SYMBOLISM, TRADITION AND BLACK GAY MARRIAGE IN AMERICA…

Essex Hemphill 

Written By David Vollin

The scope of symbolism and tradition in marriage is far too broad a topic to tackle for the purposes of this article but its history, especially within the context America plays an essential role in the fundamental understanding of how some Black Gay Men have begun to interpret the rituals of marriage.    True to its pioneer spirit America has forged yet another heretofore forbidden path of social evolution, that of Gay Marriage.  But unlike other countries that have also legalized same sex marriages, America’s journey, especially for black gay men, poses an entirely different and hugely more complex challenge.  Because of its past and in spite of its more enlightened present, the difficult legacy of slavery and racism in America presents a multi-layered reticulation of interminable obstacles to what should be an effortless expression of human love.  Many fear that an “Exodus Syndrome” will ensue now that gay black men are free to explore yet another social dynamic of the American experience.  The “I can do what I want! I will do what I want!” isms of a newly liberated peoples brings others of their kind to wonder if this, the beginning of it all, should be utilised as a brief period of thoughtful contemplation of the subject, “How shall we do this thing!”  Since it is my role to remain neutral on the subject, presenting it as a “What If” for the contemplation of my readers I will present the topic as if it were an entrée, a la carte…

Long before any policy allowing gay marriage had been seriously contemplated in America, social pioneers such as Essex Hemphill and Marlon Riggs breathed life into their possibilities.  Prior to the legalization of gay marriage defiant black men improvised self-styled marriage ceremonies often incorporating elements of African origin to symbolise their diasporal connexion to the symbols and traditions of their ancestors.  Although these marriages represented a significant social statement directly challenging the social and political establishment they lacked any legal weight not being recognized or protected by the law.    The gay community has always been segregated in America and unwritten as it may have been it was more acceptable for two gay white men to be openly or alleged homosexual than black.  Black men who had still the stigma of Mandingo Breeder about them layered with the oppressive dogma of the black church were viewed as freaks and misfits by a culture who already had its own heavy burden of social woes to bear before and after the Civil Rights Movement.  Then as now, a gay black man might have rights as seen under the law but in his own community and without he is often viewed as a diabolical, suspicious, deviant and therefore punishable figure by virtue of his being.  In more progressive enclaves of America, typically in its more liberal cities, gay black men have attained political and social respectability but only because they have worked diligently, tirelessly to bend local policy to their will.  Essex Hemphill wrote a prophetic poem in the early 1990’s titled “American Wedding.”  During that time my lover Michael Smith had also written an article titled, “Are You Black Or Are You Gay. “ I mention this because at that time we were all part of a very interesting intellectual circle in which we exchanged, and argued the same ideas.  The world was much different then; racism was far more aggressive especially toward young black intellectual males.  We were treated with the same stereotypes as criminals blowing up the 6:00 News, our intelligence and sophistication, (if I dare imply we were so), were taken as freakishly egregious manifestations of an assumed threat to life and civility all black men were assumed to represent.  We all understood because it was only too clear that the image and person of the black man was under assault and I do not have to tell you why and from whence it came, only that we battled it the only way we knew how, with our minds!  So when Essex wrote “American Wedding” he was expressing his reaction to the bruises of a culture in which he felt himself assaulted on all fronts defying all of the stereotypes directed at black gay men.  He was masculine, he was intelligent, he was eloquent and an internationally renowned writer and poet and he was gay…  More than anything else Essex was making a glorious statement of protest and warning, he was looking to seize the attention of the world in a time when it’s head was still firmly planted under a rock.  For those gay black men who were already out this poem had a special, personal significance that touched their sense of militancy and defiance living a cause they fed and breathed…

Because Essex’s poem is so focused on black men does not mean that he was racist or that he did not condone interracial marriage.  What it means is merely that he was focused primarily on the condition of marriage between two men of color.  His poem goes on to explain why his concern was so great.  In his eyes the union between two men of color was the all healing solution to the strife black men experienced as a by-product of slavery and institutionalized racism.  He saw the union of two black men as the forging of a great solidarity between warring factions precipitating the end to black on black crime and many other such evils.  This idealised vision nonetheless had much truth embedded in its potential.  I am certain he theorized that when heterosexual men began to see peaceful loving unions of black men who looked, talked, thought and acted like them this example would spread like wildfire ushering in a new consciousness of fraternity among men of color…

I like to use the image of the  cock ring as a metaphor for the chains of slavery and racism and like one who preserves something of his oppressor as a token to remind him of how hard bought freedom was the ring serves as a constant reminder encompassing nothing less than the very icon of manhood itself, the penis.  Because slavery and racism was very much meant to be a means of oppressing the expression of the black man’s true manhood, it was literally a chain around his penis.  Or is it more a metaphor for  the prolonging of the union since the purpose of the cock ring is to prolong the erection during sex?  We can toy with metaphors for ever but the true message is found in the entirety of the poem which I will copy at the end of this discussion.

The poem is short but I have here taken only an excerpt of the visionary poet Essex Hemphill’s titled, “American Wedding” as follows:

“In america,

I place my ring

on your cock

where it belongs”.

