It finally happened! I got paid for writing the online course i spent about thirty hours working on last year. That's $30 an hour, my hourly wage at the full-time supervisor job I retired from three years ago, and what I'll make if I get another part/time job as a regional coordinator for which I'm being seriously considered. I've been paid for writing before: $153/week as a part-time staff writer for a local weekly, $51 a day for the three days I worked in the office and nothing for the nights and weekends I covered stories; $50 per story working part-time for another weekly and $75 for an article I once wrote for Toledo's most popular weekly newspaper.  I've even gotten paid a few times for plays I've written. However, most of the time i was producing and directing and used all the funds to pay for props, costumes and actors. My brother got a $40,000 grant to produce my plays about AIDS and paid me a total of $750. I was supposed to get that sum each quarter of the one-year grant, but his business partner decided $750 was enough and I never got another dime, not even when KOOL Cigarettes awarded $10,000 to my brother's theatre company for AIDS education.  When I protested that our verbal contract for the quarterly payments was not kept, my plays were plagiarized and my brother told my parents he re-wrote the main one, B.R.AIDS (Black Response to AIDS), yet the title and character names remained the same.  Still, my parents went to see my brother get his award from KOOL, as well as his own play that he produced with that money off-off Broadway. I didn't speak to my brother for three years, but I forgave him before I forgave my parents who went across the country to witness my brother get an award for my work but wouldn't travel less than thirty miles to see my first play nor to see me graduate with my Masters Degree.  During the three years we were estranged, I wished every possible calamity would befall my plagiarist brother: poverty, homelessness, exposure of his theft, loss of reputation, you name it. However, once I forgave him, it was over. I became one of his biggest fans and loved every one of his staged choreopoems. But all the evil that I once hoped would fall on my brother happened and it was far worse than anything I imagined. He lost everything.  On an intellectual level, I know my thoughts did not cause my brother to lose his foster children over a false allegation by a child he provided respite for, eighteen months of incarceration or the loss of his home, money and reputation. But I felt so guilty for having ever wished him ill, finally understanding why the bible buds us to love our enemies and pray for those who despitefully use us.  Although he was never my enemy, my brother definitely used me and my work to advance his own career. The year his play ran in New York, he made a million dollars. When he was murdered in a robbery-homicide last year, he had less than $10,000 in his bank account. I spent that amount helping him get back on his feet after he got out of prison, but was told when I mentioned the plaigiarism here that I hadn't forgiven him. That assumption was made by someone who has no idea what it's like to create something, to give birth to characters, live in a plot that you create and then have it taken from you. You never forget that kind of loss.  However, you can forgive what you can't forget and I did. That doesn't mean I don't still feel the pain of having my work, my words stolen. And I will talk about it any time I damn well please! It happened to me and I have a right to remember that loss while feeling the loss of a brother who was dearly lover, but was no saint. He wasn't the monster he was made out to be by the sixteen year old that accused him, the prosecutor that charged him, judge that sentenced him despite a plea arrangement because he was "openly gay" or the press that maligned him. He was a human being with human frailties.  His betrayal was based on greed, nothing else. Greed I could forgive. And betrayal. All WAS forgiven. But I'll never forget. I re-wrote the play after it was plagiarized and again three years ago. Same title, but different characters and plot. Hope some day I'll get a big check for royalties for the play I was never fully paid for. I know my brother would like that, because he forgave me, too.