“My manhood is very important to me. I had masculinity beaten into me, then fucked into me, not even gay men want a faggot, so I learn to pretend, look and act the part, hardened up on queue, blend in, hide my freak for survival, for protection. Sometimes I got to wear my anger on my sleeves to keep motherfuckers from disrespecting me. I was born in the ghetto, so I had to learn to survive niggas killing niggas because they appear weak. It ain't easy. And then I was born gay, destined to be a black man who would lay with other black men, which meant a life of invisibility. And most niggas can't deal with my truth. If they knew, they'd try to test me. It's about survival. Can't go home with it or to the church because they would say I was living wrong. The church, where I grew up, was the first to betray me, the word, made me feel hopeless and damned. When my uncle died of AIDS, the preacher said he was going to hell at his funeral. When my mama found out she cried like I died. Don't won't nobody shedding tears for me. When my father found out he stopped speaking to me, said I wasn’t a man. Don't won't nobody thinking that I'm weak. So my manhood is very important to me. Most days it's all I got being a black man that’s gay. It ain't easy. Trust me, it ain't easy.”
I’ve always been afraid, afraid of my freak, afraid of what it was doing to me, especially after that first time I kissed a boy, let his teenage lips touch my teenage lips in what I thought was an act of betrayal against my belief system, because I grew up in the church, but I knew what I was, what my body and heart craved and I thought life was so fucking unfair that God could be so cruel, to set me up for failure, so I felt like a freak, my soul deformed, something disgusted, so I told myself that I could never tell anyone. I got older, bolder, over fear. But each time the feeling has been the same, hesitation, just like the first time I sucked dick, got sucked, had sex, had unprotected sex, went to a bookstore or bathhouse, a sex party, did drugs and had a threesome or orgy. Each time I had to face me in the mirror with fear, questioning if I was still a good kid, and not a freak because I liked it, getting my dick sucked in the dark by that old man, liked that threesome at Atlanta Pride, liked the sticky floor underneath my knees at the Glory hole bookstore in D.C., liked getting my body used at Man’s Country in Chicago. Each time, I had to face the sun, the walk home when I felt empty, that I had betrayed all the sitcoms I grew up watching, because I liked it, wearing my jeans tight, drinking too much, the high but never the crash, that I liked kissing boys, partying until the early morning, but hated the hangovers. Each time, I had to readjust how I saw myself, get depressed then accept it, feel like a failure because I kept getting fired from jobs I hated, feel scared and desperate because it never felt like I was going to get happiness right. Freaks never want to be freaks. I would’ve never asked to be born to a crack addicted prostitute who eventually abandoned her seeds, because I wanted what all children want, to be like their friends, to not stand out, to feel protected, loved, and accepted. I probably would’ve never asked to be gay, because the alternative appeared so much easier, simpler, and linear: graduate high school, college, marriage, suburbs, republican. I probably even would’ve never asked to be black because the alternative appeared so much more convenient and lighter. With these words I let go, break free, because I no longer fear judgment, freak, no more.
It would be E. Lynn Harris’s “Invisible Life,” a book smuggled to me by a friend who I told in high school that I might be gay was how I first found what I knew was in my soul, passion. The friend gave me the battered and torn book and I stole what felt like forbidden words of fire of a life that I couldn’t had imagined existed, that there were men out there, black men just like me with the same desires for other men. I read hope in bathroom stales, the last ten minutes before bed or the first twenty minutes before anyone in my house awoke. I stashed it in the back of my closet in an old boot, under my mattress, under the bathroom sink, anywhere hidden or I thought no one would find my secret. In my high school, that book had been passed around by other young black boys who thought they might be gay and it had gotten so used, broken, sweaty, and dangerous. I would’ve died at sixteen years old if my grandmother or one of my nosey cousins would have found it. For two months, that book belonged to me, made my dick hard, allowed me to escape from my high school girlfriend. It was probably one of the most exciting times of my life, rebelling against everything I was told my life was going to be: get a good job, marry a good Christian girl and raise kids to fear god. Instead, I knew the first chance I got, I’d run the opposite direction. I prayed for satisfaction. I was going to follow my heart, soul, and body.
