40
YEARS A GAY MAN OF COLOR:
MY
4OTH ANNIVERSARY AS A GAY MAN
CHAPTER ONE: THE JOYOUS SEX OF BOYHOOD
FORWARD...
I wrestled with the question, "Should my coming out story begin with sex?", because some men prefer to down-play sex as a powerful force within their lives... Some men identify their first glimpse of sexuality as a nightmare and violation. Not me.... ! As a boy I had beautiful experiences of sexuality... and their gentle, handsomeness shaped me first into a man and ultimately into the gentleman I have become. I could never subscribe to that college of thought which considers human sexuality to be sinful or bad. Sex is of course one of the most natural elements of our human makeup. Sex does not disgrace or disgust me... honestly I should not know who I am or why I am without it... I treasure it.... there is no doubt that sexuality is highly instinctual in me and every other man; therein lay its power...
As a freethinker I believe it is my responsibility to understand why I should not play sexuality down as a legitimate self-marker and to find creative means to convey this freedom to you. So I will put it to you this way. Human sexuality can be a complex labyrinth for adults but to a young boy it is really very simple... it is just a matter of pleasure... I followed a natural, curious sense of attraction to other boys in my general age range and a pleasure that was uniquely exempted from the artificial overlays of guilt and fear I had experienced with girls my age during that same period of time. Looking back I realize how fortunate I was to have had such a healthy and fulfilling introduction to sexuality but was that really what it was. I believe it was just an innocent, unbiased exploration of pure pleasure... I was a happy, healthy boy and so were all of the boys that I knew in that way... Our experiences were so normal, so natural as to go unnoticed so typical of the things in life that are good?
A GAY MAN IS BORN
On June 11,
2017 I celebrated my 55th birthday and also my 40th
anniversary coming out as gay man of color. It all began while sitting on my
neighbor’s steps with a lesbian friend of the same age… 15… who candidly asked
me if I was gay. I hesitated for a few seconds because the question was
unexpected. Actually, I had not really even considered the question since a
moment about 7 years earlier around the age of 8 when one of my neighborhood
buddies with whom I also had regular sex asked me if I felt gay.
I distinctly remember that we both totally stopped pleasing each other in order to
ponder the question. He responded first saying he did not feel as if our sex
made him gay because we were not acting like females. I concurred. We both
agreed that we did not really feel as if we were homosexuals either because we
were still dealing with both sexes at the time. To both of us boys at 8 and 10
years of age (he was a couple of years older than me), being gay meant being
effeminate. Being homosexual was way too much of a psychological commitment for
either us to understand at that time. And why on earth should we have burdened ourselves with what I now understand as the bittersweet troubles of life. At 8 that would certainly have stolen all the joy away. I believe it is difficult for adults to remember that sex is actually supposed to be fun. Well the entire idea of being gay was some alien grown-up thing we had
no interest in at all. At 8 years of age the label “Gay” conjured images of
white homosexual men because we had only seen openly gay white men on television. Black men were loath to expose themselves as openly gay in the early 70's and when they did it was within the raiment of a homosexual subculture altogether unknown and forbidden to what was considered normal black folk. So the misconception was that these rare, out, black gay men were trying to be something they were not when in fact it was the reverse... they were being exactly what they were and holding up a middle finger to the hypocrisy of the conservative black southern Christian establishment. The irony was that they had actually found acceptance outside of their community, that they had to leave or were ejected from their black communities and found the love, friendship, understanding and brotherhood in the white community which they had been taught to fear. I studied these men closely as a boy. I studied all men closely... (wink) but to these men I lavished special attention as if somehow by observing them I would osmotically understand what my destiny as a gay man might be. In my boys eyes that destiny seemed to be comfortably a million miles away. There was no immanent decision to be straight or gay looming in the horizon so the fleeting thought quickly dissipated into the myriad of my boyhood world of sports, play, entertainment and more amazing sex...
There is no denying that the black church is a formidable force having the power of erasure within the substantial reach of its oppressive arm. To this day gay black men shrink from challenging the anachronistic dogma of the church... it remains untouchable! Although we knew of a few black gay men then living in our community nearly everyone had very little knowledge of their real lifestyle. They remained one of the neighborhood mysteries. The general myth believed by black people at that time was that a black man who chose to be gay had forsaken the black community. This was somewhat true but in some circumstances but mostly not by their own volition. Black men who chose to be gay openly or not were simply treated differently by their own community. I find it absurd to conclude that these men would suddenly transmogrify into a white homosexual male upon utterance of the words, "I Am Gay"! Collard greens and fatback are still served at their addresses. What has changed is how we now digest each soulful entree now that the menu has the flavor of gay!
