Love In ATL: How Three Black Gay Couples Found Love and Family In The Unlikeliest Place
“Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?”
Depending on whom you ask, Atlanta can be a place of refuge for Black gay men or the embodiment of all that’s wrong with Black gay culture. In a city overflowing with eligible gay bachelors, the prospect of finding love can often look bleak, with many growing tired of the dating scene altogether, instead choosing to find joy in the freedom of being single while working to advance professionally. But both can exist simultaneously. Black gay men in Atlanta and beyond can find loving relationships with each other while maintaining successful careers. It’s happening every day.
Tony and Benie
Tony De’Berry, 31, a dancer and choreographer, was singularly focused on conquering the Atlanta dance scene when he made the decision in 2019 to move from Denver to Atlanta with only $400 in his pocket. A tall, statuesque dancer, De’Berry, can often be seen dancing in heels in videos posted on his Instagram. A dance niche he owned in Denver with hopes of making a name for himself in Atlanta. However, Benie Gorde, 27, an Atlanta native and professional dancer, was already dominating in heels. De’Berry was instantly drawn to Gorde’s Instagram videos and the content creator behind them.
“There are not a lot of guys whom I feel I can be challenged or dance next to,” De’Berry says. “And so when I came across his page, I was like, this dude is good! I want to dance with him. I always want to dance with the best of the best because it makes me work.”
De’Berry tells The Reckoning that upon arrival in Atlanta he frequently attended dance classes with hopes of connecting with Gorde, but to no avail.
“Everybody flocked to him. I swear to God,” Gorde recalls. “Once he entered the room, people were just like, who is this?”
While there was no shortage of male and female dancers enamored by De’Berry, he had his sights set on Gorde and slid into his DMs. Unbeknownst to him, Gorde was celibate and had been for two years, and was unimpressed by his advances.
“He would use words like, oh, let’s link, that's why I never went to meet up with him,” Gorde says. “We’re going to have to actually get together and go somewhere and do something. The word link just has a bad connotation for me.”
De’Berry decided to change his approach. He needed a haircut, and luckily, Gorde knew how to work a pair of clippers as well as heels.
“I found out that he is a licensed barber and I needed that. I could not find a barber in Atlanta. And I was like, yo, cut my hair. And so I made an appointment. When I saw him, I hugged him and picked him up,” De’Berry recalls as his face lights up.
“He picked me up and spun me around in a circle,” Gorde says. “I liked the embrace. That's one thing I look forward to is a really good hug. It just felt good.”
And then it happened.
De’Berry coyly asked Gorde, “It looks like you want to kiss me?”
“I said, I might. And then we kissed.”
“He picked me up and spun me around in a circle. I liked the embrace. That’s one thing I look forward to is a really good hug. It just felt good.”
Two years later, the couple resides together in the Buckhead community of Atlanta with their dog, Giselle, and are a team both professionally and romantically. Both say they’re aware of how their individual brands have meshed, and how their public embrace of femininity lends itself to all sorts of assumptions about who they are.
“What we present to the world is work. That's a brand. That's a business, “De’Berry says. “We go home and we take off our shoes. We are still men at the end of the day. We are two men who like men. The fem thing that you see doesn't necessarily depict who I am as a person. Just because you're feminine doesn't mean you're not a top,” he adds. “Just because you're feminine, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are a bottom. It doesn’t determine your sexual position.”
De’Berry tells The Reckoning that marriage and children are definitely in their future.
“Benie wants three [children],” De’Berry says, as he jokingly pushes back on their hypothetical growing family. “Can we count Giselle as one?”
Alex and Ricky
In February, Dr. Alex Camardelle-Floyd, 30, and Ricky Camardelle-Floyd, 31 will celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. The 2017 nuptials marked the beginning of a lifetime commitment the pair would make public on a journey that began in 2009 when their future together was anything but certain. Alex, a native of Mobile, AL and Director of Workforce Policy for a D.C.-based think tank, first met Ricky, a Gulfport, Miss. native and Registered Nurse, during undergrad at the University of Southern Mississippi after a dorm mate shared Ricky’s Facebook profile.
