3
Nigger Lover
“Do you mind if I call you the N-word?” (pant, pant)
“Um…?” (pant)
“It’s just what I’m into. It’s okay if not.” (pant, pant)
“Yeah, no.” (pant)
“Cool.” (pant) “Put it in my ass.” (pant, pant)
That was a real exchange I had with an otherwise lovely young white gentleman one summer afternoon in Provincetown, I wanna say in 2018. His casualness in asking me was the real shocker, not the asking itself. He was so matter-of-fact about it. He went on to say that he loved Black guys and he wasn’t racist, but something about getting fucked by a Black guy and calling him “nigger” (he never actually said the word around me) really got his mojo working. He didn’t know why.
I did. I just didn’t feel like unpacking it with him, not when I was already balls-deep, after having been so horny all week. This hunky white boy had said he’d seen me at the pool earlier and that I had piqued his interest as I was reading amid all the loud pool noises and the blaring electronica soundtrack. I felt greatly flattered. Boys into books are just generally hotter than other boys. He was so nice and so handsome and so sculpted and fine.
And then he had to go and say something like that. Who says romance is dead?
So this guy, he lived in Boston; he even went to Vassar, a most liberal of liberal arts colleges, in my hometown of Poughkeepsie. He was your classic Democratic homosexual, probably posting black squares and “Black Lives Matter” hashtags during the summer of 2020. At least he wasn’t the type of shitty hypocritical white gay who has #BLM in his Grindr profile yet still can’t bring himself to acknowledge my fucking existence. But he’s the kind of fag who doesn’t think he harbors any sort of racial animus; in fact, he loves Black boys, so he can’t possibly be racist. Therefore, he doesn’t really mean anything if and when he says “nigger,” since it’s not like he’s cosigning the meaning behind it.
It’s like when little white boys rap along to their favorite lyrics and “forget” to omit the N-bombs. They love Black culture, even if they’re being dismissive of Black people. It’s one thing to be rejected or ignored for your Black skin; it’s another to be prized for it. Both make me uncomfortable, but I suppose it’s better to be desired than not. Still, it’s altogether terrible to be reduced to one aspect of yourself, an aspect over which you have no control. Every individual contains multitudes.
What this Beantown himbo didn’t understand is that at this point in American history, racism is like the air we breathe—inhaled and exhaled without a second thought. What he got off on wasn’t the word but the power dynamic that word represents. Even if I’m on top, he can reclaim dominance by putting me in my place, the way white people have been using “nigger” for centuries.
The following year, 2019, I was in Miami, as part of a cross-country journey moving from New York to Los Angeles. New York and Miami are like sister cities, connected by convenient, short, cheap flights, so that some New Yorkers and Miami…ites(?) regularly migrate from one city to the other. One of these bi-city residents messaged me on Grindr, and while I found him attractive, I didn’t feel like hooking up with him. He was an older, white muscle-daddy type, which is very much my type, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t into him. Attraction is capricious, and I go through different cravings—sometimes younger, sometimes older, bigger or smaller, open to any race but with a fondness for white boys. He wasn’t my flavor that day. I usually just ignore messages, hoping that guys will get the hint. As much as I hate getting rejected, I hate rejecting guys even more. I know how it feels, and I don’t want to subject someone else to that. But someone’s feelings, or pride, get hurt regardless of intention.
This daddy kept messaging me, so I decided to be a big boy and just say that I wasn’t interested. Hopefully he would be understanding about it. Or, you know, not. When I told him politely that I wasn’t interested, he responded curtly, “Fuck you. Nigger.” Then after he had made sure he had given me enough time to read his missive, he blocked me. I swear, the ability to block people has been one of the primary causes of the breakdown of civilized society. Folks are out here just saying the wildest shit without consequences because they can simply block whomever they offend. And we can curate who is privy to our lives and thoughts and opinions, eradicating anyone who might disagree.