Within the black community gay men can only peaceably coexist by consenting to be invisible and or by manufacturing a false heterosexual identity over a homosexual actuality. The black community really does not know these men who are often the movers and shakers of their communities... not that they should have access to their privacy which would also be unacceptable. But when stealth conditions are betrayed, when the community discovers a man has been living life as a gay man all of his contributions immediately shrink into a cheap, lewd and odorous black and white pinup of an unspoken homosexual sex act. We need to focus on reforming the self-pious proud fixing their malicious spiritual discernment. I discern in them a vanity far more obsessed with the temporal and particularly with the exponential perversion of the sacred beauty of natural human sexuality! If there is a crime it is the prejudice against and persecution of homosexuals. Men who hate other free men because they are gay cannot be holy men, they are not good Christians, Muslims or Hindus... they are more akin to social-vampires, cultural monsters who feed on the fear, shame, and negative emotions they suck from the souls of their victims! Even as a young boy I recognized this evil streak in adults. It posed the question why? A question nobody could answer. I soon learned that such hatred could only be loosely justified if one mis-interpreted one of a dizzying list of what are considered to be the holy books of human civilization... but I believed in none of them! So their evil had no effect on me. Not one of those books could ultimately verify any divine provenance... all were clearly the artifice of men. To what extent god had actually contributed to these primitive myths and fables was uncertain to me but the more I understood why I rejected them the closer I came to understanding god and my place in creation. The true origins of the holy books of men appeared to be as a tool to define and control what men did not understand, a contrivance intended to be a brainwashing tool for powermongering men. Black Americans and black peoples around the world had got caught up in this evil tide while they were enslaved and oppressed by other cultures. But that did not mean they could hot un-learn this evil. As a boy I embraced the beloved heritage of my ancestors who I knew to have been slaves but rejected what I understood to be their slave-religion. It was a religion that had been intentionally perverted to justify slavery. After slavery was ended the bible which had been manipulated by powerful men to serve their earthly purposes throughout history was never revised to remove its evil elements. Like the bible the laws of this land my enslaved ancestors and I called home had also remained unchanged allowing the shameful legacy of racism to extend beyond emancipation. The bigoted laws some Americans used to justify the oppression and murder of black men was based on the premise of the divine right of some men to claim racial superiority over others. I knew such evil would never have been sanctioned by god! I had no use for religion because it had no reverence for me!
For an instant as a young boy I wondered if I might ever have to choose between being gay and being black. I loved my family and community and could not have imagined abandoning it just to be gay. So I put it out of my mind as something that I might have to deal with many yeas from then... It was a handsome summer day and I had a sexy brotha standing nearly naked in front of me down in the woods by the two-headed tree. He candidly but innocently asked me if I felt gay doing what we were doing. I don't have to tell you how quickly both of us redirected from the task before us... The idea of being a gay adult, of still meeting boys in the woods all seemed so unimaginably impossible in the distant future but for now it was hot. I supposed there'd be plenty of time to wonder if this homosexual thing lasted another summer. For my part hoped it would last forever not only because I was coming into a real understanding of my sexuality but also because it just felt so good! I think we can all agree that it is the duty of sex... good sex that is, to feel good! But The powerful brainwashing of my heterosexual upbringing almost immediately responded with The default; I would of course marry a respectable woman from The black intelligentsia and have a family passing on the wisdom my parents gave to me... it was a done deal. But it was not to be. In the 40 years since I came out to my family, friends and to the world around me I have yet to settle into a life shared with my life-companion, my soulmate either male or female... What I do have to share with humanity are the stories of a person who in his exploration of manhood strove to live an honest and ethically-robust life whilst cultivating a freedom of spirit allowing me to explore the uncharted wildernesses of life accepting their lessons without prejudice and thankful to god almighty for the vigour of life with which to have been able to explore them then, now and in the future... if I should die tomorrow you and I shall know that I did not shrink from my manly prerogative to own and defend myself as a proud and openly gay black man in America! For this I believe my ancestors would be proud...
The gay experience does not have to be a tragic one but people like to gravitate to the bad stories because drama and pain is more vivid than normalcy. The fact is that a happy life can be far more interesting and colorful than an unhappy one depending on whether you are more interested in the negative or the positive side of life! For this reason a gay man has to be confident and brave. Like a well-educated black man he will have to defend himself against those who only know the bad stories to make dissenters know he is not one of them! There are living examples all around us that a black man can have a happy and healthy gay sex life from childhood to adulthood succeeding to actualize himself as a gay man, that he can become a gentleman, a success in his occupation, that he can earn the respect of his community and enjoy a sophisticated relationship with god... I believe I am one of those men...
