Tonight was so interesting. A friend of mine a old skool friend stopped by the house for a favor and we got to talking. Ive known him since I was 13 or 14 that's when I actually came out the house.
We going thru some old pictures and I realized he had to be almost 50 by now he was a Lebejia back when that house was ...well lets see you had what was called "crafty" children. It was such a different world that I came up in as opposed to now.
Theres a 17 year old gay in my building and he was at the house trying to fit in and I realized three generations of the NY gay scene were in one room!
To allot of you that doesn't symbolize anything but Dee has trophy's from back in the early 8o's when their was really only three things a black or latino gay man could do. U could go to city college if your family hadn't thrown you out and you were living on the pier, you could go to jail ( how many of the kidz I came up with got shipped to Elmira CC back in the early 1990s or you could get into the ball scene.
I never got in. I didn't have the "Attitude" I was from the suburbs and didn't really aspire to pretend to be rich or crave any of that. Basically, I grew up having neighbors that had a pool, I was a cub scout and came from a two parent household,
I think when I hit the city the summer of 1989 I was a very naive. I had never heard of stonewall. I loved going to clubs, drinking and I learned to drive that summer. Also, I lied about my age so to this day people are shocked that I'm my age and still around. LOL
I so wanted to be 30 at 15 now fifteen plus years later I'm like....slow down the carousel! I wanna get off.
I was taken back, and this is the reason for me blogging this by talking to this kid tonight I remembered so many wonderful things that I had to blog.
If you say "1989" to me I see old, grey NY. I remember my first boyfriend that turned out literally to be a girl. Her name was Tee and for all accounts and purposes she looked like the cutest black guy. I use to stalk Tee. It was always T&K that's what everyone use to say. I was a virgin and so sex didn't equate in this first big romance. What happened and this is so funny. We got picked up for being minors without proper supervision. When they went to take us to juvenile the officer was named Officer Black he said. "These two freaks! I had allot of hair as a kid so i was kinda girly and she had a czar with just a tiny it of what we called back then a gumby. Come to find out he was a she!!!!
Imagine! I never knew what happened to Tee my parents came and picked me up and took me home ( I ran off again like 3 days later) But this time i met my gay mother. Her name was candy and shes in a clip from that old film "Paris Is Burning" she was a beautiful transgender and i use to run the streets allot and hang with the big ppl. But the difference then rather than now? They never introduced me to any negativity. Not like ppl today they string these kids out on crack and meth sometimes as young as 12 and I wont even discuss these pedophile ass motherfuckers.
But this drag-queen, shed be at a old bar they called Blues i believe was the name and shed be whuppin some queens ass and shed say "This my lil sissy son come to your mama" and you know I remember in my mind she was my Mom. Not that my mom was bad cause she wasn't but to have a hip mom like Candy "The body beautiful" that was her. i wonder is she alive today?
How is it different at 14 allot of older guys would be on the kentucky strip that's like 42nd street between 8 to 11th avenues it was a stroll. I remember I met this really nice looking guy ban-gee oy style, the shell tops etc, and we were hanging out hard and that drag queen didn't see me in like 3 weeks. i was living up at the Cinton Hotel with a 30 year old man.
When she caught me Ill never forget this. She said u know he old enuff to be your daddy and hes a fierce user. U need to go home. Well I wasn't a virgin no more and I let ole gay mama have it and i remember that queen slapped the shit outta me and beat me down on the corner of 42nd street and 8th ave. While I was telling that story a tear came to my eye that out of all the people in NY that queen cared about me. Damn that drag queen was whuppin my azz and the other drag queens said you better not hot yo mama back! We were a family.
I don't have brothers or sisters so when I hit the street i wanted brothers and sisters so bad. Sometimes I made disastrous choices.
She wasn't wrong either. That same guy tried to introduce me to heroin, prostitution, locked me out during the snow storm and pimped me as his son to social services 9in those days the system was easy to beat) all the while he was a drug addict with two latina whores working on Houston street. I remember that guy took me to a house in Jersey to set me up. Told me I would make a lot of money etc. I didn't really understand how that worked but in retrospect it was prostitution. Its unclear how or what happened but I remember candy bringing me back to NJ. I honestly to this day don't know the story....I wish I did
When I sit back and think how different my life could have been. So many i came up with are dead they dies of AIDS in the early 90s I mean I have literally a dead folks photo album around here somewhere. I'm still here even the ones my age are gone.
I always say "God has blessed you when you find someone that loves you for you." Unlike allot of my friends I wasn't what i would consider "Hot" i have always been a average looking person. I'm not a show off. Most people and animals I love. I wasn't "fierce" so the house thing I never got into. Tho I attended practically every ball their was in those days. i was very shy with a knack for dating mean evil old men LOL
Yet I'm here because there was someone who cared. How do you phantom with logic like that and u know its because the ppl that no one understood. They cared about you to put a roof over your head and make sure you were protected. To this I always hope that if the situation ever occurs i too can be like that!
I guess the moral of this blog is if fate should bring a younger person into your life. have patience because when we are young we know everything and allot of us will die before we know anything.
There are so many doors for str8 kids to go thru but the gay kids fall between the cracks and the so called help is many times a fox in sheep's clothing. I cant count how many old farts wanted to mentor me ( yeah right) that's why I have such a negative view of religion and religious ppl because maybe that's where whatever scars I have came from their.
I felt good typing this out. I needed to see it in print
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