Power Plays

He spoke of anger and isolation.

He thought perhaps his friends were right--that he blew things out of proportion, that he and not oppression was the problem.

"If you can take a dick, you can take a joke," --Anonymous Straight Man

He confessed finding no haven among gay friends who, largely, echoed the same clarion call of straight jokesters and jeerers to 'ligthen up.'

And perhaps he could lighten up, if he was not so confident that if he did, he would be destroyed. But he is smarter than that. He knows that his every breath and step and word is an act of defiance and challenge. His existence, his body is a realm of constantly contested space. These contests are (in no particular order):

• over whether he was born as he is or recruited;
• whether he deserves equal protection under the laws of his nation;
• whether he ought to enjoy the same liberties to the same extent as his straight fellows;
• whether he is a threat to our most cherished (?) social and cultural institutions;
• whether he should exist or been seen or heard at all....

But he is smarter than that. For he knows if he left the question of his personhood and individual liberty to straight people he would surely die. He would suffer cultural erasure, his name and body stricken from the course of history. Or perhaps he would simply be murdered.

So the only choice is to endure: to be as relentless as violence, relentless as fear, relentless as bigotry for they do not sleep. This is why he looks so tired.

But to be a tireless counter to violence and oppression is to be gnat swooping at the forehead of Goliath. It is to be a buzzkill. Because to be a tireless counter to violence and oppression is to never let us forget that there is always a choice to consent or to protest that same violence and oppression. Moreover, it is to remind us that we are all marked by our modes of seeing, being and knowing and there is no meridian separating ourselves from our culture.

There are no good people and there are no bad people. There are only those who participate. Sitting on the sidelines does not make us any less part of the game; abstinence offers us no spiritual absolution from the sins of our day.

'They need a course in gay politics,' he moaned. 'All they want is to be straight....'

Perhaps it was true that his less enlightened gay brethren, in the end, merely wanted to be straight. But first shouldn't we ask: if you are a gay person anywhere on the face of the planet, is wanting to be straight such a terrible thing?

There are a million things wrong with this proposition of course. A gay man 'wanting to be straight' has many meanings. However, this statement illustrates the way status is conflated with behavior in our society. Heterosexuality, and inversely homosexuality, describes behavior but both are perceived as status.

If to be straight is to not have to think about it, then a gay person 'wanting to be straight' at the most basic level means wanting that fearlessness, that unchallenged and assumed right to exist that gay people experience as straightness.

Indeed gay people everywhere might 'need' a course in politics but what balm could mere politics be to our individual and collective scars?

"...For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places]." --Ephesians 6:12

Ido not believe the answer to our problems, these are the problems of the day not just the gay ones, is in any sense political. Material changes in our society: in institutions, legal systems and norms reflect the desire to remove the visible barriers to a freer, more open, loving and equitable society. Recall: we do not wrestle with flesh and blood but with principalities, with the realm of the immaterial. It's easy to integrate your lunch counter, less so to integrate your mind.

The legal landscape alters according to who is in what office or who sits on the bench. The history of law, indeed of humankind, is as much progress as retrogression. Legal solutions are necessary but, by themselves, insufficient to change our world on the elemental level at which it needs changing.

Whether two gay men want to live in the suburbs, have a two car garage, a dishwasher and 2.5 children and live largely apolitical lives, is neither my business nor my concern.

Everyone deserves the lives they want. What is worrisome for me is that everyone, whether privileged or oppressed, is conditioned to respect the prevailing vector of power. What is worrisome for me is that I can be told by straight men and gay men to bend over for homophobia.

I am reminded of a story I heard from a straight friend whose brother who is gay.

Steve was hanging out with his fiancee's father in NYC. The father, from small town Kentucky, thought it cute to walk the streets of Chelsea and point out all the 'fags' to my friend. (As if it would be that difficult in any case.)

Now my friend, a straight man, nice guy, and with a gay brother, was offended but his future father-in-law persisted in his afternoon 'fag-spotting.'

'And what did you do?' I asked.

'I didn't do anything,' he said. 'I probably should have said something, right?'

If there is, as I am often told, some great arc of oppression with the multiply subordinated (the gay, the black, the female,) at some point on the extremities, then Steve, whether he wishes to be or not, is situated at its center.

Here is a white straight man,incensed by this narrative of abuse toward all gay people and his brother specifically, still paralyzed by a need to respect homophobia as 'culture' writ large.

