An Interview with the cast of Secret Survivors

Every now and again, I get to publish something here at My Feet Only Walk Forward that means something. A few months ago, I got an email (or phone call, I can't remember which) out of the blue from the amazing and beautifully radical Amita Swadhin. Amita had recently been elected as board chair of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition, and she was recruiting new board members. The short version of the story is that I rejoined NYAC's board after a decade absence, and I have had the honor to work closely with her over the last few months,

In the process of working together, I came to learn that Amita is a survivor of child sexual abuse (CSA). Moreover, I came to understand that she has done amazing intentional work not only to deal with her particular history but also to share with the world what it means to be a survivor of CSA. Through workshops, panels, and theater, Amita is a fierce advocate, and storyteller, for survivors everywhere. Though I am not a survivor of CSA, I am a survivor of some fairly heinous childhood physical and mental abuse, and Amita has opened up space for me to speak more forcefully about being a survivor and to be more aware of the ways that being a survivor of childhood trauma manifests itself in my own daily work.

In January, Amita mentioned to me that she and a cast of other CSA survivors would be putting on a play called "Secret Survivors" at the theater in El Museo del Barrio. When the information for the show came out, I was surprised to find that I knew three of the five members of the cast. One of whom, Lucia Leandro Gimeno, is an old friend of mine. Di Sands, no less loved, was a new friend that I'd met recently through Kenyon Farrow. And though I have yet to meet the other two cast members: Gabby Callender and RJ Maccani, I have come to know them a little through this interview, and I can say with honesty that these are tremendous people that are intentional, radical, beautiful, and giving us all a gift by telling their stories so openly and fiercely.

Please note in the interview, I will be using the following initials: AS for Amita Swadhin, LL for Lucia Leandro Gimeno, DS for Di Sands, GC for Gabby Callender, and RJ for RJ Maccani.

Interview with the cast of Secret Survivors


1) How did you all find each other? What work did you have to do with each other, first, before you were able to begin working out how to tell your story to a broader audience?

AS: knew of Ping Chong & Co.'s work because they have an afterschool partnership with Global Kids, where I worked for four years. I had seen their "Undesirable Elements" shows featuring Asian Americans telling stories of discrimination and migration, and of NYC public high school students sharing their experiences through interwoven narratives. I also knew they had created shows with refugees, children who had survived war, and people living with disabilities. I felt they would be a good home for this project. I pitched the idea of using the "Undesirable Elements" format to help survivors of child sexual abuse tell our stories in May 2009, and we began assembling a cast in September 2009.

Given that child sexual abuse is so pervasive (1 in 3 girls, 1 in 6 boys will experience child sexual abuse before the age of 18), I knew that a public call for participants would be overwhelming - how would the theater company and I vet the applications? Also, given that I was participating in the show, I knew I had to have a level of trust already established with the other cast members. I've been out as a survivor in my friend circles since 1995, and increasingly in my professional circles, so I've heard many disclosures from other survivors over the years. I have a "survivor rolodex" of sorts in my head, only because I really try to remember people's stories when they share them with me. So I started by approaching my personal friends who I knew were survivors - that's how Gabby joined the cast. RJ and I had friends in common, and he's been doing work with cisgendered male survivors for some time, so a mutual friend put us in touch. Di and I also have a common friend who I know through South Asian queer community, and she put me in touch with Di once I told her about the project. And LL and I connected because I put a call out on my Facebook status for cast members, and he sent me a private message expressing interest. Sara Zatz (Secret Survivors Director and Associate Director of Ping Chong & Co.) and I put together a thoughtful contract for all project participants, highlighting the fact that this project is not a substitute for therapy, and indicating that the script writing process might in fact retrigger trauma. We wanted to be sure people had come out as a survivor to whoever they needed to share with in their private lives, and that they had healing networks and tools assembled to be able to help them get through the creative process. To be honest, about 5 other people initially expressed interest, but withdrew from the project in the earliest stages once I shared this contract with them and discussed where they were at in their personal healing processes.

Once the five of us had agreed to the participation terms, we gathered for a six-day-long writing workshop, held over the course of two weekends. Sara and I led the workshop, which focused on a combination of theater exercises, writing exercises, and oral storytelling. We shared both our narratives and our political views, and were pleased to learn that we were very much on the same page politically as a group - especially around our analyses of the prison industrial complex as it relates to child sexual abuse. Our mealtime conversations were recorded, and Sara used those recordings, our journals, and one-on-one interviews with each of us to create the script that we are performing on Saturday. We had a therapist in the office (in a separate room) in case any of us got triggered and needed the extra support, and we also had a somatics coach visit to lead us through a series of somatics exercises to help us get grounded and centered together.

RJ: Amita and I had met each other a few times and have a number of mutual friends. I remember well her impressive karaoke skills at a joint celebration she was having with a friend of mine. Folks knew I’d been out about being a survivor and active with generationFIVE, a bay area based organization building transformative justice responses to child sexual abuse, so I’m guessing that’s why Amita approached me. Gabby and I have known each other for years and were both on the board of directors of the Brecht Forum at the time so when I heard her talking about participating in the project at a board meeting it definitely was encouragement to commit. Walking into the room at Ping Chong and Co on the first day I was really happy to see LL, who I’ve known for just as long as Gabby… probably nearing a decade now – wow. LL’s been a great buddy in this whole process. And Di, who I’ve never met before, has been wonderful too. As a group we clicked.

GC: We all knew each other in one way or another from our social activism community. Amita glued us together for this production. It was a nice surprise to show up on the first day and see familiar faces.

DS: How did we find each other? Amita knows EVERYBODY!! she told my friend about the show she was going to put together in november (while they were out seeing "precious" together). my friend said, you should meet di, she has a crazy story and can talk about it without getting upset. that's how we got introduced. i already knew LL and Gabby. RJ is also a new friend for me but now i love him and Amita like I've known them forever.

For me telling my story is not the obstacle. I'm very used to it by now. the work we did together was really intense. getting to know one another at the deepest level of intimacy, even if we've already known one another for a long time. but we also all came in there committed to getting it done, so we were never going to let the disturbing material prevent us form succeeding. we all came to this invested in the collective benefit and we kept ourselves and each other present and grounded by being very conscientious of each person's well-being. we were all responsible for reaching out in support when we could and reaching out to ask for support if we needed to.

LL: I've known each member of the cast before the project started. Some for almost 10 years and some for only a couple, all through queer organizing or community. I've known RJ the longest. We used to be part of Critical Resistance in Brooklyn. Our process was first to just get in touch with our stories, our voices, lots of writing, journaling, writing exercises and then through interviews our director wove a story together. We had lots of discussion about how we wanted to craft our stories and our political messaging one of them being: prisons are not the answer to dealing child sexual abuse.

2) Why is this work important to you as an artist/organizer/change maker?And why now? Why not last year, why not next year? What makes telling your story now, in this way, to such a large audience different than how you have told your story in the past?

GC: I have also shared my story in a film documentary called Anomaly by Jessica Chen Drammeh. Also, I have addressed CSA often as an artists and in my performance ensemble Mahina Movement. Mahinamovement.com .

If I can be brave enough to publicly speak about being victim of child sexual assault then maybe it will provide strength and courage for others who are currently going through the same thing.

DS: This work is so crucial to me because i can't see any way to fight the pandemic of CSA on this planet without making space to talk about it. it must be said and it must be heard. i'm as surprised as anyone else who knows me that i'm in this show right now, but i'm just happy for the opportunity to work with 4 incredible activists whose work i admire tremendously.

Maybe it's worth noting that i started working on this project at 29 years old, 25 years after my abuse was disclosed. i wasn't able to participate in any kind of accountability process for my abuse in the past because of my dissociated memories, so i feel it's about time that i play my part to reclaim the narrative about Wee Care and the terrifying things that Margaret Kelly Michaels did to us there.

The major difference between this and any other occasion when i have told me story is the theatrical medium. it's theater and that's so different from an intimate conversation or even straight-up testifying to any number of people. it's a different kind of witnessing experience for the audience. it anonymizes them (is that a word? i guess so), keeps them with us, holds them in their seats, present from start to finish. we offer them numerous avenues through which they can stay engaged even when they want to look away, cover their ears. and if they do get triggered, we have a very powerful safety net for them in the form of counselors who volunteer to provide support to anyone who needs it during and after the show. when i disclose my survivor history in a conventional conversation, there is not much i can do to provide my audience any safety. if i'm committed to telling anyone who will listen that yes, i'm a survivor of CSA and let's talk about it, i also don't want to hurt people with their own trauma or mine.

I think this show is a real trailblazer for creating a medium for advocacy and dialogue about what is sometimes nearly impossible to say and sometimes nearly impossible to hear, but leaving all parties feeling uplifted and hopeful-- among other things.

