“Burst down those closet doors once and for all, and stand up and start to fight.”
~ Harvey Milk
In the same way that breathing in fresh air can expose the poisoned lung, seeing beautiful things makes you realise how ugly your life has become.
Two days in Madrid.
I dragged my thin black fingers across the chalk and the church crumbled. I met a superstar who was humbled by my praise of her beauty and I realized that I have not felt that in some time.
Beautiful.
While I understand this may appear to be an admission of cowardice, I was so tired of being brave and was ready to be broken but have only ended up realizing how incredibly blessed I am.
In June of 2013 realising closets are for hanging clothes not gay men I ventured into the light but its brilliance has burnt me terribly. This light that so many spoke so auspiciously of has been cruel and calculating and has done everything in its exceptional power to blind me to the beauty beyond being closeted.
This is all my fault.
I have been foolish enough to think that my freedom would be respected; that being out would normalize me but I now understand why I hung and hid for so long in the dark, because the first steps on this long walk to freedom have been nothing short of terrifying.
Six months on from that revelation, grey blades of cold slice through my clothes; the sun sleeps and rain now snarls in the South London streets; thunder shatters the sky and I do my utmost to not die. I am months older and though there has been much female approbation for the most part black men’s hearts have grown colder. They don’t call, text or email anymore. It’s an unnecessary war.
Family ends where friendship begins to fail.
I now realise that I will never stop wrestling with the world to breathe the air I breathe. I now realise that the strings of my struggle are being pulled by a society that has normalised me on paper but not yet in person. I now realise that the same people I have continually loved back from the brink of debt, insanity and suicide are the very same people who now insist on pushing me off the edge of their world. I now realise that after your coming out is their coming to terms. I now realise that this, as Harvey Milk suggested, is the fight of my life.
Seconds out. Round two.
