Living Uncaged: How Black Queer Public Figures Are Navigating Sex and Relationships
Juan Smalls says he simply wanted to be liberated. As one half of the highly visible married couple known by many as Juan & Gee and the owners of Virgil’s Gullah Kitchen and Bar in College Park, along with the non-profit The Gentlemen's Foundation—this Atlanta Black, gay power couple raised more than a few eyebrows after revealing that they’re in a non-monogamous marriage in the pages of Gee Smalls’ memoir “Black Enough Man Enough.” The spiritual and emotional capacity for the life partners of over a decade to define their relationship on their terms required both men to release themselves from the expectations projected onto their relationship from those within the Black LGBTQ+ community who often refer to their union on social media as #couplegoals. For Juan Smalls, the process was not overnight, and the lightbulb went off when he least expected it—during a six-hour flight delay at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport en route back home to Atlanta.
“I didn’t have anything to do but to think,” said Juan Smalls. “I was just sitting there thinking about my vision for my life. I called Gee, and I said my vision, and I said my vision for our relationship…the freedom, the liberation. He was like, ‘well I was waiting for you to get here.”
But for a while, Smalls says he was still concerned about how the couple’s non-traditional marital arrangement would be received by others in the community, and even declined to discuss the inner workings of their relationship during their YouTube relationship series “Love Works with Juan and Gee.”
“In my head, I was like, people have this image of us and we have to uphold this image. I was doing and being what I thought people wanted…what someone who owns a non-profit should do, what a speaker should be, just all of these performative ways of being,” he said. “But then, I don’t know what it was, it was a click in my head, it was like a switch went off and I was like, fu** this! I want to live for me. I want to be liberated. I want total freedom. I want to release the need to control you [Gee]. I want to release the need to give a fu** about what people think about us.”
And for the couple, this release also included embracing the term “life partners” instead of husbands, and being transparent publicly about the sexual needs that at one point were being unfulfilled in their relationship that led them down the path to non-monogamy.
“We have zero expectations of each other regarding non-monogamy, except respect me, respect us,” said Juan Smalls. “And after 12 years, I think we both have a pretty good understanding of what that means. We don’t even like to use the word husbands because it connotes ownership. We’re life partners, we’re on this journey together, and it’s up to us to fully experience our lives together and separately on that journey,” he said.
“He [Gee] wasn’t being fulfilled in certain ways sexually and I said to myself, I am not going to do these things for you because I’m honoring myself and I don’t desire x, y, and z, and it’s just a no. So, I don’t feel like, though, you should go without these certain things,” said Juan Smalls.
“You can have everything that you want and still be respectful, still be safe, still have a family, still have businesses, still have a great thriving life, you just don’t sleep with one person all the time. And that’s okay.”
Juan Smalls and Life Partner Gee Smalls
Admittedly a flirt, but shyer and less of an exhibitionist than his partner Gee, Juan tells The Reckoning that their liberation has also penetrated the digital space, which can be seen on at least one of their Instagram accounts.
“You’ve probably seen two risqué pictures of me. Gee is more risqué and more of an exhibitionist than I am. I am not an exhibitionist. I am not overtly sexual in that way. I’ve always made a commitment to myself to not do anything that I was uncomfortable with,” he said. “For the longest time, I would police Gee’s public image because of my insecurities. I would never post something like that so you can’t do it,” Juan recalls saying to Gee. “That makes me so uncomfortable so you can’t do it. Nope. Hell no. Hard stop.”
Black queer love: A political act?
The conversation around highly visible Atlanta queer couples whose relationships fall outside of expected norms is not limited to Juan and Gee Smalls, and the chatter may have increased when political activist, abolitionist, and onetime State Senate candidate Devin Barrington-Ward, who until recently, was publicly known to only date men, revealed he was in a relationship with She’lia Roby, a Black, queer, cisgender woman, theologian, and Masters of Divinity candidate at Emory University.