“We disagree on this. I believe that Ricky reached out to me on Facebook first and then things went from there,” Alex says. “But I'm going to fall on the sword and say that I reached out because I saw his picture. I thought he was very attractive, and we started a conversation and eventually started dating. At that point, we were still very much so closeted, and just kind of hiding our relationship with the exception of our very close friends.”
With Ricky studying at Ole Miss University in Oxford, Miss., and a four-hour drive between the two schools, the budding couple often met in New Orleans, a halfway point, with a thriving LGBTQ+ club scene unavailable in their respective Miss. towns.
“We went to “Club Fusions,” which is no longer in existence, and spent the night dancing with each other. And then later we spent the night together. And the rest is history,” Alex says with a grin.
After receiving his bachelor's degree in 2012, Alex says he was ready to leave rural Mississippi for Atlanta.
“I saw the appeal of Atlanta because of other Black gay men who were successful,” he says.
Prior to the move, Alex tells The Reckoning that he and Ricky went through a cycle of breaking up, dating other people, and reuniting.
“It was just a lot of running back to each other over and over again until we were just like, all right, I give up,” Alex says. “I moved to Atlanta first, and I wanted to experience Atlanta being single. And I realized this is overrated. Ricky, come back,” he says, imitating the urgency in his voice at the time. “And he came back. Thank God. But we kept coming back to each other after realizing that other people just weren’t fitting the bill.”
Ricky made the decision to join Alex in Atlanta in 2015. A move that solidified their relationship and allowed the once-closeted couple to come out, resulting in very different reactions from their families.
“When I came out, my mom thought the world was ending,” Ricky says. “She thought I was going to hell. My dad did not want to have anything to do with me. They wanted to disown me for a couple of weeks. I think eventually, over time when they realized that this was serious, and I told them who I was moving in with, they kind of accepted and are still accepting.”
Alex says his family accepted him almost immediately, but there would be an adjustment period for the family of Mississippi’s star running back. As it turned out, the wait was short-lived following Alex’s marriage proposal to Ricky the following year during a trip to Venice, Italy.
The engagement would be a test for Ricky’s family and one they’d pass with flying colors. Both families were present for their big day, with their mothers walking each groom down the aisle to John Legend’s “This Time (I Want It All).” Married in their twenties, both men say they feel the weight of honoring the commitment they’ve made to each other.
“We’ve longed to be fathers and are so inspired by some of our peers who are Black gay fathers and or Black gay mothers. We look forward to joining the ranks one day.”
“It's just a young age to make that kind of commitment, especially in the Black gay community. And I'm not stereotyping,” Alex says. “I'm just saying there are a lot of barriers to maintaining a successful relationship, whether it's a marriage or not. And that scared me because at the time we did not see successful Black gay relationships. So we rarely had something to look forward to.”
Now, Alex and Ricky have become possibility models for other Black gay men who desire to be in a committed relationship.
“Marriage is not the end game. It’s a constant partnership,” Ricky says.
The pair are transparent about their challenges around communication, which they say is always a work in progress. But among the things they agree on is the expansion of their family beyond their dog Zora.
“We've longed to be fathers and are so inspired by some of our peers who are Black gay fathers and or Black gay mothers. We look forward to joining the ranks one day.”
Chase & Terrance
You’ll never win if you don’t get into the game, and you’ll never win big if you don’t take risks.
Chase Beard-Turner, 39, and Terrance Beard-Turner, 41, are the living manifestation of the rewards on the other side of vulnerability and true partnership. Chase, a Chicago native and Senior Director for the Boys and Girls Club of America, and Terrance, an Atlanta native and Area Supervisor in Transportation for the Cobb County School District, were both established in their careers and homeowners by the time their paths crossed on the dating website Plenty of Fish (POF) in 2016. Disillusioned by the popular hook-up apps created for gay men, along with an unsuccessful experience with a paid subscription to Match.com, the Beard-Turner’s turned to POF in hopes of finding more than a one-night stand.