If indeed Steve is at the center of the arc, what was he so afraid of?

The vague answer is: a confrontation. Like most civil people we are taught not to rock the boat. We are taught to respect culture, if that culture is violent, intolerant or greedy it is irrelevant.And no matter what face on the spinning coin of oppression we occupy (privilege or oppression), no matter what our intentions or our politics, we are taught to respect the prevailing vector of power.

We have all been very good students.

We're taught to respect big over small

male over female

rich over poor

white over black

straight over gay

bigotry over sensitivity, compassion, love and brotherhood.

In this opportunity for resistance, how could Steve, as a good student of culture, see love as a legitimate challenge to homophobia? How could any of us?

"...we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language...while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us." --Audre Lorde

It begins and ends with a choice of what to respect: love or fear, which is the opposite of love.

It was a hot day in June and I had taken him to the Long Island City waterfront. We looked across the East River as Manhattan glittered in the afternoon heat. I wanted to kiss him but there was a slightly overweight woman eating her lunch some fifty yards away who watched us very closely. And there were two construction workers about thirty yards away from us down the pier. And a woman pushing a stroller. And a group of co-workers chatting idly on the way back to the office. And a group of tourists taking pictures against the Manhattan skyline. And there were no shadows, no trees or shade to abscond to. Just the blue sky. And the bright sun.

And the woman eating lunch who watched us very closely. In that moment I too was paralyzed by my desire to show this man affection and my fear of what would happen if I did. Would the construction workers sneer, jeer? Would the lady confront us? Would all or any of them? Who else might see and be repulsed? Have their day ruined by two fags kissing on the waterfront in broad daylight? Who might perform their civic duty to police us? And would I be able to resist?

In the end I chose to respect love more than fear and kissed him. And that moment was heady and electric with danger, as most genuine moments of resistance, as many instances of gay life. To be gay is to live on the edge of so many knife-points, yet somehow have life retain its goodness.

In the end this is the only choice for all of us: that of love over fear. Many will laugh. This is because they have been good students, because they have learned that love is an inadequate challenge to nearly everything. And to the extent that they continue to teach these lessons to themselves and others, they will continue to be hemmed in by fear; there will be a bogeyman behind every door and there will be no escape.

Existence

I think I know what the problem is. The problem is: I'm suddenly this thing called a 'black gay man' and this doesn't seem like it should be news but it is and that is the problem.

Theproblem is that I do not exist. This is confusing. I understand. I was confused. For a while at least.

But how can that which does not exist express?

How indeed?

Let's call me a specter, rather, an optical illusion: that trick of light that exists only when we experience it.

That is what I am--now you see me; now you don't. Now I see me; now I don't.

I am as invisible to myself as I am to you.

Briefly consider a moment: a thing which does not exist which cannot see itself and cannot be seen until it is experienced.

And then you would not need to ask me questions because then you would know what it is to be me.

I will put it to you again: black gay man. If you cannot conceive of such a thing, I do not blame you. It has taken me close to 30 years to arrive at what a black man is; it may take me another 30 years to arrive at what a gay man is.

Maybe when I am 90 I will arrive at what a black gay man is, an exquisite union that is like Kool Aid perfectly mixed, and look back from that hill at life seeing all that I only glimpsed or vaguely understood, guessed at or imagined.

I will put it to you a third time: black gay man. Have you seen one? Did you take a picture? Get an autograph? Did you commemorate this encounter? If yours is an untrained eye you may not likely see one again.

Is a black gay man your friend? Really? Your brother, cousin, son, uncle, nephew or grandson? What is the shape and texture of his life? Have you bothered to ask? Have you stopped to wonder? Or are you busy being an accomplice to his (en)forced invisibility at funerals, family reunions and church homecomings? Muttering 'there's no such thing as ghosts,' as you blankly ask what he's been up to?

Is a black gay man your lover? Was he a black gay man when you met him? Before or after you first made love?

Black gay man. Say it aloud. Hold it in your mouth. Swish it around like listerene until it burns you with its acid specificity.

If it feels like you are being beaten over the head its because you are. It's only fair. I am beaten over the head with Helzberg diamonds and sacred straight marriages. I am beaten over the head with gay as deviancy, disease, perversion or unfit to exist. I am beaten over the head with skinny melon breasted white women in Victoria's Secret as the gold standard of feminine beauty and pearly toothed muscle queens as the gay identity. I am beaten over the head with why my cell phone has an inadequate number of Gs and how now, for a limited time only, I can get two phones for the price of one!