The black community has never embraced the power of its gay men. It pretends not to see them, it ignores and avoids them, it discounts them praising others far less noteworthy because they fit the popular stereotype. It forces them to choose. It asks them to lie and pretend, to abandon their homes, family and communities in order to live their truths. It places such pressure on them to perpetuate the biases of their ancestors rather than grow from their mistakes that it ultimately loses so many good black men in an irreversible transfer of love and devotion. Ask the leaders of the black community where these lost men go and they will respond with silence because they neither see the problem nor comprehend the answer. The same phenomenon haunts black men who marry outside of their race but as long as they appear to be heterosexual the stigma is less severe. The redefinition of the black man is long overdue so that is what we shall do now in this life! By forcing black men to be something they are not the black community twists and perverts them into unstable, volatile things at once desperate to validate what they know is a false love and to secretly explore what they know is a real love. Of course some blame must also be accepted by men who ultimately make the choice to ignore their sexual freedom allowing themselves to become manipulated and imprisoned by the corrupted expectations of others. A tragic example of this pathological pattern was recently played out in the saga of a gay man named Reverend Eddie Long who found a way to serve god and the church, to take a wife and raise a family and also pursue his forbidden homosexual desires. No doubt he was a highly creative man but the magnitude of his falsehoods eventually caught up with and virtually destroyed him. Could he have achieved the same accomplishments if he had been openly gay? I know his journey would have been different but I like to believe it would have have had a far less reckless impact on the young lives that crossed his path. His selfish abuse of innocent and impressionable young men who might otherwise hold him in high esteem as a fatherly mentor was a missed opportunity. As a mature man he fundamentally mis-understood that pleasure was not its own end. The enjoyment of pleasure for pleasure's sake is a luxury afforded only to boys without any real responsibility or comprehension of life as it really is. A man must sacrifice pleasure when the far weightier issues of ethical and moral standards warn him he take a new direction. As a man of conscience he had an ethical responsibility to separate his desire for pleasure from his duty to protect the young and to act on it! His betrayal of those youths, his wife, family, church, peers and perhaps even of god himself is something only he can now answer to as he ever only could. The irony is that in spite of his deceptions at the end of the day he was unequivocally exposed as a gay black man! When he fell he understood the meaning of abandonment. For the rest of his life he was forced to live as a gay black man. All anybody saw was sex! Gay sex! He seemed at first to be at the threshold of a second chance at life but that opportunity too appears to have been squandered. He never publicly faced his truth! Rev. Long and so many other black gay men who reject the chance to openly live their truth have inadvertently diminished the richness of our understanding of the vital resource black gay men have been and continue to represent in our community. The
black community has not learned to hold on to gay black men as if they were the very soul
of the land. But they are the heart and spirit of life itself. The community should demand that they stay close to share their wisdom and creativity with posterity. Black gay men are marginalized, ostracized and feared by their own people as if they are a virulent poison capable of swallowing the whole of black progress itself. But when one begins to see who among our black male leaders is or has been gay it is apparent that progress could not have been made without us... we are at the soul of progress! As a
result of simple but not misguided fear so many gay black men achieved greatness but were forced to sacrifice their truth in
order to remain effective leaders of the black community. History however has revealed them as gay men of formidable power forcing the black community to re-evaluate itself now. As kids
we did not see a black, gay community at all. Therefore, we assumed that in
order for a man to be gay he had to leave the black community and adopt the
white community of gay men and women. We were very naïve. Homosexuality was not a subject that most people felt comfortable talking about. We of course were
completely ignorant of the ongoing struggle of the LGBT community all around
us. So that was the very first challenge I faced as a gay man of color who
feared I would have to abandon my black community in order to be who I wanted
to be. So I betrayed who I was at that young age mostly because I did not know
any better but later I life I had to deal not only with the fact that I was a
gay man but also that I was a black man who had to assert myself and command
the respect of my community as openly gay. Back then we were privileged kids living
in a world that was insulated from the
poverty and crime that plagued most black families and communities. Moreover we lived in what
was then one of the most affluent and progressive cities in the world for black
peoples so the threshold of possibilities was seemingly boundless and we were
all to eager to discover them one by one. We did not realize that we were privileged
at all just the same as I never realized how skillfully my parents protected me
from the brutal realities of segregation in the 1960’s. I was a very lucky
child and I owe it all to my parents, because of their love I was able to look
at the world objectively. I did not see race even though it saw me! Conversations I had with the boys I shared sex with
were the kind of conversations all boys have in childhood. Economics only slightly
alters the nature of the human experience… we all develop as men at the same
rate of time asking the same questions, taking the same risks and drawing the
same conclusions. All we were doing, we agreed, was responding to an innate
physical and sexual attraction, it had nothing more to do with being gay or
effeminate than our mutual love of sports and typical boyhood interests had to
do with the man in the moon. At that time we were safe and comfortable with our
naïve understanding of our primitive libidos. From that seminal point our
journeys have taken us both on such different pathways in our exploration our
sexuality.
At 15 I was
having regular sexual relations with several boys and girls of color in my
neighborhood who were my age and older. I grew up in a primarily black middle-class
neighborhood so my sexual peers were other Black American boys and girls of my
age. The black families in my community were well educated professionals who
had integrated what had formerly been an exclusively white section of southeast
Washington, D.C.
I am only now getting back to
the question, “David are you gay”? The second time the question had been posed
was by my lesbian friend and I was finally prepared to respond intelligently althogh I did not know it until I responded.
I was sitting outside on the stairs at of my favorite buddies house. He would
have been around 18 ready to graduate from high school. He was in junior high school and I was only in
the 3rd grade when we began our first sexual encounter. To be honest
that is all it was… a sexual encounter. But I would be remiss if I did not admit that I looked forward to our daily sexual rendezvous in the woods behind our house. He was older and taller than me and I remember how handsome and smart he was. I remember his clean, manly scent it was intoxicating to me... we didn't talk at all we just enjoyed the pleasure of one another's body. Like I said, sex was so much easier then because all we had to do was explore the new realm of physical pleasure... Neither of us felt anything deeply
emotional even though we met daily… this was the case with all the others with
which I explored sexuality… it was just clean, safe healthy and ordinary
experimentation the kind that most kids have during puberty. We never discussed
it outside of our encounters except that he would always approach me and ask me
the question, “Wanna go down by the creek”. I always said yes. With him and the others there was never any
pressure to have sex, it was all consensual and enjoyable. I often wonder on
those times when sex was so free and simple and plentiful. In many ways those
early years of sexual exploration were the very best and certainly the most
interesting of all of my sexual encounters probably because I was just learning
about sex and it seemed there was so much to learn. All of this passed through
my consciousness as I answered Antoinette’s question. The answer came so easily
and as it passed my lips I felt the most liberating sense of ease and
satisfaction. “Yes”, I responded. And Antoinette said, “I thought so”. From
that point on we became thick as thieves. She introduced me to the gay culture
of 1977.
