Howdy,
I want to take a moment to thank all of your for supporting me for so long. My blog was recently named by WordPress as one of the Top 100 blogs to watch – which is really exciting and something that I couldn’t have done without you. I have decided to take this chance to break out into more interactive blogging. Take a moment and subscribe to my Twitter feed and get live updates about what is happening around me, what is happening on campus, and gossip that is too personal to share on the blog. It’s a new way to reach out and I hope everyone takes a moment to join me. Also, I have set up a YouTube account that I would love you all to subscribe too. As we move forward, I am going to favorite videos that I think you should watch, and make my own videos that may be too much to post here.
Again, thank you for following me and supporting me on Old Airport Road, and I hope you take a few moments to follow me into these new mediums.
S/Alexander
This is amazing. This is absolutely amazing. I love America and I love the internet.
It was Saturday morning and I was depressed. It was Saturday and it was my twenty-second birthday and I was overwhelmed at the prospect of having officially entered my early twenties alone. No more could I hide behind the mask of youth, or even the social convention of being twenty-one and foolish enough to think love wasn’t for me. The feeling of hopelessness was the perfect punctuation for a week that had seen the dissolving of some of my closest friendships. This wasn’t how I assumed it would be, and this wasn’t how I assumed I would feel, and I found myself itching for a distraction to take the edge off. I found one sitting in the Starbucks on Thayer Street while sharing a box of White Cheddar Cheese-Its with a girl I had known when I still cared about silly things like student government and making a difference. Pretty, and with a thick Indian accent, the girl had a no nonsense attitude that I had always found attractive. I had skipped her birthday a few weeks prior and so we sat at a small, round table in Starbucks to chat while I waited for a trolley that would take me to the Eastside of Providence.
The conversation itself started out pretty normal. Earlier that day I had received an e-mail from the University of Southern California, and they had officially accepted me into their graduate program with the promise of five full years of funding. So we spoke about graduate school for a while, the thesis that I was attempting to write, and spent some time discussing the few mutual friends that we had in common. She reads the blog religiously, and so we spent a considerable amount of time fleshing out the meaning for a few of my posts, with her throwing in anecdotes from her own life to back up her feelings about certain entries. Having exhausted all the usual topics of conversation, but neither one of us really wanting to get up from our small circular table, she asked, “How’s your love life?” I could feel my heart sorta thud in my chest and I responded with a line I stole from a sitcom years ago, “If it’s not dead, then it’s certainly on life support.”
“Well,” she said as she reached inside the red box for some more snacks, “tell me who your prospects are.”
I don’t usually share that information. Not for any particular reason save for the fact that when I say things, especially things in the realm of life or love, it tends to get repeated endlessly until the person I fancy is fully aware of my feelings – making things awkward. But there was something about the girl’s tone, and her Punjabi accent, that made me want to at least attempt an answer to her question. While the word prospects implied that these boys could serve the function of my boyfriend – I had learned that on a campus like Brown, where dating had died a slow and agonizing death long before I got here, dating was merely a term used to describe long-term hooking up. The word dating made people feel like more than whores to their own sexual needs, and that’s fine as long as its acknowledged. In my mind, my ideal prospect was a man that could satisfy me intellectually and/or physically for an amount of time (to be determined) where, when it ended, no one got hurt. Given my recent track record, the last part was especially important.
Who were my prospects?
The most obvious was the boy (man?) who had decided to tell me that he liked me while we fought over a text message I had sent him while I was drunk, essentially deriding him for a hook-up that I had heard about. He was offended and in the heat of the argument we confessed how we felt about each other without ever coming up with a plan as to how it should be dealt with. Prospect Two was a boy that I only ever got to see in short bursts, and only ever on his schedule, but who as much as told me that he liked me at a party two weeks ago. However, since then he hadn’t made any move towards anything other than friendship and I refuse – given my last attempt at playing the game of love – to put myself out there by being anymore direct than I need to be. There’s the robot I’ve wanted since Sophmore year but was too emotionally stunted to pick up any signals beyond the direct, but who tolerates my outburts in a way that implies he might be open to the possibility. And then there was the friend who acts like more than a friend – and whose behavior has confused me recently into thinking that there might be something there.