I got older, got away from home, went to college where my kind was welcomed to roam free. I didn’t find the characters in an E. Lynn Harris book. I was from the ghetto, not on the down low, only knew the club. Funny, the same book that once gave me freedom, begin to make me feel like a freak. I didn’t know football players or successful lawyers. I knew check writers, homo thug boys, drag queens, and too many niggas not trying to change their lives for the better.
“Living the life" is what it's called when you're a nigga and a fag. It's the underground's underground. It's the invisible invisible. It is simply the unseen. It comes out a night, to prey, to kick, to howl, to fuck, to fight, to kee kee, to serve, to punish, to hate, to drop it like it's hot, to find love, to be a star, to live, to escape, to be and simply to breathe. It's the sub-culture's sub culture, hidden in the dark. It's where boys who are in to boys look for illusions of the streets. It has titles like "trade", "daddy-girls", "butch queen walk in pumps", "top", "bottom", "versatile", "versatile top", "versatile bottom", "aggressive bottom", "passive", "submissive" and "I just don't know." It's where boys can be girls; and girls can be boys. It's about sex. It's about tops for boi-pussy and bottoms for big dicks. It's concrete sexual assignments. It's about the queens throwing shade and giving attitude in their tight fitted Prada, Gucci and Dolce & Gabanna. It's where we fight with the dance, words, and eyes that cut like knives instead of fists. But sometimes, if a bitch gets too cute, you might have to pop her, to show her you’re still a man. It's where the self-diluted and delusional sport stolen designer rags, working the crowd. It's where the young and beautiful are adored. It's about body and face. It's where men dance dangerously close to other men in the hip hop room; where baseball caps turned to the back cling to sweaty wife beaters and caress yellow timberlands and gold teeth tongue-kiss chiseled waistlines. It's where the aroma of weed and alcohol blend poetically together with designer cologne and cheap perfume. It's where we come together in the night, behind close walls of brick across the United States for limited hours, dancing to the latest gansta who hate fags, so that in the morning we can creep back into our masked houses and blend into the rush of traffic. It's your brother, husband, lover or father. It's our secret that's clothed in FUBU, Prada, Gucci, Target, corporate suits -- carefully hidden behind boy drag and masculine voices. But we see each other, those who belong to the life, those who come looking for it: sexual release, social acceptance, and to be somebody. And only we know what we do in the dark. And only we know that no one must ever know, so we remain invisible.”
I’ve been black my entire life. My mother and father were black. I grew up in a black neighborhood. I went to a predominately black elementary, middle and high school. I grew up singing gospel at a black southern Baptist church with regular and scheduled Holy Ghost fits. I grew up eating my grandmother’s collard greens, black eye peas, yams, cornbread, and smothered chicken. I grew up listening to soul music and not just Marvin Gay but Donny Hathaway and the blues like “After the rain” by Betty White which used to always make my aunt cry because she was married to a no good cheating man. I had cousins with names like “Poo Bear” and “Ray Ray’ and Tweety.” I came into age when hip-hop was still young and raw and Tupac spoke to my soul and Mary J Blige “What’s the 411” taught me ghetto-fabulousness. I will always remember when James died on Good times or that episode when Janet Jackson got caught stealing or burned with the iron by her mama.. My favorite movie of all time will always probably be the Color Purple. So my blackness has always been more than polymorphisms or genetic revelations. My blackness is soul, heart, where roots travel deep.
When I came out, I thought that was the end of it. I was gay, told my family and friends, and figured enough said. I was already a minority and coming out made me a double minority. I couldn’t possible understand what that meant. After all I’d been shaped by five hundreds years of oppression and slavery, personally dealt with racism, been followed in department stores and police profiled, all before I even kissed my first boy. Gay life was so new and exciting that I rushed out into the middle of traffic. It didn’t take long for me find out that it was also political and the black thing wasn’t going to go away. I was still was going to have to deal with racism. I was still a black man living in a white man’s world.