My parents of
course, had no idea I was having sex with men but they knew I had started to
experiment with girls very early. My father had caught me with a couple of
girls in my room at the same time several times already and I had been messing
around with girls since I was at least 5. I got grounded for a week the second
time I got caught. The unwritten rule in my family was “NO KIDS UNTIL MARRIED
AND GAINFULLY EMPLOYED AFTER COLLEGE”! I think my family was cool with the fact
that I showed an early attraction to females but wanted to send a clear message
that they did not want me to get myself in trouble with a girl by getting her pregnant. So as soon as I
realized that I was able to impregnate a woman I began to use protection. I
loved sex with women and looked forward to it. The feeling of intercourse with
a woman was the most amazing thing I had ever felt until I began to fantasize
about the boys in the room next to me while we were having…. parties… One of
the older boys in one of our parties of 3 or four couples told me, “You’re
lucky because you have not begun to produce sperm yet, so you can have fun with
as many women as you want without getting them pregnant!”. He was my sexual
idol. Eventually I began to think about him isolating him in my fantasies and
memories of our little orgies. I don’t think I became bored with women. I just
stopped fantasizing about them sexually and started focusing more on men. It
was completely natural, nobody forced anything upon me. That is how I know that
being gay is a matter of choice… free choice. As human beings our sexual
attraction changes from time to time sometimes drastically. No one should be pigeon-holed
into one sexual role or preference. Human sexuality is dynamic. As sexual
beings we are responsible for keeping up with the ways our sexuality changes
and also with taking the necessary steps to ensure we are able to explore them while
respecting the dignity of others with whom we have established sexual lives.
Suddenly the fear
of getting a girl pregnant didn’t matter really anymore by the time I was 15
because I was no longer really sexually active with females anyway and scarcely
with other males. At 15 I was mostly interested in sports, architecture and
art, hanging out in the woods, climbing trees and building my insect and
mineral collections. I was a nerd staying up late reading books on archaeology
and science fiction. I read extensively and in my readings of historical
figures I always took special interest in those men who were openly gay ahead
of their time. My love life declined after I came out because I did not see any
men that fit my ideal of the type of men I had formerly dealt with. My other
friends began to date but for me it seemed too tedious. Besides, I did not know
any girls who liked catching turtles reading ancient Egyptian poetry and going
fossil hunting. At that time none of my male friends were interested in those
things any longer… they were all working hard to look and act cool to attract
females or other males. I was a teenaged nerd but a happy one. I began to miss and forget about the active sexual life
I had enjoyed as a boy but I could not forget the expectation that I would
someday be married to a woman and have a family just like my parents. The
entire prospect seemed to be very antiseptic. I had no problem with this dream
except that in my frequent sexual fantasies I was simply replacing the woman in the
equation a man and one man in particular. In my heart I already knew that, that was the way it
would play out. I started having dreams about being married to a man as a young
boy I remember the dreams began around 5 years of age and although I never told
my family I fully understood what they meant at the time. There were two or
three versions of the dream and they stopped when I was about 16. One of the
versions was very forbidding. I remember this dream came to me when I was about
9 years old but I did not understand it until after I had read Dante’s Inferno
and seen August Rodin’s magnificent sculpture, “The Gates of Hell” in the
museum at age 11 years.
In my dream I
was an old man near the end of my life walking down a cavernous street in a
metropolis very much in scale like Midtown Manhattan. As I marveled at the
brilliant landscape of modern skyscrapers suddenly it became dark and
featureless, suddenly the throngs of people were reduced to only a few gay
couples walking holding hands and stopping on occasion to kiss and hug
affectionately. Suddenly a feeling of dread overcame me as I realized I had
lived my entire life as a lie refusing to explore my attraction to men. I had feigned life of heterosexuality denying myself the
touch and feel of a man. It was too late
for me to ever enjoy the love and freedom these youths displayed. A wave of
jealousy, remorse and resentment arose within me because I knew I had squandered my life in fear rather
than pursuing my passion… I took this as an omen to resist suppressing my
homosexuality. Suddenly I began to really look at all of the mature men around
me who I respected and I began to try to figure out which of them was gay. Of course, it was too easy for me I have always had a magnificently
acute gaydar… since I was a very handsome, masculine and muscular young man it
was easy for me to catch the roving eye of an older man checking me out… but I wasn’t
looking for a father figure at all I had a wonderful father I wanted to meet
men close to my own age so we could learn and share our experiences at the same
time… A heavy dream perhaps for a 5 year old but I was a very precocious child.