All of these boys were operating against the one from last semester who – like the final remnants of a bad cold – still tickled my throat every now and again.
My companion took this all in stride. She reached into the bag of tricks and pulled out a handful of snacks and began to chew them, looking at me and trying to think of something to say. “It reminds me of that thing Carrie said once on Sex and the City, about people always looking for things and not really recognizing that they have most of it.” I knew the episode she was referencing, and I knew the quote that she was attempting to pull out for this moment. Carrie was in between relationships and sat in her apartment, smoking a cigarette and staring at her laptop, and her internal monologue said something akin to, ”In New York, people are always looking for a job, an apartment, or a boyfriend. But why, if you have two, and they are fabulous, are you always hung up on the one you don’t have?”
Was there something to this? Had I missed an obvious Sex and the City reference that would have explained perfectly how I felt? I didn’t have to worry about a job. In the middle of a recession, when my friends were scrambling to find work that they could at least tolerate until the economy improved, I was being offered a chance to do research at one of the most impressive History Departments in the country and, for five years, receive a guaranteed paycheck. This is something that most anyone I knew would be insanely jealous of. The same luck had also affected my housing prospects. I didn’t have to worry about housing, for this year or next year, as I was still in school and housing was provided for me as long as I didn’t mind sharing a bathroom with people that I’d rather not have to walk in during the middle of the night. It would seem that the only part of the Carrie Bradshaw Axiom that I didn’t necessarily fulfill was the boyfriend part. Was that so much of a big deal?
We chatted for a few more moments before finally my ride pulled up in front of the Starbucks. She handed me the box of Cheese-Its and I hugged her close for a moment. She wished me a happy birthday and kissed my cheek, and I ran out of the coffee shop and just got to the trolley before the doors started to close. I swiped my Brown I.D. and took my seat at the back of the trolley. She was right, and I knew it. It was my birthday, and it may not have come with everything that I had hoped for – but when do we ever get everything we want in life. I was moving to Los Angeles next fall to start the next chapter of my life. I was going to be a scholar. I had my health and I had some friends that, despite anything, had stuck by me through everything. I reached inside the box of Cheese-Its and took out a big handful.
The boy thing? Well, that’d work itself out.
S/Alexander
Visiting my brother in jail has got to be one of the most ridiculous experiences of my life.
The response I get from people when I mention my brother is usually some variant of shock and wonder. People assume that someone as, well – let’s be blunt, gay as I am must have arrived on this planet fully formed and in the absense of any heterosexual, testosterone driven influences. While anyone who has ever spent time with me knows about my sister, and probably a good deal about my dog as well, my brother is just not one of the people in my life that breeds interesting stories. He has a few gems, and is occasionally good when I have to make a larger point about masculinity in general, but rarely can I bust him out during a lunch date. That isn’t to say that I don’t love him, or even like him, but it more than likely has something to do with our differences. It is hard for two brothers to really bond when one of them is playing football and fucking cheerleaders, and the other is teaching himself how to Vogue in the bathroom mirror. In situations such as this there tends to not be a lot of commonality to build a relationship upon.
However, even I never expected my brother to end up in jail. If anyone would have asked me what plans my brother had for after he graduated high school, I would have suggested that he was going to go to college, major in manipulation – with a minor in sex, and then go off and found a country where all the women had DD’s and college football was played all year. Instead, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of driving along with my cousins, grandmother, and sister to Bumblefuck, South Carolina to visit my only brother in jail. Everyone in the car was sharing little pearls of wisdom about what should or should not be discussed in front of the inmate, but at the time the only thing I could think about was that one episode of Oz I had seen where that guy had gotten beaten up and then plastered behind a wall to starve to death. While an interesting commentary on prison life, it probably wasn’t the thing to bring up given my audience.
