Bonsoir Paris!

Last night covered in the blanket of chill known as November and one of my favorite black scarves I stepped off a lift and into one of the most stunning sites natural eyes can capture. I stood on the second level of the Eiffel Tower and looked out at the City of Lights knowing fully in that moment how she was named. As aesthetically fantastic as a woman as she is by day, she is simply striking at night. I stood in awe. Far as the eye could see it, it was beautiful.

I didn’t know when I got on the plane a few days ago what it would mean for me to go to Paris, France. I only knew that for years it had been a place that I’d seen on television, in books and films and said I wanted to visit some day. Other than that and the opportunity to help a friend celebrate her 30th birthday I had not put much thought in what it meant for me to make the trek.

Now that I am home, in the comfort of my own home, in my room with the candle burning I have a better understanding of what it meant to me and for me.

After I arrived back home this evening I began plowing through my emails and found a reply from my mother to the email I sent her as soon as I found a computer in Paris to let her know that I’d arrived safely. In her note back to me she said that she was glad that I’d made it safely, to be careful and have a good time. She also shared, that years ago when she was in high school that she had studied French and always dreamed of going to Paris some day. I have the most wonderful mother. And at 54 she has never left the US and traveled the world, yet I know she would do anything in the world for me. Thinking of her email makes me want to cry and fulfill her dream.

Sunday night I ventured to the popular party for gay men of color. I admit I’d gone in hopes of seeing gorgeous black Frenchmen and what I saw was something more intriguing. Fellowship. The men of color party wasn’t dominated by black Frenchmen but was probably split equally between them and Arab men. For every 15 or 20 minutes of the typical American hip hop and dance music there was equal time allotted for more popular songs from Arab nations and the music for the most part was enjoyed by all. During one song I stood as a cultural observer, so enchanted, curious and pleased at what I saw in front of me. There was a long line of Arab men on the dance floor and another opposite of them – but still facing them. One line would dance and walk close to the other so that each dancer would be almost eye to eye with their counterpart in the other line and before they would get too close they would march backward to the beat. To see their movements, smiles and exaggerations was delight – because you could tell they were delighted. And also free. I have been to parties with gay black men, gay Latino men and Asian Pacific Islanders but never one heavily attended by Arab men. While we are all gay, there are nuances to our interactions, socialization, beliefs and even the way we party that draw on our ethnic heritage and traditions. I was happy to be a student.

I looked at Aziza once during the trip and couldn’t imagine anyone else sitting across from me. It was my first trip to Paris and I don’t think anyone else would have been as an appropriate companion than her. She and I talk about love, romance and living our truths in a way and with a frequency that I don’t think I do with anyone else. We have helped each other lick the wounds of loves hard lashes after being beaten and bathed each other with exciting words that make us tingle and giggle when romance has showered her rain upon us. Romance is usually on our tongues and Paris is the language.

It meant a lot for me to go to Paris. Now that I’m home it even means I must decide where I want to go next.

Cocoa, Candy & Contemplation

Most people use Halloween as an opportunity to put on their mask and present to the world whatever most ghoulish or delightful thing that their imagination can muster. It is a time for many to be seen temporarily as who they want to be in the moment, not necessarily who they are.

This year I chose to use Halloween as an opportunity to do just the opposite. I was invited by Cocoa Conservative to his Halloween party. I accepted not because I didn’t have anything else I could be doing on a Friday night but because I knew a social event at his house would be attended by those people who he really considers friends. For many years I have often thought that to be one of the best ways to unmask someone and see who they truly are – get a good look at their friends.

So tonight, I sat out with a mission and it was accomplished. As bare as I have ever seen him, there he was tonight. Mixing and mingling with party guests. I was most intrigued and ironically most engaged with the people there who seem to have known him the longest, the people from his hometown. They were good people and our interaction was upbeat and flowing. The same can be said about his two colleagues from work.

But on the other side of the room; there seemed to be the other side of him. A side I wasn’t really interested nor engaged with. Oddly, it was the group of Black gay men. I knew a few of the faces, only one name and not even he and I know each other so much on a more than cordial basis. There was no shade but there was no love.