If you had known Essex you would be smiling with me now as we read this part together.  Like Baldwin, Essex was a very shy quiet man in public but his fire was reserved for his pen.  I never experienced them both in the same room nor did I ask Essex if he knew Baldwin although I assume he surely must have.  I had met one of Baldwin’s companions, a black man named David who lived with him in his cottage in the south of France for many years.  David was so much the antithesis of Baldwin but like Baldwin and Essex his paintings were made of pure fire!   This portion of the poem is the very personification of that spirit of that moment and time when the two generations were passing the torch to between them, and it burns marvelously today lighting up a world that perhaps is not accustomed to its brilliance!  It is the light of protest!   As I have mentioned, Essex Hemphill was an internationally renowned gay poet, activist and a personal friend.  Each time I read his poem, “American Wedding”, it challenges me and seizes my imagination with a vice-grip!  I vividly recall reading it for the first time almost twenty years ago reeling from its power to seize both my conscious and subconscious being…  I remember Mike reading it to me while I lay resting in bed… those were such poetic times…

What is it that Essex is telling us? Because of the history of struggle black and gay men have experienced in America we must approach the symbolic marriage between two men in a completely different way!  Historically the law in America forbade black men from legally marrying.  The key figure in his rationale is stated clearly as a condition, “In America,” condition stated, “I place my ring on your cock.”  Does this mean that had he been in another country it would not be necessary to place the ring on his lover’s penis?  I suspect the answer is far more complex than the obvious, it requires a great deal more thought.

Marlon Riggs, Film Maker

Only history will tell if Essex’s is a valid argument, if gay black men should refrain from imitating traditional marriage customs and carve out their own.  Creating their own marriage ceremonies in an act of defiance would be the ultimate ritual of protest for the inestimable injustices suffered by black men over the centuries of our captivity in America.  The stories surrounding this theory will be told and debated many years from now when men such as me are long dead and forgotten… However, his poem stands out as an aesthetic, philosophical and political icon and the imagery invoked in “American Wedding” speaks to us right now in a language too lucid to ignore memorializing the historical difference and struggle between them and us.  To know Essex Hemphill at the time that he wrote “American Wedding” was to know a deeply introspective and intellectual black man who was still a very young man now faced with the certain inevitability of his own mortality after having been diagnosed with Aids.  The racial climate not only in Washington, D.C. but in America was caustic toward black men regardless of their education or economic status.  In our circle of intellectuals we all exchanged what would now be thought of as unimaginable stories of racial profiling both in Washington, D.C. and suburbs as well as at the airport, and train station, it was a far more serious and frequent problem then.  Essex was frustrated with a country that had enslaved his ancestors, and then denied him the basic dignity and respect as a full American citizen.  He deliberately dressed down in urban hood attire to both antagonize white Americans and to signify his own solidarity even though as an elite member of the black intelligentsia he was far removed from the reality of the average black American man.  We used to share heated stories about being followed at the airport or randomly stopped on the street and asked for identification… because we were black men dressed in hyper-urban attire which was then considered to be militant.  Yes we were militants then, soldiers for the cause of equality.  There is a great difference between militants and racists… racists we were not!  More than anything we upheld racial equality and harmony else we should have been hypocrites for what man sues for racial equality when he cannot himself love all races of men?  We may have been militant in defense of our civil rights but that was because they were being openly threatened every day at every turn in every place we went outside of the hallowed halls of academia.  We could easily have assumed the raiment of our world, the academians of Howard, Hampton, and the long list of colleges and universities we all frequented but being young and idealistic we chose to signify for the cause of the BROTHAS!  Because the brothas whether they chose or not were at the front of an unrelenting firing line into the integrity of our ranks as men.  At the time I was a senior at Catholic University, which was wrestling with the issues of racism and sexism.  I had innocently stepped into the halls of institutionalised, hierarchical classism, racism and sexism, practises The Catholic Church had had over 2,000 years to refine…  I watched while in the midst of everything else, a closeted gay black priest who had gained affluence in the black Catholic community was excommunicated and left the Catholic Church to establish his own Afrocentric version of Catholicism which publicised its acceptance of homosexuality.  So you see, during that time Washington was a virtual hotbed of debate and creativity concerning  the prospect of gay marriage and of the way in which gay black men would rectify their sexuality with their heritage both as descendants of Africa and as Americans.  Between then and now the urgency of the question seems to have died and that is what most concerns me, this is why I have chosen to resurrect this poem from its rest…