“For me, trying to find a successful dating relationship through apps such as that was not working for me,” Chase says. “POF offered free dating profiles, but it was different from Jack’d. At the time, you could have some general conversation on Jack’d, but we all know what it kind of leads to, right? [With POF], there was the opportunity for us to get to know each other, see each other's profile, and have a meaningful [dialogue].”
Their virtual conversations eventually led to meeting in person at the now-closed Cowfish Burger & Sushi Bar in Dunwoody. Chase admits that the cuisine, a mixture of beef and fish, didn’t go over well with Terrance, but seeing him “whiff it down” anyway was an early indication that he was special. It was on subsequent dates hiking and strolling through The High Museum of Art that Terrance says sparks began to fly.
“I don't know if it was that same day or maybe the third time that we met. I can't remember now. But we went on a hike and a butterfly landed on my shoulder and he took a picture of it. That stood out as a special moment to me,” Terrance says.
The two quickly developed a dating routine. With Chase residing in Midtown and Terrance in Snellville, they were faced with their first challenge of navigating Atlanta traffic.
“It was a commitment for us to date,” Chase says. At that point, without traffic, it was a 50-minute commute. We got into a routine of him coming over on Friday and staying through Sunday, or vice versa. So we found ourselves just spending a lot of time together.”
So much so that it began to make less sense to live in separate homes. And after three years of dating, Terrance took a risk, sold his home, and moved into Chase’s townhome.
“That's a big power shift to be dependent upon someone else and their stuff,” Chase says.
“It was a lot,” says Terrance. “But it’s just one of those things that you do in life. You just take a risk and it worked out.”
It would be the first of many life-changing decisions for the couple to include fatherhood, marriage, and the building of their dream home on nearly an acre of land in the Atlanta suburb of Douglassville.
Chase tells The Reckoning that he shared his desire to be a father with Terrance early in their relationship, with Terrance attending foster classes even before the two were official, ultimately becoming foster parents to several children before adopting their son Nylen.
“Children don't care who you are. They don't care if you're straight, gay, or non-binary. They just want love,” Chase says. “Nylen is the true match for us through and through. He is a dynamic kid and we love being his parents. He wants for nothing and he loves being our son.”
It was clear that marriage was the next logical step. And Chase was preparing himself for the perfect proposal from Terrance during an 11-day trip to South Africa.
“It was a lot. But it’s just one of those things that you do in life. You just take a risk and it worked out. ”
“I said, oh, I know I'm getting proposed to out on this safari. You’ve got these perfect sunsets and everything,” Chase says through laughter.
Terrance had a more intimate proposal in mind. And on Valentine’s Day 2020, Chase returned home to a kitchen island covered in rose petals in the shape of a heart with engagement rings in the middle.
“I was on the phone with one of my best friends, I said, oh, it's Valentine's Day. I don't know what's going to happen. Then I walked in and I was just in shock,” Chase says. “It was truly unexpected.”
The couple quickly began planning a Memorial Day Weekend wedding as news about the coronavirus began to make international headlines. With invitations dated May 24, 2020, and the venue booked, everything was canceled. They eventually married on September 6, 2020, in a beautiful outdoor ceremony adhering to strict COVID-19 guidelines with 50 of their closest family and friends.
But while their wedding ceremony was special, the building of their dream home and the investment into their families' generational wealth was the main event. In a process that began before they even walked down the aisle, the newlyweds were directly involved in every detail in the construction of their home, beginning with the contractors.
“It became important to us that the builders that we found are people of color. What better way to support than to be able to work with people who ended up sharing our vision and are people of color.”
The couple, who identify as spiritual, also says it was important that God’s presence dwelled within their home.
"We decided to [plant] the Bible at the front door, or where the front door was going to be positioned when they laid the foundation for the house,” Terrance says. “We said a prayer, read scripture and began the process of asking God’s presence to reign over this house.”
If life were a fairytale, or if happily ever after truly exists, the Beard-Turners have written their story with a pen that’s available to us all.