Dreams have always come to me throughout my life. They have always contained
truths about things to come…
From that day
on I vowed never to become that man, desperate, spent, hopeless and
disconnected. Upon my deathbed, I would recall innumerable lovers with delight
and satisfaction that I had lived life to the fullest! Carpe Diem! It has
always hovered in my subconscious so one might say that I knew from an early
age that I was a gay man…
But finding
another gay male, my own age outside of my exclusive ring of neighborhood beaus
was nearly impossible. I dated a few older men… mostly because they were
masculine and could hold an intelligent conversation. Also because as I got older the boys of summer drifted off one by one as they discovered they must hide or abandon their love of men. I was a very muscular and athletic boy and I am certain my presence intimidated many boys and teenagers my age from approaching me. So I dared older men because they were not afraid to approach me and they were masculine like me. But I soon became bored
with them so I patiently waited until I was able to pursue the men that I was
really attracted to and who appeared to be attracted to me. The fact that I am
still a single man at age 55 may be the most sobering proof that appearances
are deceiving…
I attended an
all-boys catholic middle and high school which was a pretty confusing
environment for me at first until I learned to read between the lines but it
did tip the balance convincing me that I was far more sexually attracted to men
than women. And O’ did I have an eye blessing in catholic school! There I was
sitting in class among the smartest, most handsome and affluent men in
Washington, D.C. Anyone who has attended an all-boys catholic school knows how
homophobic the church and curriculum is. Match that with a battery of priests
and laymen professors who openly display nuances of gaiety but dare not speak
of it. It was a veritable circus. I saw through the wrappings but was disgusted
at what I saw… hypocrites! This like nothing else convinced me that I should
not live a sexually closeted life, that somehow, I would find and marry the man
of my dreams… But I just could not meet the man that would make me lower my
guard.
Catholic school was sexually repressive but that too was a big old illusion. The first time I stepped-foot in a gay club guess who I saw? My catholic school mates! I may have been a gay nerd and way off every bodies gaydar but that does not mean I did not have some fun with my cloak of sexual invisibility. One of the staples of catholic school is everyone must take religion class. I didn't like it so I determined to make it fun. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, which was whenever I felt inclined to get a good laugh, I'd ask the priest to explain how homosexuality figured in heaven? Or I'd ask what happens to gay people when they die? Whether the priest was gay or not the result was always the same. No result! An uncomfortable period of silence enveloped the room as if it had been vacuum-packed. The subject was unconvincingly changed and just as fear mounted that I might ask again the bell rang...
Unlike the
free sexuality of my childhood by adolescence I was really looking for amazing sex
and substance. For some reason every time I had sex as a boy was amazing. Unfortunately this revelation happened at the height of the 70’s
disco era. At that time nobody was interested in amazing sex they just wanted to have as much of it as humanly possible. Although infrequent I actually did have some pretty mind-blowing sex during the 70's but that is because I demanded sexual excellence. I often reflect that my life was possibly spared because I was not that sexually active during that time. Nearly all of my gay friends from that time
are dead. Only myself and a couple of men were spared. When I used to go out
clubbing and one of the old disco anthems came on I would dance for them,
putting my best foot into it the way they used to do. I was quite a party-boy I
went to all the hot parties and clubs 7 nights a week. I was still a nerd but
just a very stylish one. I kept to myself and learned the lessons of gay life
the hard way. The first lesson I learned was never to trust a friend with my
boyfriend. Then I learned to use my friends who were whores to see if a man was
good or not… it didn’t matter because in the end they all cheated… Lesson 3#.
When I finally
did come out officially,(meaning I went to the gay bars), the very first guys I
saw in the very first gay bar I entered included my high school classmates. But we discussed that before. My all boys high school turned out to be a breeding ground for young gay men, no pun intended... One
of them was very nice guy named Quinton and he was quite handsome with a
distinct sweetness to him. Quinton lived around the corner from me, he was fine and very quiet. Quinton's afro was much bigger than mine. In those days it was essential to have a large well-groomed afro. I want to say that having a big afro was as visually important as having a big penis. One of the things I liked about the 70's was that men's trousers had a high waist and were tight around the butt and thigh so they accentuated a mans crotch and buttox. Back then I remember straight men wore tighter trousers and shirts than gay men did... it was a visual wonderland! Quinton never approached me at school except to say hello and we barely spoke
in the club called Knob Hill that once stood at 11th and Kenyon
Street N.W. It and most of the men who frequented it have long since perished
of plague. Quintin was openly gay at my all-boys catholic school. He was well respected there because he held his own and I remember
one of my neighborhood buddies (who later came out of the closet) called him a
faggott in the cafeteria before classes. Why did he do that! I remember Quinton
picking Alphonso up and dunking him head-first into a trash can in the cafeteria.
Everyone cheered with the exception of Father Wood who turned absolutely red in
the face as he took Quintin to the Deans office. Quintin was typical of what I found in the
gay clubs. Nice guys but far too effeminate to attract me sexually. Quinton was
one of the first men I knew to die of AIDS. I was very sorry for him and
regretted that I had not got to know him better. Thinking back, when I saw him in Knob Hill at 15 Quinton was already a well-established customer implying that he had come out at a much earlier age than I perhaps at 12 or 13 or even earlier.