Funny thing is that last night when I contemplated my friendship with Cocoa Conservative it was his straight side that I wondered if I’d mesh well with. I actually find that more comfortable and even more desirable.

The goal of my attendance of his party was to unmask him. I suppose I got two for one. In the end it seemed on several levels it also helped reveal more about me, who I am and how I see myself and others in the world.

Ultimately what I think saw though in one very concise thought is that he is just as human as I am and I am just as human as he is. Silly as it sounds, until I saw him without that mask on tonight, I don’t think I’d realized that before. That means a lot to me. As we do with Halloween candy, I’ll have to do with this, sit back and suck and chew on it for a while.

Wig Out!

It was the same feeling I experience after eating a new dish and immediately knowing that I like it yet not being able to immediately identify all of the ingredients that make it so tasty to me. The sounds, sights and feel of the Vineyard Theater production of Wig Out! written by Tarell Alvin McCraney were delicious and after savoring it in my mind I realized what that secret ingredient was that made it so good.

The cast, lighting, costumes, wigs and makeup and skilled direction are all notable but the ingredient that makes it so good is the script by McCraney that taps into the desire of all men and women to simply belong. It is a desire that transcends and enters into the psyche of people no matter who or where they are. It is the desire that is often the basis for love and hate, clarity and confusion. Everyone wants to belong – to something, some group, or sometimes just somebody. It is a difficult journey to navigate – finding at first, and maybe even all at once – who you are, where do you fit in the world, how do you fit in it and how to maintain that mental and physical positioning. The play explores each of these questions through its characters and even tinkers with the question of what does one do when the place they thought they fit, they don’t anymore. Where do you go then, a new world or just a new place in the old one?

While the playwright explores the idea of belonging in a world, a family and in ones own skin that are universal issues, he chooses to do so in this work in a world, family and in the skin people from an often underrepresented, marginalized, financially poor black gay co-culture that the mass of audiences of the show are unfamiliar. That is an additional unmistakable beauty of the production as a means to educate through art sense. It shines the light, if only briefly, on the humanness of us all regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and class. Wig Out! is a much welcomed and delicious body of work.

Around the World in a Day

There was a single moment of being present yesterday and I think that is where all of this begins. Or probably better for me to say, that is where all of this, the events, thoughts and feelings of the past little more than 24 hours becomes so vibrant with color that my eyes that see internally and externally I haven’t stopped moving and bouncing. For they have seen so much, so hurriedly.

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting on the eleventh floor of a building and found myself staring out the window at the dome of the Capitol Building. It was a beautiful afternoon and few clouds in the sky and it was a picturesque image – fit for any post card. As I sat there my eyes transfixed on the view of the Capitol Building the symbol and actual dwelling place of so much power of the country and influence on the entire world I heard stories from others in the room about the barriers faced by people with disabilities in their quest to find sustainable employment. Ignorance. Stigma. Inequity.

I have spent most of my civic life advocating broadly for people of color, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and college access for young people. It was the first time I’d really sat in a room when the disenfranchisement of people with disabilities had been the sole topic of discussion. At times I was dumbfounded. At times I was frustrated. At times I too was angry. The entire time I heard a whisper saying to me, “yes, this is for all of us.” For the root of what those advocates said were the barriers to people with disabilities gaining full equality and independence to in their communities – which is the same as everyone else’s neighborhood community – are the same things at the root of the disenfranchisement of every other group that is oppressed. The same as every other group that I have advocated with and for. Sadly, I know that it is some of the people that I have advocated with and for ‘our’ cause have contributed to the people with disabilities community issues and probably without ever even realizing it. We all have.

Staring at the cradle of law and power I wondered how and why it is sometimes not distributed equally and why in 2008 ignorance still lives in her prime while anti-oppression and global awareness and understanding that we are all one still lives in her infancy. Lord, I wish I knew.

There are a lot of things that I wish I knew, like why my day today was packed with moments that combine to make it a day I doubt I’ll forget.

