TALLULAH, THE ORIGINAL GANGSTA

© Breeze Vincinz

While doing some research on a project that I am involved with, I recently came across several articles dealing with the bisexual practices of an immense number of celebrities both past and present. And while there was a certain amount of adolescent blushing, giggling and awe at my initial knowledge that Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford once bumped fuzzy muffins once upon a time, there was also this feeling reading story after story of lesbian and homosexual trysts in Hollywood that maybe I, and the rest of the modern world, might have an unhealthy preoccupation with this whole idea of homosexuality and homosexual rights.

Not that I would suggest that the fight for equality amongst all sexual orientations is a moot one, but as I enveloped myself more into the world of Tallulah Bankhead, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Billie Holiday, I found myself curious beyond belief to know what exactly would they think about today's almost fanatical leanings towards gay pride and identification. In their 1930's celebrity Hollywood world, homosexuality didn't seem to be such a point of contention or accord. There were no parades, no marches, no magazine covers or rainbow flags and they were just as out if not even more so than the most prevalent soap box preaching homosexual of today. I just wonder if today's homosexual is more preoccupied with the idea of homosexuality than actually being a homosexual?

And the same goes for the homophobes. I see Reverend Fred Phelps and his flock give such passionate discourses about the mortal abominations associated with homosexuals and homosexuality over the years and I can't help but wonder if in all this time if they actually know or even remember what that means. In my head I see them pillaging and marching and yelling offensive things at the funeral services for gays and lesbians and condemning their fallen bodies and fragile spirits to an eternity of hell when someone softly taps him on the shoulder and goes, "Uh, he just did it with a couple of dudes" and Rev. Phelps going, "Oh. Really? That's all? I thought it was so much more. Is that it? What was I thinking all this time?"

Homosexuality has just become a life of its own nowadays and we either grab a sign and march for it's promotion or we grab a sign and march for it's elimination and I wonder if Tallulah would have even given a shit or would she be too busy eating hair pie. Somehow I think she would she have chosen the latter and I think she would have had the right idea.

I think in my old age I am becoming more and more of a pacifist. Rev. Phelps himself was scheduled to spearhead a bullhorn session on the corner of Santa Monica and LaCienega here in Los Angeles not too long ago. There was a little army of protesters ready to combat his hate mongering but there was a more predominate group (led by Queer as Folk's Peter Paige) that suggested that nobody even acknowledge that fool, to instead go about your ordinary business and donate money to the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. I loved that plan. Why waste all that energy trying to combat "lifestyles", go out and just live your life.

I feel the same way in regards to Gay Marriage, you pick your battles. I am totally for gay marriage in the United States but my heart just truly isn't in that battle when the inner city school system has become one of the most expensive combustible heaps in the history of America. Besides, it just feels so counterrevolutionary to try and find spiritual recognition and acknowledgement only with the approval of the powers that be. I just don't ever want people feel like they can't fall in love because Dubya hasn't sanctioned it. I don't ever want to feel like I can't fall in love because his successors won't approve it.

I think Tallulah was very revolutionary in that sense, very gangsta. She didn't wait to be defined and she didn't need any outside agenda to define her. She did not march, she did not carry signs… she was just her. And like her or hate her, she got away with it.

It's definitely been on the forefront of my mind lately as I have swooped in and out of different areas of the black gay movement. I wonder, exactly how real is my reality? I speak to both my sister and my boss who are both struggling to raise children, maintain relationships with their respective spouses while remaining gainfully employed then I compare it to the trials and tribulations that I have voluntarily taken on as an African American homosexual (should I take the day off to go to the bathhouse or should I take the day off to go to the beach… should I continue to wear my hair in cornrows or try an afro for the fall… I'm going to have to plan my schedule for October around the next season of America's Next Top Model) and I come off like some modern day Ferris Bueller on Viagra.

I guess I want to get back into the real world with real problems and have real conversations with people that are not so heavily dripped in my own gay forward perspective. Like, Tallulah, I just want to live my life and fuck as much as I can and move on. Any need I have ever had to be in association with any entity, group or faction has since elapsed.

