Until The Pandemic Ends, Black Gay Men Must Ensure We Survive
Back in late August, I received a text message from my friend Nolan stating that he was going to be traveling to Atlanta for a weekend trip. I last saw Nolan right after New Year’s Day 2020 when he was in Atlanta visiting his friend James. During that visit, Nolan invited me to meet him at James’ house for a few libations before his flight back to St. Louis. James was the consummate host, and he welcomed me into his home as if we were old friends. We were a group of Black gay men sharing a bit of what we all hoped that the New Year would bring our way. None of us could have predicted the confluence of crises that would play out in 2020, and James certainly had no way of knowing that this New Year’s celebration would be his last. This time, Nolan was coming to Atlanta, not to visit James, but to attend his funeral. James, a healthy man in his mid-40s, was one of the more than 350,000 Americans to die of COVID-19.
A few minutes after my somber text exchange with Nolan, I received the first of several text messages announcing one of the many parties that were scheduled to take place during Atlanta’s Black Pride weekend over Labor Day. While all of the “official” events under the Atlanta Black Pride banner were canceled or were moved to virtual platforms in alignment with public health recommendations to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, several “unofficial” parties were organized by promoters under the “Atlanta Black Pride” label. Receiving messages announcing the upcoming death rites for one of our brothers, followed by invitations to parties taking place in crowded, poorly ventilated, indoor venues—the most ideal conditions for spreading the virus that killed him—hurled me into cognitive dissonance and emotional despair. If my own community of Black gay men cannot be counted on to care for the health and well-being of our brothers, then who can?
Since Labor Day weekend, large circuit-style parties in Atlanta have continued to take place with regularity. Tragically, during one of the circuit parties held over Atlanta Pride weekend in October (which, like Black Pride before it, was officially a largely virtual affair that party promoters were able to capitalize upon) a Black gay man died. The image of a Black man dying amid a sea of largely indifferent white men is a black mirror to the broader racial terrain of the pandemic, given the stark racial disparities we have observed in COVID-19 cases and deaths. (However, the man died of a drug overdose and not COVID-19). Much has already been written about “COVID-shaming” and the proliferation of social media call-outs/dragging of gay men who attended large-scale parties during Atlanta Black Pride, Atlanta Pride, and the numerous New Year’s Eve circuit parties held in Atlanta, Miami, Houston, Rio de Janeiro, and Puerto Vallarta (including the dragging of several front-line healthcare workers who attended these circuit parties), and it is not my intention to pile on to what in my view is a largely unproductive conversation. Shaming is a less powerful tool to encourage responsible social behavior than coordinated COVID-related public policy. Shaming people online does not necessarily lead people to change their behaviors to comply with COVID restrictions, rather, it just leads them to adopt a stance of defensiveness about their decisions, and maybe post about it less on social media while continuing to “do what they do.”
“Part of the damage that American individualism has done is that it saps our imagination for collective action in the service of one another.”
To be clear, I do not wish to reify notions of Black gay bodies serving as vectors of contagion that should be subject to heightened epidemiologic surveillance and behavioral policing compared to our non-Black counterparts, but rather, I am calling for Black folks, Black gay men, in particular, to center our community’s holistic health and well-being as the lens through which we make decisions about how we gather and hold space with one another during these challenging times.
It all adds up to hygiene theater
Enter Deviant Events. I have long been an admirer of Deviant Events, a party promotion outfit that organizes circuit parties for gay men of color. Their parties offer a place for the exploration of kink, fetish, and liberated sexuality that is grounded in a sex-positive, unapologetically Black aesthetic. Deviant Events postponed a previously scheduled Thanksgiving weekend party until MLK Holiday Weekend 2021, during what is unofficially called Atlanta Winter Black Pride. This party weekend comes on the heels of the increased scrutiny placed on gay men’s partying behavior during the New Year and falls during the middle of the most severe surge in COVID cases of the pandemic in the United States to date. According to an Instagram direct message exchange I had with the manager of the Deviant Instagram account, they are offering temperature checks, placing hand sanitizer dispensers around the venue, and requiring masks at their parties. While the promoters should be commended for attempting to put in place some manner of mitigation measures, the total of these strategies adds up to hygiene theater— actions that give the appearance of conferring safety without actually doing so. I’m not blaming the promoters here—party promoters are not public health officials, and public health messaging throughout the pandemic has been unclear, inconsistent, and often without concrete actionable steps. To be sure, good hand hygiene and mask-wearing are effective COVID-19 mitigation strategies. However, their efficacy is likely to be eclipsed when one is inside a poorly ventilated, crowded, indoor venue where the whole point of the gathering is to not maintain physical distance from other patrons.