AS: For me, Secret Survivors feels like a culmination and a beginning. I've been wanting to tell my story publicly since I was a kid, and especially since I never got to testify against my father (who raped me for 8 years). In some ways, I have been telling my story for years - to friends, to colleagues, to some of my students (when they disclose their own survival stories to me). I first spoke publicly about being a survivor in 1997, at a Take Back the Night rally in college. And one thing that has remained constant is that people always disclose to me when I disclose to them - if they don't have a personal story to tell, they know the story of a friend or family member. And that's the thing about child sexual abuse - it is a taboo epidemic - everybody knows a child sexual abuse survivor, even if they do not know who in their lives has survived this violence. The statistics indicate this to be true. We have established nonprofits that (with only a few exceptions) point to the criminal legal system as a solution to this violence, even when my own story and the story of many others indicate that the criminal legal system has failed to heal perpetrators, and has often retraumatized survivors. When I started my MPA with a focus on public policy, I realized that the work I had attempted to do in college was still work I was committed to - creating social and political change that will end child sexual abuse. Because of post-traumatic stress disorder, I was forced to abandon this work back then, but I have now healed enough to hold this work and move forward. Initially I thought about writing my memoir, but witnessing the way mass media likes to deify individual survivors who are high functioning (like Oprah, Maya Angelou and many others), I knew I wanted to create a way for survivors to tell their stories in tandem, to take the spotlight off of us as individuals and really point to the fact that child sexual abuse is an epidemic that affects ALL of us and that is much bigger than any one person. I believe the work that the five of us have created with Ping Chong & Co. is a replicable model that can help more survivors speak out and can really begin to build a movement of child sexual abuse survivors, through storytelling, that I hope will result in the creation of viable community-based prevention and intervention strategies. What keeps me committed to this vision and this work is the memory of all those who have shared their stories with me and later fallen to self-destructive behaviors and even suicide, and the knowledge that child sexual abuse continues to be an epidemic - I want to create a world that is actually safe for young people, and I believe this is the starting point, given the frequency of this violence.

RJ: That’s the biggest piece, the sheer size of the audience. It’s an event, you know, which is important because an event is something that people talk about with each other like, “Did you go to that performance on Saturday? Let me tell you about it…” It opens up a space for people to have more conversations around child sexual abuse, transformative justice and many other things that we might not otherwise have a smooth-ish way to discuss. But are things that we MUST discuss because they are so deeply affecting us individually and collectively.

I’ve done a fair amount of work to get to this place in sharing my story. I really started talking about my experiences of sexual abuse in 2005. In ’06 I created a digital story about it with generationFIVE and the Center for Digital Storytelling. I’ve done a lot of related work in the years since but, yeah, I’m still scared about the performance on Saturday. I was having major blocks even just sending out invitations to people to come to the show. This is definitely the BIG coming out moment.

LL: This is the first time that i have told my story publicly. As someone who is known in the queer world most people don't know that I am a survivor. Why now is a good question. I think that theater has always been part of my history as a creative person. Any opportunity to use it to talk about issues that impact brown and black people I'm so there. I also think that the timing was right. I am in the process of attending grad school to become a therapist and social worker for queer people of color and this felt like a safe and fun way to talk about something that has impacted my entire life. If i'm going to be supporting others do their own healing I gotta be doing that work myself. It's the scariest and hardest and yet most rewarding personal transformation process I've been apart of. And to be able to share with this group of people who care of healing and social transformation it's like icing to my cupcake.

3) What are some of the challenges you have faced working together? How has the reality of being a survivor, and the multiple ways that can manifest in our bodies, minds, and spirits, made it hard to work together? What healing have you been able to find with each other?


GC: I either like to pull myself away from the group and isolate or be the hero and hold space for everyone – all strong suits I created from being a survivor. It’s hard to do either when I’m working with such a great bunch of loving, evolved human beings. We hold down the space for each other and truth be told ..we have a lot of fun!

DS: It's not too often that an outspoken CSA survivor meets another outspoken CSA survivor, so it's been fantastic to discover the conversations that can take place when the factors of stigma and shame can be zeroed-out. the thing that was tough for me in this and many other survivor group experiences is the lie of a hierarchy of suffering. having been in the unusual position of surviving CSA with a group of kids, i have always compared and contrasted my struggles to the visible signs of struggle in
my friends and peers who were also at my day care. it never felt like the right thing to do, but intellectualizing is one of my strongest coping mechanisms, so it's something i've struggled with. working with this group of folks on this project was the first time i could face that struggle with trusted comrades at my side and consider myself an equal.

I think we each had physical and emotional bills to pay for the work we did to create this show. as adults survivors of childhood trauma, our bodies and minds and spirits are very accustomed to the coping mechanisms we have at times in the past and sometimes still do depend upon to keep us functioning. this work has pushed us pretty far out of the ordinary course of experience and there is a stress reaction. everyone responds and handles it differently. i think it's actually really beautiful to see the great variety of ways that our bodies can communicate with us when they are being pushed over and beyond both societal and self-imposed boundaries. but what should also be noted and celebrated is the reward we get from knowing that our sacrifice has made a constructive and healing impact on the whole (including us).

AS: Sometimes the fact that we face similar impairments (for me, PTSD, for instance) and that we have sensitive triggers can make it hard to communicate and be sensitive. However, over the past year and a half the cast members have really gelled into a group that understands each other's idiosyncracies and we've learned, like one does in any relationship to another, how to call each other out from a place of integrity, honesty and respect. I have found somatics thanks to RJ, and have been able to further process issues like addiction, debilitating perfectionism, and difficulty setting boundaries thanks to conversations I've had with other cast members over the past year and a half. I feel blessed to be working with such fantastic comrades.

RJ: Child sexual abuse is about silence. It’s often something that is experienced solo. Child sexual abuse is an epidemic hidden away in millions of little silos. So to be breaking the silence, sharing the secret, alongside four amazing friends is a real gift and totally different than just telling “my story.” Doing this with Amita, Di, Gabby and LL is about breaking the silence AND the isolation. I feel that difference in my body, my spirit.

LL: This is a great question! I think that when conflict happened I think we were really aware of how we would regularly respond, using our survival strategies, and we dealt with them as a group and we were real generous with each other. I remember pulling RJ aside and being like "yo, this is your space too!" he's so aware of how he takes up space as someone who is white and assigned male and read as straight. he didn't talk a lot our first session. and i was not having it. this was a space for him to take up space because he is someone who has experienced oppression, he is a survivor just like me. i called him out. this is one of those spaces where not contributing and not talking is not being an ally, it's holding up the walls and not helping be part of the process. we held this kind of space for each other. as the only trans person in the group i felt really held and cared for about how gender in the space for me and for everyone, trans or no trans, is complicated and that has been impacted by our sexual abuse. we always checked in with each other and supported each other when we made time to do self care (Even if it meant being late). there is nothing like being with a group of people where touch (i.e. hugs) felt safe and healing for me.


4) Having not yet heard your stories, how does queerness intersect with being a survivor?

LL: For me, as gets laid out in the show, when i was realizing that i was queer it felt like i didn't have a right to say that i was queer because i was too scared to explore my desire for other queer people. Negotiating sex and gender and safety was incredibly difficult. So for me being a survivor and queer has taken me a long time to intergrate as a sexual person.

AS: My queerness is definitely not a result of my being a survivor. I believe I have always been queer, at least in terms of gender expression and behavior, and that my desire is and always has been fluid, when I take an honest look back at my childhood. The fact that my father raped me certainly impacted my self-esteem, self-image, relationship to my body, but that is entirely separate from my desire and gender expression. I do think it was easier to come out as queer once I figured out that I was queer, given that I had come out as a survivor 6 years prior to that. One societal intersection I perceive is that because of homophobia, male survivors seem less likely to speak out, for fear of being perceived as gay (as if being raped or molested indicates one's sexual orientation). Also, I think many people are quick to assume that I am queer because I am a survivor, and if this perception is faced by other queer folks, it may keep many of us silent for fear of feeding in to this homophobic stereotype.

GC: There is an outsider”ness” to being a survivor and an outsider”ness” to being queer. Im also a very light skinned black woman who is adopted …more outsider”ness”…. I have found myself on the outside commonality. However, this has served me well…enabling me to see beyond the usual limitations of life.

DS: i think it's challenging to think about these things, and often folks who learn that i'm gay and my abuser was a woman are pushed to yet unexplored levels of curiosity (producing some pretty heinous questions and comments). fundamentally i think sexuality and pedophilia are as different as apples and facebook-- two completely unrelated and separate planes of meaning. just like some people who use cell phones are left-handed, some survivors of sexual abuse are queer. the fact that the dominant discourse in the media populates our day-to-day interactions with folks who conflate sexuality with pedophilia only feeds my motivation to get this secret survivors project out to as many people as possible!

