Where I stand

I am to blame for my own issues: I take words too personally, I keep living in the past, I am the problem of my suffering.

Why should I care if people talk about black or queer people, why don’t I JUST STAY CALM? Why is it as soon as I raise my voice everyone freaks out? I have come to the conclusion that the scariest thing to White people are pissed off brown folks.

For so long I was an assimilated Brown person. I didn’t want to be of color, I wanted to be just like everyone else. All the words they said, all the things they would say about those “niggers, faggots, goddamn Jews”. But of course I was “DIFFERENT”. I wasn’t like “THOSE PEOPLE”, and “Don’t take it personally”.

I lived by someone who I called a friend, he was the guy who eventually raped me the first time I was on ecstasy. He was half White and half Native American but did NOT want to be of color. I remember smoking with him one day, some other guys I somewhat knew came by, they were on the bed doing who knows what. I was spaced out, then my bubble busted.

He began to rant; calling me nigger, saying that I was going to be nothing. I was alone because I was ugly and anyone dark will turn out with AIDS. It was a good ten minutes and as I sat there taking it those two boys just watched, did nothing else and as I got up and cried they just turned their heads.

I was alone.

I have been left alone to take the brunt of people’s racialist, homophobic, and sexist words. I have been taught, by my father, that I cannot be angry, that society has no room for black men with a voice.

I have mollified myself to be sweet, to be the non-imposing black man, to be the SWEET, SASSY, gay man and you know what, I am tired.

The censoring is too much and I try to keep a little of myself in whatever mask I wear. Another day I live, another day I confront the aggressions of my peers and fellow humans.

With community comes community responsibility, we depend on each other for support, be left alone in a moment of need is a feeling I wish on no one.

To be left outside brings utter pain unto me
Cold shoulders leave me frozen
Averted eyes means blindness
Turned heads mean paralysis
And silent mouths might as well be death sentences.