The couple met at the insistence of Barrington-Ward’s chief-of-staff during his campaign where Roby served as a volunteer. The pair subsequently shut down Interstate 85 together in protest of the Atlanta PD involved shooting of Rayshard Brooks. And although the spark between Barrington-Ward and Roby was first ignited during the protest, they’d ironically experience the fireworks from their first kiss on the fourth of July following an exchange about handcuffs at the Buckhead sex emporium Tokyo Valentino. Barrington-Ward tells The Reckoning that while he’s always identified as queer/fluid, and has previously dated other women in the past, he didn’t always share the truth about being fluid with other Black gay men.
“I didn’t always share that I’d been or was in romantic or sexual relationships with women with gay men because when I saw the discourse around other people who identified publicly as bisexual, it was always undermining whether they’re really bisexual or queer. I don’t have time for that. I know how my mouth is set up,” said Barrington-Ward.
Devin Barrington-Ward and She’lia Roby
Roby, who joined Barrington-Ward during The Reckoning’s conversation, said the response from many within Atlanta’s Black LGBTQ+ community to their relationship has been “so shady.”
“To walk into a party and we can’t be identified as individuals for our humanity, and the first thing is, ‘Oh, this is a scam. Why are y’all together? This is Devin’s political ambitions,” said Roby of some comments they’ve received regarding their relationship.
The sentiment that their heterosexual presenting relationship was formed to advance his political ambitions is something Barrington-Ward says he appreciates being confronted with face-to-face by those who have been bold enough to assert the incorrect assumption up close. Although he’s now in a relationship with Roby, Barrington-Ward says he could never divorce himself from his relationship with Black gay men.
“They are some of the most important people in my life. I’ve been in deep relationships with them. I’ve lived with Black gay men in partnership, in romantic partnership. I’ve broken up, I’ve gotten my heart broken, I’ve broken hearts. I’ve had a full experience with Black gay men. And also, those Black gay men knew about my attraction to women,” he said.
One reason Barrington-Ward says he prefers the terms queer/fluid when discussing his sexual orientation is because those terms “denote a conversation versus being hit with everyone’s assumptions and preconceived notions about what bisexuality means.”
“It is disappointing when the lack of the ability to understand that fluid people exist within these communities,” he said. “There are people that you’re in love with right now that are sexually fluid. There’s a man that you slept with last night that is truly sexually fluid. And just because y’all had amazing gay sex doesn’t mean that he is a gay male. And that also doesn’t mean that y’alls sex was any less meaningful or freaky or passionate or whatever the case may be. It is just that some people are fluid. And a lot more people are fluid than I think folks want to acknowledge. I think people need to allow themselves to be more open to the inclusivity we pride the LGBTQ experience to actually offer,” he added.
For Barrington-Ward, this includes, but is not limited to celebrating his sexuality in spaces and ways that reject the confines of respectability politics on Black bodies.
“When I started doing my criminal justice reform/abolitionist work and less HIV work, I got to be more of my full self without permission. It’s interesting…HIV prevention and policy work, we’re talking about HIV but we’re not talking about sex, which is wild,” he said.
“I didn’t always share that I’d been or was in romantic or sexual relationships with women with gay men because when I saw the discourse around other people who identified publicly as bisexual, it was always undermining whether they’re really bisexual or queer. ”
Barrington-Ward served as the founder of Impulse Group D.C. and credits the sex-positive attitude of organizational leadership for his ability to lean into the political and the sexual publicly.
“The work has inspired me to be more comfortable showing skin because I’ve unchained myself from the notion that someone who shows skin is unworthy of public office; is unworthy of being an advocate for the community. And I show skin to the level that I am comfortable,” said Barrington-Ward.
Likewise, Roby is navigating the forced anxiety projected onto her, particularly by other cisgender Black women who question her choice to date a sexually fluid man.
“Girl, you don’t have to be around me at all and I’m okay with that,” said Roby of her attitude towards Black women who have expressed faux concern regarding her relationship. “The first thing that fell out of your mouth was, ‘Is he done with that? Do you trust that? You’re not worried about him cheating on you with another man?’ It’s so disrespectful because you are policing my partner’s sexuality and mine. You don’t know what I’m into,” she said.
