Man in the mirror: til it happens to you. Black gay pride 2007

You can’t make a person feel pride. I think it’s illegal. I feel conflicted every year like I do on Christmas because I’m not close to my family or Valentine’s Day because I’m usually lonely. What’s changed about me this year? Pride is usually the time I see people I haven’t seen in a year or two. Have I gotten fatter, I don’t know because I refuse to weigh myself. Have I gotten older, I don’t know because I see the same damn face every time I look in the mirror. I know I will see old friends and ex-lovers and some will say in their head that I’m not as cute as I used to be, or maybe time hasn’t been good to me or something unflattering. I will smile back with darts in my eyes as to say “I’m still here bitches.” Maybe they would be happy to see me, happy to see that I’m still alive. I guess that’s pride when we get older. The young live to die; the old just don’t want to die.

It officially begins with Phili. The blueprint is all the same. They usually have some silly theme.
Phili – “Your life, your pride.” I don’t know what that means. Are the clubs going to be free? Can I take the hotel towels? Of course I’m taking the hotel towels.
DC – “Liberty, Unity, Strength.” Again, I don’t know what the hell that means.
Miami “Sizzle.” It’s so obvious Miami is promoting a good dick sucking. It might as well be a Blatino party. It sounds hot.
L.A. – “Rock you.” Somebody must’ve been listening to Michael Jackson or something or just tired.
Detroit – “Eyes wide open.” In Detroit one must always keep their eyes wide opened because that city is ghetto.
New York – “Evolution of pride.” It sounds like a summer blockbuster movie or a video game where punks get make-overs or shot.
Atlanta “Moving it to the next level.” Again, I don’t know what that means. The themes are always so esoteric.

If black gay pride was a man, he would be 31 years old. We’re almost the same age. Each year with pride, I feel as if it’s trying to change. It wants to profit on the “Down Low” hype. It wants new blood. It wants to buy the house in the suburbs with the white picket fence and maybe adopt some third-world children. It’s not as young as he used to be. And it knows that the older have gotten complacent and don’t spend as much money. The older are not desperately looking for that approval. Yet, what is this new youth. Who are they?

It was like a horror movie. He couldn’t have been no more than twenty two years old. With hate in his eyes, he dragged a sledgehammer down the sidewalk, the block of metal thick as a fist scraped its knuckles against the concrete creating chards of flashes. Some black gay kids had gotten into a fight earlier in the bar. I didn’t know what had happened. I ran outside and saw a young man no older than twenty five years being kicked bloody. More important, it was that maniac with the sledgehammer rushing towards him. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. It was a Wednesday night which meant shirtless night at the gay bar. Most go for the free drinks from 10 -11 and then head over to the bar across the street. Mostly black kids went there because they played hip hop on the second floor. They didn’t used to charge to get in. Actually none of the bars charged to get in until too many young black kids started showing up. It’s because they like to fight. They don’t tip the bartenders. They are usually rude and loud. They don’t follow the white gay standards.

The charge was meant to discourage them. Five dollars for their regular customers seemed worth it to decrease the insanity. It always worked. It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen it happened. I lived a lot of places and always when too many black patronages usually mean a price hike. And now the fight.

I don’t know what’s going on with the young black gay kids anymore. In the last couple of years they seem like they’ve gotten more pissed like prison inmates. They come into the life with a chip on their shoulder. They club used to feel like a place to have a good time now it turned to gangs. I know the down low has done more than just been a problem with black women. The down low created the ultra-masculinity hype and said it was sexy. And now this ultra masculine gay boy was going to bash some kid’s head in with a sledgehammer. I was more amazed how everybody was just watching it like Monday night football. I ran to the kid with the sledge hammer. I wasn’t thinking. It’s a problem I have. A couple of months earlier I had gotten into a fight at that same bar. I don’t remember what it was about. I just got three ribs cracked and two missing teeth. I ran to that kid because I knew that anger. I knew that look in his eyes. He had gone too far to stop himself. Somebody else was going to have to do it. I ran to him because I wanted to tell him it wasn’t worth it. Yet, I knew that was stupid. I didn’t know what was worthy to him. I had done things in my life in hindsight that wasn’t worthy but at that moment was worth everything. Maybe that kid slept on the floor at his mama’s house. Maybe he had nothing to lose. Maybe life wasn’t going so good for him. Maybe that fight and winning was the only worthy thing in his life. I knew that look. I had looked for love, happiness and acceptance in many dark places. No one was stopping him so they might as well been cheering. I looked at the crowd, my black gay brothers; it was as if they wanted to see spilled blood like Rome. Some walked away as if it wasn’t their problem but will complain when the club raised the price again or closed down.