That and it’s just fucking rude. To say that to me and just disappear into the ether was such a pussy-ass move, and it left me feeling conflicted. On the one hand I was angry. Like, just because I said no, in as diplomatic a way as possible, I’m a nigger? I was also partly amused that someone could get so butt-hurt when he had so much going for him. As I mentioned, he was an attractive dude; lived between New York and Miami, so he had money; and had a nice body. I’m sure he was used to getting what he wanted. But that entitlement didn’t extend to my body. And the more I thought about it, the sadder and angrier I became. In the year of our Lord Oprah, 2019, I’m out in these streets getting called the N-word? Did Obama mean nothing?!
Of course not. I was more surprised when Barack Obama won in 2008 than I was when Donald Trump won in 2016. The latter felt correct. The balance restored. The former seemed a fluke. Obama was a once-in-a-generation president who thankfully was Black. Trump was a run-of-the-mill charlatan who of course was white. But with Obama’s presidency, the nation—parts of it, anyway—was eager to continue the fluke, thinking this was the way things were now. The straight white man’s reign of terror had finally come to an end.
Yeah, right. Americans underestimated the power of whiteness—even white people are afraid of it. If you don’t have whiteness then you’re just a nigger, the antithesis of whiteness, and no one wants to be a nigger. White people so feared their own niggerization, the loss of their power, they nearly drove this country right into the ditch.
For this entitled white man to brand me a nigger then block me with impunity was his show of power. He reclaimed it. I was put in my place. Balance was restored.
Just as people (let’s be clear: certain white people) thought Obama was a radical and permanent sea change, so it went the summer of the Great Reckoning. The lynching of George Floyd was the spark, but dozens of other instances of police brutality against people of color were the kindling. White America had a nice long look in the mirror and didn’t like what it saw. After all, we were in the middle of a pandemic, so it wasn’t like anyone had anything better to do. The whites started reading anti-racist literature, attended Black Lives Matter protests in droves, and asked their Black friends what to do, how to feel, and just if they were okay.
I don’t know a Black person who wasn’t exhausted that summer. Between the pandemic, the violence, the rampant injustice, the marching, and the white guilt. And I’m not even an activist. I’ve never taken on that label because I’m just too lazy and self-involved. I’m not one to march anywhere. I might hold a sign if I don’t have to go anywhere or have to stand for long periods of time. I’m not even an armchair activist, sharing posts to show how socially conscious I am. While I was moved by the deaths of George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and the list goes on and on and on, I had also become inured to this violence, to this injustice. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. How could I not? I just can’t bring myself to watch any video depicting a police officer assaulting an unarmed Black person, because it’s too easy to imagine that person being me.
Getting incarcerated is almost a rite of passage for Black men. It’s expected of us. And though I’ve spent my life consciously defying, or trying to defy, expectations, I still found myself in jail. Just once, though. I say “just” because I probably skated by a few more times than I should have, given how often I was blackout drunk in the streets of New York City. Sniffing cocaine in every alleyway and bathroom in that town, face-planting off a mysterious combination of pills, and carried Weekend at Bernie’s style all around the city; phones and wallets were lost with careless, drunken abandon. That I only ended up in jail once is kind of a minor miracle. My own recklessness, combined with the likelihood of me, a Black man, ending up in jail or prison, and it seems more miraculous the older I get.
I used to think that because I defied expectations I was exceptional. That I would never be a nigger, when I understood a nigger to be a lowly Black person. I looked down on the variation “nigga,” and down on niggas who used it as “nigger.” Only later did I realize this was a form of self-loathing around my own Blackness. I had to embrace the nigga in me.
As with any and every story leading to my downfall, this one begins with my being horny. I get dangerously horny. It’s the Scorpio in me. Though I may write a big game, I don’t sleep around a lot. Sex with strangers, pretty much like doing anything with strangers, is awkward and potentially dangerous, so I’ve always sought some sort of consistency with my sexual partners, even if they don’t do the same. But all that “patiently waiting” business weighs heavy on a body, and my balls, and after months of denying myself some man-lovin’, I erupt into a cipher of longing. I need to get laid, no matter the cost.
