What it feels like...

They were Gods.

I’m from Texas, some say the south, others it’s more southwestern, but it always felt southern to me. Wasn’t too far from Louisiana or  Alabama. Most of our family reunions took place in Mississippi or  Georgia. So I like to think of myself as a southern boy.

As the end of my twenties approaches, I like to revisit my youth in my mind. Sometimes I feel stuck there. When I came out, I was living in San Antonio, Texas, such a small city compared to where I’m living now, not so fast, it was slow as molasses. There weren’t many gay clubs, actually there was just one or two, the second one was not really gay but straight and gay. The gay club was called Papermoon, they since changed the name to what I can’t remember. I started going to Papermoon around age 15 and 16, I had a fake i.d. that said I was twenty two. Gay life sorta became my recluse. I was still in high school, I was still playing the role, I had the girlfriend, was on the soccer team, trying to pretend that I was perfect, that I was normal, like them. But on the weekend, I suddenly disappear from my friends, I had a new group of friends, and we would go to the gay club or the gay spots, and I would just feel at home. It wasn’t about sex, but a world I could control. I felt I had power in the gay life.

I eventually left San Antonio when I graduated high school. I thought I was heading to New York but the lack of a scholarship sent me to the University of Texasmy freshman year then on to University of Houston. I immediately loved Houston, mostly because there were more black people. And there was a black gay club. It was fascinating. I had never been to a black gay club.

I was in college, supposedly becoming my potential, supposedly studying to get a good job in corporate America and accumulate materialism, but none of that appealed to me. I never cared about the title or the degree. I wanted attention. That’s why I fell in love with the club. I think the club means something more down south than it does up north. Down south there aint much for a black gay boy too look up to, not good jobs, no room to exist. The club was identity. Who you were at the club, was how you defined your entire life. It didn’t matter what you did during the day, the night was the only thing that mattered. It was about your body, your face, your wardrobe. It didn’t matter if you charged, stole, robbed for it, prostituted for it. It only mattered if you served that night. It you served in that moment. Because the right outfit and attitude could make you a God.

I was just a simple southern boy growing up in Texas, and every Thursday, they would have the talent show and drag queen show at this bar called Rascals. I didn’t care how I came up with the five dollars to get in the club, but I knew I had to be there on Thursdays. It was more important than my mid-terms. Thursdays were like magic. I loved seeing the drag queens performed. They were like Gods. They got so much attention. I love tipping the drag queen, because for a couple of seconds I got to bask in her spotlight. It was what I craved. I wanted to be legendary, that’s what it was called in Texas, a person who will not be forgotten. Tommie Ross was legendary, Peaches was legendary, a hustler named David was legendary. People talked about him long after he died. They were gods. Everyone at the club knew them. It was our own world. The other world we just pretended. The other world we were just asleep. But when I was at the club, I could wake up. I could live.

I had decided around 25 or 26 that I wanted to be legendary. I was working some lame corporate job in Chicago and hated it. I only felt alive when I was at the club, so I decided that I was going to start my own magazine. So when I got laid off, finally, I embarked on the adventure. I didn’t know it was going to be so much work. I only got to the first issues and decided I didn’t want to do that. But I still wanted to be legendary. I wanted to do something the kids would remember. I just didn’t want to be another black fag in the club. I just didn’t want to die another black fag in the club. I guess the illusion had unraveled. The gods, they were just tragic fags. Without the lights and make-up and theatrics, they were sad. They were on drugs. They were often homeless. Even that hustler David, died alone from aids. I didn’t want to die another black fag who once danced on the floor of another closed black gay club.

I felt I was stuck in that world, maybe because I didn’t think I was good enough. I had been pretending, I had been lying for so long. It’s hard when the illusion unravels. It hard when you get to the club before it opens, and you see it just a rundown box, but the minutes the lights go down, and the music start pumping and the drinks start flowing, everyone becomes a star.

I wanted to be a god. Maybe because the night life was something I thought I control. I was young, attractive, had a great body, so many men wanted me, I could smile and get in the club free, I could dance until my shirt was soaked in sweat and they would watch me. I liked the attention. I craved the attention. I felt like a god. But in that other world, I was just a weak mortal. I had issues with my family. I hated my job. I was in a loveless relationship. I was constantly confused. So I kept rushing back to the club. they I kept rushing back to the alchohol. Reality is a bitch. I hated reality. We weren’t friends.

But gods are quickly forgotten when the religion changes, when the wind blows in the new seeds, because we all die.

yes I must go on, the rest of my life is waiting, and I will write books and some will be successful, I will buy a house and a nice car, I will get a pet, probably maintain a successful relationship, that’s because life changes. But it will not be like my youth, not the same passion, not that intensity, when life was fucking selfish before I knew the world didn’t revolve around me.

maybe that’s why we protect the young, because we are really protecting the memory of our own youth.

when I die, hopefully too many years from now, I want my last thought be of me dancing on the floor, when I was young, and they watched, and I was god.