I recently had a conversation with a friend in which I was alluding to the fact that I don't really want to be apart of those tiresome cliques that exist in modern society, particularly the exasperating ones that exist within the black gay community which can eerily resemble a suburban high school lunchroom at even given moment. My friend alluded that it was a childish sentiment to believe that the real world is so childishly divided into jocks, nerds and cheerleaders. But I can't help but feel that a certain hierarchy exists with the help of strategically grouped cliques whose members have similar agendas. Within the black gay community there are several cliques vying for the top position of modern spiritual political artistic omnipotent fabulousness. It is very ageist, it very sexist, it is very class-ist… there are certain social circles that you have to be "this" height in order to ride their rides.

But I have to admit I did feel a bit like the paranoid outcast at my derision to a world that I felt the "beautiful people" built for themselves. Maybe I was looking at this the wrong way. Maybe I was trying to push off my own insecurities on other people and that had nothing to do with their agenda but my own idiosyncrasies. I began to feel that maybe that in all actuality there is no class system within the black gay community. Until it suddenly dawned on me that we had the whole conversation inside of his tricked out 2006 Mustang on his way to some posh dinner party thrown to support an upcoming black gay/lesbian center project.

My braces, scoliosis brace, therapeutic shoes and bifocals never weighed so heavy.

And I wonder if anybody in attendance really understood the importance of unity and fellowship or were these buzzwords to create yet another clique? Was this an opportunity to make a difference within their own lives or a preoccupation to avoid what they really want or need and make a name for themselves in the process?

Right now, I can't truly interpret if I am just being bitter or if there actually is a Gay Black Elite velvet rope that I can't get past. In either case, Tallulah has been the one getting me through. I think she would say, "There are way too many holes in a man's body darling for you to be preoccupied with what's coming out of one when you should be putting something in the other."

She would probably go to all those parties just to get laid and move on. I aspire to do that one day. For now, I'll just write about them… and her… a just be a lil' gangsta in my own way.

THE MYTH OF AMERICAN SANITY

© Breeze Vincinz

Sometimes I truly wonder about the general mental welfare of us bipedal primates. Adam and Eve definitely come to mind. As a kid, I could never understand why God never wanted them to eat from the tree of knowledge. I never understood why he felt knowledge to be this condemnable transgression. I imagine that it was done out of basic parental concern, like when you just want your kids to stay little… eat, sleep, cry and blow spit bubbles. You just don't want them to ever know about rape, abortion, murder, autoerotic asphyxiation, vodka enemas, crack or the litany of other occupational hazards that exist in this job called life. You never want them to "know". 

I think it's a concept that has plagued mankind for centuries, this whole idea of free will. Can the idea of having 32 flavors to choose from make you go mad and is that why so many factions just want you to stick to vanilla and call it a day?

This year in particular has been quite arduous for me but it has been quite minimal compared to the tribulations of some of my friends. I have found myself on many occasions trying to spout some words of wisdom but I can't help but imagine that their thought bubble has Billy Joel's video for "Pressure" playing as loudly as it can, 

"You've turned the tap dance into your crusade! Now here you are with your faith and your Peter Pan advice! You have no scars on your face! And you can not handle pressure!"

Last night while swapping ghetto depression stories with a friend of mine over Big Macs, I found myself offering consolation to him that I have to remember to keep in my arsenal to maintain my own mental health. It's the idea of narrow vision. I've noticed that when I have gone to those precarious places in my life where I have made the conscious decision to do physical harm to myself or other people with the goal of complete annihilation and had begun the process of that destruction, nothing else existed in those moments. It was just me and a knife or me and a baseball bat or, as Tori Amos so famously sung, just me and a gun. Nothing else was moving in my universe during those moments. Nothing proceeded it, nothing else happened concurrently, it was almost like being in the middle of making love where there is no consequence, only the present, you and the object of your obsession.

 

And while I think that is a preferable state to be in while making love, it is probably the absolute worse possible state to be in when your finger is on the trigger. You got to step back. You got to breathe. You are too close to the trees to see the forest. You've got this tunnel vision where you can only see you and this problem and you have to come to grips that something, anything else exists. I can only imagine how many kittens have prevented their owners' suicide by just licking their ankles and widening their world view just an inch to include the sight of a little cat at their feet; showing them that there's more to this life than this predicament. Or maybe the old lady who gives you a smile for no real reason than to be polite as you walk pass her with your Smith & Wesson .40 in tow on your way to do some serious damage. That's what it will take, just a couple of seconds of some outside stimuli to remind you that there is something else outside of this predicament… and it has hope, and it is sweet and you can just turn around, right now… and everything will be okay.