RJ: I’m a man who was sexually abused as a child by a teenage boy. I also had a hard experience later as an early teenager with a much older woman. Within this heterosexist culture, there are particular ways that each of those experiences are generally read that get in the way of speaking, healing and seeking accountability. Going to public schools in Cincinnati, to come out as having been repeatedly molested by another boy was not my idea of a good time. Later on, in the case of the woman, the assumption is that no matter what I must’ve wanted it, which is also not helpful. So I’d like to acknowledge that queerness allows for a much more expansive understanding of what ACTUALLY happens with our sexual experiences, amongst other things. This creates more room for us to share what is going on with us, including when we’ve been abused.

In my chosen sexual life I’ve lived a pretty straight existence. Did being sexually abused by a boy turn me off to men? I don’t know. This isn’t addition and subtraction. The ways of the heart feel more like calculus. Maybe there’s an algorithm somewhere that’ll help me figure this one out.

5) How have your families been supportive through this process? Have any of your families (of choice or otherwise) been less than supportive of this project?

GC: I am no longer in contact with the family who raised me. My friends (chosen family) have been amazing. My wife, Stephanie has been my rock throughout this entire process.

RJ: My mother and one of my uncles have been especially supportive. I’m also grateful for much of my community here in NYC… too many people to list have given me strength, often in small ways, and that’s made a huge difference.

LL: My chosen family has been there every step of the way. I think because so much of my family are part of the story (as being around when it happened) I put distance between me and this process.

AS: My family, both biological and chosen, have been supportive. I think my sister had some anxiety initially, as her story is obviously intertwined with mine, and she is much more private than I am, but she has given me her blessings to continue this work and I believe she is proud of me taking this project on. Also, my mother has struggled to accept that her public image will become complicated thanks to this work, given the choices she made when I was a child, but ultimately, she too has expressed her support for this work and has said she is proud of me multiple times in the past year and a half. I'm very lucky.

DS: In many ways my parents survived my sexual abuse right along with me! they were deeply traumatized in a different way from me, being adults and understanding the violations in ways no child can. they struggle to this day with crushing guilt knowing now what they couldn't have know then, that they trusted their child to the care of a pedophile. no matter how much forgiveness i can love them with, they may never forgive themselves. Wee Care parents handled their trauma many different ways so i feel fortunate that my parents, whatever their continuing struggles may be, have been as open as they could with me about my abuse. for most of my life they were my only source of affirmation. as i mention in the show, i don't think enough community and support exists for caregivers of survivors of CSA and i wish that my parents had had the option of support from a community of people who shared their experience- especially the other Wee Care parents.

another important community of support has been what i call the Wee Care diaspora: other Wee Care survivors, their parents, the investigators, prosecutors, judges, and therapists who worked hard to try to help us. i'm talking about dozens and dozens of people. working on this secret survivors project has brought me close to folks i haven't connected with in decades. it's also given me the opportunity to connect with other Wee Care kids as adults and to be in solidarity and supportive of one another in ways that i couldn't have imagined even just one year ago. this is such an important network of people in my life and i'm only just beginning to discover all of the connections and all of the potential for healing.

6.) What is the change you hope that this project, presented in this way (theater as opposed to a talking heads panel or After-School Special, or Oprah episode) you hope to see?

LL: This play moves people. It connects the personal and the political and I think this play can help open up a space to talking about how sexual abuse is so real and yet so invisible as an issue that we organize around. The first step to creating a world without sexual abuse is to name it and acknowlege that it exists. This play does that.

DS: I guess i talked a bit about this before. the theatrical medium is transformative and ping chong's undesirable elements series has really elevated transformative process to art. we are real people having a profound impact on an incredibly important and dynamic issue without the star power of Oprah or the intellectual masturbation of political punditry.

In fact, because of my bizarre case of CSA, i can testify to how dangerous that very media can be where CSA is concerned. that media, from Montel WiIliams to Mike Wallace on 60 minutes and the New York Times, bought (and sold) my abuser's lies of innocence hook, line, and sinker. they broadcast it as truth to millions of people. we in the Wee Care diaspora will never reclaim our story from our torturer using those same media tools that she deployed to brand us all as liars- once again exercising unlimited power over our lives, once again we were powerless to defend ourselves. we will change it one by one, audience by audience, witness by witness, until everyone knows what happened because they heard it from our very mouths, felt our scars, mapped our struggle. then, i hope, they will know the truth.

RJ: This is a nuanced peek into the lives of five people who have experienced some part of that really broad thing called “child sexual abuse”. It’s not just about the abuse but about history, vision, resilience and so much more. I hope we touch the hearts of the audience in a way that is much more profound than what can usually be achieved in the mediums you mention above. I hope that this project contributes meaningfully to the emerging transformative justice movement in this country.

GC: More visibility around how CSA affects a wide range of people. Ideally, for it to be common knowledge that CSA is truly an epidemic that needs to be dealt with immediately.


7) How can folks that can't be with us on Saturday see the show or get in touch with you?

AS: People can view two clips of the show on our website (www.secretsurvivors.org). We also hope to produce a DVD and educational toolkit to be able to share this work with many others. People can support our work with a tax-deductible contribution (designated for "Secret Survivors") here: https://www.justgive.org/basket?acton=donate&ein=13-2874863
and can contact me at: amita@pingchong.org

GC: If people want to see more of me and the work that I do they can reach me at gabriellacallender@yahoo.com/ MahinaMovement.com

DS: We are working on the creation of a video of Saturday's performance- raising money and selecting the fiercest outfits- so that as many people as possible can engage with secret survivors. but if nothing else comes out of this show, i want folks to get in touch with the fact that secret survivors is on stage in and around your life every day and everywhere you go. be inspired by the courage of CSA survivors every day, the ones who disclose to you and the ones who don't, the ones with visible scars and the ones with hidden memories, those of us who made it and those of us who didn't. be inspired to have the courage to hold pedophiles accountable in your families and in your communities without relying on the false solution of prisons and jails. have the courage to meet (y)our gaze as survivors and don't look away.

RJ: Hmmm… come find me on Facebook, or through my blog at zapagringo.com

Editor's Note: Lucia Leandro can also be stalked via Facebook!

Thank you all for opening your hearts and lives to all of us. I woke up at 4am this morning and made the mistake of reading RJ's interview responses, and, as with all of your responses, it sent my spirit and my brain into overdrive. I appreciate each of you, your work, and the love that you bring, give, and share with our communities.

(PS, on a personal note, RJ if you ever decide you want to check out the other half of the Kinsey scale...you know where to find me!)

Paranoia Ain't Paranoia If Its Real

Since realizing that meth and I had a fucked up and abusive relationship almost six years ago, Miss Tina and I have been on again/off again lovers. Like anyone that has ever lived through or seen another go through "battery syndrome," it is always shocking but rarely surprising when an individual returns to a lover that is abusive. The comfort of the familiar and the numbness that comes with it do not require the courage to face the unknown and our own internal tapes that tell us that we deserve no more than the abuse we receive at the hands of those people and things that purport to love us.

A couple of weeks ago, my partner was struggling with some of the areas in his life that are challenging for him. In general, he is an amazing, well adjusted, smooth sailor that has done his share of living and figured out lots of things for himself. He's 13 years older than I am, so he has had plenty more time to figure lots of things out. But, like most folks, he has some work still left to do. In this particular case, he was struggling with some issues that impact both of us. In general, we are both very loving and patient with each other when we come up against those places where we know we each have work to do. In this particular instance, I only had so much emotional fortitude banked up, and it ran out.

Now a well adjusted and right-thinking person would have perhaps gone nuclear on his partner, perhaps thrown some shit around, broke a dish or two, and raised some Hell. Perhaps a rational person would have gotten angry but then sat down to help work out an effective solution that allowed for his partner to have the space to work through his shit while also getting the support he needed so that his shit didn't overly impact my mental health.

Oh no! Not my crazy ass.

Instead, after about a week of being angry and bitter, I decided...you know what...you want to be in YOUR SHIT...WATCH THIS!

You think I am joking? I totally arranged a hook up that was going to include a threesome with Crystal Meth, and as I left the house to get high, I literally thought to myself: I'll show you!

Lord have mercy if that isn't the dumbest line of thinking possible. Let me break down that thinking for you into what it really means: Because YOU pissed ME off...I am going to go out and do some shit that is only REALLY hurtful to ME. So because YOU fucked up, I am going to go out and do something in response for which I am going to pay for the consequences.

