What it feels like...

Weekly column (11/27/05): “Just because I shook your hand, doesn’t mean I’m having sex with you.”

I admit, I thought Queer as Folk was appalling, not just because it didn’t have any major black gay characters or even likable characters, it was the handling of gay sex, specifically Brian Kinney who gave sex addicts a bad name and still managed to keep a full time lucrative job. Nor was it the bad acting, over dramatic plots, or the wool Showtime tried to pull over my eyes to get me to believe that the most average looking gay men could live "seventies porn clichés" conviently dressed up in designer label outfits and trendy expensive background that smelled of Burberry cologne. Yeah right!! As much as gay and straight men alike would like to think the real world or their real life could be a porn movie, the odds of the pizza guy showing up at the door and letting you pay for it with your mouth; or the plumber who needs his equipment examined; or corny line like “your pants are unzipped” could lead to hot steamy sex was ridiculous. Some gay men think a handshake could lead to sex, I say more than often, misinterpreted body language often just leads to an awkward social moment.

Horny gay men would use anything to cruise. There’s the gay eye contact. There’s the gay licking of the lips. There’s the gay head nod. There’s the gay section of a train or bus. There’s the gay section of a public library. In gay life, there are too many sexual innuendo landmines, and if an unsuspecting innocent isn’t careful, he can find himself trying to get out of a bad seventies porn situation. I can’t count the times where I paid for a soft drink and had the cashier who I suspected was gay give me my change and then touch my hand too affectionately, or riding on a train and a simple smile at a stranger invites his lust and him getting off at my stop and trying to invite me home, or a head nod and eye contact on a Saturday night meant a “well dressed” guy grabbing his crotch and then pulling on his dick to show it to me. I had to think to myself, women don’t have to go through this shit. I mean that’s like sexual harassment. I know with gay man, I have to be very careful with my body, not just safe sex, but safe body language because a head nod for a regular stranger is just a greeting but to a gay man however innocent it can mean “I like to give you fellactio at the nearest public urinal.”

Just my luck my religious fanatic Grandma who refuses to acknowledge that I’m gay, decided to scooter herself into the twenty-first century by getting a computer. I remember her last technological achievement when she got a cordless phone with caller ID, call waiting and three-way. It took me a year of explaining before she finally got that when the phone beeped it didn’t mean that she had to keep returning it to the store because she thought it was defective. The beep meant someone else was calling. It took two years before she successfully was able properly work her three-way. My grandma was the type who VCR still blinked “12:00” o’clock, but the second she got a computer, she sent me the most disturbing email. The church decided to get their own website and their first agenda was “Protecting ignorant god fearing Christians from sick homosexual predators” aka “Exposing the homosexual agenda.”

In her email, Grandma explained that because I lived in the big city and was a good southern boy, I needed to know that there were sinners out there, recruiters, who preyed on unsuspecting virgins trying to turn them from the light and into their kinky beds. What grandma failed to realize, I was not only one of those homosexual recruiters with a kinky bed, shit, I taught the class and wrote the books.

What was most amazing about the website, it gave specific instructions on the “homosexual” handshake and its meaning. It explained, on casual introduction, the prospective recruit (palm facing) would be extended that homosexual hand, and upon touch, the homosexual using his gay wit will insert the “the three finger” lure. I thought that sounded hot. The homosexual then will extend his middle finger toward the tender area of his prospective’s palm. I loved the use of the word “tender” and middle finger which basically meant “fuck.” It is then explained that if the homosexual didn’t sense resistance, he would begin to tickle the inside of his prospective’s palm. Lastly, during the final downward motion of the handshake, the homosexual will either insert or receive the index finger, which meant he has decided who will be the “girl” when they meet later in a public toilet for sex. I guess the homosexual didn’t have an apartment or a couple of dollars for a bathhouse room or motel. I immediately emailed my Grandma back and told her thanks for the information and I will used it to my advantage to protect myself from the lurching homosexuals.

Same batman time, same batman gay club, the new Madonna song based seductively in the background, it was shirtless night at the local bar, I stood alone sipping my rum and coke trying my damnest to hold my stomach in and look sexy and comfortable and not like I was trying to hold on to a buttplug that was slipping out. He was a mature man, the sweaty, hairy, more than a little overweight, touchy and grabby type. He extended his hand out to me, as to greet and meet, I took it, and just like the pamphlet said it would happen, he first gave me his three fingers for insertion, then took my palm and with his middle finger his molested the tender center of my palm. I yanked my hand back. It wasn’t sexy.

I was speaking to a friend at the bar; my life is a less attractive and very gay version of “Cheers.” I guess I’m Frasier, the intellectual barfly with a pretentious heart. I was talking to a friend about the different types of handshakes. There were handshakes that grossed me out. I hated the tickling of the middle palm handshake because it felt like the person was trying to tickle my hand with his slimy tongue. It was gross. I also didn’t like gay men who extended the “limp wrist” handshake-- that basically said “I’m a lady” and a “bottom.”

There was also the “stalker” handshake. It’s the guy who wants to hold your hand for five or ten minutes. I remember this one guy who gave me the “stalker” handshake, grabbed my palm and placed it against his heart, and when I told him I had to leave the bar, he followed me. He was obviously one of those guys I knew I was going to have to outrun. It took four blocks, and I was wearing Nike tennis shoes, but he finally tired out.

I like the masculine gay handshake. I like when the two palms touch each other, and the part between the index finger and thumb gooses. I liked the firm shake, the immediate eye contact, and it’s not too long, but long enough to make lust simmering in my pants rise a little, as if to say, “your place or mine.” But of course, because I’m unapologetically gay, that scenario only works if the guy is “hot.”

