanford and Son . Just because we got a musical where a bunch of Wypipo were cast in our roles doesn't mean we accepted that shit as okay. But even our outrage was on the downlow, and our voices were less audible than whispers.

My pop was an Afro-Latino and used to get mad if we called him black, yet all his co-workers and drinking buddies and lots of his girlfriends (including one of his wives and another who is the mother of a brother I never met) were 'African-American'. I felt so sad that his dna results came in a month after he died, and showed that he was 35 percent from West Africa. My youngest brother, who took after our pop in skin color, found great difficulty in blending in with that mainstream gay culture cause, you know, America. And yes, I'm mad light-skinned (a point always thrown in my face by my brother), but I'm aware. I know that this skin tone let me sneak into a lot of spaces like a ninja. But let me tell you, as soon as they talked to me or saw me up close, they could tell. This is something different.

But anyway, I digressed a lot. I was watching this show with my mom, and we were in it deep. Clara's struggle and pain were so real and familiar. And it was so understandable and relatable. When the characters would look at the screen and into the viewer's faces, I wonder what other people saw. My mom and me, we saw those faces reach us and tell us... this is what happened to us. This is what happened to your family... your blood. Why did you forget us?

How dare you forget us?

Barry Jenkins is a prophet, y'all.

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THE INSTITUTE FOR THE PROTECTION OF LESBIAN AND GAY YOUTH



JUNE 17th, 2021





This was the first site for the Hetrick-Martin Institute, known then as IPLGY the Institute For The Protection Of Lesbian and Gay Youth on E 23rd Street on the 3rd floor. Above us was Ugly George, a live video porn pioneer. I was getting counseling that first year in 1983 and ended up working for them in 1986. The first issue of Tales of the Closet was published here as well. That feeling of a righteous mission was so strong back then. I've been lucky in life to have been with two pioneering movements in their early stages.

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YUP. I'M A BITTER BASTARD FROM THE BRONX.



JUNE 13th, 2021





I'm here to talk, write, share a some art and some of those thoughts that are spilling out of my head on onto these posts. This wek, I'm teaching my SUCASA ARTOPIA online zoom class for a bunch of amazing elder women, trying to get my GREEN COMICS video made and edited for the NY PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSYTEM, negotiating a few art programs that will be spread throughout the Summer, trying to fix and post this website that has stopped updating since Yahoo got rid of Pagebuilder 2 months ago, setting up a couple of online drawing events for PRIDE month, trying to finish the edits on my book MONSTERS OF THE BRONX, so I can finally get it to print (and yah, the contributors are nagging the hell out of me), trying to get some drawing done on my ROOT story for Wham Kabam, and also another few pages of Tales #10, trying to figure out what's going on with my partner's health, and trying to start up the next round of COMIC CULTURE classes since I won another BCA Art Fund grant that will pay for it. Sigh. All this, and trying to get healthier, too. It's that toonist life, y'all... and sometimes its not fun.

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MEMORIES



JUNE 13th, 2021





I'm remembering some of the people I loved and lost. My grandma was my ride or die, and the only person I could trust 200 percent. She was an amazing woman who took care of so many people and who was the core of our hearts all the way until she passed. Next to her is my cousin Angie, who I knew since birth, and was so sweet and funny. She dies too young this year at 49 years old, and I wish things were better for her. She grabbed that MEGALITH tee shirt from me and I always wanted it back, even though she wore it better. I'm sad that I didn't keep up with her and her siblings since we were all so close as kids... but that's what happens the older you get and all the elders start leaving. Sigh. Hope Angie and our grandma are having a good time up there. They deserve the best.


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THE COVER THAT NEVER WAS



6.13.21





When Jennifer Camper (look her up, she's amazing) asked me to do the cover for the second volume of JUICY MOTHER (one of those queer cartoonist anthologies that actually worked), she wanted me o draw two sexy tough women. I immediately thought of John Woo and those Hong Kong actions tropes and this is the cover I came up with. This was soundly rejected by the publishers (namby-pamby, anyone?) who objected to the implied violence and the gun. Sigh. I then drew two women boxers who fight on the front cover and are in bed on the back cover. The front cover was also rejected, even though it was the classic reimaging of Cassius Clay SV Sonny Liston. Sigh and double sigh. One day I'll tell you about the mainstream rejected art I've done. Some. Bitter. Day.


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NYQ



6/13/21





This is the first published paghe I did outside of Tales Of The Closet. NYQ was a new tabloid-ish newsprint magazine who wanted me to do the inside back cover with a comics page. I create INTO THE OUT OF, which depicted queer folks and their urban troubles. I thought it was going well. It was a whopping $75 per page (which they took foerever to pay) and I got about 5 done before the editorial decision was made not to continue the strip. Well, ok, but couldn't they tell me before I dropped off that last page. Well, they ended up folding not much time later, but returned under another banner as OUT magazine (which is still around today.


And wouldn't you know they outright stole my last page? I mean, Dang. And am I bitter about that? You're damn right. Some day I'll tell you about how I worked near the UN at a gay sex-hookup website that was founded by one of those OUT magazine publishers, and how they were absolutely awful to work for.


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