Now math has never been my strong suit, and I hate word problems, but even I know that 1+Stupid=Dumb As Hell.

Since then, over the last few weeks, I have been full on struggling against my addiction. It has owned my ass in a really scary way over the last few weeks. Thank God I finally reached out to a good friend of mine, also a recovering addict, who, over the last few days, has been the angel I needed to get me to where I need to be. Thank you KF. I love you for it. For those of you that are concerned, I am fine now, I will be heading back to therapy, and KF and I will hitting up some CMA meeting together. I know this dance. It's old as hell at this point, and I am well aware of the things I need to do in order to keep on top of my mental health. There are also request that I have made of David so that our relationship is strengthened by him doing his work as well. If necessary, I will find a therapist willing to move in with us.

But all of that is really just the backstory to the real drama.

Over the years, I have, when partying met guys that I felt knew more about me than they should have. In fact, I have met "random strangers," via various hook up sites that have been very poor actors and about as see through as a lace thong, and so did a poor job of masking the fact that there were things that someone had told them about me. Queens will gossip, especially Meth Head Queens, and since coming out as HIV positive a number of years ago and making sure to include that emblazoned in my online ads, I really could care less about rumors that persisted from an earlier time in my life when I was basically in denial.

The shitty and scary thing was that this sort of moment kept happening despite where I lived geographically. In this Internet age, it isn't difficult to keep track of and fuck with someone via the web. With the ability to embed secret files and programs into graphics, encrypted communications, and a whole host of other sneaky freaky tools, if a computer savvy individual with a grudge or a crusade decides to e-stalk you...there is very little you can do about it. I thought, though, that living my life as rightly as possible, even when relapsing, by disclosing my status, letting folks know if I am dating someone, etc, I figured that I would be able to short circuit whatever rumors happened to be out there about me. Plus, Hell, I never had any hard proof that my interactions with these various men were anything more than a combination of my personal guilt at using heightened by meth fueled paranoia.

Then came this latest relapse. I was meticulous in my various disclosures. I was honest, up front, and clear about just about every possible aspect of my life. It didn't matter.

After one particular hook up, when I noticed, again, some strange behavior in the other person that was consistent with past behaviors that indicated that this person "knew" or had been "told" information about me. I had also noticed, in the past (and this might get graphic ya'll), some really strange behavior where an individual would, ostensibly, place a finger in my anus, but then would do this weird thumping thing with his other hand just outside of my anus while press, from the inside, against the skin...just as you would if you were breaking open something.

The first time it happened, I thought...stop being paranoid freak. The second and third time it happened with other people, I also let it go. When it happened again and consistantly, and I began noticing very strange purple stains on the insides of my jeans I got very fucking suspicious. When I caught a guy actually placing something in my anus after which I ran to the bathroom and saw that, indeed, the skin inside of my anus had turned purple, I knew that something was motherfucking up.

At that point, you'd think that you'd cut your losses and realize that despite your transparency, someone somewhere had decided that they were "Righteous Tweakers," and you were a "Tweaker of Sin," and they were willing to do whatever to keep you from doing what they do.

Just like my Mama, when you tell me I can't do something, it just makes me want to do it more. So, our dear Tweaker Crusaders upped the ante. They changed strategies. Instead of using a purple stain, they began using a solution that is meant to be used externally but when applied to internal tissue causes enormous swelling, effectively sealing up your anal cavity except for enough space for doing your toilet time business.

How do I know this? This last time I connected with someone the dude had a little bottle of solution that was curiously out of place amongst the lubes, poppers, and other ointments. After being in a compromising position, my stomach and booty started to feel funny, so I ran into the bathroom, sure enough, once again, my anus (and I am talking about the inside now...so basically the colon) was swollen to the point of starting to portrude, and let me be clear that NOTHING had happened at this point to justify any type of swelling. It's one thing if you have gotten your back banged out by a big dicked cholo that treated your ass like a low rider, it is quite another to have a .5% solution injected into your anus as some sort of Tweaker Retribution. As you can imagine, I was understandably pissed and dipped the fuck out.

I had a great conversation with my friend Shelly about all of this, and she agrees...how fucked up must you be to decided that you, as a drug addict, have the power,privilege, and moral righteousness to physically attack another human being. By all means, if I were not disclosing or was in some way acting in a malicious and damaging manner, I would chalk this up to a justifiable community response. But that was not what this was.

Of course, in the end, the real point is that by NOT relapsing, I don't have to worry about any of that shit. Simple solution, right? RIght.

And if that shit wasn't actually enough, these Tweakers have hacked my computer and iPhone. For years, I felt like I was being remotely surveilled, which is how various folks in various cities have reacted the same way when I have relapsed. But, again, I never had solid proof to back up my meth fueled paranoia. Now I do. This last week, I noticed my computer acting strangely. Then I discovered a program called iSteg on my computer along with a PDF explaining how to use it. iSteg is a program used to hide secret texts inside of PDFs and image files. It was from a website called www.hanynet.com, to which I had never directed my browser. When I finally was able to load the website (my webbrowser was being manipulated to keep me from it), I found it to be a small, personal website with several homemade hacking programs and two firewall programs. I downloaded the two firewall programs, which then allowed me to see just what was going on with my computer. And lo and behold my paranoia was absolutely justified. Before my eyes, I watched as a individual that lives within as block of me was attempting, and sometimes succeeding to connect to and manipulate my computer.

Let me tell you, after feeling paranoid as fuck for years and thinking that I was losing it...it is nice to have confirmation. Now I am bitter as Hell and ready to kick ass.

My first priority is to take care of my mental health and smack down Miss Tina. But TRUST that now that I have an address and am fairly certain I know who it is, and should I see him on the street, he better sure as hell make sure that I have taken my meds...because I am ready to fuck him up or get put down trying to do so.

I trust my instincts almost always. And, I will continue to do so from this point forward.

And, just in case my hacker is reading this, that moral high horse you have been riding...must have kicked you in the head. Get sober. Clean up your life, and get the hell out of mine.

Revolution and the Middle East: Why the U.S. Should Stay the Hell Out of It

This morning, on Facebook, a conservative gay that often times comments on my wall posts, made a comment today, when I posted a status that was celebrating Tunisia, Egypt and now Bahrain, that "Egypt was easy because they didn't want a bloody coup on their hands. Some of these countries will now be bloody (and some have been). Think about where we would be if we backed the FIRST Iranian protesters last year instead of standing by, timid..."

First of all, I don't believe the U.S. government was at all timid during the Iranian protests. I think that Obama understood the politics and reality of the situation. Also, comparing the uprising in Iran with what has taken place in Egypt and Tunisia are not valid comparisons. Very simply...the uprising in Tunisia and Egypt worked. Iran failed.

As I said to this gentleman on Facebook, I do not deny at all that the Iranian people have the POWER to overcome their current government. And, should the people of Iran rise up and throw down the Supreme Council, I believe the U.S. should immediately recognize whatever new transitional government is formed. It is going to take sacrifice by the Iranian people, and it is going to cost lives. The people rose up once before and threw down the Shah. I believe that, specifically, is why their uprising took place and failed.

It took place because, to the young people of Iran, the revolution of the 1970s, was disconnected from their personal narratives in that they did not live through it. Like all human beings that inherit history but were not around to live through the history, we relate to it differently. As a black American, the Civil Rights movement resonates with me deeply. It gives me a sense of pride and an understanding of the power of people. I look back at that time and think about the unity of community, the folks unafraid to take to the streets and face dogs, water hoses, lynchings, and police brutality. It makes me want to grab everyone I know and form a new human rights peoples army and march off to Washington or Selma or Minneapolis or, better yet, Wall Street. I wonder why our elders aren't marching off with us, leading us, taking us where we need to go.

Of course, right there, is part of the dissonance. I look at the Civil Rights movement from a distance of history and from a vantage point that has been privileged by the work that has gone before without having had to experience any of the pain that went with it. For those folks that fought the fight during the Civil Rights era still bear the scars, pain, and knowledge of exactly how far the state is willing to go to maintain the status quo. That memory is often and can be paralyzing.

I fully believe that the reason that the Iranian uprising was not successful was, in part, due to the memory of the overwhelming repressive actions taken to maintain the Shah's authority. To face that sort of repression once, and survive, is an act of heroism. One is no less of a hero if the idea of facing that sort of repression again is too much for the spirit to handle.

So those beautiful young people in Iran rose up against the Iranian government...but, unlike with the Shah, the movement was limited, isolated, and was facing a modern state with all the powers of social control at its command along with a willingness to roll tanks over angry students if necessary.