In gay life, attraction definitely has to be part of the lure, but I’m sorry, I need more than just a head nod or a handshake. I need a decent greeting, a joke or two, flirting for at least ten minutes, some cocktails, a dinner and him having his own apartment and job. I stopped, like buying my liquor at gas stations, having sex in the back of cars, libraries and bookstores when I graduated college. It’s just tacky. I’m easy, but not that damn easy.

Episode 4: Ghetto Snob

Even in the ghetto where everyone was poor and struggling, there was pride. I remember having to hide our poverty. We got foodstamps like everybody else, but we could never let anyone see us spending them. In the ghetto it was only cool to have foodstamps if you didn’t need them and bought them from a crackhead starving her kids for her high. Our basic diet consisted of fried government cheese sandwiches but the brown wooden boxes would be destroyed immediately if we had company. We were what Chris Rock has termed “Ghetto Snobs.” The only time we got new clothes was for family functions, so that the other relatives wouldn’t think they we were charitable cases. It was all about not having anybody think they were better than our situation. We were dirt poor, electricity got cut off every other month, where I grew up eating just rice most days because it was the cheapest meal. There were a lot of people in the world who had better lives than we did. Every Fourth of July my uncle had a party at his house. My uncle lived in a nice suburb, and he had a large backyard with a swimming pool, and in every room there was a color television, and they had foreign things like decorative bathroom towels, floormats and a washing and drying inside their home. I thought my uncle’s house was the home of the future.  If we wanted to wash, we had to walk two miles pushing a grocery cart full of our stank clothes to the local washing-mart. If we couldn’t afford that, we often washed our clothes in the bathtub with the left over soap that got to small to hold with our fingers or clean the body properly. Those little soaps would be reused, put in a jar and collected like pennies until the jar was full and then when we were desperate and broke, that jar became our savor. It kept us honest. In America, if you’re poor, people pretty much considers it your fault. America hates poor people.

After the Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation, blacks went from slaves to second class citizens and were segregated into what would be known as the "ghetto." In the face of segregation, DC 's African Americans created a cohesive, self- sufficient community, one that helped insulate them from some of the system's worst rigors and insults. With its mix of black-owned businesses, newspapers, churches, and educational and civic institutions, many of them concentrated in the Shaw area around Howard University, DC was known among African Americans throughout the country for its rich intellectual and cultural life. The sumptuous Howard Theater, at the corner of 7th and T Streets, NW, the first legitimate theater for blacks in the nation, opened in 1910 and featured top musicians including Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstein and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as famous white big bands, such as Stan Kenton's. White audiences, attracted by these stars, came to the Howard, making it the only integrated theater in the city. But according to evidence recently discovered in the attic of an old school for African Americans on Capitol Hill, there had been African American theatrical performances in the city long before the advent of the Howard and the other commercial theaters and movie palaces of Shaw. But still, the black neighborhoods were considered the “ghetto.” It was because blacks were the poorest in the city. And if a black traveled outside his domain, he would be cheated like a second class citizen. Even the big stars who did crossover acts at white establishments were subjected to using backdoors, drinking from separate water fountains, and not being able to stay at the same in which they performed.

The idea came to me to sell my “life comic” was at a bar when I tried to figure how I was not going to have to get another 9-5. As I sipped my last rum and coke for the night, I scribbled on a paper napkin with a miniature pencil all the “legal” things I could do for money. I knew there was no way I could become a stripper, not just because I graduated college with three degrees or didn’t have the best body, but mostly because I didn’t have a freakishly large penis which was the requirement for all black male strippers.  I figured the only thing I was good at was telling a story, so I decided I would sell my individual funny stories. I also figured if gay men were willing to tip a man dollar just because he put on a dress and song an eighties Patti Labelle song, they would give money to anything. At the time, mostly because I was drunk I thought my idea was genius. When I sobered up the next day, I found the napkin in my pocket and remembered the ridiculous idea and immediately threw it in the trash. I had forgotten how incredibly insecure I was, but then I remembered the 2005 black gay pride in DC, I just self-published my first book “Who is Sean” and I brought 20 copies, along with a hundred flyers to pass out at the host hotel lobby, but instead, I kept my eager dream a prisoner in my head and book bag. I chickened out. I was terrified of the rejection. After I remembered my most spineless moment, I went to the trashcan and retrieved the balled up napkin with the insane idea. I was going to do it. I figured I had nothing to lose.

I don’t really enjoy going out anymore. My parti-boi experience used to be full of wild times and frivolous adventures. I took a good time and made it my job. I took the fun out. It’s only after I figure myself drunk enough, that meant I could no longer hear that voice in my head that constantly told me I was a loser, I would start going up to as many strangers as possible hoping for the change in their pocket.

A large emotional part of me hates it. It makes me feel like a hustler, or a common beggar. It makes me feel the lowest of the low like telemarketing. I was at the bar talking to a friend who was reading my latest edition when this girl who seemed interested in the laughs asked him what he was reading, so naturally I decided she might be a potential customer. I gave my usual sale pitch, “Do you have a dollar” and of she said she had money, so I told her about my life comic, that it was funny and sexy and she should definitely purchase. She gave me the most disgusting look, like I just pulled down my pants, squatted, shitted in my right hand a diarrhea mess and then tried to sell it to her. “That’s not romantic, that’s ghetto,” was what the bitch said. She was now a bitch. I just smiled and walked away. I really wanted to snatch that piece of weave that gotten loose from it tracks out of her head. I didn’t. It was part of the job. The humiliation was part of the job.