This morning I woke up extra early so that I might arrive at an important 8:30am meeting in the middle of downtown before the rest of the participants would. Indeed, I did and it was productive meeting. It was held in at boardroom table in a pristine boardroom in a sharply remodeled office building with respected business men and women. I walked out at the end a colleague who seldom gives compliments paid me one. I smiled and dashed away.

When I returned to my desk there was a woman waiting to see me. She has been homeless for nearly three years, living on the streets and living with a mental health issue that requires some medication. She said that it was getting colder outside and she need housing before winter. She couldn’t live through another winter outdoors. Drop everything. Try to help. Call who I think I should call. Ask her and the people on the other end the questions I think I should ask. I asked one question. The answer left me stunned for a second. Only a second. I couldn’t visually react and just sitting there would get nothing accomplished.

All the rooms are full. Shelters are full. I learn that the agency that handles a particular type of housing voucher has just gotten to the applicants who submitted their forms and requests in 2002. This woman at my desk didn’t become homeless until 2006. We didn’t come to a final resolution today on her case but we did move closer to it. She left.

In minutes I threw on my suit jacket and dashed to a building so close to the White House many an elementary school student could jog to it from there and not be too winded. In this room I sat absorbing information from slides and speakers that reveal no matter how far we think our society has come, the truth is that children are being bullied, harassed and assaulted in schools for being or being perceived as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. The children. We must teach them now. I go back to work.

I toil through the rest of the work day and when I leave I call my mother. We speak. The economy is fracturing and I feel deeply. More than I right now, my mother truly feels it. I pray.

Before getting home I stop at the local grocery. As I walk home tired and pensive I look across the street and I see that rhythm. The rhythm in his walk distinguishes him from others. Then I see his backpack. That turns my smile into a frown and I turn my head, hoping that he hadn’t seen me. I knew what that walk down this street with that bag meant. But he did see me. I heard him call my name. He crossed to my side of the street.

He stood in front of me and smiled, Beauty. I hadn’t seen Beauty in literally a year. While I think about him on occasion, I don’t like to see him because if I don’t see him that means that he is staying out of trouble. If I do see him that means he is up to something he has no business being involved in and surely it makes me not want to be involved with him. But he smiles at me. He makes his long story short. It makes me sad. I met him in the fall several years ago. It is only in the fall that I see him. I wonder why that is. I will pray again that he gets better.

Finally I sit on my sofa, so much to think about from the day that I can’t think and I can only write. Until my phone rings.

It is Jimmy Jam and I’m surprised. Following our last exchange a week ago I certainly hadn’t expected to hear from him. The conversation started off smoothly. As it grew longer so did the distance that now temporarily divides the relationship that I have with my brother. I told him that we he said to me and about me hurt my feelings. He was unapologetic. He stood by what he said.

And I sit here on my sofa wondering about a lot of things. Praying that all things will work for the good of the Lord.

Thank God for Thunderstorms

That it is why God is so amazing.

Today I was walking through a valley and I wanted to cry and emote but the tears would not come. I could just feel them moving around inside of me.

I left work and went to the gym and a little less than two hours later I walked out and it had begun to drizzle. I got on the train and traveled through several underground stations. When the train left the final tunnel and we emerged in the night it was a full storm outside. Thunder and lightning. Wind and rain.

I couldn’t control my laughter. I smiled at the sky and at the God inside of me. I knew it was a blessing. For a few minutes I stood at the station waiting for the rain to calm a little. It toned down just a tad. And so I began walking home in the thunderstorm. I was getting soaked and it was wonderful.

As I walked I thanked God out loud for this storm. Once again, what I couldn’t do for myself – God did for me. The wonderful part about all the rain in the storms is that it cleanses the Earth and moves old things and debris away. The thunder and lightning are magnificent displays of power and beauty, force. The thunder roars, I am here. The lightning signals, I am the light.

I couldn’t cry today so God cried for me. He released the rain, the wind, the thunder and the lightning for me. The emotions I was feeling on the inside. He brought them out.

After the rain, the clouds go away. There are rainbows and sunshine. There is fresh air. There is a cleansed Earth and bodies. We are renewed.