We parked in the lot furthest from the front doors and walked as quickly as we could towards the visiting area. The distance from the parking lot to the checkpoint for the visiting area was more than a mile, and I couldn’t stop myself from using the time to fantasize about the closeted security guard that I imagined worked at the prison. He would see me in line and create a reason to pull me aside and acost me with his large, blistered hands. Afterwards we would talk about the dreams he had, dreams that never included being a correctional officer, and about how he wanted someone to spirit him away from this dusty town and promise him a better life. When we got to the check point, I was denied the strong touch of any uniformed offical – gay or straight – but my grandmother was almost forced to leave behind her walking cane – as if the guards suspected that the cane, as well as her oversized pocketbook and brown-tinted eyeglasses circa-1973, were a part of some elaborate McGyver style break-out she was planning. Eventually the entire clan was allowed into a waiting area where the furniture was made of of cheap metal and the walls were covered in what looked like the claw marks of a mental patient. The place lacked all of the fine accutrements I was expecting of a prison, my not knowing at the time that there was a difference between jail and prison and that my brother was, at the time, in jail.
After waiting for nearly forty-five minutes for the prisoners to be allowed on their side of the glass, I suddenly understood the urge to claw painted cement. Right before I had reached my wit’s end, but after I had lost two dollars trying to get myself an orange soda, my brother appeared behind the glass with other inmates. While everyone rushed up to the glass for a better look, and fought over the little black phone in order to speak the first words to him, I stood near the clawed cement wall with my sister and stared at what could only be described as the most unfortunate outfit I had ever seen.
My brother was, and has always been, a redhead. This meant that his color palet is severely limited when it came to “warm” colors such as reds, yellows, and especially oranges. When we were younger I would tease him over his red hair, sometimes going so far as to accidentally leave a red or orange sock in the mix when my mother washed his white clothes. When confronted I would cackle and run to my room, yelling behind the security of my locked door that the joke was always going to be on him, because he would always have red hair! But this time the joke didn’t seem that funny. The redish-orange tint of his hair and skin clashed entirely too much with his orange jumpsuit. My brother, who took such care later on in his life when it came to his clothing, was being forced to wear an orange onezie – and I was beginning to question the fairness of our judicial system.
“If only we had a needle and some threat…” my sister whispered. My cousins had all crowded around the glass and were howling out the details of a life that, even if I were in prison, was boring and ridiculously tedious.
“And a pair of scissors,” I whispered back
“We could sinch up the waist…” she suggested.
“Make it a little more form fitting.”
“We need to do something about the…”
“Sleeves? I say cut them off, he has the arms to pull it off.”
“But how white-trash is that? Cut off sleeves?”
“Grace, the woman over there just took her teeth out and set them on a napkin. Let’s not forget where we are.”
“But really? Are we going to hem the sleeve holes or are we gonna leave them raw?”
“If you want to hem the sleeves sure, but I’ll be working on the pants legs.”
“Oh shit! Capris?!” my sister exclaimed loud enough for visitors to turn and stare.
“Too baggy for good capris pants, but maybe some…”
“…Peddle pushers! Perfect, and it goes with the cut off sleeves…”
Eventually we had my brother in a pair of orange shorts, and had turned the upper portion of the jumpsuit into a pair of overalls. It was at that point we noticed my brother was calling us forward. There were only five minutes left for visitors and we could clearly see the guards, eager to break up these happy moments, counting the seconds until they could remove the prisoners. The family stood against the clawed walls and grace and I sat down together on the two small, metal stools that were placed in front of the glass. I held the phone so that we could both hear what he was going to say, and so that he could hear what we wanted to say. For a moment it was complete silence, and I felt an intimacy that I had never felt before with my sibblings. Suddenly I felt insanely guilty for the hour I had wasted making fun of his outfit when, on the other side of the glass, my brother must have been afraid and worried and nervous for us to see him like this. How could wehave been so selfish as to be so cavalier with the feelings of our own brother?
I wanted to tell him that I loved him. I wanted to tell him that even though I don’t pray, that I was praying for him. I wanted to know if anyone was being mean to him, or if I could send mail to anyone or call anyone for him. I wanted to know who I had to hurt to make all of this better and give him back his island and his women and his college football. My brother leaned closer to the glass, and my sister began to squeeze my knee. We both leaned forward as well, wondering what he was going to tell us, with only seconds until the guards seized him - hoping against hope for some words to assuage our guilt for not noticing his condition sooner.
“Yall, I ain’t never needed some fuckin’ pussy so bad in my LIFE!! God DAMN!”