Also, if we had intervened during the protests last year, the Iranian government would have had all of the fodder they needed to paint the protests as a U.S. backed attack on Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran. That would have absolutely galvanized the ultra-conservative base that props up the regime, and Ahmadinejad would have had absolutely no qualms about blowing up a few city blocks in Tehran to wipe out protesters, if it meant retaining power and upholding the Supreme Council. And, if the uprising last year would have been successful and the U.S. had backed the protesters, whatever regime would have come into power, no matter how legitimate, would have been seen as a tool of the U.S. That would have made it continuously vulnerable to reactionary forces and given them a bullet-proof platform to fight against any democratic progress AND, if they manage to regain control of the government, institute such draconian state controls that any movement for democracy will be put far out of reach for the next 30 years. Don't believe me? I got two words for you: Tienanmen Square.

And let's be real about why the U.S. can not intervene in any of these tremendous and powerful uprisings taking place in North Africa and West Asia. It is directly a result of the United State's fucked up, suck ass, imperialist ambitions and actions in the Middle East...when moments like this arrive...when the people are rising up to demand change from their government (or to overthrow their government)...the U.S. has neither the standing nor the relationships within these legitimate pro-democracy movements that would allow us to support grassroots democratic movements. Historically, it has not been in our best interest to support democracy anywhere outside of Europe and North America. Folks living in the underdeveloped world are not stupid. They understand that many of their most oppressive leaders have been able to hold onto power because of direct support from the United States. The Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Manuel Noriega, Papa Doc, Trujillo, Fulgencio Batista, and the list goes on and on of the dictators that the U.S. has supported that have used the most despicable means of social control on their own people.

We should absolutely recognize, immediately, any real movement for democracy in a country as it is happening. When those movements are successful, we should move quickly to offer aid and support for the new governments. We should offer quiet aid packages to the new regimes that will help support them through the transition. The U.S. should send send CIVIL delegations from the U.S., from places like the Liberty Tree Foundation/Center for Media Justice/FairVote, and other democratic practice NGOs, as teams of experts to help work with the new regime in setting up new institutions that will help preserve and expand democratic practice as it makes sense for the countries where nascent democratic movements are taking place. But our government should stay far far far away from these movements and from the new governments....unless we want to see them brought down in bloody civil wars and arch-conservative backlash movements.

The bottom line is that I fully believe that it is up to the people of each country in the world to bear responsibility for changing their ruling regime. In almost all cases, I absolutely oppose any foreign intervention in the self-determination process of nation-states, including the use of violent resistance to the state, including guerrilla actions and civil war. There is one notable exception to this rule. I believe that anytime that there is evidence of genocide, there is a moral obligation and a human rights imperative that ALL nations, especially developed nations, have the right and obligation, without permission from the particular nation-state sponsoring the genocide to intervene and do whatever is necessary to protect those being "ethnically cleansed."

Outside of that, I truly believe that, even if a regime is propped up by the U.S. or whatever other world power, the ultimate responsibility for confronting and changing a repressive government is the responsibility of the people living in that place. Real democratic practices requires a ground up process that has only ever proven effective by being developed through a revolutionary process that has cost innumerable lives. Name for me ONE single country in the entire world that is a stable democracy that did not arrive at democracy through a process of war, revolution, popular uprisings, and social agitation by the undeserved. Democracy is only powerful when the people choose it because it is the best vehicle for their well being.

I am super heartened by the popular uprisings taken place right now. Some have already been brutality smacked down while others are clearly headed for or have achieved some level of victory. The worst possible thing that could happen right now would be for the U.S. or any of the European powers to intervene in these organic processes. Let the people fight their fight and find their own voice, and when they reach out to the rest of the world in friendship, let's be ready to give them the support they need to walk tall down their own democratic path.

RuPaul's Drag Race: Get it together!

To quote my best friend, Bebe Zahara Benet, the winner of the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race: GET IT TOGETHER!

I have been watching the third season of RuPaul's Drag Race, and while I think the caliber of the queen's improved over last year's dismal and largely untalented pool of talent (with a couple of notable exceptions), the unnecessary and community damaging drama of this year's season is really reaching the point where I am ready to walk away from the show.

Let me tell you why.

To begin with, the near violence on the show between the drag queens is really fucking out of control. In the first episode, when the two queens up for elimination had to lip synch for their life, I thought Phoenix's crazy ass was going to draw blood. RuPaul made it clear that her behavior was unacceptable....and then two episodes later Mimi Imfurst loses her fucking mind and PICKS India up and slings her over her shoulders.

Let me be clear. I know Mimi. We are acquaintances. I do not know her well, but she has been in my home, and I respect her drag artistry. I know that these shows are edited in a particular manner, and I don't believe she is as whiny and clueless as the show makes her out to be, but when she put her hands on another queen, I was done. It wasn't funny. It wasn't ok. And she deserved to be booted from the show. Love you girl, but that is the Lord's own damn truth. Don't put your hands on another person without their permission. You don't know what that person has lived through or what burdens they are carrying. As a survivor of intense physical assault, I promise you that I wouldn't have screamed when you picked me up, I would have put you in the motherfucking hospital and that is no damn joke. PTSD is nothing to play with.

Up until this current episode, I was LOVING on the South Asian Drag Queen Raja until she opened her mouth to talk shit about Stacey Lane, and, in particular, using Southphobic bullshit about listening to bullfrogs and sipping iced tea on the back porch. Let me be clear with you Raja you dumb heifer, if not for the radical, life threatening and courageous social justice work of SOUTHERN folks, PARTICULARLY queers and people of color, tranny South Asian half-assed drag queens wouldn't have a fucking chance in this world. LEARN SOMETHING before you open your fucked up mouth and start marginalizing people from rural and southern communities. How about that?

I HAVE HAD IT!

It is Black History Month. Hey Raja....do you know WHY we have Black History Month? Because MY great-Uncle Carter G. Woodson, FROM THE SOUTH, made it happen. Hey Raja, did you know that Stonewall only happened because BLACK SOUTHERNERS had shown the way? I am so fucking tired of folks from outside of the South perpetuating stereotypes of Southerners. I am from northern Minnesota. My Dad is from southern West Virginia. The most welcoming place, besides Minneapolis, I have ever lived is ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA! More friendly than New York, more friendly than the Bay area, but dumb bitches like Raja say shit on tv that reinforce and re-marginalize southerners that continue to lead us forward.

Hey stupid ass Raja....do you know about Southerners on New Ground (SONG?). Do you know about the Suzanne Pharr, and now Pam McMichael, both queer women to lead the HIGHLANDER CENTER in New Market, TN? Do you know anything besides how to tuck your tiny little dick into your ass with a little duct tape? I hope Stacey Lane shoves your ass in a Fry Daddy and eats you on stage.

I am pissed.

The South is going to rise again, but this time it is going to be queer people of color that rise up and claim their due and then beat the shit out of dumb fucks that run off at the mouth on national television.

Creating Change: Claiming My Place

For the last week or so, I was back home in Minneapolis. This trip was specifically to attend the Creating Change Conference. Creating Change, for those of you not in the know, is the largest gathering of LGBT organizers in the world, and it happens each February in a different mid-sized U.S. city. The conference is comprised of two days of day long institutes, plenaries, and hundreds of workshops. It stretches from Wednesday-Sunday, and the 2,500 people in attendance reads like the Who's Who of the movement for queer liberation.

This year was my 10th Creating Change conference since 1998. To give you an idea of where the conferences have gone, I have been to Pittsburgh, Oakland (twice), Atlanta, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Denver, Miami and a couple that I have forgotten. Good grief.

When you first attend the conference, almost universally, you are overawed by both the content and the names that are walking about. One of my proudest moments was being yelled at by Barbara Smith at my first conference. Yes, THAT Barbara Smith of Kitchen Table Press and the Combahee River Collective. If like me in 1998, you don't know who Barbara Smith is...then you need to Google her now. Fierce. By about your third or fourth Creating Change, if you have continued your work in the movement, you start to realize that though the workshops and plenaries are powerful, the real work happens every day, all day long, in the hotel bar.

Let's be real...the hotel bar of every Creating Change IS the cigar smoke filled back-room of the LGBT movement. As I explained to some straight friends recently, power politics of the HIGHEST degree in the queer movement takes place during this conference. It's a case study in the way that American movements work in the non-profit industrial complex age. And what's even more mind numbing is that while some folks exude an essence of "player," power and access only have a superficial correlation to your current job title. In fact, your personal work is often more greatly valued than whatever position you may currently hold, and since most people at the conference change jobs like I change condoms during the conference, what pays your bills is often far down the list in terms of the access you might have.