During one of these particular horned-up jags, I was on antibiotics after contracting an infection from the removal of one of my remaining wisdom teeth. Because I was an asshole (still am, honestly), I was out drinking on these antibiotics, then someone brought out the cocaine, and next thing I knew I was knocking on the door of an old hookup. I was apparently a bit worse for wear and was asked to leave several minutes into the action. I was so furious as I gathered my things and stormed out the door, sternly telling him to lose my number. It was late by then, around three in the morning. The trains wouldn’t have been running so much as crawling, but I began walking toward the subway station anyway. Hopefully my luck would hold out tonight. Or, you know, not.
As I walked, I worked myself into a real heated lather, angry that yet again I was denied what I wanted, the simplest of pleasures. Never mind it was my fault, as wasted as I was, but I thought I was fine. I think I went to the train, but it wouldn’t be arriving for quite some time, so I went to sit in front of a store instead of waiting on the platform. I kept talking to myself, making myself angrier and angrier, the rage burning inside me until I slapped my hand on the window of the store.
I don’t know what I thought would happen. I certainly didn’t think the entire window would shatter and an alarm would go off. Or that my hand would start bleeding. I knew I had to get out of there, so I tried to hail a cab. Hailing a cab as a Black man, with the nerve to go to Brooklyn from Manhattan at three in the morning, was already a gamble, but my bloodied hand truly did me in. The cabbie called the cops, who put together the ringing alarm and broken glass and handcuffed me in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, to get stitches in my hand, and then to jail. To wait.
Jail, by the way, is no fun. I had grown up thinking jail was like that episode of The Golden Girls when Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose get mistaken for sex workers (yeah, okay) and land in the clink—just as they had gotten tickets to see Mr. Burt Reynolds! That jail was full of hijinks. Rose met a hooker from St. Olaf and convinced her to go back home and give up her life of sin, and Dorothy, naturally, became the alpha dog. Then when Sophia comes to bail them out of jail, she thinks that means one of the jailbirds will be staying home so she can go see Mr. Burt Reynolds, too. When the girls inform her that no, she’ll still be sitting this one out, Sophia runs off with all the tickets, leaving them in jail. Fun!
I didn’t make any friends in jail. The closest I came was with this hustler who, as soon as he got into the cell, faked a seizure and tried to get me to play along. It was just him and me in the cell, but he feigned paralysis, which I limply cosigned. I was then moved to a crowded cell with other men, mostly Black and brown, mostly drunk. There was one toilet that we were expected to use in front of everybody. I held in all I could and tried to get some sleep on the concrete blocks the NYPD calls beds.
But I couldn’t sleep. I just kept thinking about how the hell this had happened. Why the hell this had happened. Dangerously horny. Damn this Scorpio energy! At first I was angry at my hookup for rejecting me, sending me on this downward spiral, but soon that anger turned to disappointment in myself. This had all started because I was being an asshole and decided to drink and do coke on antibiotics because that was how I operated in my twenties. Anything for a good time, anything to keep the sadness at bay. But I was nearing thirty and I didn’t want to be that person anymore. That mess. The passed-out kid in the corner. The lifeless, bloodied body on the sidewalk. Sure, those incidents make for funny anecdotes that I will tell till the day I die. But we have such a small window to be reckless with our lives—and being a Black man meant I couldn’t really afford to be reckless in the first place if I was to achieve all that I wanted in this grand, beautiful, painful, glorious existence—and I had smashed that window to pieces.
I was so lucky until I wasn’t. I made it out of Poughkeepsie, I went to NYU, and even after I dropped out, I managed to become a professional writer. I defied the odds until I could no longer. My mistakes, my messiness, caught up with me. I got out of jail the following evening, the sun setting over lower Manhattan. It was late 2015; I would turn thirty that November. I had to be more careful.
My arresting officer was this very nice Black girl with great braids, and she handled me gently, speaking to me in a calm, reassuring tone and asking me if the cuffs were too tight. I could’ve been her brother or her cousin. With the cuffs on, I had sobered up quickly and was coherent and adamant that this was all just one big accident. The store, it turns out, had insurance, and that paid for the window. I appeared in court, paid a fine to the city, and the felony was expunged from my record. Again, lucky as fuck. I knew it was luck and that this was a wake-up call. The alternative was frightening.