And just like that, he threw his head back and holl’rd. The intercom buzzed and the guards flooded the room, rounding up the inmates and taking them back to their cells, and our family rushed to the glass around us, waving goodbye to my brother as they led him away. Meanwhile my sister and I sat still on our tiny metal stools – both of us too shocked to move – but knowing that this time, the joke was on us.
S/Alexander
The problem with loving your friends, and I mean really loving your friends, is that there are endless opportunities for your heart to get broken. And, however cute or clever or insanely obvious this might seem, it came as a profound realization one night – after I had decided not to drive my car into a concrete barrier.
The clock on the dash was inching towards one a.m., and I was crying too hard to see the road anymore. Deep sobs rumbled through my chest and it took everything in my power to keep my hands on the steering wheel and foot on the pedal. The yellow-colored lines that marked my lane had begun to blur together, and rather than pay attention to the wheel I began trying to focus my eyes in such a way as to untangle the lanes – the make it what it was when I was driving to instead of coming from. If I didn’t pull over I was going to die. I knew that. But I kept going because I didn’t know what I would do on the side of the road if I did pull over. Who would I call? Who would come? “You run your life by committee,” he had said – effectively tying my hands in this moment. Who would I call? No one. Who would come? It didn’t matter, because I couldn’t call anyone. The highway was empty and the lights that were supposed to shine over the median were black and the only thing teling me where I was, or what I was supposed to be doing, was the occasional sign glimpsed through tears and pointing the way towards Providence.
I had taken off my seatbelt when I noticed that the lights reflected odd patterns when I made the jump from lane to lane. I was trying to reach under my seat and feel for the lighter I had dropped when he told me that he didn’t trust me the same way that I had always trusted him. The lighter had slid under my seat and I had stared ahead and I couldn’t help but think that our entire friendship and somehow led to this great reveal. “Silly faggot, always feeling before thinking.” He didn’t trust me and never would and there was no point arguing because it is impossible to convince people to trust you – that much I at least agreed with. I could have sworn I heard the lighter slide down to where the break pedal was, but I couldn’t get there now and I was in too much of a rush to leave him, and his bags, and his baggage that I forgot to stop and get it before I got onto the highway. Now, thirty minutes later, I was dying for a cigarette and crying for a man that I had loved as a friend.
The problem with loving your friends, and I mean really loving your friends, is that there are endless opportunities for your heart to get broken.
I know that it is my fault. I put more stock in friendships than most anyone else, but that is just because of how I was raised to think about relationships in general. See, I never believed that a significant other would fill me the same way that I saw it fill other people. Even now, when I see couples that only hang out with one another I can’t help but feel as if I would be stiffled by that. Boyfriends are nice, and they serve a purpose, but I always knew I would never be one of those people. I chose to invest my love in my friends – building them up and supporting them and pushing them, all the while they were hopefully doing the same things for me. I brought them icecream when they were sad and they cried with me on the phone and, when things were rough, we would crawl into bed with one another and cuddle until things were better – or at least until we could laugh about whatever was wrong. I invested in friendships believing that, in the long run, friends were more likely to stick with you as you got older. Boyfriends (or girlfriends) only seemed transitory – momentary hiccups. Friends, best friends, were supposed to be forever.
At least, until I started to lose them.
I lost four of them last semester when it became clear that our friendship, or their friendship with me, was based more on proximity than on any true feelings of reciprocity. We still smile and laugh and stop on the street, but it has all become a little transparent. When I see them now I feel the strange urge to perform, as if the only thing they ever cared about was a story – and when I leave they sit in their common room and talk about how “crazy” I am while never bothering to enjoy the same banalities in me that I enjoyed in them.
I lost another at the end of last semester, when it became clear that our definiton of friendship was too different to ever be completely reconciled. While I believed in defending your friends to the end, even if it meant standing with them until the body is disposed of and the cops have left, their definition wasn’t nearly as strong. They thought that being a friend meant being a mirror to all the ugly things about yourself, while I thought – and still think – that friendship is more about helping your friend mend the ugly, and not just about pointing it out.