I started attending Creating Change when I was a youth of 21 years old (and I had just turned 21...the conference used to happen, annually, in November). For the last 13 years, as I have worked within and outside of the movement, I have still been fairly awed by the conference. There are names and faces that would make me stutter and stammer, and while each year I have enjoyed fairly strong access to the decision makers in the movement, I still felt like one of the whippersnappers trying to figure things out and listening to whatever the hell Mr. Russell Roybal told me about what was REALLY going down.

I heart me some Russell. Yes I do. And I appreciate all the opportunities that he has provided me over the years.

But this year something different took place. For the first time, I had people walking up to me (that I didn't know) saying the same sort of things that I STILL say to folks...things like..."I READ ALL YOUR SHIT AND I LOVE IT!" Basically, I found myself in the shoes of the people that I have often found inspirational. I had people that knew my name, knew my work, read my blog, read things I've written in their college classrooms, and heard me speak at this or that place.

I felt OLD AS HELL.

I also felt extremely and totally humbled AND really very scared. And I mean both of those things.

Let me give you an example. I just finished writing my first novel. I am in the process of reading the whole thing through for the first time, and there are things that I wrote that are really very smart...(hold on...this isn't as egotistical as it sounds)...and while reading what I wrote I seriously could not 1) remember writing it, 2) understand where the poignancy came from, and 3) I fundamentally don't believe that *I* actually wrote it. Now I KNOW that I physically typed the words but there is a part of me that still believes those tapes that say I am not actually smart or fierce or beautiful or strong enough to have written those things.

Ain't life grand.

So, when these people came up to me and were saying these sorts of things, I got scared because I felt like a big old fraud. I was/am afraid that they are going to find out that really....I don't know what the hell I am talking about, that I make up half the shit I say, and that the other half is something I probably got from Wikipedia. Don't you laugh at me.

As the conference went on and person after person (almost always young people), said the same sorts of things, I thought to myself...you know what dude...you need to start believing in yourself. If these strangers can believe the things you put out in the world, don't you think you should?

Yep. I should.

The clincher for me was the fact that I got to present Mr. Kenyon Farrow with an award from Queers for Economic Justice at their annual event. If you don't know Kenyon, and if you don't Google HIM now, then you and I aren't friends.

Let me say that being asked to present someone that is at the core of what it means to be a progressive, radical and transformative change maker was humbling and a shock to the butt. I thought to myself (after I got done crying in front of a hundred people)...that if I am good enough to give an award to Kenyon, then I must not be those things that those tapes inside tell me.

So, this blog is my way of saying that right here and now I am going to go right on ahead and believe that I am smart. I am going to believe that I sometimes have something valuable to say, and that I am worthy of the leadership that has, from time to time, been entrusted to me by my peers.

Thank you all for helping me see myself better.

Let's Be Real

If you don't believe in God--bless your heart. I respect your belief, I support your right to believe it, and for those of you that need material proof of God's existence (He/She/It/Them/They) and haven't received it, I trust your perception of material proof as it applies to your life.

And for all of that, I am psychically, physically, mentally, and spiritually unable to understand your experience. I have always believed in God. I have never had a crisis of faith based in doubt of the existence of the Divine. Please do not get me wrong, I have spent a good part of my life cussing God out for everything from bad dates to my junior year class pictures (please see exhibit A, the offending picture, posted here for your amusement--no...that is NOT the missing third Indigo Girl). And when it comes to proof, I have enough empirical data to make a Nobel Laureate blush. Dr. Erik Streed, the closest person I know to a Nobel Laureate (his graduate advisor won the Nobel Prize in Physics based on the research they did together when Erik was a lab slave) might poo poo my "loose" definition of "empirical," he would be forced to admit that either there is a greater force at work in the universe or there is a yet undiscovered sub-sub-sub-sub atomic particle that he will discover by putting frozen Kool-AID into the CERN Accelerator and adding a dash of lime just as the collider reaches energy output of 3.5 TeV per beam, which he will then redirect using a kaleidoscope while singing "Grease Lightning," and mimicking the mating ritual of the Pakootiekootie bird, which, incidentally, he, himself, discovered in the fossil record and then, using leftover skin cells from Joan Rivers' last face lift, a section of skin from Carnie Wilson's latest gastric bypass, a dash of leftover love lube from a secret butter bath romp between Oprah and Gayle, and an Eggo Waffle, proceeded to clone the Pakootiekootie.

All of that to say is that I am right. Erik is wrong. God exists. Now let me tell you why.

I tried to relapse today with all of my might. I mean short of selling my ass for drugs or training Mimzy to run a meth lab out of her kennel, I gave it the good old addicts try. And let me tell you it was sneaky. Hold on to this trip into the the Misfiring Synapses of Brandon's Frontal Lobe. David and I are moving our open relationship in to a broader scope. I have actually been really proud of myself for not completing giving in to my abandonment issues or losing my mind over things that a year ago would have had me calling on the name of Jesus and raising the TSA security level to whatever the hell comes after orange. But there have been things that have stuck in my craw (and rightfully so). Last night, I couldn't fall asleep because my brain was desperately trying to figure out what the hell was at the core of my discomfort/annoyance/etc. Around 3am, I figured it out. This morning, I didn't trip. And after a rocky moment or two, David and I had a sleepy, half-finished, but ok conversation.

Still with me? Good.

I actually recently dealt really well with am online situation here at home. And we laughed about it. But today is where the synapses were listening to Katy Perry and took that song Fireworks quite literally. So, I figured...hey... I can look at Craig's List. Well, since i am looking at Craig's List, I might as well look at Manhunt. Oh well since this gay with a delicious booty messaged me on Manhunt, and I am on Manhunt anyway, I might as well read the email. Well since I am READING the email, I might as well respond. Oh. wait. what. You are partying (aka crystal meth), well I can entertain that notion. Well, you know, just because I go meet this guy at his place and there is crystal meth there doesn't mean that I have to do it. It was right about there...just after I got out of the shower and had gotten dressed and was about to head out the door that the Lord took a hand. I decided to call the guy just to firm things up. And he didn't answer. I called again, and again, and about 40 more times, until the guy shut down his phone. I was stomping around my house cussing and kicking and screaming and pissed off. I was acting a fool, but in my head, it was all very justified and logical. It wasn't about the drugs! It was about this person that would have had me standing outside of his front door and not answered. It was about the lack of manners and the general upbringing of this heathen with the great ass.

Here's where God intervened again.

I caught myself in the mirror, and at that moment I realized just how ridiculous I was acting. I had rationalized myself about a minute away from doing something really fucking dumb (in the past, I would have realized it, and I would have kept right on going. Hell, YESTERDAY, I would have realized it and kept right on going). And let me not be the saint here. I did, once I calmed myself down, sit back down at the computer and spend about five minutes checking out Manhunt and seeing if there were any other opportunities that could get me out the door and high. That is when two things happened. I slammed down the cover of my computer, walked towards the bathroom and chanted to myself, "FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT."

Then I prayed.

The Lord didn't answer. He texted.

Rude.

Actually, it was a friend of mine that lives in my hood, and he texted to tell me that he had just gotten laid off. Within one minute another friend texted to ask if I would go with him to Callen Lorde to get an HIV test done. It may not have been Jesus per se on the line, but the Lord works in mysterious ways, and he spent all that time with 12 men in the desert, so it makes sense that he would use the gays as his post-crucifixtion messenger. GayT&T!!

Nothing like a dose of real for real life problems to put your momentary psychosis into check. And all of this ties into another God-moment I had recently.

Last Friday, I got to see a woman that I love deeply and dearly. Her name is Makeeba Browne. Keeba and I lived together for only about four months when I was out in Oakland. We moved into our house a day apart. She was going through some things when she moved in. She had just moved to the Bay. She had lost someone very close to her not more than a year before. She was black woman in a white ass world, and she had carried a lot on her shoulders. Some of that was those things that life puts on us that aren't really ours but we have to carry and learn to set down anyway. Some of it was things that she picked up because, well, too many of us learn that we were meant to suffer. During our time together, I was also a hot mess, do not let me tell all her tea and none of mine. But if you scroll back in this blog, you can read mine, in detail, with footnotes. Anyway, I digress. Over the course of those four months I learned several things about Makeeba: 1) she was absolutely beautiful beyond her own comprehension. Real, true, amazing beauty. 2) Behind her beautifully sharp tongue there was a beautifully vulnerable spirit that, if you made the mistake of confusing vulnerability with weakness, would snap your neck if necessary. 3) She was wise. Like old old old ancestor wise and deeper than I can ever hope to be. I am not being self-deprecating here. This girl is wise like still rivers that run deep, chocolate brown currents and sensual eddies that whisper gettin' over stories to Guinea-children. I have moments of clarity, but Makeeba is one of my teachers. 4) I loved this woman desperately. There is a story I won't share, but she will know that there was one night that we spent together, and she may have thought that I was comforting and taking care of her, but that night, in her rawness, she was holding on to me and lifting me up. For real for real.