All the way home, I praised God and prayed to God. Right now I feel like I’m going through a little storm but – this I know is true. When the storm is over, when the rain ceases, when the clouds roll away, when the lightning stops flashing – I and this Earth will be anew.

The Awakening

What surprises me is that I don’t remember the exact date or what I was wearing. I usually remember details like that about important events in my life. However, of that day, that moment, that experience in my life I mostly just remember how I felt. At first I was just so very tired, and my body was just so very heavy. With each step that I took, it was like I was carrying a thousand pounds of pain on my shoulders. When I reached the bedroom there was a shift and I was light as a feather. The weight of me, under me and over me disappeared and I fell to the bed effortlessly. Still. I lay still. I lay still, body motionless.

Then there was a tear. A single tear that unleashed and lest loose everything within the gates of my soul and spirit. A sound. A gasp for air. A sound and gasp for air that released what must have been all my years of pain. Nothing could stop the flood of tears. Nothing could quiet the sounds.

To my bedside came my mother. She lifted my limp body up into her arms and held me so close she could feel my heart beating as if I were once again a baby in her bosom. She rocked me back and forth, she rubbed my back. I could do nothing more but cry and moan. When I finally stopped crying she laid my body down on the bed and I went to sleep.

I have yet to wake. And there are times like today that I pray that there were arms that I could rest in like I did that day. So that I may cry and moan, so that I may be rocked to sleep. For in that, there would also be an awakening.

Thank You

The past few days, people have given me gifts. They have all come as a surprise and I am truly grateful for them. What a lot of people don’t know about me is that not only am I genuinely surprised when people give me gifts – but often times I am embarrassed by them and question how worthy I am of them. I have a tendency to think I should give more of myself.

Last night after being surprised with another early birthday gift I was completely overwhelmed, not only by the fact that someone had given me a gift, but because they were so thoughtful in choosing it. It was actually something I’d been thinking about buying for myself and hadn’t gotten around to it yet. It wasn’t on my priority list but I thought that it would simply be nice. And there, my friend and his boyfriend had bought it for me.

I didn’t know what to say other than thank you and I didn’t know what to do other than hug them. As I walked to the train heading home I was very quiet. When I got to the train station I asked God how on Earth could I say thank you. Thank you to the friends who just gave me gifts this week. Thank you to all the people who over the past year and simply in this lifetime had given me gifts, big or small, tangible or intangible. I just didn’t know how to say thank you – for everything. I didn’t know what I could give them in return.

It was in that same silence as I sat on the concrete bench that God spoke to me. He said so gently, “give back.” And so it is. That is how I say thank you. I continue to give hugs, kisses, encouraging words, helping hands, a shoulder to lean on, a chest to lay your head, an ear to listen, a voice to speak my truth so that others may connect, learn and be set free. That is how I say thank you.

Going to Be

For the last several days I have contemplated the intriguing evaluation language made famous by the Obama family, challenging us to look at the world as it is and then as it should be. I am three weeks, 21 days away from my next birthday. I am counting down the days until the big countdown begins. In 21 days I will be 29 and 12 months later, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I will be 30. In this moment in my life I am turning the Obama lens on myself. I am looking at myself as I am and simultaneously wondering about my future, myself as I should and I want to be.

It has taken me years to cross the hurdle of really knowing and understanding who I am and in the vague sense of adjectives and descriptions I have come to some conclusions about who I should and want to be. Now if I could just figure out how to get there. The life I’ve lived thus far has been just as much about time as it has been about preparation. I’ve been prepared to move to the next levels and phases at just the right time when opportunities have presented themselves for that movement.

Three weeks from the start of the countdown to my next numeric milestone I have questions about me and where and how I'm going there in this universe. Tonight I’ll pray about it before I go to bed. My life as it is and my life as it should be and making it happen.

Black Underwear

I decided sometime in June that I was going to make the switch. The plan is that by the end of the year with the exception of a couple of novelty ones I will only own black underwear. Briefs, boxer briefs and bikinis. All black.