I was born in Guyana, where my citizenship lies, and I am still, as of this writing but hopefully not for much longer, just a permanent resident of America. If I got into enough trouble, I could potentially get kicked out of the country. I’ve been here since I was four years old. I have no life in Guyana. The reasons why I haven’t gotten my citizenship are numerous and complicated, but losing my life was not always my biggest fear should I have a run-in with the law. Then the summer of 2020 happened and I was reminded that maybe it should be.
Because of the immediacy of the George Floyd killing—because “it could’ve been me”—I felt I should want to do more, to get out into the streets, march, yell, hold signs while moving. I should demonstrably care more. Was I a bad Black person for not marching? I’ve often felt like a bad Black person, whether it was my “fondness” for white boys, or never feeling like I fit in with other Black people, or being embarrassed by niggers, what Black people call other Black people they can’t stand. “Nigga” is a term of endearment or humor or anything you want it to be, similar to how I use and feel about “faggot.” Because I am both of these things, I feel like I can choose what they mean and how to use them since, historically, I, and people like me, didn’t have that choice. But once we, Black folk, add the “-er,” somebody done ruined everything for everybody.
So-called respectable Blacks might not even use “nigga” because they feel it diminishes the race, but if some ignorant coon comes shuffling along, they’ll whip out that “-er” with the quickness. It’s not a form of racism when Black people use the hard N-word on one another; it’s more about class. One person’s got it; the other does not. But no matter: whosoever wields “nigger” in anger, or passion, or frivolity, or any fucking situation, does so as an act of ignominy. While I couldn’t possibly consider myself respectable, just based on the last few pages alone, I’ve often said under my breath to Black folks disgracing the race, “Fucking niggers.” Or, “I hate niggers.” In one breath I can love Black people and hate niggers. But then, it took me a while to love being Black.
’Cause I used to want to be white. I thought life would be easier, that I would be more desirable, and of course that’s true, but I had to realize that it was my Blackness, like my queerness, that made me exceptional, not the denial or transcendence of them. I had to understand the history of the African American and the impossibly impossible odds they surmounted to become the most influential people in the world. I had to learn to find myself—and by extension all Black people—beautiful. Some Black folks are born feeling those things, the love and pride of being Black. I don’t know why I wasn’t.
When I was young, being Black felt like a burden I had been saddled with, made even worse by being a big old kween. Other Black kids made fun of me, told me I sounded white or was trying to be white because I was a nerd who actually liked school. And as I got older, I was put in more and more gifted classes, which grew less and less Black year over year.
Still, my mother enrolled me in a free after-school program that also had a summer camp, not the sleepaway kind, but the day kind, where a van came to pick us up one by one and dropped us off at some abandoned school in the City of Poughkeepsie. It was called Harambee, Swahili for “all put together” and the motto of Kenya. Harambee was intended for low-income, mostly Black kids whose parents needed somewhere to send them where they would be fed and, god willing, kept out of trouble. For my single mother, who was almost forty-two when she had me and thus had no energy for my shenanigans, Harambee and programs like it were incredibly important. For me, Harambee was a scary experience that I eventually grew to enjoy. The scariest place for a chubby, effeminate, soft-spoken gay kid is the school bus. The Poughkeepsie City School District didn’t provide buses; the closest we got were discounted fares for the city buses, which were especially dangerous because those kids loved to get rowdy in the morning. Harambee had vans, which were as terrifying as buses, maybe more so because they were so small—much easier to grab, hit, and throw things. And the driver was not what one would call “giving a damn.”
So at the start of Harambee’s summer program, I timidly stepped onto the van and kept to myself. I was a sly one. Everyone thought I was so quiet and shy, but that was only one side of me. The safe side. But Harambee allowed me to come out of my shell just enough. One year, each class (we were divided into classes) had to perform in the big end-of-summer show. Nothing brings out the ham in me like the threat and thrill of showtime. I loved to sing and dance but kept those parts of myself hidden from nearly everyone else. Still, when the time came, I grabbed my chance to shine with both hands and shook it vigorously in excitement.
