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his essay was envisioned as a polemic, an elaborate
exercise in argumentative controversy. [1]
The title suggests that identitarian politics would have
been at play. Instead, I decided to keep the title and
temper the rhetoric in order to elaborate the
problematic of being that is identified in the title,
“In the life on the down low.” What is of concern to me
is how is it that being on the down low, how is it that
this descriptor, this way of life, how is it that this
has become the image of black gay men? Let me begin by
way of a quick contemporary literary history of things.
In 1986, the anthology, In the Life, edited by
Joseph Beam was released. This anthology was subtitled,
Writings by Black Gay Men, and served to launch,
in retrospect, a black gay renaissance. In the Life
introduced the young, curious, somewhat clandestine
audience to some voices that resonated throughout the
late 80s and into the 90s, voices like Essex Hemphill,
Craig Harris, Blackberri, Donald Woods, Assotto Saint or
already heard voices like Melvin Dixon and Samuel
Delaney. Some never heard before and some never heard
again.
 Beam’s anthology emerged when Gay Related Immune
Deficiency (G.R.I.D.) had fast become the AIDS crisis
and was both perceived and received as white, back when
ACT-UP had to be integrated. In the life was
dedicated to those who were “in the life,” a community
identity in which men, specifically black gay men, or
homosexuals, were known as such, lived as such, and
contributed to the communities at large as such. These
men had devised ways, albeit not easy ways, in which
their sexual identity was acknowledged, respected for
what it was because it was about community, because if
one were “in the life,” one was in a community. Now
understand that this descriptor, “in the life,” was not
a negation, perhaps a self segregation, but not a
negation. By this, I mean that the dialog of being in
the life was not with whiteness, in opposition to or
negation of “gay,” as much as it was in dialog with
black communities. Being in the life signified a
collectivity, a subtle way to unquiet sex and life
practices kept quiet by larger community strictures,
kept quiet for the sake of survival. In the late 80s,
early 90s climate of In the life, work like the
anthology of poetry, edited by Assotto Saint, entitled
The Road Before Us, the anthologies Tongues
Untied and Brother to Brother, the journal
Another Country or the video poetry of Marlon Riggs,
or the stories of Randall Kenan, or more work of
Hemphill or Melvin Dixon appears voicing a timeliness,
an urgency in the need to be heard, an urgency in the
need for community acceptance and an urgency in the need
for cultural and community action, because most of these
men would be dead by 1995.
In August of 2003, “Double lives on the down low”
appears in the New York Times Magazine, but
before I address that, let’s look at the “in between” of
1986 and 2003. I want to use the release of In the
life and the publication of “Double lives on the
down low” as markers, as bookends to an admittedly
constructed period of time and cultural production.
Therefore, in quick summary, not exhaustive summary, in
summary of the happenings between 1986 and 2003:
Crack has a pop cultural black face by 1986
Rockefeller drug laws bring it home
and the levels of incarceration among black folk
reaches new highs
Easy E
Arthur Ashe
Max Robinson
Patrick Kelly
Willi Smith
die from complications
due to AIDS
Magic Johnson reveals his HIV status
Pam Grier is back and “better than ever”
Thelma Golden scores twice
Will Smith does not kiss the white boy
in Six Degrees of Separation,
on the advice of Denzel
The Cosby Show delimits the black televisual
future
New Black Cinema and the hood film rise and kill each
other
Spike Lee’s She Gotta Have It to Bamboozled
become
the markers of a generation
Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence and Wesley Snipes get
paid for doing drag
Issac Julien looks for Langston and gives us a
queer look with Young Soul Rebels
Marlon Riggs, Marlon Riggs
Paris burned, we cried for Venus, and then we
laughed
Spin City and Six Feet Under have black,
gay characters
HBO becomes the site of the visualization
of sex, sexual difference and indifference
but let’s not forget Mapplethorpe
and what he did to us
Papa Bush’s “Man in a Leisure Suit” was Willie Horton
We went digital but the cops were still analog:
Rodney King, over and over again
Time magazine’s was O.J. Simpson
who we should have seen coming
following Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas and
that damned high tech lynching
with desktop publishing
the zines, Thing, out of Chicago, and BLK,
out of LA,
let us know what was going on in black gay communities
and a Million Black Men
march on Washington
Pan Africanism goes Diasporic
and who can forget House music
and the arrival on these shores of dance hall
Oprah builds an empire
and the 2000 census told us that
the black population was shrinking:
I came out during the time of “the endangered black
man,”
the speciation of race and gender
in the statistics of death and incarceration
RuPaul, oddly enough, introduced me to Zen
there was that brief moment in NY when
men wore skirts
Brad Pitt appears on the cover of Vanity Fair
in a sequenced cocktail dress
Nixon
Reagan
Jackie O
are finally put to rest
Toni Morrison wins the Nobel Peace Prize
Meshell Ndegeocello asked for Peace beyond Passion
and in a familiar fashion there was a marked
migration
pattern of black folk from the north to the south
Jesse ran twice and Clinton was the first
black president
hip hop diversified and commodified
Tupac
Biggie
Pat Parker
Audre Lourde
June Jordan and
Barbara Christian
they all die
Prince became a slave
transmogrified into a symbol
and Michael Jackson became our problem
Jeffrey Dahmer ate white hustlers, latinos, black men,
and two Laotian boys
memory will never serve that correct
Dinkins tells us that the melting pot
is a mosaic
New York crumbles and burns, like something out of the
movies, with faces of the dead and missing plastered on
the subway walls
from Chambers Street, all the way to Penn Station
Baby Bush turns on his constituency, friends and the
world
the talented tenth becomes home
for the new black public intellectual
Apartheid ends
Georgia enforces its long forgotten sodomy laws
Abner Louima is sodomized by the law
Amadou Diallo mis-interpellates and reaches for his id
Halle Berry
and Denzel Washington
win best actress and best actor
at the Academy
this is just a sample
a few of the things that happened
between 1986 and 2003 ... (continue reading) |
2 COMMENTS ON THIS ESSAY:
I am very curious about the life on the downlow. I am living with a man, a gay black man, who is very secretive at times about his sexuality, yet is very open at other times. In conversation with him, he shares there are so many reasons why black men don't share their homosexuality. I am very open as a white man, but find it utterly fascinating, this culture of the downlow. I live in Menifee, just a few miles from Riverside. Is there a class you offer, or have an suggestions as to how I can be more educated on this culture?
I think that so many people are interested with this phenomenon is that they feel that it is helping to erode the ever declining hope of family values in America. As a gay man who has had the fortunate and unfortunate luck of being involved in these potentially toxic relationships is that their primary focus is on sex, secondly is demeaning in so many different ways. The guy(tri-sexual) will do or say just about anything to get you to give him what he wants and most of the time won't take the time to protect you or himself because if he did that in his mind he would be admitting that he was doing something wrong. I would love anyone to contact me about their views or opinions about this subject as well.
Thanks in advance