So, Keeba and I met for breakfast last Friday. Seeing her walking down that street was like seeing the sunlight finally come to understand its own brightness. Keeba always dazzles me. But this day, I was almost blinded. Keeba ain't no saint. Lord no she aint, and she inherited the same hoochie gene that I got, but even when she is not ready to DO the work she knows she needs to do within herself...she KNOWS it needs to be done. And I could see that this woman had been WORKING. At one point in our conversation, Keebers said something really profound. I can't remember the exact words, but it was something like, "I know that I am supposed to be here. I know that the universe wants me here. Because try as I might to take myself out of Creation and do what I am not supposed to be doing. The Universe takes care of me! The UNIVERSE takes care of me.' And she was right. She and I have found ourselves in situations that, quite frankly, if they had gone the wrong way would have meant that we wouldn't be here right now. That isn't an exaggeration. If the Universe had closed its unsleeping eye for a quick minute, I woulnd't be writing this blog right now. And let me tell you, when it comes to addiction, I have lost people I know to this disease. I can name three people that I went to rehab with that are now dead. And, truthfully, there ain't a lick of difference between what they were doing and what I have done. Situation might be different. Particulars might be different, but in the end, the risks were the same. And anyone that plays Roulette can tell you...when your number hits twice in a row...and then another number hits twice in a row back to back....that right there...is the finger of God spinning that wheel. And we never know when they are going to call a change of dealer.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day: I've Been to the Mountaintop

In celebration of Dr. King's birthday, I would like to honor the good doctor by reprinting here his final speech, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," which he gave the night before he was murdered in Memphis, TN. The speech was given in support of the sanitation worker's strike, and it highlighted doctor King's commitment to radical economic justice. It is my favorite speech of the many brilliant orations given by Dr. King, and I read and listen to this speech at least twice a year. The words are power but hearing him speak it is life changing. You can hear the full audio of the speech at American Rhetoric. God bless you Dr. King. Thank you.

I've Been to the Mountaintop

Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It's always good to have your closest friend and associate to say something good about you. And Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world. I'm delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow.

Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there.

I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn't stop there.

I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there.

I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there.

I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn't stop there.

I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there.

I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but "fear itself." But I wouldn't stop there.

Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy."

Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.

Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee -- the cry is always the same: "We want to be free."

And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.

And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I'm just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding. And I'm happy that He's allowed me to be in Memphis.

I can remember -- I can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn't itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God's world.

And that's all this whole thing is about. We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying -- We are saying that we are God's children. And that we are God's children, we don't have to live like we are forced to live.

Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.

Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we've got to keep attention on that. That's always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers are on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn't get around to that.

Now we're going to march again, and we've got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be -- and force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God's children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That's the issue. And we've got to say to the nation: We know how it's coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.

We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. I've seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there, we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth, and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around."

Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on." And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water. That couldn't stop us.

And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we'd just go on singing "Over my head I see freedom in the air." And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, "Take 'em off," and they did; and we would just go in the paddy wagon singing, "We Shall Overcome." And every now and then we'd get in jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn't adjust to; and so we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham. Now we've got to go on in Memphis just like that. I call upon you to be with us when we go out Monday.

Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we're going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper." If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.

We need all of you. And you know what's beautiful to me is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel. It's a marvelous picture. Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones. And whenever injustice is around he tell it. Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and saith, "When God speaks who can but prophesy?" Again with Amos, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Somehow the preacher must say with Jesus, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me," and he's anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor."

And I want to commend the preachers, under the leadership of these noble men: James Lawson, one who has been in this struggle for many years; he's been to jail for struggling; he's been kicked out of Vanderbilt University for this struggle, but he's still going on, fighting for the rights of his people. Reverend Ralph Jackson, Billy Kiles; I could just go right on down the list, but time will not permit. But I want to thank all of them. And I want you to thank them, because so often, preachers aren't concerned about anything but themselves. And I'm always happy to see a relevant ministry.

It's all right to talk about "long white robes over yonder," in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here! It's all right to talk about "streets flowing with milk and honey," but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can't eat three square meals a day. It's all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God's preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do.

Now the other thing we'll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively -- that means all of us together -- collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That's power right there, if we know how to pool it.

We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles. We don't need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, "God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you."

And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy -- what is the other bread? -- Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on town -- downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right.

But not only that, we've got to strengthen black institutions. I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank. We want a "bank-in" movement in Memphis. Go by the savings and loan association. I'm not asking you something that we don't do ourselves at SCLC. Judge Hooks and others will tell you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We are telling you to follow what we are doing. Put your money there. You have six or seven black insurance companies here in the city of Memphis. Take out your insurance there. We want to have an "insurance-in."

Now these are some practical things that we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow through here.

Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We've got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school -- be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.

Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base....

Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn't stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But he got down with him, administered first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the "I" into the "thou," and to be concerned about his brother.

Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn't stop. At times we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that "One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony." And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem -- or down to Jericho, rather to organize a "Jericho Road Improvement Association." That's a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect.

But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles -- or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked -- the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

That's the question before you tonight. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?" The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" The question is, "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question.

Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.

You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" And I was looking down writing, and I said, "Yes." And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, your drowned in your own blood -- that's the end of you.

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply,

Dear Dr. King,

I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School."

And she said,

While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze.

And I want to say tonight -- I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent.

If I had sneezed -- If I had sneezed I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great Movement there.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.

I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.

And they were telling me --. Now, it doesn't matter, now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night."

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I'm happy, tonight.

I'm not worried about anything.

I'm not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

Theater Review: Jomama Jones

Last night, I hopped off the E train in SoHo and was greeted by a slap directly to the forehead by Old Man Winter. As my brain crystallized and froze over, I whispered a prayer for my boy Kenyon Farrow. The prayer went something like this:

"Dear Baby Jesus, please let this show be good tonight. I know the ticket is free. And I know I would walk across lava to get some face time with Kenyon. But I have lost three toes due to this arctic air, and if this show ain't no good, I am going to chew off three of Kenyon's and sew them on my feet. Hey Glory. Hallelujah. Amen."

I walked into the SoHo Repertory Theater, into a narrow hallway, which was packed on both sides by bundled up theater-goers. I was greeted by an adorable Asian woman that looked like she'd been molested by Ziggy Stardust. At the same time, I saw Kenyon, Asian Ziggy gave us a card on which to write a wish, and Kenyon and I sat down to obey her interstellar command.

Shortly thereafter, I noticed the sign for the bar, and Kenyon noticed the sign for the bathroom (he is much more evolved than I am). A few moments later, we were climbing the stairs and about to grab our seats, when I grabbed Kenyon and said, "I might be tripping, but I am fairly certain that the gentleman seated in the waiting area is Djola Branner, a friend of mine from Minneapolis that teaches in Amherst, MA."

It had been a few years since I'd seen Djola, so I erred on the side of not feeling foolish by screaming his name and having it turn out not to be him. Kenyon and I went to find our seats, and who should appear but my friends Christian and Mark. Immediately, my expectations for the show were raised. Kenyon has impeccable taste, but Christian has flawless taste. Between the two, I was expecting this performer to get up on stage and shoot rainbows out of her eyebrows.

Waiting for the show to begin, Kenyon and I ended up in the last row (in a very small theater, so the view was perfect), and into the theater walks the possibly Djola Branner. Well, the only open seats were right next to me, and as the possible Djola climbed over me, I squinted at him and said, "Ain't you Djola?" He looked at me a little startled and said, "Yes, I'm Djola." And I said, "Lord it's Brandon from Minneapolis."

Right there we had ourselves a reunion. It was fantastic. Djola thought I was still living in Oakland, and I had to let him know that I'd been in NYC for almost two years (way to keep up, Djola). We loved up on each other for a minute, and then the show started (beforehand, I found out that Djola knew the performer, who had spent some time in Minneapolis as well).

From the minute the lights dimmed and the curtains were drawn back, I knew that I was about to be changed for good.

Onto the stage walked Jomama Jones and the Peaches. I had to rub my eyes, and I almost made a collect call to Heaven, because when Jomama took the stage I thought, for a minute, that Miss Lena Horne had faked her own death and was now doing independent theater in lower Manhattan.

Jomama Jones, a character created and lived by Daniel Alexander Jones, was everything that I didn't know I needed. Combining original music, dance, storytelling, theater, lots of campy drama, and beautifully poignant moments, Jomama Jones took us on a journey that was never overtly anything but was subversively genderqueer, all about liberation for people of color, woman powerful, and responsibly communal. It would have been easy for this show to bludgeon the audience, instead, it gently and firmly carried the audience along with it, waking up the best in each of us, and helping us to see each other as a united community.,

Jomama Jones is the best in everyone of us.