I lost one at the start of this semester. Brief and loving, he had become friends with the man he thought that I was going to turn into – as opposed to loving and supporting the man I already was. He refused to change his mind, and I refused to change myself, and I ended up breaking the heart of the only man I could ever say actually loved me – even if his version of “me” wasn’t real.
And three days ago, on the side of RI-146, I realized that I had just lost another one.
I completely missed the irony as I pulled the car into the breakdown lane and cut on my flashers. It was dark, and I could see the blinking lights illuminate, for what seemed like miles, the empty pavement stretching on behind me. I cut the car off and managed twenty seconds of silence before grasping at the steering wheel and crying. I cried for four years of delusion and four years of promise and for four years of being silly enough not to have not seen this coming. I cried because my sister had told me this would happen and I hadn’t believed her. I cried because life wasn’t fair and it wasn’t supposed to be like this and because I had already imagined the next ten years and it hadn’t included him saying what he said, telling me what he did, or my crying on the side of the road. I cried because of all the time I had invested, when I was only being tolerated.
I was crying because I thought that he had picked me. To be his friend or confidant or something, when, in reality, he hadn’t picked me at all. For anything.
I found my lighter under the passenger’s seat and I lit a cigarette, rolling down the window just enough to let the smoke escape. And I sat there, for what seemed like forever, and took deep drags until my lungs were filled with smoke and everything started to make sense again. Yeah, a crappy way to end four years. But the time hadn’t been wasted. I grew and evolved and became a better person while I knew him. It wasn’t a wasted four years, because I at least learned that I was capable of truly loving someone platonically and without expectation. I felt the smoke slide down my throat and I knew, in a moment, that it hadn’t all been in vain.
I eventually tossed my cigarette out the window, turned off the car’s emergency flashers, and steered the car back onto the road. You see, while the problem with loving your friends, and I mean really loving your friends, is the danger your heart is in, that doesn’t mean you stop loving them. In fact, you should love them harder – relishing the moments of true reciprocity. Because, much like any other relationship, loving your friends just requires you be more careful with whom you give your heart to.
S/Alexander
1:35pmGrace
um so mr. cooley just got hit by a car
1:35pmStefan
WTF?!?!!?!
was it mr. sherman?
1:36pmGrace
yeah… i mean hes ok. he rolled off the hood and walked away like a true crackhead lol um no stefan it was mr cooley if it was mr. sherman i would have said mr. sherman keep up lol
1:36pmStefan
no i asked if mr. sherman hit him with the car
1:37pmGrace
oh no mr. sherman stood and watched in horror just like me lol
1:37pmStefan
AHAHAHAHAHAHA
who was trying to kill mr. cooley?
1:37pmGrace
rita’s daughter lol
1:37pmStefan
and yall are just useless – no one wanted to shout a warning?
1:37pmGrace
u know rita wants that man dead lol
1:37pmStefan
haha yep
1:37pmGrace
shes gonna get that house if she has to kill for it
1:37pmStefan
rita aint playing
1:38pmGrace
and about shouting out concern no i was unable lol
im glad this happened actually because
i now know i can NEVER have a career where id have to react as soon as something like that happens cause i cant get over the shock quick enough
1:39pmStefan
so there goes ur dream of being a policeman?
1:40pmGrace
i just stood there like what the fuck just happened… lol when it first happened iwas like fuckkkk! let me get the dog! and then my mind was like WHY DO U NEED TO DOG GRACE!!! GET THE PHONE CALL SOMEONE!
1:40pmStefan
HAHAHAHAHA
1:40pmGrace
got the phone and called sara!!!
1:40pmStefan
our dog isnt lassie
WTF is Sara gonna do?
1:40pmGrace
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:40pmStefan
bitch isnt a medic
1:40pmGrace
i know!!!!!! right!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:40pmStefan
oh shit – theres a murderer in the house, let me call WYFF
1:41pmGrace
lmao!!!!
1:41pmStefan
its like HUH?
1:41pmGrace
even the killer would be like what????