I decided to go downstairs and found a group of black men, mostly interested in the fact I don’t wear underwear. I knew I was really selling sex, but part of me liked to believe somebody like the damn column. This fat queen told me he would only purchase my hobby, if I danced sexy for him. I explained to him that I wasn’t a stripper, but a writer, but he promised to give me twenty dollars, so I found myself bending over and shaking my ass to Cyndi Lauper‘s “Girls just want to have fun.” As I walked home, counting all the crumbled dollar bills, I felt cheated how much work it took just to make forty three dollars. At my last job, that would’ve been two hours of work. But the truth, I really needed the money. I was staying with my ex, and he took care of the rent and food, but refused to pay for my entertainment: liquor, weed, clubbing, books, porn, etc…

Sha was my best girl friend on the planet and was coming into town. I was to meet her at the Union Station for lunch before she headed back to the Midwest I met Sha in Chicago when she was in art school. She was a very sexy and gorgeous girl. She actually came up to me at a gay bar, asked me if I wanted to hang out with her and a cute friend who liked me. I did. We’ve been friends ever since.

Sha graduated from art school with a degree in Merchandise. I thought she was going to become a buyer for a big department store; instead she did a 180 and became a stripper. I knew she had gotten into modeling, did some nude modeling, did some escorting, and some underground underground ghetto rap videos, but I thought that was until she graduated college. With her college degree, she decided she would make more money as a stripper. Within a year, she bought a Benz and three years later, she bought a house. Sha was the traveling type of stripper, and I didn’t even know there was such a thing. She did mostly upscale strip clubs in high profile cities or private parties mostly for rich athletes. Sha had a thing for aggressive, very dark skinned, sometimes violent linebackers like Terrell Owens. Of course he had to be married. She didn’t like unmarried men, said that unmarried men were always on a “save a ho” mission, and wanted to take her from her lucrative career as a stripper.

After a rough night, I had no desire to meet Sha for lunch at noon, but I made myself get up, because since we became adults with our own problems, we saw less of each other. I was happy that she was in DC, hadn’t seen her in a year, but talked to her on the phone at least twice a month. I was becoming concerned about her. She was drinking more, started doing ecstasy and other heavy drugs. She said she was in control, but I knew her life was full of emptiness which could mean danger. I didn’t mind the drugs and promiscuous sex, but only if she was a functional addict. Sha was always on the road and working herself silly trying to fill that emptiness. She was getting older and no longer the independent woman who didn’t need a man to be happy. She wouldn’t admit it, but for most of us after we turn twenty seven years old, we begin thinking about our happily ever after.

I met Sha at the American Restaurant at the Union Station. I immediately ordered a rum and coke to settle my stomach. It was so good to see her. It was the middle of fall, the temperature was just beginning to drop, the leaves had already fallen and thanksgiving was just a week away so that meant snow was coming soon. When I saw Sha she looked like a high class stripper more than ever. She wore a caramel waist length mink, but it was her long fake jet black fingernails decorated with diamonds that I noticed first, and then her long flowing honey blonde weaved hair, next her protruded cleavage in a tight fitted pink blouse, tight black jeans and four inch Fendi boots. For some reason strippers and “video hoes” really do love Fendi and Louis Vuitton. I told her she was paying for lunch.

As we sat down at the table, not much had changed since the last time we talked. She was still dating some football player, but this one she was trying to figure out if he was gay. Sha was always trying to figure out if one of her men were gay.

Before Sha could get too much into her life and make our two hour lunch date all about her, I quickly interrupted her and ask for fifteen minutes of my own time. I think that’s why some straight women get gay friends, so they can talk.

I told Sha about my new job, selling my “life comic” at the club, and how I hated it. I told her about that bitch that rejected me so rudely, and how some men think just because they gave a dollar they own you. I only told her about my night because I wanted to know how she being a professional stripper dealt with the hustle. I hated it. I hated asking people for money.

“It’s because you’re a ghetto snob” she said so matter of fact as she sipped her dirty gin martini. What the hell did that mean, I wanted to know. “You can’t accept that you’re poor. You quit you’re job. You lost your credit cards and checking account. Your back is against the wall and you can’t help it. And also, for the first time in your spoiled existence you have to work. And don’t tell me you’ve worked, because those jobs just paid you to show up. I mean really work.”

I knew she was right, my other jobs didn’t require me to do much, and it was mostly me pretending to do work. And my existence had been a little spoiled. I lived with men who took care of the rent and groceries and all my money went on my entertainment. But how would that make me a ghetto snob. “It’s your pride. You don’t want anybody thinking that they’re better or you still want to think you’re better than other people.”  She was right; I did at one time like to think that I was better than other people. It gave me joy. When you’ve been poor and hungry you’re entire life, and you finally get some money and moved up, it felt good to finally be able to look down on somebody instead of constantly being looked down on. Now I was back at the bottom.

“I can see it in your eyes, you’ve gotten desperate.” She was right, I wanted so bad to succeed as a writer. I feared I was going about it all wrong. I didn’t want people to look at me like a hustler, but more importantly I didn’t want for me to start looking at people like tricks. I hated money. I hated what people would do for money and I had to become one of those people if I was to survive.

“When I’m at work, I’m working. Everybody who comes into the club is a target, that’s why they are there. I go out with some of the guys who come into the club, mostly because it’s easier than explaining to strangers you meet at a bar what you do. The guys at the club know I’m a stripper. But when I’m at work, I’m there to make money. I have my quota in my head and I aim to fill it. That’s why I have a stripper name. When I’m at work I’m Almond, not Sha. It’s just a game. You want to win or lose? Fuck that hating bitch, she’s ghetto.” I knew if Sha had been there, she would’ve probably hit her.

“And when you’re poor, you have to be creative, you can’t be indecisive when it comes to being hungry, you eat or you starve. You’re a good person. But you have a dream and you’re spoiled which don’t help a black ghetto kid. Being spoiled or proud means failure because you will never ask for help. Don’t live in your head. And you’ve seen too many white sitcoms and you think you’re that character. Always remember you’re a black kid from the ghetto who by any means necessary is going to have to figure out how not to return. I’m glad you’re doing what you doing because it welcomes you to the real world. And what’s wrong with being a hustler.” I asked her if she cared what people thought about her. She asked me why I cared what people thought about me. She said she didn’t care because she knew her real friends. She grabbed my hand. “You betta bash mister head in now, and worry bout heaven lata.” she finally said with a huge explosion of laughter. I laughed too. I really loved that girl.