One of the
first things that changed in my social circles when I came out at 15 was that some
of the females I had grown up with suddenly treated me differently. I never had
any problem with the guys, they all knew me as a cool, rusty butt dude, they
continued to treat me as one of the guys and at that time Washington, D.C. was
very gay friendly, it wasn’t a big deal at all for a man to be gay in D.C.
people just kept it moving. I think those women must have felt as if I was
competing with them for men. Of course I was not. I knew they were insecure
with their boyfriends and the fathers of their children many of which did mess
around with other men but not with me. But at first their cold and combative
demeanor, their suggestive language deeply hurt me.. Somehow for a very quiet
man I knew everybody’s business but I kept it all to myself. I always hated gossips and vowed I would never
be one. Besides I understood all too well how hurtful gossip could be. Anyway,
it was not my responsibility to judge these men or out them. As men they were
charged with managing their own affairs. I always turned down bisexual men when
they propositioned me after all what was I going to do with a dude that already
had kids and a girlfriend? I pitied those girls who had had children way too
young and who had not done well in school as a result so why add to their long
list of frustrations by sleeping with the men they foolishly called their own.
I had no intention of betraying those women and my ethics in that way and I intensified
my friendship with the confident women in my life who did not have those issues
to manage. That was my first experience of discrimination based on my
sexuality. It was also my first revelation regarding what I would not tolerate
in a man. For some reason I have always been a straight and married-man magnet. Reflecting upon the disrespect of those bisexual men whose overtures
spelled trouble from all angles I saw that sex was as much a matter of quality
as quantity. At this time I was 16 and the world began to really change all
around me. Suddenly my world split into those of my friends were going to
college and those were not. Earlier in life at around age 6 when I began experimenting sexually with girls and other boys it had suddenly created a split between men I knew were bisexual and those whose sexual preference was unknown to me. It all happened so fast I barely had time to take a
breath. When I finished my first semester I understood what my father meat when
he lectured me on the duties of manhood. When I came out to my parents at 15 my
father explained to me that nothing had really changed and went on to explain
that I was expected to finish high school, college and become a credit to my
people and a positive figure of my community as my parents had groomed me to be.
Being gay was purely incidental … I was clear on that point… When I started
college my life suddenly changed so drastically that I could see my childhood
on one side of the road and manhood on the other. I was suddenly aware of the
expectation that I would pledge my father’s fraternity as a legacy. I had no
problem fulfilling this goal since it was clearly another critical step toward achieving
manhood. There are some gay men who have an aversion to the traditional
standards of manhood but I am not one of them. I love being a man in the
traditional sense. There is enough room within the tradition parctise of manhood including the manly arts of gentlemanliness to
include gay men. I do not find necessity in manufacturing a new definition of
manhood to suit the fact that I am sexually attracted to men because nothing has changed… I feel that save for the exclusion of gay men in the credits the
recipe is just fine. Gay men who try too
hard to deny their manhood trouble me but I respect them of their freedoms. To me
being gay is all about the exploration of manhood I have no desire to emulate woman though I respect all women. I never understood all the effeminacy woven into the stereotype of the gay man. None of the gay men in my life were ever feminine. Defining myself as a naturally masculine gay, black man has somehow set me apart, I have always felt as if I were on the outside of gay culture looking in... Once I was forced to look at myself as a gay man something really did change in me... but for the most part that change was a good thing...
CHAPTER TWO: THE APPLE T'IS SOUR BESIDE DESIRE
The night
that I went on line my Dean of Pledges collected all of my line brothers at his
house and invited an unexpected guest. Our line consisted of 7 pledges assorted in hierarchy from the shortest in front to the tallest at the very end. We were a jewel line and I was number 3. We had all been summoned there on a cool Sunday night the first gathering of the Spring Line of 1984. Our dean of pledges was a large man in both physical mass, fraternity status and ego. As if expecting to get a reaction he mentioned out of nowhere that his best friend was coming shortly to visit him and to look over the line of pledges. According to his account this man had been his line-brother but dropped at some ambiguous point before crossing the burning sands. I immediately thought it odd to introduce us to what we called an eternal sphinxman, but assumed it was intended more for shock-value than anything else. That was until our dean made a special point to inform us that his friend was gay. I thought the entire menagerie was inappropriate but realized i would be forced to endure it... whatever it became. So he left us to imagine if the gaiety of this eternal sphinxman was the cause of his fraternal demise. A warning beacon immediately went up in my brain. It was too contrived, too over the top, too weird and honestly too gay to be taken as a mere coincidence. As he went on it became clear he was mocking the man he also calked his best friend. I could not have been more disinterested in the entire affair. I concluded there was really no reason other than some unresolved guilt, jealousy, anger, embarrassment, fear or an unholy combination of those treacherous variables that precipitated such an off-beat digression. I mean, how on earth would any of us had ever known either about his friends aborted pledge or even less likely, his homosexuality? I inferred the probability that he was fishing for acquaintance with his gay friend among us pledges. Perhaps he feared exposure through association. As I remember... I thought to myself, "Not another Closet Queen... they're so tiresome!". It was a mystery I never wanted to solve.
The incident initially gave me the impression that the entire pledge program might be a witch-hunt to weed-out gay men but I was proved refreshingly wrong. I had not got so many propositions and sexual innuendos before I went on line. I was careful not to let my tea out to my big brothers who were everywhere on the campuses we traveled to for fear they would try to use it to their advantage for sexual favors. The brothers in my chapter were very chill but the other brothers who pledged us from other colleges like Howard University, University of Maryland, UVA, and so on were pretty aggressive flirts... of course I loved every single minute of it but kept my cool. After all I was about to be engaged to a woman who was also a sweetheart of my fraternity... and to be honest the thought never occurred to me to betray her. We had amazing sex.