I realized that when I wore black underwear that I felt more mature, confident and sexier. Along with that I also recognized that I just look damn good in them too. So, I began the hunt for a maker or makers of black underwear that suit my palette.

After searching for some that I thought were cute and affordable I decided on purchasing a few packs of Tommy Hilfiger black hip briefs and flag briefs. I loved them. I liked the cut, the look, the feel and the comfort – the price wasn’t bad either.

A week later I returned to my favorite retailer only to find that they had no more of the styles I wanted in my size or color. And so it began, weeks of waiting, going to other stories, unsuccessfully ordering them online, thinking I’d found them in other places only to be let down when they didn’t have my size either. But I believed.

I believed that I was going to get the underwear I wanted. I believed that somehow, some way I was going to walk in the store and there they would be – on a day I had it in my budget to buy more no less. I was going to feel mature, confident and sexy without the black underwear but damn it I wanted them! I didn’t know how I was going to get them but I knew that I would.

One day last week I finally found the time to put in a call to the department store near my job and remarkably for the first time I was actually able to speak to a manager on duty that I could query about the state of black underwear in the men’s department. He heard me out, apologized and said that they were on back order and that one day soon he expected them. It may have been lip service but it was better than the typical no answers I got from the floor staff.

The next day I was having a very rough day. I had been coming and going and nearly in a daze when that afternoon I stumbled into the department store and that is when it happened. It happened when I least expected it. Just yesterday the manager told me he didn’t know when my black underwear would be in but on that day as I approached the display I saw them. They were in my size. They were in the style and color I wanted. They were there. After a long and tiring day and over a month of waiting and wanting I was able to buy all the black underwear I could afford that day, which was more because I happened to have in my bag the store gift card that I’d gotten recently from my boss for a job well done. In life we must cherish even the small victories. I celebrated getting the underpants I wanted, when I usually celebrate getting into the underpants of someone I’ve wanted. Those black underwear made me happy. They also made me think about life in a general too.

I believed that I was going to get what I wanted. I went to that store and others actively searching for them. I picked up the phone and communicated my wants to someone who could do something about it. I followed up. I was persistent and consistent. In the end I was rewarded. I know for sure, this is also true about life’s other wants and goals.

Seven years ago today I moved to Washington, DC to attend graduate school. When I arrived I had enough money to pay my rent, $265 in cash and two interviews for part time jobs to get me through the school year and most importantly I cam here with the belief, hope and faith that I would do well and succeed. Today I have more blessings than I even imagined then. For that I am grateful.

There are still a lot more things that I want to accomplish, achieve, and still many steps for me to become the man I want to be. I believe that I can and will.

The quest for my black underwear was a good and timely reminder.

I love my underwear.

T.I. vs GOTV

I have seen two television shows run segments on the Hip Hop Caucus’ decision to use famed and sometimes troubled rap artist T.I. as their spokesperson for their 2008 get out the vote campaign.

These media outlets have taken shots at the organization and their choice of national spokesman because T.I. who has had run-ins with the law is actually not able to vote in the upcoming election. These half assed reports and the producers who allow them to take shots at T.I. and the Caucus are good examples of poor media and the most shallow of reporting jobs.

Rather than chide T.I. and the Caucus perhaps they could dig deeper and try to inform the public that it isn’t ironic that T.I. can’t vote and is urging others to do so, but that T.I. represents and extremely large number of American citizens who have been disenfranchised from the electoral system because of their past criminals records – so many of them being poor people and people of color. Yes, two groups who don’t sit in the producer or reporters chair often enough and thus we get shoddy pieces on television that boost stereotypes and border on racism that are being passed off as news stories.

It is historic fact that the laws prohibiting ex felons from voting expanded and began to be increasingly enforced after African American men were first given the right to vote. In Northern states the laws were put on the books mostly to decrease the number of poor people overall from voting. The trend to suppress the voices and the votes of poor people and racial and ethnic minorities continues.

The revolution won’t be televised because there are too many people running news rooms and television shows that are more inclined to cover stories on the most surface of levels rather than to do anything as radical as to explain not just what is happening but why it is so.

Truth is. . .

Things have changed and so have I.