Episode 3:"Goddamn bitch set me up!" aka “Do you believe in second chances?”

On the streets when one is trying to score their high, he or she can never tell if it’s going to be the “good shit.”  Professional addicts sometimes smell for a potent stench; others look at the form in the light searching for texture or any impurities; others just trust their connection knowing the real test would be when they light up, sniff or inject the intoxicant. In 1990, as I watched the television like so many Americans that night and saw the once adored mayor of DC, Marion Barry, set ablaze his crack pipe, let grey smoke collect and then inhaled its soulful dance until his lungs, I knew for a second he thought to himself “this is some good shit.” And in that moment, even before the FBI busted into the room, if you could’ve frozen the frame you would’ve seen the fear in his eyes because he knew something was up, “Goddamn bitch set me up.” Every addicts knows that only the FBI and police have the really good pure shit, the type of shit busted off the drug smugglers from Mexico and Columbia before it hits the streets and diluted. The “good shit” that would piss off my drug dealing uncle when he found out about another "multi-million dollar" drug bust, he would curse “Goddamn pigs, that’s probably some good shit too, and all they going to do is catch more niggas with it, like luring a rat with cheese. Damn shame.”

A drunken friend at a bar told me, to understand the DC, one must understand Marion Barry. As a four-term mayor; civil rights activist; hero to the District's poor, black communities; tireless battler for District rights; his legacy was almost lost when he was convicted in the winter of 1990 for crack cocaine use and procession and sentenced to six months in prison. But the story wasn’t over, in 1994 after serving his prison term, Marion Barry ran for Mayor once again and won under the slogan “A city healed and On the move.” DC had to be the city of “hope” and “second chances” or incredibly stupid.

When I arrive to DC, I desperately needed a second chance. I completely fucked up my life. My friend Sha said that she felt in her soul that DC would be good for me, that if I stayed in Texas it would be my downfall. Yet, when I arrived in DC, I wondered if I could change my parti-boy ways. I wondered if could get a job and keep it. I was such an emotional mess. I didn’t know who I was. I was desperately trying to bring my life into focus. I needed to get in control of my body. I needed to get in control of my mind. I needed to get in control of my writing. I was trying to prepare myself for the transition. The transition to become somebody.

One of the first people I met at a bar was a drag queen named Bing. She told me, that if I wanted to, I could rule in DC. I didn’t want to rule DC. I no longer cared about being the hot boy or center of attention. I no longer cared if men wanted to sleep with me. I was over the “nightlife.” I had spent my entire youth chasing something that was never there, my ego. I wanted a life I felt I owned.

Two years later my life would be that like Marion Barry but not as public. I would quickly climb so high and then of my own doing, fall so low. At first DC accepted me with open arms, trusted me, and loved me as if I was one of their own. With DC, I began seeing myself, my potential. DC told me that I was sexy, intelligent and magnetic. Being from the South, nobody every told me I was anything but a potential problem. I started to believe all the sweet nothings DC was whispering in my ear. I started to believe I had real power, that I might have something to say and people would listen. With DC, I couldn’t easily blame it on the man, the system, or that it was a white man’s world, because DC was more than sixty percent Black. I’m not saying racism was dead in DC just that not as hostile and inconveniencing as it was in the South.

It was very easy to get a good job and I got one with a predominate black company. My boss loved me. So many men in DC wanted me. I felt like I was being pulled in so many directions. I had a whirlwind affair with a stripper but I never felt good enough for him. I had a whirlwind affair with fashion designer, but I always felt insecure around his bourgeois friends. I worked for a great company with prominent black intellectuals but I was always afraid of being found out a fraud. That I was still “field nigga” who somehow snuck in the house. I would see black gay men in DC hanging in their pretty circles, and I was on the inside. I had become one of the beautiful people like I’d seen with white people on television. Of course, I immediately rejected it. They told me I belonged, but I didn’t believe it. I decided to go back to what I knew. I was tired of trying to uphold an image in which I didn’t feel secure. I went back into my darkness, back with the drug addicts, alcoholics, aging drag queens and barflies, back to a life where it seem nobody escaped. One morning I woke up and decided to give in to my demons again. I didn’t think I was strong enough to fight anymore, so I quit my job, I quit everything. I couldn’t find a reason to fight. My first two years in DC I had proven everyone who didn't belive wrong and right. What I forgot to do was prove to myself. I had only myself to answer.

I’ve lived a lot of places in my life. And with each of those places, they seemed to have their own essence that was easily accessible, but with DC, I immediately found it elusive and a very complicated city. It could be ghetto, bourgeois, gentrified and unapologetically gay all in the same breath. I remember when I first got to DC; I noticed there was a liquor store and church on almost every corner. It was as if the sinners and saints were never too far from each other—that sinners could just as easily become saints and vice versa. And that was DC.

If Marion Barry after such national humiliation and assassination of his character could come back and reclaim himself, life and legacy, I knew anything was possible. I guess to understand DC was to understand Marion Barry. It was a city that I had no excuse not to do better with my life. If I was to fail in DC, it would be my failure, and something lacking in my soul that didn’t want happiness. I wanted to be happy.

I ended up going back to the “Lost” suburb for a second interview. It turned out the agency did send me to the right place. Funny, a black woman answered the door. I think the interview went well. The only problem, she wanted to check my references, call my old boss, and so it’s most likely I won't get the job. I’m not worry, because I still believe in second chances, even if I'm on my third, fourth and fifth. I will get mine.