Helga Davis and Sonja Perryman were the primary backup vocalists and co-performers along with Jomama, and let me tell you that when these women sang NOTHING else existed in my world. Helga has one of those voices that is vaguely reminiscent of Tina Turner but only in the way that it crosses over into the "traditionally" masculine, snatches you up by the back of your neck, and makes you call out to Jesus. And Sonja's voice was soul sexy smooth, like warm honey on cornbread and fresh maple syrup straight out of the boiler. These women not only sang, they LIVED.

It was a blessing to see Jomama Jones last night and to experience the beauty of that character, the storytelling, and the amazing cast and musicians that made it all come alive. For Tamar-kali and for Jomama Jones, I owe Kenyon Farrow a deep debt.

Thank you Jomama (Daniel), Sonja, Helga, and the rest of the cast. You have a forever fan right here. And how wonderful to get to share the show with an audience that included new and old friends. One love y'all.

Transphobic and Racially Confused

DISCLAIMER: I am a board member of the Audre Lorde Project, a New York based organization committed to the liberation of queer, trans, and two spirit people of color. The following blog is in no way reflective of the thoughts, positions, or opinions of the Audre Lorde Project, its staff, or its board. This is my personal rant on my personal blog, and as such I will say exactly what I damn please.

This letter is in response to a series of transphobic blog postings at the blog The Dirt from Dirt, including one which targets the Audre Lorde Project.


Dear Dirtywhiteboi67:

Let me begin by saying that I fully respect your right to belief what you would believe, to live your life as you would live it, and to identify how you would identify. As long as your beliefs and actions do not infringe on the right of others to believe and act in a way that is consistent with their best selves, then I will defend your right to do and say as you will.

However, when your beliefs and actions actively impede the right of others to express themselves in a way that is uplifting and powerful, is centered on their own personal truth, and reflects their own best selves, I have a problem.

Namely, I have a problem with your consistent and ugly bashing of trans folks and their right to be and live openly as transgendered individuals. From your vitriolic rants on your blog, which remind me of something I would find on the 700 Club or perhaps hear coming from the pulpit of the Westboro Baptist Church, it seems as if you have had severely negative personal experiences around your own struggle with identity.

From your blog, it would appear that at one point in time you may even have identified as transgendered, perhaps had elective surgery, and then later came to a different understanding of your identity. It seems, perhaps, at that time, instead of looking closely at your self and taking a moment to really conceptualize and look at the different ways that sexism, homophobia, transphobia, gender identity and the complex interactions between those issues created a circumstance where you were unable to see yourself clearly--- thus leading you to make choices for yourself that you later regretted--you instead lashed out at segments of the queer/trans community in a manner that is more reflective of self-hatred than any reasoned critique of your own experience.

I empathize with you. As a person of color that grew up in the upper Midwest, I had a hell of a time finding accepting spaces as a mixed race individual. I wasn't black or Latino enough for the blacks and Latinos. I wasn't Native enough for some Native people, while other Native folks wanted me to identify as Native to the exclusion of all else, and though I am half white, claiming whiteness would be an idiocy. I had to find my own way, and it involved some transformative and empowering experiences as well as some shitty and painful experiences (some of which were flat out created by me in my stumbling attempts to navigate a multiplicity of identities within complex communities that exist within specific socio-historical and political realities).

I could have handily blamed all black, Puerto Rican, Native American, and white folks for my own mistakes and missteps. But, frankly, since the only common factor in all of the equations surrounding my struggle with identity happen to be me, then it made sense for me to start at home. I looked closely at what I wanted from community, what I wanted from myself, and what I expected from community. I learned about how internalized racism and homophobia, classism, and other oppressions worked to have me see my own as enemies. Once my eyes had been opened to that insidious reality, I refused. I refused to see anyone with whom I shared a common or related struggle as an enemy.

This did not and does not mean that I fail to hold my allies and compadres accountable for the ways they participate or have participated in oppression or policing of identity or gate keeping or any number of other ways that we hurt and harm one another in an effort to feel safe in our identities. But this does mean that I will not lift myself up or find comfort in denying the existence, or the right to justice of anyone else that is fighting for their right to live free and liberated lives. It seems this is a lesson that you have failed to learn. I am sorry for you for that.

Having said that, here is the part where you as a white person need to shut up, sit down, and never ever speak again. You as a white woman do not now have and never will have the right to EVER SPEAK or COMMENT or in any way have an OPINION on the right of queer and trans people of color to self organize around our commonalities. You do not now nor EVER have the right to lay claim to one of our family, and here I am speaking clearly of Audre Lorde. While I did not know Audre, I do know Barbara Smith, Carmen Vazquez, Katherine Acey, Mandy Carter, and about a dozen of Audre's friends, and they all agree that she would have happily seen herself in communion with other queer folks of color, period. So, your righteous indignation on behalf of Audre is just another example of white folks trying to lay claim to people and figures that are not their own. From Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas down to Audre Lorde, I would invite you to keep your hands, feet, and words off of them and out of their mouths. Audre Lorde was a lesbian, and she was proud of being a lesbian. But she was a powerful black woman, and you do not get to speak for her. How dare you. Such blatant racism and life and legacy claiming by a white person is disgusting.

In the end, I would gladly and with all of my heart still sit on the board of directors of the Audre Lorde Project even if the only community it EVER served were trans and genderqueer people of color. As a biological male with all the privilege and power that entails, it is my responsibility to use my privilege to support the right to self-determination of my allies, and I do that with pride. I support the Sylvia River Law Project, I support the trans leadership of the Audre Lorde Project, which, Dirtywhiteboi67, is an organization committed to the liberation of all queer (gay, lesbian, bisexual), and trans, two spirit, same gender loving, pato, joto, punk people of color. Your personal hang ups do not now and never will define us, our work, or our liberation.

I sincerely hope you find the healing you need. In the meantime, I'd hope that you would sit down and learn a little bit of history. Because, sweetness, it was genderqueer and trans people of color that led those riots at Stonewall. It was the very people that you hate and vilify that made it possible for you to live your life in the way that you are living it---no matter how flawed and destructive that life may be. I sincerely wish you the best.


Yours,

W. Brandon Lacy Campos

Word of the Day: Snufflesnout

It's a new year, and I am announcing a new occasional blog series at My Feet Only Walk Forward. In addition to Interviews, Everyday Heroes, the Political One Liner of the Week Award, Reviews, and the One Liner of the Week Award, I am adding Word of the Day.

Now and again, I will make up a word or overhear a word that is just too good to pass up. Sometimes it is an everyday word used cleverly and sometimes it is a word that with a subtle shift in pronunciation changes it from Jessica into Jem (truly outrageous!).

Synergy! Sorry...I was momentarily caught in a 1980s cartoon vortex. We now return you to your occasionally scheduled program: Word of the Day.

Last night, I was asleep having dreams of God knows what (and elephants). I can't remember what the hell they were doing or why I was dreaming about them but the elephants were there...and they were up to something. Just as I was dreaming about these elephants, back in the real world (Shakespeare Sister anyone?) David poked me.

That is when, in my dream, at the same time, an elephant also poked me with his trunk. So it makes complete sense that I would yell, out loud, in my sleep: SNUFFLESNOUT!!!

I woke myself with that miraculous word. David asked me what I had just said, and I said it again. Snufflesnout. And I meant it. It was the most logical thing to say. Snufflesnout. Of course.

The sound of the word was so absolutely ridiculous that I started laughing uncontrollably.

I was pretty sure that I was going to puke if I laughed any harder, and then David went right ahead and said the damn word again out loud. I fell over on my side with my head in the pillow trying to catch my breath. I even tried whispering the word, snufflesnout, just to see what would happen, and I almost met my end choking to death from laughter.

And that, is why I submit to you, the first ever My Feet Only Walk Forward Word of the Day: Snufflesnout.

One Liner of the Week Award: Emily Berube

Last week, on Christmas Eve, the Berube family gathered for their annual gift exchange. David, his Mom and Dad, his brother and sister-in-law, and his niece and nephew gathered in the family rambler in Bristol, CT.

This year, Mitchell acted as Santa passing around gifts. Each person opened his or her gift and made the obligatory oohs and aahs as well as thank yous.

At one point, Mitchell hands his sister Emily one of those plastic candy canes that are filled with various candies, small toys, etc.

This was the following conversation.

Me: "Hey Emily, what's that?"

Emily unwraps the candy cane and looks askance at the various small pieces.

Emily: "A chocking hazard."

And that, Elves and Reindeer, is the One Liner of the Week.