INTRODUCTION
WHAT WE ARE DOING HERE IS TRADITIONALby LaQuann Dawson
In 2016, six months into living in New York, my partner and I visited the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The 30th anniversary of Joseph Beam's In the Life was being honored in the American Negro Theatre. In The Life, published in 1986, features 29 Black authors exploring being Black and gay in America. In the anthology, Essex Hemphill writes about being “consumed by want” and desire as he maneuvers secret sexual encounters with men. Blackberri sings affirmations to the beautiful black man and Phillip Robinson mourns his relationship with his father as they grow less affectionate.
Prior to the In the Life 30th anniversary, I had not known of such a book. On that night, The Schomburg Center was filled with Black gay men of all ages who came to celebrate Joseph Beam’s legacy. We took turns around the room and shared experiences as Black gay men who suffered invisibility, silence and loss. I listened as elders told stories of the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis. That night, we spoke of the importance of archive and congregation in a building designed specifically for that. We held each other, we laughed and we wept.
That night, I saw something I never experienced in my life. My eyes were open and I was quiet. I felt like a student in that room. The meaning of celebration changed for me on that day. There were no balloons, no cake, no loud music, and no dancing. No one seemed to be drunk and many of us did not know each other at all. This celebration consisted of a room, a book, a speaker, and an audience eager to be heard. In this moment I felt
I felt myself change in that moment. I became more aware of who I was and who I wanted to be. I grew an attraction toward the togetherness of Black queer people. The things I thought I was looking for at the time changed; I found purpose in celebrating with my people.
My journey as an artist started with infatuation. I needed to tell someone I loved them, even if they couldn’t hear me, even if they didn’t love me back. I've spent much of life attaching to people and a wide variety of things I’d grown fond of,and trying to find ways to express that fondness. As a child, I carried paper, pencils, books, and rulers everywhere I went. I would draw a self-portrait. Then, another one. Then another.
I did not know at the time that my drawings were self-portraits. They didn’t look much like me. I thought they were drawings of the Power Rangers, or the Scooby Doo Gang. I thought these were drawings of women who were likable and sought after. Of people who smiled a lot and wore whatever they wanted. Of people I wanted to be and look like. I found different bodies to build myself into: taller, older, prettier, more confident. I understand today that I was drawing myself. I was illustrating my future and dreaming of a me I could one day be. I was creating my own context and choosing my own mirrors.
The more life I experience, the more I grow to embrace that we can do nothing alone. At least, I cannot. I appreciate this, sometimes, more than I understand it. I am the eldest of 9 children, and my parents split when I was a baby. While I had many siblings to love and take care of at my mother’s, I was an only child at my dad’s and I was usually alone. At my dad’s house I learned who I was and who I wanted to be.
I buried myself in my computer, Beyoncé videos, Photoshop, and in virtual worlds. I found gay porn, chat rooms, men to Skype, and images to aspire toward. I mean, I found bodies to aspire toward. I skipped meals and did sit-ups in the shower. I would suck my cheeks in when I wasn't talking. I ran and ran and ran until I liked who I saw in the mirror a little more, or until he was too much of a blur to even see.
I thought my move to New York City was in search of opportunity. I wanted to climb a ladder and live out my gay fashion designer dreams. I arrived in New York with two-hundred dollars in my account, and hit the ground running. I lived in the basement of a Bronx house with a friend from college and a few mice. I slept on a shitty air mattress, swatted flies, and showered at Planet Fitness. I’d wake up each morning, catch the 2 train and commute from the Bronx to Bryant Park.I’d clock in before anyone got to work. I was paid by the hour and needed every dollar I could finesse. I enjoyed the quiet of the empty office; I loved working alone in the dark.
Closer to 9am, I’d leave to get a peanut butter bagel so it seemed like I got there just before everyone else. I worked from 7:30am until 9pm most days. Sketching, designing, running from fabric stores to trim shops to Pret-A-Manger, then back to the office for sample review meetings. I was productive, energetic and hungry. Plus, I hated going home. At the end of the month, I'd collect a decent sized check with the taxes left in. It was a good life for a 21 year old. It worked too, for a little while.
When I clocked out I went looking for something else. I found myself loitering around Union Square. I would admire the hustlers and the protesters. I would hope someone would talk to me. I found myself in front of, and eventually on, stages with other hungry Black people, queer people, and searching people who poured their hearts out to strangers.