Episode 2: Lost

 

The last time I found myself trying to explain Existentialism, I was in jail having been arrested for mistaken identity, and it was the old as dirt story that too many black men have experienced being at the wrong place and wrong time and in Texas. I was happy that I didn’t get shot. In jail, we were having to strip of our clothes, I can’t remember why, when the guy standing next to me noticed I had a great body, so ignoring the situation, he asked me if I was a personal trainer or dancer, I figured he meant stripper. I was not the least bit interested in discussing my diet secrets in jail, so I changed the subject. For some reason I was having an Albert Camus “Le Stranger” moment. I hadn’t read the book since high school, but in that exact moment, I remember the last chapter of the book. I turned to my new friend of circumstance, so that he could be with me in my moment about existentialism and explained that it was a philosophy that emphasized the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regarded the human existence as unexplainable, and stressed that freedom of choice and responsibility was the consequences of one's acts. He of course noticing I was dodging his sexual innuendo, mumbled under his breath “fucking faggot.” I just smiled, knowing that he just confirmed how “lost” I really felt.

The whole world knows Washington, DC as the capital of the United States, but the city did not exist when the US became a nation in 1789. It was never chartered, won in battle, stolen or admitted to the union like most states, because it wasn’t a state, more a federal district that hosted the city named after the first president. The District of Columbia and the city of Washington were coextensive which meant it had no say so its administration, no elected Senator or Representative in Congress, so for most practical purposes the federal government and city was to be considered the same entity.  In other words, it was some very complicated and emotionally charged mess that pissed off a lot of people. Kind of like myself.

It was a typical Wednesday night in the capital city, Black people liked to call it the “Chocolate City,” but with its very noticeable recent immigration of Latinos, DC was quickly becoming the “Salsa” city." The chocolate people were being out priced out of the city due to the recent gentrification by more prominent white gays and yuppies who were steadily buying out their ghetto shacks and replacing them with million dollar condos, strip malls, trendy clubs and restaurants. But like I said it was some very complicated and emotionally charged mess that pissed off a lot of people. Kind of like myself.

“Please feed the writer, no donation will be refused.”

Every Wednesday, I print out my weekly column then cut, staple and “Martha Stewart” it into sort of a readable booklet to entertain those on the toilet or be used as a distraction device for the early morning commute. That’s the one great thing about the city: people are always looking for a reason not to speak to each other. I like Wednesday nights because it’s free drink night at the local bar for an hour, and considering I’m often unemployed and broke, I like to kill two deadbeat birds with one stone, get drunk and make a little money. I figured a writer’s mind was a terrible thing to waste, and since no magazines, newspapers, or publishers were sending me a check anytime soon, I did what any starving artist would do, I whored myself on the streets.

To be honest, I didn’t make that much money, an average night was about twenty miserable dollars, and considering that I’m often unemployed, broke and an alcoholic, that’s only three cocktails if I tip. I hardly ever tip. I’m broke bitch.

“I’m not saying I’m a gold digger, but I aint messing with no broke niggas.” 

“Give me a dollar” was my only selling pitch, because I found it was easier to ask strangers up front for money than try to sell them anything. It diverts my true intentions, and if they say they don’t have a dollar, I don’t have to waste my time with a pathetic rehearsed pitch that I’m a struggling writer, am funny, will be famous one day or any of that bullshit you hear at every street corner in the capital city. I just have to make sure I don’t have on a shirt, have done my sit-ups and my green contacts sparkle in the light. If they say they don’t have the dollar, I also don’t have to waste the next five minutes flirting with old men who want to grab my waist, lick on my neck, or try to grab at my crotch. I don’t have to pretend like I like it for just one dollar. I must be the cheapest hooker in the business, shit, crackheads make more money than I do, but then again I’m selling my dream, so to a whore for attention was part of the deal.

“I so want you to succeed.” His name was Mike, he was more than a little overweight, he and Jabba the Hutt probably wore the same jeans size. I like Mike because he was a Negrophile, a barfly and every week he had a ten dollar bill to stuff down my pants. I knew he was in love with me, that five cocktail limit type of love, had been saying he was trying to lose weight so that he could be with me, but I was sure he said that to all the young black boys with flat stomachs and a nice dick print. I was always happy to see Mike, mostly because he gave me money with few complications. Hearing him say that he wanted me to succeed made me feel so good, because it was hard trying to hold on to a slippery dream at twenty-nine years old; and it was hard hustling the bar with my little column that I put together at home; and it was hard wearing my heart on my sleeves for every pervert just to try and look down my pants. I only did it because I got to be a writer every week, I got to live my dream, and until I was discovered by the “powers that be” that write checks, it was all I had to look forward to in life. So I hugged Mike, wrapped my skinny toned arms around his fat waist, and that’s when he whisper it in my ear again, “I so want you to succeed” but it didn’t sound so supportive anymore, but more suggestive and nasty, so he whispered it again to make sure I heard him, “I so want you to pee on me.” Needless to say, I let go of Mike’s fat nasty ass.

The next morning I decided that I needed a job. I was tired of trying to live outside the box. I changed my mind, I wanted the blue pill. I wanted to go back into the Matrix, didn’t care if it was all an illusion and evil robots were using my soul to wipe their asses. The last job I quit or got fired, I can never remember, I vowed to never return. I hated the politics of the 9-5. I hated having a boss. I hated the “good mornings” and fake smiles, and boredom of sitting in a cubicle with nothing to do but pretend like I had something to do. I hated it all, but I was broke and tired of trying to live outside the box. I decided to call one of the few Temp agencies I hadn’t fucked over with not showing up for an assignment.  I knew it wasn’t going to be easy getting a job with my “Temp Karma.” I was very surprised when I was scheduled for an interview the next day.