In certain ways, I think life is a series of conversations being made to talk you down from the ledge, constantly reaffirming yourself that this compost pile of an existence is in all actuality serving a greater purpose. 

I recently commented on someone's blog who explained, in great detail, that he is a black man specifically looking to partner with another black man who will be his submissive "bitch". I commented that it wasn't my thing but I would love to get drunk with him and hear of his adventures. To wit he replied, in great detail, about how delusional and offensive I am and how he isn't even remotely interested in pursing the "intimate" relationship with him that he assumed I wanted. 

And again I kept thinking of this idea of free will and tunnel vision. To this dude, when it came to relationships, nothing else existed for him but this hyper-masculine sadomasochistic situation that included him, his "bitch" and (I assume) a bridle. And this is something that he chose… out of the 32 flavors of sexuality and then some, he chose (really fucking) rocky road. Which, honestly, I am not making a judgment call on… like I said, it's not my thing but if he digs it, go forth and perspire. But I do wonder if he has taken that step back away from those trees and has actually seen the forest that he is so adamantly rebelling against. And if so, what purpose does the whole ordeal serve in the big scheme of things. I guess that's why I was so curious about him. But I think those are questions that he couldn't possibly answer outside of his comfort zone of being a "Bitch Owner". 

To him, his agenda is no more sacrilegious than that of the passive aggressive duplicity of your typical homosexual relationship, which just begs the question, are we all just fucking nuts? 

One thing I have to applaud the brother on is his honesty. I would so much rather have a guy that I am seriously digging tell me upfront that he is a psychopath before I decide to give him head… there is nothing worse than realizing you just licked the balls of the insane. Say for example, you meet a dude, and you're hitting off. Wouldn't you rather him say, "Oh, by the way, I like to kill people and eat their body parts" than to find out months later that you ate out Jeffrey Dahmer's ass? And this is the world that I'm living in, one set of brothas that are honest about their insanity and another set of brothas too insane to be honest. 

All in all though, I think honesty, especially the succinct kind, goes a long way and it saves a lot of time. I wonder if, it is indeed, the cure for the common crazy. I wonder, in an honest world, how far incongruities, pain and suffering can go. I wonder if everyone were brutally honest about what they want, no matter how eccentric or whimsical, and worked towards that goal, how proficient the world would be. But alas, we are stuck in this flawed world with flawed agendas and flawed defense mechanisms. We accept the world's passive aggressive tendencies to "obtain" without "acknowledgement", to "love" without "passion", to "have a male-bitch" without "realizing it takes one to know one".

We are humans after all. I think by definition one of the primal aspects of being human is being flawed. I guess if we were not flawed, then we wouldn't really be human. Because it is our flaws that encourage us to strive for something more and it is that endeavor that separates us from other species… that and our ability to accessorize.

It's all about evolution and becoming more of what our potential claims that we can be. It's a never ending cycle and the carrot that dangles in front of us for as long as we're here… no matter how depressed you get there is always that voice whispering to you, "Dude, you sooo can do better than this." I think it's a good affirmation. I think once you stop doubting yourself, you leave out room to grow. You've got the carrot, and you're eating it, and now there is nothing left to do. I read in a Toni Morrison book once and I later read that it's a sentiment that originated from Ghandi that the secret to maintain life is to have someone to love, something to do and something to forward to. I guess realizing the butt load of flaws that I have accumulated over the years, my own multi-tiered psychosis and the psychosis of a world in which my dating pool includes Jeffrey Dahmer and some dude looking for a male-bitch that… something to look forward to, for me, equates to "sanity". I look forward to the day when I gain full sanity… or at least enough so I can believably fake it.

So I guess we just need to honestly accept people's absurdities and inaptness and be as honest as we can about our own. Appreciate all those incongruities and just try to get along on this small blue marble called Earth while we still can. Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone… and if you're thinking of picking up a rock right now… you're out of your fucking mind.