I will beat you over the head with my gay blackness. I will hammer it into your skull like glowing metal. Because like a good person you have invited me into your mind and I have a small window in which to scratchitti my name in your grey matter so you do not forget me. This is our only chance.

Yes our.

For we are in this thing together.

My desire to be seen is not sufficient to make me appear to you.

You must make a choice. I am offering it to you now. And I am scared for you because you may not have this opportunity again.

Here goes.

I would like to know you. And I would like you to know me. We could share things: secret things, not-so-secret-things, jokes, recipes, meals, pieces of fruit. Perhaps we might become lovers; perhaps we might become friends. In either case we would both regain a sixpence of our humanity. For have all been robbed of this wealth, are being robbed of it everyday--not just me. If you did not know this, if this is news to you, then you are nearly bankrupt already and, perhaps, in more trouble than I.

But what I would like most from our acquaintance is for you to believe in me so that I may exist for you and you for me and thereby we may enrich each other. For what I crave most, as a starving man for a crust of bread, is a sense of reality.

There it ends.

You are blessed and cursed. Few are afforded this opportunity. Everything henceforward, everything proceeding from this moment is indisputably your choice.

Now you cannot say: 'I did not know,' 'I was never asked,' 'No one told me,' 'I have never seen.'

Many can say this though and relish the saying as an incantation to ward off the bogeymen.

This is understandable. There are many bogeymen. This is not, however, excusable.

I expect more from you. I have to. You are my only hope.

If you have the privilege (yes, privilege) of knowing or loving a black gay man, hug him. This is not therapy; it is called love.

When you hug him, hug him deeply--press yourself into his blackness. Do not be afraid. If you are lucky some of him will rub off on you. If he is lucky some of you will rub off on him. If we are all lucky this friction will ignite electric echoes of healing around the world.

If you have the privilege (yes, privilege) of knowing or loving a black gay man, if he is your friend and you are drinking beer or wine, if he is your lover and you are laying in the dark or it is Tuesday morning and he is patting himself down after a shower, look at him: and for no reason (or for every reason in the world) say 'Black is beautiful.' This is not therapy. It is called love.

He will laugh quizzically. Your job, friend or lover, is simply to smile broadly at him and let this truth wash over you like a tide.

He needs to hear this, ever if he doesn't know it;I know it and that is enough. Because for all the things he may have been beaten over the head with, he hasn't been beaten nearly enough with that.

Status Update from Goethe....

Until one is committed
There is hesitancy, the chance to draw back
Always ineffectiveness.


Concerning all acts of initiative (and Creation)
There is one elementary truth
The ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

That the moment that one definitely commits ones self
Then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one
That would never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision
Raising in one’s favor all manner
Of unforeseen incidents and meetings
And material assistance
Which no man could have dreamt
Would have come his way.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Mutations

it must be loneliness
that is the common thought
the suns and seasons of my regret
chasing themselves
like wild dogs

in the snow of my failure I
write my name
trace my path to bury

this is the dream I have
at day I see my face
rise and burn above me
diffuse & used up what
has all my life remained
half hidden half
seen

the face harbors
itself like a criminal
what damage it suffers
cannot be undone

Two Liberation Conversations

The topic was social justice. And whether the prophecy of real-estate developers Long Island City would ever manifest: if the neighborhood would indeed, come up.

We shrugged and decided in the end they would keep building half-million dollar condos there and everywhere whether the neighborhood in question had any redeeming qualities.

Half-million dollar condos are their own justification.

Is this what is meant by 'If you build it they will come?'

The topic was social justice.And whose backs you had to massage if you were a massage therapist who wanted a half-million dollar condo in Long Island City.

He told me a story of a classroom of budding massage therapists: many of them queer or black or brown or poor—all of them the members of the new underclass: overeducated and under-employed—and how each of them, for better or worse fancied themselves the masseur or masseuse of some old white lady from Park Avenue, a raisiny body smelling of Chanel No. 5 and talcum powder.

She walks the dog each morning and makes polite conversation with the doorman, who is a nice doorman in spite of his saucy Latino patois. Her conversations with the doorman who brings her mangoes sometimes means that she 'doesn't have a problem with them' and thinks 'they're great' and wouldn't mind giving them amnesty if 'they'' all became nice doormen like 'oh-what-was-his-name?'