With my Temp Karma, I knew the job wouldn’t be what I wanted or convenient, actually it was a hour away from the city, I had to take the metro and a bus to get to it, but I was desperate, desperate for money, just needed a good two months of consistent work to get back on my feet, that is until I finished my novel and got that book deal that was going to save me from poverty. I followed the agency directions exactly, that’s why I found it odd that I ended up in the middle of a “Wisteria Lane” suburb. I was dealing with a hangover, so I told the bus driver to wake me up when I got to my stop, and when he yelled at me, I just grabbed my stuff and jumped off the bus, and I didn’t pay attention to my surroundings, so before I could focus, the bus had driven off and disappeared. I was left standing in the middle of nowhere. For the second time I was lost and having an exisentential breakdown.

I looked at the address on the paper and the street, and according to my scribbling, I was at the right place, but I couldn’t imagine why the Temp agency would send me to a house in the middle of the suburbs where it was obvious I was the only black person for at least twenty miles in any direction. I thought to myself if I should walk up to the “Leave it to Beaver” house and knock on the door, but if I had the wrong address and me being a black male from the city, who knew what might happen. I could've been arrested. Shit, I could've been shot. It was at that moment standing in the middle of the street, in the middle of nowhere, with only a transfer to get back home, with no cellphone, no friendly faces, that I realize how screwed up was my life. And it was so damn quiet. I couldn’t’ understand why the suburbs had to be so damn quiet. I could hear myself breath. It was like that Television show “Lost” I never watched, with all those people trapped on that island located somewhere in Hawaii, they weren’t only lost because they plane crashed away from civilization but they were also lost in their former lives. It was that deep. I was not only lost because I was unfamiliar with my surroundings, I was lost in my life. I was truly directionless and had very little to get out of it. I had no credit, checking account, job, cell phone, good name, friends, nothing. All I had left in the world was my hustle, my ability to think on my feet and not starve. I wondered for long will I be able to get away with a flat stomach and youthful smile. I had no connections, no god, no religion, and no organizations, just me. I was honestly and every since of the meaning “fucking lost.” I had become a stranger in my own strange land. I had been living in DC for over two years but had not one friend I could call and come get me. Shit, I didn’t even have a cellphone because I never paid the bill. I decided to wait. I decided to just stand still and wait. Someone or something had to show up. I knew if a bus dropped me off, another would have to come and pick me up. I waited for two hours and then it started to rain. Motherfucker!!!

Episode 1: Runaway Slave

Runaway Slave

I wonder if the Underground Railroad had a first class section and served cocktails. I mean if I’m running from my white angry Master all barefoot and sweaty, I’m going to need something to calm my nerves like a cold vodka on ice with a twist of lemon and the rim coated with sugar. Maybe more slaves would’ve ran away if the advertisement for Harriet Tubman’s express to freedom would’ve looked like the Loveboat, where Isaac Washington is all smiles shaking up cosmopolitans and fruity drinks with an umbrella. I see it now, “get away with Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad, where slaves go wild.” And Harriet Tubman is in a bikini kissing another slave girl flashing her jungle breasts; and in the background dark skin black men in Gucci sunshades lay seductively in the sun with their six packs and straw skirts revealing a soulful love and beat that couldn’t be refused. I would defiantly runaway to that promised land!

My arrival to DC was as much unwanted as the runaway or abandoned slaves who began flooding the District once the Civil War began. By the time it ended in 1865, as many as 40,000 African Americans had arrived in Washington. Known as "contrabands," those runaway or abandoned slaves came to Washington DC seeking freedom. They weren’t exactly welcomed, many people thought the new arrivals should be returned to their owners, but an 1862 law abolishing slavery in the District and providing compensation for city slave owners made that issue moot.

I came to live with my ex, who just recently relocated to the capital and the last time I saw Edgar, he flipped me off as I boarded the airplane to head back home to Texas. Our relationship didn’t end on a good note. When I boarded that plane, I was so sure I’d never see that lazy bastard again in my life and I’m sure he felt relieved that he wouldn’t have to listen to anymore of my sobb stories about my mother abandoning me when I was eight and how much I hated my family. We were finally free of each other, so he gave me the finger, as if to say, I hope your plane crashes. But my plane didn’t crash, nor would that not be the last time we would see each other. When I got back to Texas, he was the first person I called. I missed his insanity, like when he would find a condom wrapper in the trash, how he would flip out and start throwing furniture. It was amazing seeing a person who usually was so calm and quiet get so damn angry. I would immediately want to make love to him on the dirty floor. I was a drama freak like that.

Going back to Texas was a mistake. Going back to live with my once ex-boyfriend and mentor was definitely a mistake. He used to be so in love with me, when I was nineteen years old, but I’d gotten older, was twenty five years old, and he had some eighteen year old “boy toy” staying with him. I was jealous because I was no longer the smell of spoil milk on my mama’s tit, but the rotting stench of cum and simmering rum. I also felt my relationship with him was just a fetish and I actually loved that bastard.

I arrived to DC on a Greyhound bus, it took 46 hours. It wasn’t that bad, with three one liter bottle of Bacardi Coco rum and a twenty dollar bag of weed that I lit up at every rest stop, I was drunk and high the entire trip.  I met this hot guy in Louisiana, he’d just been release from prison, was going up to Richmondto stay with a girlfriend, I let him suck my dick under the covers at the back of the bus. Gay men always cruise the back of the bus. I guess if Rosa Park was a gay man we black folks still be second class citizens. I tried to reflect on my life during my 46 hour trip. I was not only looking for a better life, but also revenge. Everyone in my life had given up on me. My older sister called me a “common nigga” that would probably end up found dead in an alley or dying in the hospital from AIDS.

But everyone was right, I had become a loser. I ruined everything in my life: credit, checking account, job references and friends. Nobody invited me to parties anymore. All my friends when they would see me out at the club either snubbed me or pitied me. I was no longer the designer label, American express carrying, Volkswagen driving, gym obsessed punk I had been since I was twenty two years old. Life had broken my heart, so I became the cheap box wine drinking, Wal-Mart shopping, unemployed hustler, bus card carrying, sex addict with a don’t give a damn attitude. I didn’t care those materialistic bastards didn’t want me in their plastic friendship circle anymore. I was better off without them. But that didn’t mean I was free.