1:41pmStefan
why are you calling carol goldsmith
1:41pmGrace
wyff? but why.. u have ample time to run to call 911 and ur going to call niegle and carol …
1:42pmStefan
so u called sara and got the dog? lol
alright, so u cant be trusted in an emergency
1:42pmGrace
no not at all lol
and sara was like grace… what do u want me to do… i was like i dont know call 911 i guess and she said grace baby why dont u do that… and then i got mad
by now my momma had caught wind of it shes hanging out her damn window screaming like a widow
1:43pmStefan
HAHAHA
1:43pmGrace
so how
has your day been
lol
S/Alexander
I am going to share something that only my best friend has ever seen from me: my Pandora Radio station
Modeled after Diana Ross, the station features disco, 80’s pop, and more than a few throwback gems from Motown’s golden years. I am, at this moment, dancing to Michael Jackson’s P.Y.T. Literally, every song on this station has been perfect for the last two hours, and I love you all enough to share it. I know that most of yall are young, hell – I am too, but I wanted to take a moment to allow yall the chance to educate yourself.
Seriously though, this shit is the jump.
S/Alexander
“At what point does a preference become a fetish?”
The question rolled past my lips without my even thinking, one of those not-so-rare moments when my mouth and brain refuse to work in sync. Had I uttered this anywhere, anytime other than at 2am on my favorite bench, with my favorite person, and my favorite brand of cigarettes than I would have been shit outta luck. It’s common knowledge that whenever I say anything catty, or the least bit bitchy, there are usually seven friends of the person being discussed hiding in trees and waiting to pounce, defend, and then Twitter off a message to let whomever I was dissing know that I had apparently started some shit.
“What do you mean?”
What I had meant to say, but had avoided out of some sense of human deceny was, “If there are some black-dick hungry bitches running around campus, fucking all the men of color, and calling it a ‘preference,’ did I have the right to say something about it?” We all have our kinks and preferences, both in and out of the bedroom, and I surely have done too much nasty shit in my life to ever judge anyone for anything that they may, or may not, be into – but surely this type of behavior crosses some sort of ethical boundary, right? The idea of some white boy, wrapped in his privlidge and status, being educated at one of the most liberal and progressive schools in the country, actively persuing gay black men was bothersome to me on a deep and profound level.
“I mean, that’s sort of fucked up, but why does it bother you?”
I mean, two consenting adults can pretty much do anything in my book as long as no one gets too hurt and there isn’t piss involved. But what does it say about our society that these types of white boys have arisen and no one is saying anything about it? It’s like I woke up one day and found these twinky white boys roaming the campus, fucking black men, and then retreating into the shadows. I’m not advocating that they should be taken outside the gates of the city and stoned to death, but I think that there should at least be a bigger conversation than the one taking place between the two guys on a bench at 2 o’clock in the morning.
I can understand if their sexual “preferences” and their sexual politics had somehow intersected at this moment, but I have actually spoken with some of these boys. They aren’t fucking men of color in order to make some larger point. They aren’t using their anuses to make some statement about interracial relationships in the 21st century. They aren’t “throwing their legs up to Jesus,” as my friend Mark says, in order to normalize shit. They don’t care about the “struggle” interracial couples of the next generation coming (cumming?) after them may have to suffer through, mostly because what they are doing isn’t a struggle at all. It is tolerated and acknowledged and somehow being legitimatated through our collective silence. The entire process has the stench of predatory exploitation of the ugliest kind and, worst of all, they are getting away with it - while any other race would have had to answer for their actions.
And if you happen to corner one of these tricks between orgasms, and have the balls to ask them about their “preference,” they don”t even acknowledge what they are doing. They explictly downplay the phenotypical differences. They speak in vague notions. They hint at a certain “attitude” or “swagger” that comes with men of color. They reference their lower-income status, the time they have spent in the hood, or the make-up of their high school, as if somehow these lived experiences make them less predators and more cultural anthropologists. And sometimes, when the white predator feels cornered, they have the audacity to act as if they weren’t even fucking someone of color, they were fucking someone with similar experiences. They are fucking men like themselves!
Denial apparently isn’t just a river in Egypt.
“Stefan, why are you upset? Is it because white men are going after black men, or is it because the black men are giving in?”