Given everything we know about the racial disparities in COVID-19 and the negative sequelae of COVID-19 that are likely to be poorer for Black people, how do we as a community balance the need for spaces that support our emotional and sexual well-being with the imperative to support our physical health and safety during a pandemic? How do we celebrate life, joy, and sexual liberation in a time when doing so may lead to illness and potential death? Perhaps that is not possible for Black gay men anyway, so maybe the thinking goes “how is COVID different?” If the bodies of Black gay men are marked for premature death from the time of birth, why should we not live our best lives and party in the middle of a pandemic, as doing so at least puts us in the driver’s seat of our own demise?
This is how systemic institutional failure looks
Part of the damage that American individualism has done is that it saps our imagination for collective action in the service of one another. An antidote is the concept of Ubuntu, which is a Bantu phrase that roughly translates into “I am because you are.” How might an ethic of Ubuntu change how we approach and value each other as Black gay men at this moment? Part of what helped Black gay men “survive” the first wave of the HIV/AIDS epidemic was this sense of collective action and responsibility to each other. I say “survive” because so many of us did not, the cost of the lives lost is incalculable, and far too many of us are still dying, even with today’s improved HIV therapies. How do we continue to fail to learn perhaps the most important lessons of resilience in the face of a disease that our Black gay forefathers tried to teach us?
“I am calling for Black folks, Black gay men, in particular, to center our community’s holistic health and well-being as the lens through which we make decisions about how we gather and hold space with one another during these challenging times.”
Of course, men make the individual choices to shell out the money for the party tickets, for hotels and flights, and to attend the parties. There seems to be less attention given to the structural conditions that permit these parties to take place in the first place. Party promoters make money by hosting events. I doubt that many party promoters received financial assistance during the first round of COVID-19 relief funding, and if they did, that money has likely dried up by now. It remains to be seen if bars and club owners will receive financial assistance under the second round of COVID relief funding that Congress passed in December. People need the means to pay their bills and financially support themselves and their families. Party promoters likely saw Atlanta as a “market opportunity” given that this Deviant party could not happen in DC, New York City, or other cities that have more stringent COVID policies in place than Atlanta. This is what systemic institutional failure looks like, and it is a system that continues to fail Black and Brown communities most of all. The limits of personal responsibility are laid bare when dealing with a collective problem like a pandemic that does not yield to individual action in the absence of focused, organized, collective efforts. We should be more frustrated with the failed leadership that has not provided appropriate financial resources to allow bar and club owners to sustain their businesses while closing venues to mitigate the spread of coronavirus than we are with the men who patronize these establishments and parties.
Who will save us?
I recently ran into a friend who I had not seen in many months as I was leaving the grocery store. We exchanged pleasantries and then the conversation took a strange turn. “Have you had COVID yet?” he asked. It was the “yet” that made me look askance at him when I said “no.” The conversation made me think of the front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution back in late 2016 when the paper had an above-the-fold article about the findings of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that estimated the lifetime risk of HIV acquisition for Black gay men to be one in two, absent concerted public health action to tackle the HIV epidemic. In the “yet” my friend reified the epidemiologic destiny that I know all too well as a Black gay man. And maybe he is right- given the rates of COVID spread in Georgia—I could likely contract COVID in the future, but this was the first time I had been forced to think about it in the context of a casual conversation, in the way that one might ask a friend if they had watched “Bridgerton” or listened to the new Megan Thee Stallion album. My friend often posted pictures from parties he attended around the country throughout the pandemic, huddled tightly with other muscled, bearded men, not a mask in sight. So, when he told me that he and his partner both had COVID, as did 12 of their friends, I was not surprised. He proceeded to offer me medical advice. “when you get COVID, take some Lunesta, and just sleep it off.” I wish that I could take my friend’s advice and just take a pill, sleep it off and wake up at the end of the pandemic. But I know there is no magic pill that will cure the myriad collective structural failures that have resulted in our being in this dark place.
A year has passed since I went to James’ house for what was his last New Year’s celebration. As I think about this next year of the pandemic, the words of Essex Hemphill’s seminal poem “For My Own Protection” comes to mind. Hemphill writes that “…the lives of Black gay men are priceless/and should be saved/We should be able to save each other.” If 2020 reminded us of anything, it is that nobody is coming to save Black gay men. As it is with HIV, we will get to the end of the COVID epidemic through remembering, practicing, and living the concept of Ubuntu- that I am because you are. As Black gay men that means acting in ways that honor our health as individuals and as a collective, all while advocating for a policy environment that will set the conditions for us to live our values concerning how we as a community address COVID and the other health challenges we face. Indeed, we are the ones to do this, because no one else has more power to be in service to Black gay men than other Black gay men.