I took out a small mirror. I don’t know why. It was a mirror I carried with me to force myself to look into if I thought I had too much to drink at the bar and refused to go home. It was a mirror I looked into if I was going to do something stupid. It was my “safe” mirror. I learned the trick from an AA meeting that didn’t take. I pulled out my mirror and it’s a small mirror, wallet-size. I pulled out the mirror and flashed it at him. I hoped to reflect the streetlights, distract his anger for a second, maybe he’d think I was crazy or laugh or hit me with the sledgehammer. I didn’t know. I pulled out the mirror and put it in his face and for a couple of seconds he stopped. It was as if he saw his eyes and madness. But then he started up again. He was really pissed. So I screamed out that I was calling the cops. I searched for someone to join in the scream. A guy sensing my desperation screamed out he was also calling the cops and grabbed his cell phone. The sad soul let go of the sledgehammer. He ran in the opposite direction. I didn’t feel like a snitch. I felt like I saved both of those kids lives. I hoped neither remembered my face. Maybe that’s why superheroes wear masks to prevent having to testify in court.

Back to pride. I know this is the black gay community at its core, stripped, the anger, the self hatred, the nonchalance, raw sex, the drugs, the self protection, the violence against each other. I see it in the clubs, bars and porno. I’ve seen it online, in Flavaworks, those young kids just unconsciously throwing away their lives for pennies or fucking each other like prison bitches. It’s not even sex, it’s perverted disillusionments. I know because I had been all of that. Maybe that’s why Pride bothers me so much. It’s like going home on Thanksgiving and unable to talk about how Uncle Ray touched me when I was six years old. I’m just supposed to pretend we are all happy. I’m just supposed to pretend.

I believe we all come into this world happy and loved. It’s the noise that distracts us. It’s the noise of our mama and daddy. It’s gender. We don’t get to pick our names. And then for some us there’s the poverty, abuse, rape or war. All the noise makes us unable to hear ourselves, makes us believe we all don’t seek that innate happiness and love. Some of us begin to believe we are supposed to cheat or manipulate it. Some of us just give up. That happiness and love doesn’t go away. We just have to be still and reduce the noise to hear it. And then we grow up and become gay or straight, black or white, rich or poor. We become our religions. We become our fears. But it’s the same journey. The addict and housewife are on the same journey. The preacher and the prostitute are on the same journey. It’s to reduce the noise. Some of us call it god. Some of us call it clarity or charity. It all ends in death. We just take different roads.

I don’t believe that kid with the sledgehammer was a bad person. He was just about to do a bad thing. He got caught up in all his noise, the liquor, some weed, maybe somebody said something he didn’t like, but it didn’t mean he stopped wanting to be loved or happy, yet he was about to create more noise in his life. Even that kid laying on the ground, somehow he gotten himself in danger, maybe he asked for it. I know I’ve asked for it. It didn’t mean he didn’t want happiness or love. It’s amazing what we create to distract. It’s why we distract is the real issue.

There have been many mirrors in my life. There was the mirror of my childhood, my grandmother’s house; it was cracked just like my life. I remember trying to find a solid piece to really see myself. It was the mirror of the greyhound bus station when I ran away when I was fifteen years old. I needed make sure I was doing the right thing. There was the mirror of my first apartment. It made me feel free. There was the mirror that time I spent a week in jail for some bullshit. I hated that mirror because it was a shiny tin, just a hazy mess. There were all those mirrors at bathhouse and coming from one night stands. I usually avoided those mirrors. There was that mirror in the hospital when I almost died. I get up and go to the bathroom and see my blood shot red eyes and the light in me fading. I had hit rock bottom because nobody can come back from death.

And then it was that mirror I showed to that poor soul that night. I know after this weekend I will see many pictures in various magazines of black gay men hugged up on each other and smiling for the camera. What I really want to see are their mirrors at three o’clock in the morning. That’s the truth.

The thing about the mirror is that we all come into this world wanting to be happy and loved. Sometimes we get so distracted with our own noise. I think mirrors are to remind us of our truth. I know it’s hard sometimes because when we look at our reflections we see what we don’t like, but that’s only what we think others wouldn’t like. That’s not pride. I’m finally learning to look in the mirror and be proud. I got scars. I got dark circles. I got some knife wounds and emotional scars. But I am here. I am enough. I can finally go home because home is like testing my soul. I can finally do black pride because I longer have nothing to prove. This is my protest. I don’t need a silly theme to tell me how to feel. I got a mirror and look in it often. It tells me the truth. I listen. Don’t forget yourself this weekend. Happy Black gay pride.