Larry Scott-Walker
Irreconcilable differences
A conversation around the frequency of sex and kink is something that soon-to-be divorced Larry Scott Walker, Executive Director of the non-profit organization Thrive SS, says were important parts of himself that he “closeted in order to make something fit,” which signaled the beginning of the end of his three-year marriage. Scott-Walker and his husband officially separated on June 16, 2020, and are currently going through a divorce.
Scott-Walker tells The Reckoning that he has always aspired to marry.
“I can remember being 11-years-old up at 3 a.m. thinking about being married,” he said. “I used to always joke before I got gay married that I never wanted to get gay divorced.”
Scott-Walker says that although he and his ex “had a highly successful relationship, unfortunately, we weren’t able to align on that one thing—” sex.
As a Black gay man or as a person who was raised Christian even, I think that we’re taught to just view sex as 15% of a whole relationship,” he said. “I quickly learned in a relationship that sex is way more important than we let it be. I felt like even though I love sex, that maybe I was too lascivious, maybe I should just acquiesce to this sexless kind of the married norm. And that’s very heterosexist.”
The couple who dated for a year-and-a-half before tying the knot, were simply unequally yoked, according to Scott-Walker.
“I had this mindset that two partners equal security, equal emotional security, financial security, growth, and wellness, and it does. The thing that I never considered was what if something is missing? The intimacy and the passion levels were not there. We were unequally yoked,” he said.
Scott-Walker says the infrequency of sex in their relationship before the couple jumped the broom didn’t come as a surprise after the pair were legally tied to each other. But the question he had to grapple with was whether he valued sex more than the serious lifetime commitment that his partner was offering.
“I want a normal life. I want security. I want support. I wanted a cheering section, even if it didn’t come with the passion that I like. Because at that point, I thought it [sex] was just something that I liked. I soon realized that it’s something that I need. It recharges me,” he said.
Scott-Walker says the couple sought help from a marriage therapist and even explored alternatives to ensure that his sexual needs were being met before ultimately giving up on their union.
“I had a whole ass hall pass for the last year of my marriage,” he said. “I can have sex with a room full of people, but if it’s not from the person I want it from, that void is still there.”
After a five-year absence from the dating scene, including dating apps, Scott-Walker says he returned to popular apps like “Jack’d,” but deleted the app as quickly as he downloaded it.
“I had this mindset that two partners equal security, equal emotional security, financial security, growth, and wellness, and it does. The thing that I never considered was what if something is missing?”
“I want a soul connection. I am 41 going on 42,” he said. “There was a lot of desperation that fueled what I wanted before. I just want a spirit—somebody I can grow with and have sex with. I want that expansive relationship where you feel like my fu** buddy because some places we fu**, we could probably go to jail. But you’re also the person who helps me to unpack deep shit and reminds me to prioritize self-care and all of that too. That’s why I can’t meet anybody,” he says through laughter that builds right before he asks the most important question. “And how do you put that in a Jack’d profile?”
Like Scott-Walker, Juan Smalls believes couples who are truly committed to growing together can have it all.
“You can have everything that you want and still be respectful, still be safe, still have a family, still have businesses, still have a great thriving life, you just don’t sleep with one person all the time. And that’s okay,” said Smalls.
Barrington-Ward says the journey towards achieving healthy romantic and sexual relationships begins with dismantling mindsets and institutions that don’t serve us.
“As I’m talking about dismantling the prison industrial complex—that is a cage. It is representative of the spiritual cages that we box ourselves in. It’s representative of the sexual cages that we box ourselves in. I think we’re a society that’s so comfortable with prisons and jails because we are oftentimes—all of us are living in some of our own prisons and jails in our minds,” he said.
For Scott-Walker, advocacy is both political and personal. “I’m always telling people to stand up for themselves, so I had to stand up for myself,” he said.
Because relationships, no matter how public or private, should not be a prison sentence.