I worked hard during rehearsals, sweating so profusely that our counselor, a cute, obsidian-skinned high school student who was about fourteen, pointed me out as an example of how hard everyone else should be working. Cue the side-eyes and sucked teeth. But we pulled our dance together, performing for our parents, who dutifully applauded. Harambee taught me about Kwanzaa, and I was so intrigued by the idea that I insisted to my mother that we should celebrate it. We didn’t, but give a kid some credit for trying. Because I still remember the song our counselors taught us—“Fanga alafia, ashe, ashe,” a West African welcome song of peace—Harambee was probably the first time I had been taught Black pride. It was a lesson, however, that took years to fully sink in.
I was wishing I was white as late as my sophomore year at college, when I lamented as much to my co-workers at my work-study job at NYU’s payroll office, to their great shock. I gathered that was not something one said out loud.
Like my queerness, I had to come into my Blackness on my own terms and in my own time. Throughout my school years, I was lucky enough to have a few Black women teachers who each left an indelible mark on me. There was my fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Howard, who took me to Boston at the end of the school year as a sort of prize for being her top student. Ms. Jackson, my ninth-grade English teacher, taught us Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John, a novel that spoke to my own West Indian roots. And my twelfth-grade English teacher, Ms. Ricketts, spent months that I cherished teaching us Toni Morrison’s epic Song of Solomon and also helped me write my college essay.
As I did with my queer coming-of-age, I attempted to immerse myself in Black literature. I’ve never seen Roots, but I read it. And Alex Haley’s other seminal work, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I fell in love with James Baldwin, as every gay Black boy should. I fell in love with Toni Morrison’s Beloved, as every human being should. I didn’t go as deep as I did with the queer canon, however. Though the books I did read offered me an insight into love, and that was what I craved most of all. But diving, no matter how shallow the plunge, through Black literature and history did help awaken me to the joys of being Black, though I think hip-hop played an even bigger part.
I grew up during one of the last true golden ages of our time, the golden age of ’90s hip-hop and R&B. When hits—bangers! bops! classics galore!—were being shat out by every diva, boy group, girl group, rap group, and spotlight-hogging producer around. I was besotted with the R&B side of things, rap being a bit too hard for my young ears. But by the time I got to high school, the ’90s were coming to an end and we were entering the glorious age of pop-rap, when rap crossed over so hard, displacing rock as the predominant music genre in America. With the deaths of Tupac and Biggie, rap got less confrontational (but not completely) and more radio friendly. We had hooks, kids. Knockout collabos.
Rap and its prodigious use of “faggot” in the most derogatory way had alienated me when I was a kid, but as a teenager with a questionably booming social life, the rap-R&B songs of the early aughts provided my daily soundtrack. I grew to love rap, and as I do with everything I love, I completely immersed myself in it. I went back to the ’90s and listened, really listened, to the best that decade had to offer. Nas’s Illmatic was pure poetry, the Fugees’ The Score was epic, and Biggie’s Ready to Die was terrifying, vigorous, and flawless. Missy Elliott’s Supa Dupa Fly was and still is the future.
I grew to love the art of hip-hop—the richness in its storytelling, the wit in its rhymes, the audaciousness of its Blackness—and I admired its global takeover, how rap crossed oceans and cultures. I remember an article in Vibe magazine, one of my favorite reads, about how kids in Japan, always ahead of a trend, were dyeing their skin brown to be more like African Americans, wearing FUBU and all that. How weird, I thought. Blackface is back! And then I started to piece it all together. How deep the influence of Black people went, how we turned tragedy into triumph, how “nigga” was such a great fucking word that could be used in nearly any context, like “you” or “the.” It took me a while, but I grew to love, honor, respect, and protect my Blackness. And I also realized there was no “correct” way to be Black.
Yes, there are some experiences that are universal to us, but Black people come in all shades, varieties, variants, and varietals. Most of us, save for some very prominent exceptions, wish Black people as a community the best, because when Black people win, everyone wins. In a fair and just society, no one is a nigger.
