Let no person or god take from you those ideas that you would birth into the world. Do not forfeit your immortality to the mere mortal or already divine.
ABOUT TM GABRIEL
TM Gabriel sprouted in the pine forests of Mississippi. When was old enough, Uncle Sam's Misguided Children transplanted him elsewhere. Later, he grew branches in law enforcement, bartending, and activism. He reached maturity as an educator. But like a modern day Ent, he uprooted once again.
Currently, TM and his husband reside on the American Plains with their canine children.
TM is, in the words of Meredith Brooks, a little bit of everything all rolled into one. Otaku, gamer, caffeine addict, social commentator... anything that 'slaps' to his neuro-spicy brain.
TM's one desk-drawer novel remains there as he works on a new creation for introduction to the world.
Reach out to TM via his social media accounts. Links in footer.
Works in Progress
Working Title: Rainbow Through the Green
Possible Series: N/A Standalone
Genre: Memoir
Stage: First Draft
Excerpt:
Admitting to joining the Marines behind everyone’s back was going to be uncomfortable at most. Not much worse than when the highway patrol ordered me to peel the illegally dark tint off my windows. I agonized, only because I didn’t want to disappoint. None of my peeps were going to condemn me for deciding to serve God and Country, but they might think I was stuck on stupid.
Coming out the other way remained tucked behind a horizon I couldn’t yet see and wasn’t looking for. I’d made it as a far as a wobbly toddlers first steps. My equivalent success being the acknowledgement: I like penises other than my own.
It might be a phase, I stole my mama’s line. Even if it isn’t, when it’s time to get serious about a family, I’ll do the right thing. I can do ALL things through Christ who gives me strength.
My imagination had stretched considerably since buying the Gateway but not so far as public profession of faith in being gay. That far might as well have been Krypton.
Which was why I had no moral qualms when one of the many enlistment documents I signed acknowledged my understanding of and the penalties for violating Title 10 of the United States Code, Section 654, or simply, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
I’d more or less been following an ad hoc DADT for almost three years. To me, being caught out violating my personal version carried far greater consequences.
Who I was as a college freshman, and had been in high school, necessitated my… obfuscations… not lies, not yet. Should World Book encyclopedia have defined Jesus Freak, an accompanying picture of me would not have been inappropriate.
Dad being a Southern Baptist pastor made me a PK, or preacher’s kid. Subject to higher scrutiny by the laity. Any personal misdeeds counted not only against me but his ministry. I’d lived my whole life rucking that bag.
Not that I always lived by The Book. I simply learned the debatable value of two faces, omission, and misdirection earlier and in greater depth than most. (Which might explain why I enjoy Survivor so much now.) The debilitating aspect was that both faces were me. I desired to live a faith-centered life, and I desired to live according to common sense. The two weren’t mutually exclusive, but attempts to overlap them in a ‘proper Christian way’ resulted in canyon-wide gaps. Before I knew the phrase, I practiced the maxim: it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.