I partied that Sunday morning before going on line. 3:00 A.M. I discoed through the legendary doors of the Clubhouse partying hearty until around 8:00 that morning. Of course i'd slept the entire Sunday in preparation for the first pledge night imagining it would be my last chance to cut the rug as a regular man.
Our first pledge session began and ended that night without event. Our Dean's fay bosom-buddy never showed after all. I cannot say that I was relieved... I actually had been quite curious to see how that scenario might have played itself out regretting that it could have answered the sudden flurry of questions suddenly trending regarding his sexual orientation. The question of his sexual orientation had never occurred to me because I simply had not imagined him sexually... he loomed as a singular guardian to a dimension of manhood I was destined to explore because I was a legacy inheriting the brotherhood from my father.
I assumed our dean was heterosexual until that moment. Placing myself in his position I examined every vestige of reasoning for the manufacture of the stunt my line brothers and I had been subjected too. I had been told pledging is all a mind-game, a riddle solvibg the question of manhood. None of my line brothers ever mentioned that incident, it was as if it had never happened. I am always startled by this phenomenon. Why do people drive homosexuality out of mind by pretending it never happened? Now I wonder what was going through their minds? If any of them had ever had or was having a homosexual experience they would have had a similar reaction to mine. What I resent is that our dean felt entitled to play the faggot game with 7 grown-ass men and none of us spoke up to let him know it was in bad taste! If I had the chance to experience that same thing today I would not hesitate to light his ass up for it and make it known that I enjoyed the love of men! That is how time and experience changes us...
So there we were, 7 of the most handsome sphinxmen that ever pledged being held hostage at unawares by a dean working the machines of a hidden agenda on the side lines and then Then Bingo! Eureka! Eldorado! It hit me that our Dean planned to covertly espy our reactions trusting his divining skills and our naivete. If I had thought about it any longer i'd have laughed out loud, I mean what seasoned gay man would fall for that obvious ploy? Nonetheless I wondered whom among us if any he sensed had betrayed their tea to his trickery? I knew I was too war-hardened to fall for a childish parlour trick like that it couldn't have been me? But it could have been me... at least the question of my sexuality did come up a couple of times in spite of the fact that everyone knew my girlfriend and that we were very much on love.
When you travel in gay circles in the city you never know who is watching you or who see's you whether they are watching you or not... I was a young man about town. I went to all the hip places, parties and clubs, after-hours spots, I was a club-kid and well connected so a lot of people knew me and I am quite certain that I may not have known or even seen them... Washington, D.C. is a small city actually and so it doesn't take long to realize when you meet someone new that you both are acquainted with the same people. The city and especially the high-profile realm of fraternity life is the wrong place for a closet case! If you're having sex with a men somebody is going to see you, somebody is going to know your tea and most likely its somebody you don't know who's spilling it for you... especially if you are a hot man. In the gay community knowing a man's tea especially when he is off the radar implies that you know because you have tasted it! But most gay men are smart enough to know that is rarely the case though it is almost always implied...
The more thought I devoted to our parlour trick the more certainly I realized that our Dean of pledges wouldn't dare bring a gay man he knew intimately before a fresh line of young pledges for fear that his own tea might get read! Mystery solved! He was clearly hunting for fresh meat! Looking to catch a deer in his headlights! Again they would never have caught me!
Being successful as a gay man was a far more intense affair than when I was a boy exploring sex with the boy and or girl next door. First of all it was just too damned political! I now had to be on this side or on that side or else I had to figure out how to avoid both sides and be invisible... It took a while for me to really get over the christian guilt overlay too but I had already been chipping away at it since I rebelled against being forced to go to church as a boy of 5. I questioned my parents after being freaked-out by a woman who, "Got The Spirit" in church one Sunday. She was having happy convulsions as she moved toward the pulpit to give herself to the lord. Why and I do mean why on earth did my parents tell me that? Once I realized she and therefore I had a choice in the matter it was a done deal! I confessed that I fully understood I was far too cantankerous a boy to be left at home and convinced them to allow me to stay home alone and unsupervised as soon as I was old enough and that when I felt I wanted to give my self to the church I would do so. This also meant that I should be allowed to often play at my grandmother Maud's house while my parents were at church as a constellation prize. I love telling that story because it really got me out of having to go to church on Sundays allowing me to play in the woods all day or at Grandma Maud's house to play on the golf course or watch Lawrence Welk on the television.
My family church is a very prominent Baptist church in Arlington Virginia and is now over 150 years old. Some of the parishioners included the Syphax family, a wealthy black family descended from George Washington via George Washington Parke Custis. Some of the family were sold to Robert E. Lee after the death of the first President and his wife. Some of the Syphax's were freedmen in their own right working for wages at Mt. Vernon and at Arlington House the ancestral home of Robert E. Lee. These slaves served on his plantation in Arlington the future site of Freedman's Village where my ancestors also settled after the Civil War. Our church is the remnant of the Old Bell Church founded at Freedman's Village during the Civil War. My church, family and community are steeped in American history from which comes my strong sense of tradition and of belonging to this racially and sexually troubled land. In my early twenties however I did not fully comprehend the the power and meaning personified by the connection of my family and church history. My father always said that he was not so much a highly religious man but that he had always supported the black church because it had always supported the black community. At one time I also believed as my father had taught me however I do not feel that the black church has the best interest of the black community at hear... O' how times have changed... Naturally, as an enlightened, young black gay man I was bound to eventually and continually find myself at odds with Christianity and religion in general.