As I was growing prouder in my Blackness, I was also confronted with the ways Blackness was perceived and treated within the gay community. So much of what we consider gay culture is Black queer culture—the same can be said about American culture in general. Scrolling through Instagram, I’m always amused and slightly horrified by all these straight, white, middle-aged folk yapping like a gaggle of Black kweens outside the beauty supply. Everyone’s working and slaying and voguing and popping whatever ass they think they have. And this extends to more than just vernacular; it’s fashion, it’s hair, it’s attitude, it’s a whole-ass appropriation. But nowhere have I witnessed more blatantly a love of Black culture but a dismissal of Black people than among the gays.
Until about a decade ago, the names Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were all but lost to history, except for the tireless activists who kept their names and legacies alive. With the increased visibility of trans people came the increased awareness of trans history, including Marsha’s and Sylvia’s pivotal roles in the Stonewall uprising and the birth of the modern gay rights movement. With gays finally finding a voice, cis white men took on the most visible leadership roles in the movement, leaving trans and gender-nonconforming folks out in the cold. Until they got tired of being relegated to the back seat. The victory of same-sex marriage, passed under the first Black president, felt like the beginning of a radical progression in American society, not a culmination, which is what it was.
Activists had been working for decades to be recognized as full citizens, with the Black civil rights movement inspiring the tactics of the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. The gays and the Black Panthers even worked together at one point. The Panthers also reached across the aisle to the labor movement, which was why they had to be destroyed. As soon as the downtrodden realize they’re all fighting a common enemy, that enemy’s days are numbered. White gays, however, don’t always see themselves as the downtrodden, not when they’re still white men and thus still profit from the maintenance of a system created by and for white men. Once those faggots got gay marriage, their struggle was over.
On August 15, 1970, in New York City, Black Panther Party co-founder and future destroyed Black Panther Huey Newton delivered a speech in full-voiced support of the women’s and gay liberation movements. He urged “respect and feelings for all oppressed people,” stating his belief that homosexuals “might be the most oppressed people in the society.” And being the most oppressed, they could potentially “be the most revolutionary.” Newton emphasized that the oppressed all have the same oppressor—not necessarily the White Man, as he conceded that the poorest white person is “the most racist because he is afraid that he might lose something.”
Newton’s vision was of a coalition of the oppressed throwing off the shackles of oppression, and it behooved Black people to find commonality with others in a similar position. In that speech, which feels radical even today, Newton contradicted the age-old myth that Black people are somehow more homophobic than white people, when homophobia is one of the few things all races can agree on. It’s magical that way. While so much is made of Black people being homophobic, what of gays being racist?
Grindr launched in 2009, in the early days of the apps, and I was taken aback by the hostility from some white men and taken further aback by the naked, disrespectful lust from some others. It’s one thing to be told “No Blacks” by a headless white torso in response to something as admittedly forward as “Hi,” but it’s another to be propositioned for some reverse slave-play action by a white man who insists on your racial superiority. Is a goddamn “Hello, how are you?” too much to ask for?
The apps feel like the last place in American society where it’s okay to be blatantly racist. Everywhere else there’s at least some subtlety. Things have gotten better than when I first started out on them, I will say that. After being called out by other gays, from their fellow white gays to gay journalists (myself included), white gays at least stopped, for the most part, putting things like “No Blacks, no fats, no Asians, no femmes” in their profiles. They found less offensive, more subtle ways to express their racial preference. One guy had something like, “I like guys that look like me.” That same guy came up to me after I had moderated a panel discussing gay dating apps, including the racist bias on them, and was surprisingly “hey gurl”–level chummy. I had messaged him on the apps previously, but he had ignored me then. I wasn’t suitable for a sexual or romantic partner, but we could kiki like gal pals.
I don’t think most white gays see their sexual racism as racism at all. For years, they dismissed it as simply their “preference.” But I liked to point out, repeatedly and in print, that favoring one race over another isn’t a preference; it’s actually the textbook definition of racism. “But we’re all attracted to who we’re attracted to,” they argued, and I agree. I wish I wasn’t attracted to white boys at all, but here we are. The difference is I don’t discount other races altogether. I can find anyone of any race attractive, but the weakness I have for white boys isn’t a preference. It’s a weakness. It’s programming. It’s a reflection of the racial hierarchy of America.