She and her husband--an investment banker named Bud would argue about it: amnesty, what the doorman's name was, whether the doorman was an illegal.

She never takes off her pearls for a massage. Being naked under the towel, simple black Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress draped someplace behind her, being here with someone nondescriptly clothed who was--well--middle class—she requires a badge of her identity. Her pearls always stays on.

This was who the budding massage therapists—all of them members of the new underclass—thought they had to work for in order to be successful.

Not successful. Put it baldly: rich.

To them wealth was a rose bush. Pretty to look at, painful to touch. They all thought about justice. They all had worked, were working or would work in non-profits with noble missions.
They all were...put it baldly: broke.

It is hard to be a thinking feeling person and not have a thorny relationship with wealth.
Often if you have wealth and you are a thinking feeling person you spend time feeling ashamed, denying you have it or pretending it doesn't matter.

Often if you don't have wealth and you are a thinking feeling person, you've probably never had it and spent your life beneath a penumbra of privation.

You develop a cynical attitude toward money because this is the intelligent attitude to have:but you still want it.

But you still don't want it because of the injustice, filth and waste often associated with it.

Sitting in a nondescript Long Island City bar drinking Miller High Life and musing about justice reminded me of undergrad and of a more imaginative self.The strategy at 18 or 21 was: subvert the dominant paradigm at all cost.That the dominant paradigm could be subverted was not an open question.

The epiphany at 27 or 30 was: get with the program; you are not a child; this is the way of the world; welcome to the jungle.

I expected to die this death.I just didn't expect to die it so soon.

I was reminded of another justice conversation I had had recently. With another liberal queer. In another nondescript bar.

I need to get new friends or drink faster.

The conversation spiraled like the curve of a nautilus shell, folding into a tighter and tighter coil.

I would always be among the most wretched of the earth as a gay black man and above me the yoke of oppression lightened in stair step fashion until one reached the plateau of the omniscient white straight male.

I remember stifling a yawn and thinking that this paradigm didn't reflect very inspired or imaginative thinking: that societies would forever be at tug of war with the whites/straights/moneyed/males having the upper-hand and at the opposite end of the rope everybody else heaving with all their might but nevertheless two tugs away from the mosh-pit of misery?

It was disheartening to hear this class of budding massage therapists—many of them queer or black or brown or poor—had hardly paused to consider a paradigm of wealth other than Park Avenue.

Somehow in this cosmic tug of war, we 'everybody elses' remain suspended in the moment just before that last great pull from the rearguard: muscles taut, teeth clenched, our heels carving canals in the soft lip of the pit.

But it never seems like we all put our backs into it. Not really.

We can only conceive of liberation in terms of oppression.If we are imprisoned in a dungeon with four walls and a door, what of creating another door? A 5th or 6th dimension which renders doors--and walls for that matter—useless? Growing new sets of arms, legs and heads, becoming revolutionary arachnids and Gorgons who laugh at chains and stockades?

We expect to subvert the institutions that oppress us by subscribing to a definition of power which only serves these institutions. We expect to respect (and thereby re-inscribe) the paradigms we fight against yet overcome them?

It does not serve a revolutionary to do or exchange power in a currency or on a marketplace not of his choosing; this is senseless.

Too often liberation has meant becoming conscious only to our oppressions and stopping short of our possibilities.What is worse is when oppressions are made to compete with one another for priority (?), as though one justified redress more than the other.

By the dawn of the 21st century one would hope we have deconstructed our oppressions to their lowest common denominator: we have all been hurt, hurt deeply.

Now may we begin?

Solutions? Anyone?

The principal thing to remember is: that we are the answer to our oppressions not merely an instance of them. I am the answer to racism and homophobia, much as I am marked by them. We are each the counter-voice, the counter-narrative, the counter-argument to those who would claim we do not exist, that we are no different, that our pain is imagined.

What each of us is not, however, is reducible to our individual or collective oppressions: to believe this is to validate the machinery that created niggers, faggots, cunts and others.

To create new languages, new tools, new weapons, new paradigms, new powers is to deconstruct the dungeon from within—to claw at rock and mortar for a purchase till our bloodied fingers pluck the first stone from the wall. From the space that opens, a sooty light pours into the dark.