let go

i found this poem in back of an old toni morrison book i decided to reread yesterday. i thought it was good, so decieded to post it on my blog

he says he loves me

intellectually

i know he is lying

i know trees spring from seends

islands rise from the oceans

so how can the earth spin as speeds unimaginable

and i stand so still

i can't love, not enough yet

i can't see more than five minutes before me

wenesday nights it shirtless night and then its hangover mondays

i want to get off this ride but exit seems so dark

don't believe in the happyily ever after

stopping feels like falling off a cliff

i got too high, literally

I want to be in love, but i still want to have fun

please youth, let me go

let this face age, let my body limber, let them not want me anymore

please youth, let me go

let me change my mind, let me hate the loudness, let it slow down

please youth, let me go

i got things to do

with this life

Why I hate Frank Leon Roberts

Well, hate is a strong word. I was reading the Keith Boykin website, and on the side he had something about Frank Leon Roberts, and then I get my latest issue of Clikque and of course again, it’s something about Frank Leon Roberts, and suddenly I feel this intense heat in the pit of my stomach, and I want to tear up the Clikque magazine, and I quickly click off the Boykin website.

I was talking to my friend the other day, and he’s on the Frank Leon Roberts’ fanlist, just because he is a fucking PhD student at NYU and some ball kid, I’m suppose to be impressed. And that’s all they say, they don’t talk about his work, or his ideas, like with Keith Boykin its all about the fact he went to Harvard and worked in the White House, and like some stupid nigga, I’m suppose to be impressed. I’m supposed to care, when he really aint saying nothing that hasn’t already been said. He is just milking current events. Getting rich off the “down low.” The only time I was impressed with Keith Boykin was when he went after homophobic black ministers and tried to out them. That was impressive, that showed balls. Not many blacks or black gay men will go after the church. I

But back to FLR, I don’t really hate him, shit I don’t even know him, but every time that name is mentioned to me, I feel betrayed. That’s the exact word, betrayed. In clikque, they are going to have the nerve to say, “Imagine if you will, you’re a young male living in

New York City

. Each day offers the promise of unlimited opportunities. You could, as most young people would do, live life pretending that you are one of the beloved characters of Sex and the City or Noah’s Arc, placing love, drinks and partying above the possibility of utilizing your full potential on anything relevant or important. On the other hand, you could place fun and personal enjoyment on the back burner and use your time to pursue scholastics and involve yourself in projects that ultimately promote betterment of the community around you as well as society a whole. Which would you choose?”

That quote, if that wasn’t some of the most condescending, backhanded in the face, bullshit I have ever read. I was like, I fucking subscribe to Clikque, like that magazine aint nothing but a bunch of fluff and cute boys in between. They were totally pissing on their entire audience. I mean, did they have to raise one brother up, and then put the entire community down. Almost every week I give my twenty dollars to the club which keeps the damn community alive. It’s some bullshit.

But back to FLR, my friend says he is the next James Baldwin, I totally disagree and I am getting tired of being spoon fed my heroes without question. Some say I’m jealous, of course I am. I spent the greatest years of my life going to black prides, in the club, or whatever function they created, and now they are telling me I should stayed home and worked on my PhD. But they took my money. Bitches!

And it always seem like that there are those people, the popular kids. They try to make everyone feel inferior for not having their lives. Somewhat, if they were raised in a two parent home. My mother was a crackhead, but I did just fine. Somewhat, if they went to designer label colleges. I went to a public state school and I’m not starving. And it always seem like that there is that wall, that I’m never picked first, second, third, fourth and not even seventh sometimes, that I’m always at the back of the line. And that there is that wall, because those people always have their clikques, they always know each other, and they’ve chosen themselves, and because I’m lazy or nonchalant I’m just suppose to worship like some stupid sheep. They’ve chosen themselves.

But back to FLR, maybe one time I wanted to be him, but at 23 I quit grad school, spent my summer in

New York

partying my ass off, getting high and drinking until I passed out and tried to get to

Europe

. At 23, I lived in five major cities, and finally decided to settle in

Chicago

. At 23, I was going to raves, I went to every black gay pride that year, I danced, and sex was a sport.

Honestly, I never wanted to be FLR, I never had the discipline, I could never say no to a party or a pretty boy. I could never say no to the adventure. I always thought boys like FLR didn’t like me. But now that I’m 29, it pisses me off that someone would judge that I wasted my life. And it hurts, because sometimes I believe them.

Honestly it hurts, when I pick up a black gay author book, or see them in a magazine, and I say to myself that should be me, but they stayed home on those weekday and Saturday nights while I was out in the streets. So maybe I don’t hate FLR, maybe I hate myself.  Maybe I hate the wasted time, and all of the hangovers, all the one night stands that didn’t add up to anything, but I was young, and I don’t have any regrets. We choose different. Maybe I hate that I’m no longer the hot thing at the club. And it confuses me, because one day you’re on top, they are complimenting you, and you think your life is perfect because you got youth and looks, then the next day, the compliments stop, you just have looks, and you feel like a nobody.

The expectations are high for FLR, maybe he will meet them, we will see, for me, they bar is so law its buried under the floor, shit, if I don’t go to jail this year or get a job, I’m successful.

It isn’t hate, or regret, it’s that I need to accept myself. It only hurts if you believe them.

I am not a sheep. Now every time I see an article on FLR, or Fred Smith or Alphonso or any of those guys, I need to tell myself that I accept myself. I accept my mistakes. I accept that I chose differently, and someone else’s success doesn’t mean that I’m a failure. My time will come. Yet, it’s still hard being happy for your competition, even if I’m not playing the game.