And when I was twenty one years old, I thought being gay would be so much easier, that the grass was greener on the other side, the white side. The white gay kids seemed to have it together. They had their own neighborhoods, better clubs and bars. Prettier. Lighter. All I had to do I thought, was leave my black part behind. To ignore history. To ignore polite racism. Sell my soul.
“Snow Queen” is what they used to call me. It’s suppose to be an insult to a black gay man who acts white and only dates white gay men. They figured me wrong. The only reason I started with the white gay clubs because they were easier to find.
In the beginning, I started with white gay men. I guess because they were easier to find. I figured black gay men were too close to home. I figured I would run into someone I knew and then my business would get back home.
In college, dating white gay men became a status symbol. I guess I thought the grass was greener on the other side. I was wrong. And I used to say stupid shit like “I wasn’t attracted to other black men.” I guess because I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. I didn’t like my nappy hair, thick lips, sometimes dark and ashy skin. In the beginning I didn’t know how to be black and gay, just gay. I thought just being gay would exempt me from being black. It didn’t. It only highlighted it.
My first white boyfriend had sandy blond hair and sparkling baby blue eyes. I didn’t like how my dark skinned crashed against his. I felt too dark with him. I started wearing hazel contacts and dying my hair light brown with my first white boyfriend. He didn’t’ want me to change. He liked my dark skin and nappy hair. He used to tell me it was beautiful. I didn’t like that he noticed my dark skin and nappy hair. I hoped he didn’t see skin color when I was black as night. I hoped I could belong to the white gay world without friction. That if I just spoke white enough, listened to the same music, pretended that I was a friend of Dorothy, liked Barbara Streisand and all that bullshit. I broke up with my blond blue eyed white lover. I didn’t like how black he made me feel.
My second white boyfriend used to like to remind me every chance he got that I was black. I could never figure if he was doing it intentionally or subconsciously. I hated how he changed his speech when I was present. He was originally from the Midwestern suburbs but when he was around me, suddenly he was giving “shout-outs” from Harlem. He was a Negrophile. Anything black he loved. He was a bottom. He thought with me he was going to get the big black Mandingo dick. It annoyed me. It didn’t make feel as if I was special. He didn’t give me the goose bumps of romantic love story. I felt like a hustler with him. I didn’t want to be with him just because I was black. I wanted him to see my soul not skin. I guess I got confused.”
When you’re black and gay, you quickly find out that the white gay culture only values itself or at least it feels that way. And the ones that do want you, only date black anyway, or only want you for your dick, or the myth of the big black dick, or they want you to fulfill a sexual fantasy, or to prove a political point, or to be your white massa for a black slave, or to worship, or to make inhumane, and it’s never just normal, you can never be just normal, you have to be exotic, or you have to be a sex toy.
When you’re black and gay, even if you are beautiful, you quickly learn that you’re still black and that you’re never really equal at the white gay clubs, can’t win contest there even if your dick is bigger and your body is better, can’t do nothing at the white clubs but be a token or an extra in the background, can’t be a star unless you’re a drag queen.