I awoke. I had been trapped in Texas for two years, still no job, still no future, hoping that I would die somehow. I was twenty seven years old and drowning at the deepest and darkest part of the ocean. I awoke to screaming and it was Wesley, my ex-lover, mentor. I remember I was sipping cheap box wine from a supersized McDonald’s plastic cup and he was yelling at me. He was saying mean things. He was yelling at me that I was wasting my life, that I was stupid, lazy, and a drunk. He was yelling at me that I needed to get my shit together, that I couldn’t continue sleeping on his floor, and I was trifling, disgusting, and sad. I remember feeling powerless. I didn’t like his tone but I was trapped. He was all that I had left in the world. I remember thinking if I just sipped the cheap wine faster he would go away. His voice would silence. And I heard the lecture before, from family members, friends, and the liquor store owner. It went in one ear and out the other. But for the first time I couldn't ignore the obvious; maybe because he was so damn loud and dramatic. And it pissed me off. I felt like everyone in my life was bullying me into getting a life. They just wouldn’t let it go, that I didn’t care. I didn’t like being scolded like a child when I was a twenty seven year old man. The more I drank, the louder his voice got. I had an outer body experience. I saw myself, sipping that wine from the supersized McDonald’s cup and I looked so pathetic. I couldn’t imagine how my life had gone so wrong. I actually graduated from college with three degrees. So I stopped drinking long enough to tell him to shut the fuck up. I didn’t want to hear it, and if he was going to kick me out, he just needed to do it. He stopped yelling, but in an eerily calm voice he asked me, “What are you going to do with your life?”  I didn’t understand the question. “What would be your legacy?” He sounded so serious. It never dawned on me that I was going to have to do something with my life. I never thought farther than the next club, boy, liquor and drugs. I told him I was going to be a writer. I just wanted him to leave me alone so that I could drink and get drunk in peace. The truth, I’d been writing since I was eight years old, but never took it serious or thought I was good enough. But I knew from the deepest part of my soul that was drowning, I wanted to be a writer. I liked how it sounded. It felt free. It didn’t matter that I had notorious grammar. I was going to be a writer. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t published anything. It didn’t matter. I just knew I liked how the sound felt on my tongue and lips. It felt like a future, something that would save me from killing my miserable existence. And he laughed. My mentor laughed in my face. Who could blame him? I was a fucking loser. I was fucking liar. I had been sleeping on his floor for two years with no job. I hadn’t been sober in almost a year. I didn’t know anybody. I was a nappy headed kid from the ghetto. I was the quintessential imperfect dreamer. I lived in my head. So of course it seemed impossible. And when I sobered up the next day, it seemed ridiculous.  But I knew one thing, I was leaving Texas.

Edgar wasn’t happy about it. I basically had to beg him. I told him about my dream to become a writer. He figured it was just another scheme of mine, that I was a no good nigga, the type that didn’t want to work. I promised him I would get a job because the world hates lazy black men. He promised himself that he wouldn’t fall back in love with me.

On the bus to DC, I imagined those runway and abandoned slaves who escaped up north during the Civil War. The promised land didn’t welcome with open arms, humanity would have to be proven. Up north the work was still grueling and exhausting, they worked from dusk to dawn for 40 cents a day growing vegetables for the army and the city hospitals, cutting wood, and making clothes for themselves and the military. They lived in the worse conditions like rats and cockroaches because the city was unprepared to deal with so many poor black refugees. Many would die from lack of food, smallpox and exposure to the elements. Others died from contagious diseases that swept through the areas where they lived. They became second class citizens, a notch up from slavery, but not too far where suffering wasn’t still part of their reality. They sacrificed in the name of freedom. Charles Dickens said DC should be termed “the city of magnificent intentions.” I guess for me it was not about being free, but what I was going to do with my freedom. That’s the dream, to be able to own your life even if I knew that 90 percent of people born in poverty return to poverty. When I got to DC, got off the greyhound bus, stretched my arms and legs, I knew I had a dream, I wanted to be a writer, that’s what I’d decided to do with my freedom. I was going to tell the story.

If my life was a sitcom: The beginning

The Title: Living just enough for the city

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Theme song: Stevie Wonder’s “They say heaven is 10 zillion light years away"

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THE NARRATOR

Every time I turn on the television, somebody is looking for love. People on television lives are so perfect that they can shift the focus from just trying to survive. I’m not looking for love. I’m looking how to continue not fucking up my life. I feel like my dream is in the pawnshop and I’m an addict, so every time I have the money, I don’t get it out, I just buy more time, but time is slipping away, and if I don’t come up with the money, it will be gone forever. Time is not my friend anymore. I have bills, problems, drama, addiction, poverty and yet I’m still supposed to make stank shit into roses and I haven’t always made the best decisions.

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THE CITY

If DC was a color, what color would it be? Black. If DC was a gender, what gender would it be?Male. If DC was a personality, what type of personality would it be? Real.

I left Texas for the city of "Hope and Second Chances." I would find DC and I were a lot a like. DC, like me, wouldn’t be easy to love. On surface it seemed too hard, but playful, seemly dreaming its dream away but firmly holding on to hope. Its attitude was a hint of “just don’t give a damn” yet DC was very loyal. With DC, I would find that you just couldn’t just casually be, you had to invest and go below a sometimes distracting and threatening surface to get to the heartbeat. DC wasn’t immediately striking and gorgeous like Chicago or full of immediate possibility and adventure like New York. DC wasn’t for the lazy, with all the federal buildings, museums, landmarks, confusing streets and extensive Black history, one had to study DC, not just casually peruse but digest its culture. DC,  like the slaves that migrated up north during the Civil War, was only for those willing to work three times as hard for their freedom.