I had to stop for a moment. Who exactly was all this rage meant for? Did the white man bending over the black man deserve my disdain, or was I actually raging against that same black man who bent over so willingly? I mean, I know that gay black men aren’t walking around Brown University, tripping over uneven pavement, and landing atop white dicks – anymore than the white men on campus are actively setting traps to catch them (at least that I can prove). There has to be a moment where the mutual interests of both partners intersect and intercourse becomes a possibility. However, I refuse to believe that the points where these two interests meet are at the same level and with the same social positioning that would allow rational and thoughtful choice.
I mean, anyone who has ever tried to bust one out to gay porn, especially commercial sites such as SeanCody.com, can understand that society, especially gay society, pushes forth a specific asthetic that is first, and foremost, white. Gay black men, for instance, were not, in all likelyhood, jerking off to gay black men during their formative years. I remember being thirteen and being excited when one of the gay porn sites would feature anyone of color, let alone someone of my complexion. The porn industry isn’t to blame for this, as they are simply adopting a marketing strategy that has proven so effective in the mainstream media. While blacks can buy Pepsi sold by a white guy, they still aren’t quite sure that whites would buy that same Pepsi from a black person. Gay MoC have, since before they even stepped out of their closets, been inundated with advertising explictly pushing a white standard of beauty that is apparent to anyone who has ever picked up a magazine, turned on a television, or – dare I say it – orgasmed at their computer.
Society has, to a large extent, placed a premium on white beauty that has, for all intents and purposes, trickled down into gay society. Gay black men who haven’t had the opportunity to interact with other gay men, due to proximity or issues with their closet, don’t always understand how their reliance upon the media has created an idea of “attractiveness” within their conceptualizations of the gay community. And, speaking as a gay black man from the south, those conceptions were rarely anything other than white.
I am not upset at the Black or Latino boy who accepts the attention of the black-dick hungry bitch as a way of attaining what has been denied to them by their skin color. In fact, I feel sorry for them, and hope they realize that black or latino can be just as beautiful as white – an orgasm is a fucking orgasm, no matter the skin color of the one sucking you off. But as for the white boys who fuck black men without realizing that their positioning in this world has given them the ability to more easily ignore white conceptions of “attractive” in favor of the “exotic,” those white bitches who prey on black men that are still grappling with notions of white beauty, who exploit their ability to act with impunity in our society…
Well, that’s a different matter.
S/Alexander
I was sitting in the section of the Ratty known as the “gay cave,” dishing the dirth with three of the fiercest fags on campus, as well as one seriously fierce hag, when the conversation turned towards a mutual acquaintance that we all shared. We all had met him on several occasions, and he could be counted on for the awkward “Hello,” when the weather was nice and he was feeling generous. Otherwise, he pretty much had no dealings with me, or my friends.
From our vantage point we could see him perfectly, illuminated by the sunlight that was streaming into the cafeteria from the incredibly high windows. He was a gay athlete, that much we all knew, but he played one of those sports where the only reason you watch, if you watch at all, is to catch a glimpse of the uniforms that, at the same time, revealed too much/not enough of his chiseled physique. I knew him from a different context, but had recently learned that some things were better left for my diary – as the tales of Sophmore Year weren’t necessarily the best conversation fodder over lunch.
“I mean, who does he think he is? He has a serious attitude problem.”
“Really? He doesn’t even speak to me.”
“He doesn’t talk to me either, and I never see him at any parties.”
“Well,” I positied, “who the fuck does he talk to?”
“Please Stefan, that Queen doesn’t talk to anyone but the straight-acting gays.”
It was said with such a finality that, for a moment, I was stunnned into silence. Was that the case? I mean, I used to hang out with him when I was new to the scene. Was I straight acting gay? A quick look at my plum colored nails answered that questions before it was fully formed. But was he that exclusionary as to avoid contact with those of us who primp and pop and step to the beat of Beyonce? How could someone discriminate, especially within the community, against – as I have termed us – “Destiny’s Children?”
Athlete was soon joined at the table by Enigma, another gay that we all knew by name, if not by reputation, but one that none of us had had any interaction with for any considerable length of time. Considering how Athlete had evicerated Enigma’s heart, I was more interested in the fact that they were sitting together at all. But, I justified, maybe time simply healed this wound – Sophmore Year was a rough year for everybody, I assumed. They sat together, bathing in the dying sunlight and laughing like old chums, while we sat crouched in the “gay cave.” What stood out to me, and to the other gays at the table, was not what they were saying but how they were saying it. Their lack of hand gestures or bolsterous attitudes. They didn’t break into laughter the way we did. They didn’t mime their feelings or re-enact Janet Jackson dance moves. They certainly didn’t bust out into songs from Dreamgirls. For the ten minutes we watched them, neither one of them ever ’snapped for the kids.”