I started to fangirl over NYC poets Crystal Valentine and Roya Marsh. I attended any show I saw their names attached to. Alone still, and seeking company, I waited outside the Nuyorican Poets Cafe every Wednesday after work, praying they weren’t at capacity and I could get a seat. These people, these searching people, they spoke of the things they were searching for, of the things they found and of those they did not. I studied them and their delivery. They seemed so powerful, yet vulnerable, still. I wanted to learn how to demand respect from people, how to make them hear me and see me for who I was. I wanted to learn how to be found. I was not lost and I was not immediately without, but I was searching, still.
What I found saved me from years of cubicles, silence and working to make someone else’s dreams come true. I found my people. People who looked like me and many who did not. People who wanted things that I also wanted. I think a lot of them wanted company and attention. I think they wanted people to celebrate and mourn with. I think they wanted love, maybe even needed it. I did.
Aside from my coworkers and my partner, I was usually alone, still. I found escape in writing poems about my father, my mother and my relationship. All of us were having a difficult time with the “gay” thing. None of us so much knew how to welcome queerness into our lives gracefully. The conversations were painful and the transition was uncomfortable, but I was learning that this had all been done before. I was not the first broke and in love twenty-something-year-old gay boy to move to NYC with dreams that changed every week. I was not the first Black boy with a need to be unconditionally loved by his father. I wanted to avoid a cycle, so I started to open my mouth more. I became more aggressive and started to demand love and respect from my father. I threatened to stop coming home and to stop answering his calls. I saw what it looked like for men to be without their fathers. I read about abandonment and I feared it. I knew every Black gay boy didn’t get to keep his daddy if he “chose” to be gay. I loved mine too much. He had to love me back, and he had to want to. He had to.
I started to play with the way I dressed. I wore gaudy costume jewelry, faux fur coats, stoles, and mesh tops. I documented this. Every few days I’d prop my camera on a chair, hang up my biggest blanket, pose with my trigger hand hidden behind my leg. Click. Click. Click. I’d grown used to this process since I started it in middle school. As I started to take it more seriously, it got more challenging. I had to become more resourceful, more creative. I had to dig a little deeper. As I did, I wore less and less clothing in these portraits, I started to experiment with makeup and my sensuality. I showed more of my body and I began to see myself more clearly. It wasn’t what I thought it’d look like by then but it was my own, I could see it, and I loved it.
My work started to gain attention. I was being offered freelance jobs, test shoots and event gigs. I took pictures of people who wanted to be seen and feel pretty. I networked with the artist community in NYC and I ran all over the city making my ambitions known.
In 2017, I visited the Schomburg Center again. I was informed of a zine fair they were hosting and was invited to sell my own. I didn’t have a zine at the time. I took some of my portraits and poems and threw them into a book. I used my lunch break to convene, once again, with the other Black gays in Harlem. These people were becoming my family. I could only afford to print four copies. Of those four books, I sold one, gave two away, and kept one for myself. On my way back to work, I knew I wouldn't work in fashion or in an office much longer. I started looking for an out. I started to shoot more and take every gig I was offered. Sleep became optional and this new goal was the most urgent. It still is.
I was looking for a chance. I wanted a conversation with anyone who could help me out. My partner came across a queer Tech conference that seemed like it might help us both get jobs. He’d gotten a free ticket from MOBI (Mobilizing Our Brother’s Initiative) since they were sponsoring the event. I emailed MOBI with a forty-something page portfolio and resume attached begging for a free ticket, to which Dashawn Usher, their founder, replied:
“Thanks so much for reaching out for the upcoming event. We understand and want our community represented at the event, so no need to set up any arrangements. Being visible is more than enough. We actually have been following your work and would love to discuss possible involvement for our upcoming festival in May.”
Elated at the thought that someone had been following my work at all, I took them up on their offer. My partner and I put together a film to show at the festival; an experimental documentary about Black gay love we titled A Study of Him. The film featured images of dancing people, smiling people and people in love. We shared this exploration on a screen in front of a few hundred other dancing people who celebrated with us. It was terrifying but so incredible. MOBI exposed me to NYC’s Black gay community: Emil Wilbekin’s Native Son, Sean and Terry Torrington's SlayTV, Donja R. Love and Brandon Nick’s The Each-Other Project, Joe Morris Events and so many other organizations and people who focused on the wellness, the celebration and the gathering of Black and queer people.