Each time I think of Essex it takes me back to that time and to that poem in particular.  From that day forward I have always asked myself, “Should I ever marry another man or enter into a covenant with him, what symbol, what icon shall we employ to symbolise the physical manifestation of our cerebral union?  Is it even necessary to preserve and display a tactile advertisement for an intangible, ideological, abstract covenant even if it is also captured in the form of legal documents conveying the same attestation of our now legally binding association?  According to Essex, and I am inclined to follow his august counsel, upon the occasion that two men should jump the broom fusing themselves to the ages together, there shall be a ring, a physical manifestation of the symbolic union of some kind.  This follows in the tradition of Afrocentric philosophy that elements of traditional African culture should be integrated into Black American culture to give them what I call, “Cultural Relevance,” otherwise they are merely artifacts taken out of context as in a museums collection.  I laugh because I know he did not mean for it to be taken literally although it amused his intensely erotic nature to image it.  Now when a man and woman are married the tokens of marriage have customarily been in the form of wedding bands worn about the finger, however, with two men the possibility exists to deviate from that established heterosexual tradition and I might add that outside of Essex’s suggestion of choice there remain an almost infinite number of alternative places upon which to place ones wedding ring but placing that ring upon the one organ that men share in common, our penis, seems straightway to be the most logical and desirable of all.  Mind you that the underlying message is not that cock rings be worn exclusively by each gay couple on pain of death, rather that gay men recognize the uniqueness of their union as one of two men rather than between man and woman and memorialize it with a unique form of expression distinguishing it from a heterosexual marriage… furthermore, as a symbolic expression that the struggle of the black man and the black gay man is far from over.  The union of two gay black men is ideologically, significant enough symbolism edifying the positive change of self-empowerment but it is our human nature that causes us to seek physical manifestations of abstract ideals.

I’ll raise this question for the second time: in this poem what is Essex really asking of America, if anything; is he merely trying to get their attention?  Conjured is the image of a wedding ceremony between two men, the priest steps back allowing the men to unzip each other’s trousers, pull their partners penis out and slide the ring over the shaft pushing the scrotum through the loop or place a hinged ring for greater ease.   Both grooms then turn to face the audience, a blinding array of flashes ensues whilst they including their penises are photographed adorned with a ceremonial wedding rings.  The image is far from absurd to me as I visualized it without the slightest smile.  The point, gentlemen, is that now is the time for gay black men to establish their own marital customs.  I am confident that what Essex is really trying to say to men who contemplate same sex marriage has noting to do with placing rings on one another’s penises but to recognize, comprehend and administer the sacred vows of marriage with a fresh optimism, defining new rituals that best suit the union of two Black American men.  Heterosexual marriages, with all due respect, have been undergoing a hellstorm over the past 60 years, revealing profound structural weaknesses we daren’t imitate.  On a positive note we have this unique opportunity to reinvent the wheel. 

Ultimately, I think that race is of little or no importance here, Essex was not making a protest against interracial gay marriage at all but he was asking gay men of all races to take seriously the prospect of marriage because it could mean something quite different from that with a woman.  For black gay men I believe his message was twofold asking them to respect the struggle black men have fought to even enjoy the  privilage of marriage...

Knowing Essex to be the highly focused idealistic, artistic, intellectual, visionary motivated as much by the perspicacity of his mind as his intensely sexual sensibility I am certain that he would have got great satisfaction from the knowledge that gay men, following his suggestion, were wearing wedding rings on their penises rather than their fingers.  But being the highly tolerant, gentle and humane man that he also was one might deduce the suggestion within his poem was not meant as a manifesto or command as if emanating from some stylistic dogma he envisaged for gay men… he had none, there was none… few men I have met on this beautiful earth have been so free of mind and spirit! 

Essex Hemphill and Marlon Riggs posing for an advertisement for the Film "Tongues Untied"

Essex and Marlon Riggs revolutionized the face of gay black men in America gaining international recognition only years before their lives would be claimed by Aids… Fortunately, their work laid into place a framework with which to comprehend and organise recent breakthroughs in policy strengthening the GBLT community, specifically, Gay Marriage.   It is critical that nearly 20 years later their vision is not lost beneath the pall of late twentieth-century issues that served to steal some of the wind from behind their sails.  Surviving the late twentieth-century was tough; nonetheless it was distinguished by many points of brilliance…   Essex Hemphill was one of the more brilliant stars of the late twentieth-century as was Marlon Riggs and they are sorely missed.

Marlon Riggs

They were different kinds of men both physically and in personality but they were unquestionably men, great black men of their times.  I remember them as true intellectuals always eager to engage themselves with others in intensive discussion of the many important issues of the day especially those relating to black men.  As such they were both what one could call a “Mans Man.” The questions Essex raised in his poetry asked black gay men to look forward without prejudice but to preserve the sacred hallmarks of their cultural heritage while doing so…

Here is the complete poem:

AMERICAN WEDDING

Written by Essex Hemphill

In america,

I place my ring

on your cock

where it belongs.

No horsemen

bearing terror,

no soldiers of doom

will swoop in

and sweep us apart.

They’re too busy

looting the land

to watch us.

They don’t know

we need each other

critically.

They expect us to call in sick,

watch television all night,

die by our own hands.

They don’t know

we are becoming powerful.

Every time we kiss

we confirm the new world coming.

What the rose whispers

before blooming

I vow to you.

I give you my heart,

a safe house.

I give you promises other than

milk, honey, liberty.

I assume you will always

be a free man with a dream.

In america,

place your ring

on my cock

where it belongs.

Long may we live

to free this dream.

FIN