Looking around at there here and now, I don’t see who we were reflected in any of the couples I see these days. Two black homosexuals dating across the generation gap actually seems to be quite rare indeed. It never occurred to me that we actually had something special at the time.

It was, and still is, easy for me to generalize, thinking that arguments over the finer points of what is or isn’t art happen in homes across the nation. Whether or not sampling, either sounds or images, detracts from the artist’s final product has to be as valid a topic as discussing sports scores or celebrity gossip. Sadly, I just might be wrong

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Some background information on how I found myself in such a situation might clarify things. I was born in Boston in November of 1971 and my father’s death in April of 1972 left a huge hole in both my life and psyche. Even though my mother remarried when I was ten years old, I still had issues around men. Exactly what went into making a man was one of the questions I felt I needed to answer. My stepfather and I didn’t see eye to eye on many topics. Growing up as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses had also left an imprint on my persona.
My mother decided to move to North Carolina, where her side of the family owned some land, when I was three years old. For the next twenty years, I never considered the south to be home and felt like an outsider most of the time. When I left in the fall of 1995, all I knew was that there had to be more to the world than tobacco and college basketball. I left my girlfriend at the time along with everyone and everything that I knew up to that point.
Riding the bus to California began the process of peeling away the layers of southern culture that had been foisted upon me over the years. Then I got off the bus in Bakersfield only to realize that there were rednecks in California too. I lived with a friend for a couple of months and then drove up to San Francisco with a guy I had met. Driving across the Bay Bridge for the first time just felt so right. It felt like I had finally arrived in California and that the few months before were just a sloppy rough draft.
I have to admit that I my luck kept me off the street because I only had forty dollars in my pocket when I arrived, and that ran out quickly. My buddy’s friend allowed me to live with him and then I soon moved upstairs in that apartment building. The gentleman I lived with on Sutter street had just lost a lover whose name was also Joel, but I digress.

 

 

 We both loved music, books, and art. Our conversations ranged from Sarah Vaughn to Vaughn Bode, from Richard Wright to Richard Kern. He worked in the library at San Francisco State and my grandmother had worked as one of the first black librarians in North Carolina back in the 1940’s. I love a well hung mind and we fell in pretty easily.

He is alluding to more than my mind here; which is sad cause he gave my ‘well hung’ self a lot of grief over our sexual and emotional union; He constantly denied our relationship as well as our intimacy;  And though we shared many similar interest in the arts, he was constantly undermining our joint creative efforts to only serve his interest;   Our sexual reality was all about his satisfaction and he was more than comfortable to leave mine on the back burner..which he did for the first two and half years of our affair.  By the time he realized I had desires too, he did too little to make much difference.

The possibility of this relationship as being an exploration between the realms of creativity and madness solidified for me while I was reading the Paulo Coelho article. Leaving North Carolina was similar to what he called “ploughing the field.” According to Coelho, “a good creator must be constantly turning over his values and must never be contented with anything he thinks he understands.” I had never been in a sexual relationship with another man, but we got along on so many other levels that such issues felt irrelevant to me. I knew that I had unresolved issues from my father and step dad and, on some subconscious level, felt that here may be a chance to sort some of those.

Blood confused me with regards to race; cause though he spoke a mean ethnocentric game..he put way more time into preserving relationships with white persons both in NC and in California; in one instant, I vividly recall, he attempted to have us befriend a homophobic white neo racist, simply so he could smoke weed with the cat;  blood had more interest in his white associates and friends than black queers; and kinda’ avoided most obviously gay black people.  Oh, his favorite term in them days, was ‘sort through’ –sort of a catch all for the idea that he was trying to move from one form of think’n to arrive at a new ..just he never arrived, he just sorted and sorted, often pushing me futher and futher away via , lies, contradictions, disinterest, and general contempt.   I think he like’d the idea of black on black, but never really made it real with him and I; if found connivance in the associations with my other black friends, cause they had the connections and materials that he sought for himself, not because he was really into a black on black solidarity.

White privilege runs rampant in San Francisco, so finding solidarity with another black man felt good to me. The “us against the world” vibe spurred us on to new realms of expression. We both loved music. In fact, one of his friends had opened one of the first dance music record stores in San Francisco (BPM).

What blood doesn’t know about that moment he met the ower of  BPM records, was that man and I had been having an debate about homosexual love and that man felt it was not possible (even though he is straight);  When I approached blood that night on the street, my friend felt nothing towards him and in fact found him pointless and could not understand my attraction to blood in that instant. When blood found out that I was getting music and weed deals from the man, he immediately began brown nosing him for similar opportunities.  Often the man spoke badly of blood and distrustful  of my desire of him. 

We met while they were in the process of moving the store’s inventory to a new location in Hayes Valley. Later, we saved the money to purchase turntables, a mixer, and other DJ equipment. We fought here and there, but I felt up to the mental challenge and it brought us together. I enjoyed the crucible of ideas and ideals.