Black and gay isn’t in any of the white gay movies or television sitcoms unless we’re the “queenly anchi mama” best friend or some nameless “big dick” sex interest who’s always the top. And we aren’t hardly in most of their glossy cover magazines or advertisements for their clubs no more than once a year because lord forbids anyone thinks of their establishments as a black club. Black and gay don’t really get respected at the white clubs. Can’t really breath at the white clubs, have to worry about some white queen’s prejudice attitude, or some white guy saying something stupid, or wondering why the bartender is taking so long to notice us, or why he make our drink extra virgin, or why the doorman takes extra long looking at our I.D., or why they be raising their prices just because too many niggas begin to frequent. Yet we still go. We still give our money over even if we aren’t in the advertisements or their glossy magazines. We still buy them. We still support their movies even if we aren’t in them. We still tune into their television sitcoms even if we never see ourselves. We still go to their clubs and bars because sometimes the drinks are cheaper and the places are prettier, but we mostly stay to ourselves. We always find a spot to huddle, most of the times located in the back of the club on a certain night. I guess we go because it’s there, and easy to find in any city, and we observe, and we try to be like, or we think we have to be like because when you’re the minority’s minority, it can seem difficult to dream without compromise in a world that teaches to value everything but yourself --so what does happiness look like for me, a black gay man.
“Black or White, I decided that I will not give away my power as a human being to any man. That it’s my life and I will not let anyone tell me who or what I am. Just because I’m black and masculine doesn’t mean I have to be a top. Just because I’m cute and sexy doesn’t mean I have to be a hustler. I love that line in Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory about money being common, that it’s made and printed everyday, but you only get to one life, chance, to be special, to be chosen -- you would be a dummy to buy into the idea of normal or safe. Life is about feeling alive. I’ve decided that I am everything I think I am when I’m drunk, extraordinary. I’m a fucking rock star. “
The last conversation I had with my sister, she yelled at me that she hoped I didn’t end up in the hospital dying of some disease or found dead in the gutter somewhere. If she didn’t slam down the phone in my ear, I would’ve asked how she would have preferred I die. What’s so bad about AIDS, some very famous people in the eighties succumb to its will or is it that Cancer or Heart Attack sounds better on the obituary or when telling family and friends. Dead is Dead and I’m sure the maggots don’t care. I’m sure my sister would prefer that some young punk on my way to the grocery store put a bullet in my head on Tuesday evening because it would get her more sympathy, because my death is really about how it would make her feel since she will have to tell the story after my demise. Or would she prefer that I die on a terrorist high jacked plane crashing into a building, or the war in Iraq so that I appear a Hero and her love wouldn’t appear wasted on the faggot who either drank himself to death or got some sexual transmitted disease he couldn’t get ride of with a shot penicillin.
I started thinking about death since it’s inevitable. I started thinking of the top five ways I could possibly die. I could possibly die of liver disease because I binge drink, heart attack because heart disease runs in my family, gun shot because I live in bad neighborhood and somebody is always getting killed on the news, AIDS because the statistics are against me being a promiscuous black gay man, or Suicide because I do have some very depress days where I ready to damn it all to hell with a .45. But I really don’t care about how I die, only if I lived. Only if I’m remembered.
When we’re young we just want to be loved, and we try to balance what mama and daddy refused to give us, but we eventually grow tired because there’s no such thing as replacing a childhood, you can’t go back and fix not getting that damn pony for your sixth birthday. If you’re smart and not delusional, you accept what you got, learn to live with it. Then life changes, goes the opposite direction and becomes about how we will be remembered or who will remember our real name. If I was to die after these words, I know my life would’ve had been about me desperately trying to figure out how I was going to trick, hustle or con happiness. How I was going to sell my soul, because we all have to do it, work for a living, make money, love. If I was to die after these words, my potential interrupted, I’d be okay with it, because I wrote these words, I kept my soul alive. So sister, if you’re listening, I don’t care if I die in the hospital of some disease or found dead in the gutter. I was here. I fucking lived. I lived hardcore, honest, and never gave up despite my many shortcomings. If I had a choice, I hope I die by the ocean with the bass of music pumping in the background, a cocktail in my right hand and a pretty young dick in my mouth or ass, because that’s only when I feel normal. Freak no more damnit!
When you're a nigga and fag, you have to learn to value yourself, because no one else will.
When you're brotha and a homosexual, you have to learn to fight, stand up and respect yourself, because no one else will.
When you're black and gay, you have to learn to tell your own stories, communicate your own experiences, because no one else will.
Silence is death. Speaking the truth is power.