For some white men, my Blackness has a sheen of sexual attraction, as well as the preexisting cool. They want me because I’m Black. How flattering for me. These white gays definitely don’t see themselves as racist. They love Black guys! As they will tell you before even giving their names. They love big Black cock! BBC4LIFE! I’m never not offended by that kind of rhetoric. Because, for one, these guys are almost never hot. Having struck out with the more attractive members of their own race, some white guys find Black boys easy (or at least easier) pickings. That in it itself is an insult, as if I’m supposed to settle for less and be grateful for the attention of any white man. And the ones who are hot become less so once they say something along the lines of “Mmm, chocolate.” Bon appétit, motherfuckers.
The affront to my shallowness notwithstanding, I also don’t want to be reduced to my race when I contain multitudes, just as I don’t like those multitudes dismissed by virtue of my race. It’s reductive either way. Though admittedly it hurts considerably less to be coveted than dismissed. For a Black boy routinely dismissed by white men, finding a worshipful white man, regardless of their attraction to that white man, feels like a respite from the pain of rejection.
How can I put this delicately? You know what, fuck it, I’m not going to: I’ve noticed a lot of really hot Black guys with really mediocre white men. I’m particularly sensitive to noticing these pairings because I see myself among those really hot Black guys—and sometimes, I actually have been. I wonder if they were just seduced by their partner’s whiteness or by being treated like some Black king, or at the very least, treated with respect, when so many other white men hadn’t. And regardless, are they happy? Or does it not matter since they’re not alone?
I can’t really interrogate the white gaze of white gays without interrogating my own Black gaze of Black gays. Jack’d launched in 2010, a year after Grindr. The very whiteness and racism running rampant on Grindr birthed this other app, which caters to people of color. Because it’s expressly for people of color, users, myself included, don’t have to worry as much about the micro- and macroaggressions on the more popular Grindr and Scruff, also founded in 2010.
I use all three apps, but Jack’d is more of a last resort when I’m not pulling peen on the other two. If I’m being ignored by a bunch of white guys or being buzzed about by the choco-crazed, I can turn to Jack’d, which promotes itself as “an app for all of us,” as if tacitly acknowledging the fact that Grindr and Scruff are not for “us.” Meanwhile, the same company that owns Scruff also owns Jack’d.
Sure, I can rely on Jack’d to give me a boost in attention, if not necessarily self-esteem, but I also look down on the kind of guys who use Jack’d. Niggers. The “down-low” “homothugs” who can’t string together a simple sentence, who don’t have photos, or who use a photo of a city backdrop or a placid lake in place of their face. Though Black people may not be more homophobic than white people, Black queer men still don’t feel comfortable being out in their communities because they might not feel safe or respected if they are. Or they just don’t want anyone in their business. Whatever it may be, Jack’d and Grindr have the same amount of DL, picless, discreet profiles; it’s just that the ones on Jack’d are all Black.
As a bougie Black faggot, I naturally look down on these other faggots. I grew up around thugs, and I don’t find them attractive. I used to fear them, walking quickly past them on Main Street on my way home, my head down, avoiding eye contact, deaf to anything they might try to say to me. The homothugs—the use of which makes me feel like a middle-aged white daytime talk show host from the late ’90s, when “homothugs” were treated as a phenomenon—I encounter on Jack’d just remind me of that fear. Having some college under my belt, and having been accused of speaking like I was white since I was a kid, I feel like I have less in common with some DL Black boy from the block than some nerdy white boy from Connecticut.
It’s interesting how our desires can reveal who we really are. A liberal white boy may wholeheartedly believe in and support Black Lives Matter but only date, and may only be friends with, guys who look like him. Does that make him racist? Kinda. Racism isn’t always intentional, and race, and the feelings we’re taught to have about race, influence nearly every interaction we have as human beings, whether or not we acknowledge or are aware of it. Counteracting racism has to be a deliberate action. But you also have to care enough and want to be anti-racist for your actions to make sense. Otherwise, it’s fine to not do anything if you don’t believe in it. It’s actually preferable for everyone involved.