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THE CHARACTERS

A sitcom can’t be complete without the characters. I have a very complicated life, full of very complicated people.

Me: My animal personality is the Monkey because I’m a fool for a laugh and love. Some would call me a hustler, others a sweetheart , some people think I’m brilliant others think I’m arrogant, mostly everybody wants to sleep or have slept with me. Personally, I can’t keep a job to save my life. I am also desperate and reluctant all in a blink of an eye. My love sign is Libra. I’m in my late twenties and a notorious former parti-boi trying to turn his once youthful nonchalance into something productive.

Edgar: His love sign is Leo and he believes that nobody loves like he loves. We have the type of up and down relationship that still hasn’t figured out how to end. I’m the villain in his story, the “no good nigga” he probably be better off without, but he loves me, can’t seem to let me go, and I can’t do the same. We’ve been together almost eight years considering the gay bashing, cheating, addiction and me running up all his credit cards.

Wesley: He's another former ex. His love sign is Virgo and he loves like it’s a procession. He is in his early forties but only dates young boys no older than twenty one years old. He’s a good friend, wants love, but only wants it in the right package. My favorite quote from him: “We all be in love if we accepted every fat, hairy, ugly bastard in the world.”

Sha: My favorite girl friend on the planet. She is a quick tempered stripper with a big heart. She’s a tough girl, been on her own for a long time. She’s the type of friend that if I ever got stranded on an island, I would want her there, becasue she would get us off that damn island. She is a survivor.

Ty: He is one of my favorite black gay male friends. With his flawless dreadlocks, he is like a house cat with an attitude, sometimes so cute you just want to snuggle up with him and then he gets to talking about oppression and the whitewashing of the music industry, how black people should be and then you want to smother him with a pillow. I love his mind. He’s very intelligent, not the typical young black angry man. He is also extremely loyal and supportive. I think he is going to be famous one day.

Ron: I've known him since dirt. His animal personality would be the snake. He has a PhD but quit his job when he turn thirty years old so that he could become a full time drug addict. He says he is happy, but I worry about him daily. Yet, some days I don’t care if he dies. He can be your best friend and in the next breath your worse enemy. He is extremely jealous of me.

Tony: He is a one night stand that wouldn't go away. His animal personality would be the wolf, because he is so unfairly seductive: a pretty masculine boy with a boy dick. He is a stripper by night and accountant by day, wants to open a shelter for children with HIV, a complete freak in bed but also an extreme control freak in life. I’ve been cheating on Tom with him for a year.

Sister: She is my second favorite female on the planet. She’s direct and ghetto, a former crack head and prostitute, her life changed after she found out she was pregnant. She is a great mother, but old demons won’t leave her alone.

Older sister: She’s the religious bible carrying and quoting fanatic judgmental freak. She will feed you and lecture you in the same breath.

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Welcome to my “so call life.”

a love affair with a misunderstood city and the man trying to figure himself out within it.

A dream a long time coming is here!!!

I've decided to change the direction of my blog. I will no longer ramble about my dick and ass or whatever gibberish that often comes to my chaotic and crazy mind, but do something more focus, that is deconstruct the city in which I live and learning to love, the city in which I like to think of as the city of "hope and second chances": Washington DC.

For the three people who read my blog, I hope you will continue to support, because I guarantee it will be worth it.

Holla,

Michael D. Whitley 

Every time you don't comment on my weblog, God kills a baby monkey!

Drag Queen shows are really common in the South, actually on any given night there may be some terrible drag queen performance, which used to piss me off because they took an hour away from dancing; however trite, they played a significant role in gay nightlife, spotlighting.

I called it the “ Drag Queen tipping psychology.” It was common knowledge that most people didn’t tip a drag queen because she was fabulous but to also steal seconds of her spotlight. There was definitely a way to tip a performing drag queen. Everyone had to see it. I didn’t just want to walk up and give him my dollar. I needed to be seen. I would even wait in line with all the other tippers so that everyone at the club would know I was there, see my outfit and think that I was cute. My entire purpose of tipping was getting in the drag queen’s spotlight just long enough to be seen, then have "the man in the dress" take my dollar with a smile, kiss me on my cheek so that everyone who would think that we were the best of friends, because if she was somebody for that second, I figured by the most casual association, that also made me somebody.

I understand that desperate need for attention, that’s why I have a blog. But every time I check to see if someone saw me, it’s like waiting for that important call and when you get home and check your messages, no one loves you. That’s what the “0 comments” on my weblog feel like. Why doesn’t anyone love me!!!! LOL

I know I’m not as popular as some of the other black gay men out there like Keith Boykin, Rod 2.0 or that Sex and the Second City urchin, but it got me to thinking, why do so many people leave comments on those websites. Most of the commentaries have nothing real to say. They either want to hate or congratulate. I think it’s the “drag queen tipping” psychology. They just want to be seen. Everybody wants to be seen at the hot spot. I found it the same with certain authors who came out with books in the summer of 2005. Most of the reviews I read, it was obvious most of those people never read the damn book.

I was really popular in high school and I know even the people who hate you, still want to be invited to your parties. Personally, I don’t give out too many compliments. I like to mean what I say, unless I’m trying to have sex with you, and then I lie. I know I go to those “hot” websites and post my comments not only because I have something to say, but I also hope someone notices my comment, think that I’m really smart or witty and acknowledge my infinite wisdom. And then I go back to my weblog where “0 comments” reminds me that I’m just another loser in the world. Or I get one reply to my blog and I get so fucking excited. I don’t care if it says “I’m going to kill you in your sleep motherfucker” at least my stalker cared enough to comment. I then hug the computer and make sure all my doors are locked. Maybe I should just dress up in a dress and sing a Toni Braxton song if I’m so desperate for attention, but I have really muscular arms and legs, I would look a hot mess like Wanda from Living Color.