I guess this is a dual entry with two intersecting themes.
Ah Where WOULD i begin? Hmmmm. How about Thursday night at the gym, my 8th consecutive night. I am on a treadmill alone in my apartment's private gym. I actually loathe public gym but i've got a 40 dollar a month membership to 24 HOURS GYM that i am barely using and the guilt is somewhat gnawing at my sides. I'm anxious. However i am more anxious at getting at this little piece of flab perched over my dick, like a falcon's crest overlooking the bushy terrain of my crotch...and i want my abs back to their solid washboard glory. I'm heavily intent on this. This is foremost in my mind as I'm running feverishly at 7.8 miles per hour going on 35 minutes with little rest bits between. I've been fairly consistent this evening at keeping up with this speed. Sweat has been forming at my crunched brow and my white towel i brought with me is dampening more with the succession of each minute as I reach for it and swipe the top my forehead and rest it down again on top of treadmill's red LCD screen. I lay it strategically to hide the calories and time amount of time I've been running so magically time can speed up, i don't worry myself with the count and hopefully i do more than I set out for myself.
I'm alone in the gym. Just me and my thoughts and a thought floated to surface that almost made me stop the mill and just stand to linger in it a little longer instead of squelching it. That thought was simply: "Why am i doing this?" and instantly i answered my own question with a somewhat ugly response:
"Because if I'm not handsome enough.. I'm single and edging towards 30. No longer a young adult.. the body isn't what it used to be. And face it. You're black. No one will want you."
I've known for the longest time that standard for beauty amongst black men- hell minorities period, is raised a hell of a lot higher than that of white guys. To be perfectly honest white men can develop a beer belly along with a receding hairline, but as long as they got a job and hold onto their entitlement snug enough, they're datable.. someone will fuck them and not just any snaggled toothed fag. Average looking white men to minorities are gold...especially if you are an Asian bottom or young black top with a BBC. As long as you fuck them, you've got your CARD. And by CARD, yes i mean your White Card, like Visa, excepted everywhere you wanna be.
Depending on where you stand on the stage of the world, this can be arguable. But not for me. Ever since coming out I've been told "I'm attractive for a black guy". I've also been lauded for being well spoken, creative, personable, interesting..... FOR a black guy. There's always that wedge which separates me from my race and somehow implies I'm cut from the better edges of a worn and undesirable cloth. And it echoes always in my psyche. I've dealt with it since a teenager and the younger 20 year old Jack. I have reconciled with that idea through the ages..grown with it. I do not resent the idea that i am in someway partially inferior as much as i used to. I'm not puzzled. Nowadays I'm amused by it. So amused I can write about in this color, I'm writing to you right now. In this tone. Blue. Yellow. Green.
Which brings me to the gym and back to why i hadn't been to 24-HOURS in a week. It was last week i went in and I was reminded of my goal when in the locker room. An at least 6 foot tall Black man, who i will call Mandingo, came strolling in with bulging biceps, a nice grid underneath his tight white t-shirt and these huge thighs. He was hot as hell. I swallowed my homemade protein shake and thought.. god i gotta get up to his level. I eyed Mandingo throughout my time at the gym, watching him perform reps and cautiously aping them. I wanted to be Mandingo. Mandingo has power. It's in his crotch and ability to make white men nervous in a world where they otherwise don't give a fuck. I loathed this sinking feeling of inferiority to Mandingo along with the envy mutating my clear thought processes into heavy white static. At times I compare myself to other black men. And i will tell you why.
In the GAY LAND, a land in which i reluctantly live ... Black men are a niche. It is common to read online personals that specify White or Latin... which always made me chuckle. It's as if ordering food on a menu. It almost directly comes across to me like White is the first choice.. but if you are out of that in the kitchen, eh.. I guess I'll take the closest thing to white.. Latin.Dark meat. Keeping with a metaphor of the gay restaurant, you will have your white diners who want the most exotic thing on the menu and will order it.. and order it again.... and again... Whether it's "Deep latin" or "Afro-can A-mer-i-can". I use to and still am a bit apprehensive of those (white) men who order up the same thing most if not all of the time. After being told that I was sub par while growing up out of the closet in southern California, the Inland Empire, where all the queens are jaded because of the smog, the high speed chases and the overall David Lynchian vibe of that valley you'll cross on your way from Los Angeles on 10 heading into the dry desert, I suddenly at some point became a big hit. It was around 22, and when i started visiting San Francisco for weeks at a time and then moved there and somehow got a job in a night club and at a little boutique in the Castro. Men were after me left and right. But these men were unlike the gays I knew in southern California. They LIKED black. They LIKED them A lot. My best friend in San Francisco, almost a motherly fag to me,had fucked or at least flirted with every black man in the Castro... and that's not a lot. He is the Black Rolodex... his knowledge of any black gay male- eligible or non-eligible extended from San Francisco to east bay to Sacramento. The Boy was pulling them,. And I enjoyed the attention for awhile, until i started noticing some of the guys i was dating seemed to have nearly a fetish for black men. This was new for me.. because i grew up in Southern California, in the Inland where I was treated horribly by the queers there. I lotion twice daily because when i was 18 some bitch, Mexican at that, told me he didn't Doooooo Black men... "one word: ash". I HATED the Inland Empire.