I may denounce racism and classism, but at the end of the day, I’m just another respectable Black, thumbing my nose at those I deem niggers. Am I classist? Totally. I may have grown up poor, but I also grew up with an unearned sense of entitlement. Sure, I may hate capitalism, but I also like nice things. I contain multitudes. And that’s not always a great thing.
Class is a deeper problem in America because class begat race. There had to be a class system for Black people to be second-class citizens…once we were actually granted citizenship. Before that, we weren’t even considered people, or at least not more than three-fifths of one. A class of human beings stripped of their humanity by virtue of their skin color.
Within class there are racial hierarchies, and within race are class hierarchies. Hence, niggers. The lowest of the low. I would never date a nigger. My own class prejudices won’t allow it. And my own levels of oppression don’t soften or alter my stance. It’s interesting how our desires can reveal who we really are—“Do you mind if I call you the N-word?”
As much as white boys have a reductive view of me, I have a reductive view of other Black gays. There’s a palpable tension whenever one only Black kween encounters another only Black kween. In a sea of whiteness and/or heterosexuality, we can either be the best of friends or the worst of enemies. There’s a wariness that very much says, “I see you. Bitch.” This other Black kween could threaten the place of the one and only Black kween, or they might blow up everything that the one and only kween has worked to cultivate. They’re family, but they could be friend or foe.
When I first started working at a fashion blog, there was another, younger Black kween named Mac already working there. I thought I might have to kill him. Highlander “THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!” style. If there was already a Black kween there, what would they do with me? Wasn’t the quota filled? It’s so hard and rare to get an opportunity that when someone else who looks like you also gets that opportunity, you feel less special and thus threatened. But Mac ended up becoming one of my dearest friends. Which is usually how those standoffs go. We as minorities—double minorities at that—tend to underestimate the power of having another person we don’t have to explain everything to.
The Tenth is a magazine founded around 2015 by Khary Septh, André Jones, and Kyle Banks, three Black queer creatives with the intention of turning a side-eye to queer white media. Theirs was a highly cultivated side-eye for art and fashion on a level I hadn’t associated with Black queerness before. As a consumer, I always want anything Black to be luxurious, because we deserve luxury. Not just luxury in terms of cars and jewels and what have you, but the luxury of quality, beautiful photography, provocative art, spell-checked and grammatically correct prose. When Black products fall short of these goals, it’s disappointing but not totally surprising. After all, it was probably made for a quarter of what its white counterpart was, by people who might not have the same wherewithal or opportunities as their white creative counterparts. The Tenth wanted to change that. They wanted to bring luxury to the gurls!
I first read about them in The New York Times (fancy bitches) and reached out to them for an interview for my then outlet, Queerty, a small, independent, white-owned queer news and pop culture site. I met up with Khary and Kyle in Brooklyn, near their studio, and we chatted for hours. They were so fucking cool and smart. Khary had worked for years in fashion as a creative director, and Kyle was, among other things, an opera singer. These were the faggots I wanted to know. We kept in touch, and I would write for The Tenth here and there over the years. I hung out with Khary, Kyle, and a few of their collaborators on their recent issue about a year or so after our first meeting.
We were just kiki’ing in their studio loft space, drinking, getting high, yelling about Whitney and Janet, and it felt like we were changing the world. We creatives, with so much in common, whom I could talk to as if I had known them my whole life, as if we had been raised together, even though I barely knew any of them. I felt so fucking Black, so fucking queer, so fucking powerful. For years I had been chasing whiteness, but among these gorgeous Black kweens I found what I had been really searching for: affirmation. I felt part of something. And it emboldened me to further embrace my Blackness.
The Tenth was trying to change the perception of Black queerness in the media, but with the understanding that in order to change others’ perceptions, we had to change our perception of ourselves. We had to believe that we deserved. That we deserved luxury, that we deserved the same resources, the same opportunities. We had to stop seeking permission from the white gaze. And the white gays. We had to believe that we weren’t what they said we were: niggers. We had to stop seeing one another as niggers and start seeing one another as “my niggas.” It’s a tall order, but Black folks have been chipping away at that hard “-er” for centuries.