But if they weren’t socializing with us, who were they hanging out with? Between the four of us, I thought that we had covered every type of gay on campus. The social butterfly and the critical theory/music gay were sitting across from the activist gay and the, for lack of a better word, fabulous gay. We were different classes, different races, and were even spread out pretty evenly on and off-campus. This was not even taking into account the hag, who had spent more time in the LGBTQ Resource Center than I ever had. And, yet, there were two boys – sitting less than 100 yards away from us – that weren’t even guest starring in our lives. What was going on there? And, more importantly, when did I get classified as one of the “non-straight acting” gays? I mean, I fuck athlete for Christ-sakes. Something was amiss.
We didn’t linger too long on the topic, and we eventually turned towards more interesting (read: salacious) topics. The questions that this chance encounter had brought about were still unanswered, but I simply dismissed the entire episode as a coincidence – a hiccup in the fabric of the gay Matrix, a random Ratty encounter.
That was until last night. Sitting in the middle of the Gate, another eatery on campus, Mr. America walked into the room. His muscled chest visible through his wife-beater, and his sweatpants giving just hint of the body that laid underneath. A former boyfriend of the Athlete from the Ratty, I had met him last semester when the sight of his chiseled jaw and perfect hair had made my girlfriends swoon. I had taken not the least bit of satisfaction in pointing out to them that her preferred penis to pussy. Behind him trailed another gay – a cross country cyclist who spent his free time working with disabled children but, for all his good deeds, had never been anything but cold when it came to me. Without so much as a courtesy nod they walked past my table, got their food, and perched themselves in a corner to talk amongst themselves.
Suddenly what had seemed like an abberation in the Ratty had become a trend. Was there some secret, underground network of gay men at Brown University that I had somehow missed over the last four years? Had this cabal of men who, while not in the closet had kept their sexuality to themselves, been playing with only one another for this long without anyone noticing? I suppose the more important question was what stung me the most: had my friends and I been the victims of discrimination for the past four years without ever knowing it? The Athlete. Mr. America. The Cyclist. In an instant the pieces began to come together and the web of connections began to shine a bit brighter.
The Athlete was the key. He used to date both Enigma from the Ratty and Mr. America. Mr. America had accumulated the only gay in the theater scene who could, and during my Junior Year did, play a straight character with an conviction. The Drama King, Mr. America, and the Cyclist had also become really good friends with the recently out(ed) football player. This wasn’t counting the cohort of random gays I had encountered over the past year, including one this weekend who, after a cursory glance, promptly informed me that he was only interested in “dominant” types. At the time I had thought that this was his way of letting me know that he was merely a bottom, but looking back he might very well have been saying, “Sorry, you don’t run in my circle.”
To steal a line from Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t help but wonder if we were suddenly back in fifth grade. Had I stumbled upon a game of kickball, the sides already chosen, only to find myself placed on a team? Or was it past kickball at this point, and had a silent war been brewing that I had never even bothered to recognize? Is this what gay-life is going to be when I graduate, or had it always been this way and, in my own self-centeredness, I had somehow missed it. It seems that while I was trying to “make friends”, I was actually being forced to opperate within a bifurcated system that put the fags that could “pass” somewhere seperate from those of us that apparently couldn’t. What did that say about us? What did that say about them? And, as I am inherently selfish, what does it say about me that I had apparently missed this occurance.
Today I recieved my confirmation of this theory on the steps of the Student Center known as Faunce. The Athlete from the Ratty is throwing a birthday party on Friday, which also happens to be the same day that one of my “team-members” is throwing his birthday party. While my not getting an invite speaks of nothing but purposeful neglect, I was curious to know if any of my other peoples had been invited. I pulled the “Gay Godfather” to the side to ask if he had even heard about the party.
He hadn’t.
S/Alexander