So with that background, i was elated to have a dating pool but soon I grew a bit disenchanted with the idea that i was possibly expendable to the "black hunters"- They like black men...because they are soulful, their skin is rich, their bodies muscular, their voices deep, their cocks the size New York City rodents. I began to feel expendable IF the guy i was dating might run into someone BIGGER, BETTER and BLACKER than I. What's a verbose neurotic audiophile like myself to do?
Easy. GET BIGGER< BETTER AND BLACKER?
But what the fuck is bigger, better and blacker? My mind rife with these muddled emotions, apprehensions, half formed ideas and hunches that lead to rocky unstable roads i wasn't sure i wanted to travel. On one hand I believe in telling it and accepting it like it is. It's better to have someone interested in you for you than someone who doesn't want you for you. Those are the types that would say to me "Well I usually don't find black men attractive but You are HOT!!", to which i couldn't reply, only run. But then there's this really cheep feeling when you look around you and nearly all the black men in SF have white boyfriends. It seems as if that is my destiny; To be some crackers Trophy Black Husband.
"Oh here goes my Black man! I'm not like the other whites.. i DATE BLACK MEN.... (and I'm a bottom)*cough*"
So Here i am at the gym kind of laughing at myself, all sweaty, with the basic premise for the entry in my head- but seriously i start to wonder IF that is the ONLY end result. If that is the only option, just settle down with some chocoholic..what do they call them these days? I can just bulk on up, so I'm Mandingo enough to snag myself a decent looking white man who works for the ACLU, maybe land a Jew, who knows, and poof!! my happy ending. It feels like that is ALL there is.. and it's instinct for me to rage against any machine. I could go Afrocentric and find me a black man for the sake of it.. but i would be no different than the machine I'm trying to fight. It's like death... there is a undeniable sense of inevitability, especially when every time i look around i see the hottest black man is with a white guy who most likely voted for Obama and or a Nader-fag who listens to too much NPR.I can Wind up with some guy who is ashamed he's white and is repenting for his ancestors sins and his equally pale family members back home in Idaho by fucking the nearest biggest, blackest mothefucker his ass can find thats wants his ass and adopting a skittles bag of children from third world countries and making sure they bring along their culture club to EVERY SINGLE RED NECK FAMILY REUNION. Or If said white guy is from east coast money... the Summer House.
Nah. I've never been the type to bend to what was expected of me. I always opted for the opposite just to prove i was nobody's slave and nobody's fool and certainly nobody's nobody. There is a culture, a byproduct of what i'm describing, of black men who have felt the racism and intentionally date white men. They feel if they can bag a white man they are of importance. They're "Nota Nigga". I felt this a lot last year as i went through a dating marry-go-round, four guys in one month. Each fellow seemingly flaunting me as their HOT YOUNG BLACK BOYFRIEND..and for a few seconds i bought into it.. i enjoyed it even up until the novelty of it wore out and i felt, again, i was doing what was expected of me. So i had to give my card up. And sure enough there was another black guy waiting in the wings to take my place and they didn't question defiantly like i did. They had their card and were damn glad i gave it up for whatever reason. To the white guy that i left and his fresh new black catch I was the nigger. I was the ignorant one, silly enough to pass on that available White Card and all of it's perks and privileges.
Shortly after i got off the Merry-go-round nauseous and disorientated I left San Francisco with other shit on my mind.. family.. finding a sense of self OUTSIDE from what i felt was a pre-programmed fate for me as a creative black gay male. Too many drugs were around me... too much partying and I was looking at 27 and not feeling whole. And i certainly believe that two halves can make a whole- a codependent whole, and that was never me. comfortableness in me breeds anxiety. like the anxiety i feel today... I've rediscovered who Jack is and what makes Jack tick... what makes Jack happy. What Jack's passion is.
So In the spirit of my rebelliousness, I caught myself at the gym after that nasty response to my my bothersome question: "Why am i doing this?". I can't live my life sanely standing next to other black men in the troughs sizing up who's dick is bigger and whether that dictates my worth as a black man. Or A man period. No one should compare themselves to anyone. It's exhausting and defeats the purpose of your singularity, your unique fingerprint you leave on this world. My worth is not my penis, or any stereotype that radiates from MTV/Viacom culture. I am Jack and these are my truths. If i deny reality then i become a lie. The same can be said for you.