There had always been something unsettling to me about religion and now that I was beginning to define myself as a gay, black man I suddenly felt more acutely the uncompromising, unrelenting bullying of religion. Religion has always seemed to be like a poisoned dagger aimed at my heart. Over the course of my entire life I have never felt comfortable with religion and at best I can say I now have the ability to coexist with it but I shall never trust either religion or those who follow it! It has taken nearly 40 years for me to reconcile my mistrust of religious doctrine with my natural reverence for God and divine creation. All I knew then was that religion would never accept me as a gay black man but God did! That was all I really needed to know for the time being because it kept me rebellious and resilient the way my idol Frederick Douglass would have wanted me to be. I think Frederick Douglass would have accepted me as a gay black man. After all one of his sons, a concert violinist, was also gay...
My early effort to understand manhood was closely linked to my ability to reject the corruption and contradictions of religion while allowing myself to grow in the understanding and reverence if god. Gradually I learned to extract what wisdom there was from religion realising it was nothing more than any other examination of the human experience. I realized the zeal with which some men persecute others in the name of religion is tantamount to sex... only a very bad sex. As if someone who you find sexually repellent somehow forces you to perform sex with them doing something that has never turned you on. Religion causes men to ignore compassion in the name of abstract ideals and that will always be its danger...
I had a college professor in my freshman year of architecture who made every analogy to sex with his wife. He was one of the coolest men I had the pleasure to know. His name was Mr. Wray. I imagined that Mr. Wray was so cool because he had a healthy and active sex life with his wife. After all he could joke about it.
The very first time i had sexual intercourse was with a girl. I knew the earth would open up beneath me and I would immediately go to hell! One day passed... then two... I had sex again, good sex! I knew I had really done it now there would be no turning back. Not only did I enjoy sex but I looked forward to more and more of it. The pleasure and desire outweighed the fear and guilt. I had no desire to stop having sex. I figured god was just allowing me to build up my sins waiting to punish me at a later date... but nothing ever happened! Finally I could not carry the guilt and fear any longer. After all i was only five... and those were the glorious years before I began puberty and had to wear a condom.
The funny thing is that I did not feel any sexual guilt after having sex with a man. Well, we were all just boys then. Not the first, second or any time thereafter did i ever regret having sex with another male. Sex with another man was perfect! I say this because at that time the only expectation was sex before I began to develop an emotional connection with a man.
Sex as a boy was so much simpler without expectations beyond the next session. We usually went down into the woids to a spot commonly known to everyone in my neighborhood as the two-headed tree. That was the place you went to get down. You'd find young kids and teenagers having sex at the two-headed tree 24/7 straight and gay. If you wanted to have sex with someone all you had to say was, "Lets go down to the two-headed tree?" and it was on. Grownups didn't know about the two-headed tree it was an exclusive secret of the neighborhood kids and we managed to keep it that way. I have akways been proud of the fact that I was exposed to sex with both genders early and that it was such a fun and meaninful experience. I was never forced into having sex it was always consensual and exciting. As kids we could get away with havung sex anywhere and we did.
As a young man I realized that religion would never accept me as a gay man. As a gay Black American I realized that christianity had been corrupted to justify enslavement of my ancestors by men assuming they were divinely entitled as racially superior in the eyes if God. But I did not need religion if anything it needed me. From that day early in my twenties I decided that unless all religions changed their sacred bibles to include specific language accepting of gay men, deleting or revising any language that might be interpreted as homophobic I should not support them in any way. Sice that was clearly not going to happen I accepted religion as my close enemy vowing to live as an example of its glorious alternative. At 55 I am even stronger in that conviction. As a gay, black man I could no sooner support religion than I could the Klan!
Christianity was the brutal foundation of slavery in America. No intelligent black man can ignore that fact. Religion was used as double-edged sword to brainwash black people into a dumb submission which appeared to make racial superiority ligitimate... Moving forward in a country that has not reconciled either its racial or religious problems has compelled me to find an alternative means to understand god and my purpose within creation. My sexual orientation factors as a common denominator with other defining aspects of my character subordinate to the numerator of manhood.
It is in the early years of our manhood when most of us are first challenged to speak up or hide. For as men we suddenly have the ability truly own those aspects of our makeup which distuguish us from others of our kind. While ownership of ones homosexuality is not unique it nonetheless conveys the confidence required should it becone necessary to defend ones manhood and what is a man if he cannot defend himself and the ideals he holds to be true. First let him be certain his ideals are righteous and harnless to all men. The pressure to conform to a culture of dysfunctional self-denial is an unfortunate by-product of religion. It takes a strong man to be gay because it takes a srong man to be a man...
I was nearly married to a woman in college. My college sweetheart whom I had grown up with was also a sweet-heart of my fraternity while I pledged. Ours eas a natural sexual and intellectual alattraction. She was not the first woman with whom I fell in love but ours was the first time I really understood the purpose, blessing and committment of love.
TO
BE CONTINUED…