In all of this community building, Impulse Group NYC and I found each other. They reached out to me in February of 2020 with hopes that I could shoot a digital campaign for their 2020 theme: Transparency. The idea was to celebrate and promote our community as being our most authentic selves. We’d begun casting for this campaign and started to lock in dates when the COVID-19 pandemic struck NYC. Everything was put to a halt and our shoot dates were canceled. In this time of uncertainty, panic and stillness, we all waited. Impulse assured me that they’d reach out with updates when things felt safer.
In June, they reached out to check in. They humored the idea of a calendar instead of a digital campaign. Once more in July with an idea for me to shoot a ten chapter coffee table book. I responded with a proposal of my own; rather than my singular perspective, let’s open this up to the voices of our community. During my time in NYC, I've learned of the many talents surrounding me, it made the most sense to let them tell this story. I grew up a loner but I was raised and taught that we needn’t walk through any doors alone. I don’t want to and I know I don’t need to.
I immediately started to draft an outreach list. I went through many portfolios from my favorite artists over the years and some suggested by the Impulse board. Picasso Moore and Matthew Thompson came to mind as some of my favorite writers. I thought of Tre Crews, Tyler-Andrews Nelson and Jai Pugh’s beautiful photographs of Black people. I saw Teacoa Rushton and Cole Witter’s incredible self-portraits next to Kendrick Daye’s erotic collages. I envisioned us all living together in this sort of time capsule, all of our stories in one place. Similar to the ones that sit under our family’s coffee tables and in the closets, filled with photos we were told to smile for. Similar, but different. I think, a bit more honest, less pretty and more beautiful. Less concerned about who is looking at it and what they might think. Today, I am not worried about such a gaze. In my artist outreach, I sent each person a few suggested images and writings that I’d hoped they’d submit. I did, however, want this to be a collaboration. I wanted the artists to be able to control which of their stories were being shared through this project.
I did not know what responses would look like after my initial email went out, and I did not know if I’d get enough. I kept my fingers crossed for weeks praying that some of my favorites would come through. I sent emails, texts and direct messages to artists, sometimes following up five and six times with extended deadlines for outstanding items. In the midst of my curation and research for this book, I found calls for submissions from the 80s and 90s that looked almost identical to mine for publications seeking to collect queer art in one place. All the way down to the publication date and net 30. That’s when tradition came to mind.
What we are doing here is traditional. As a people who have been taught to hide and keep silent for so much of our lives, we cannot help but to look for each other. We cannot help but to create and we cannot help but to dance through it all. We will do this because we need each other. We will do this because we believe in our existence. We will do this because we are worthy of each other’s love and it is worth searching for.
Finding community helped me survive a basement in the Bronx, many Midtown cubicles, backrent, diabetes, homophobia, racism, loneliness, and fear. It has brought me safety, joy and light. For that, I thank you.
Thank you to Joseph Beam, Essex Hemphill, Antwuan Sargent, Reed Massengill, Joshua Renfroe, Kimberly Drew, Jenna Wortham and to everyone else who is keeping this tradition alive. You are our models. Thank you to each and every contributor who allowed their stories to be a part of this project. Thank you to my best friends, my roommates and my mother who listened to me talk about this book nonstop for 9 months. Thank you to the Impulse Group NYC board for trusting me with such a task and for allowing me to challenge you at every turn. This process has been such a blessing.
What you are about to witness is … proof of our living. My hope is that this book will help further immortalize us. I hope that our visibility will show queer people all over that they are not alone and they do not have to be. I hope that the artists involved continue to exercise their talents and share their stories. I hope that you are all recognized for your hard work, your beauty and for the way you shine. I hope you are paid for it. I hope you know that I see you. I hope that you can see yourselves and I hope that we can celebrate together.
Just as we drape a sheet of fabric behind someone and fix a camera in front of them with intent to immortalize. Just as we teach our young how and when to speak. Just as we dance to communicate joy, pain and relief. As queer people who know lonely and rejection, the search and the collection—the gathering—of queer images and stories has been and will continue to be. As will we. We will continue to look for each other, and we will continue to find each other. We will do this because we need each other. We will do this because as people, we house an urgency to seek out our own and to convene.