Note 3

I've never seen a pot of gold at the tail end of a rainbow. And therein lies the paradox of Pride.

I was either 13 or 14 when the tingle of queerness seemed to finally take me. You know, that chill that covers your body like the Midwestern cold. At school, a girl sat on my lap during a break for some type of theatre kid exercise and I thought, "Wow, this is different...this is nice." Then I freaked out and never thought about that thought until a year or two later.

I was with my uncle and my brother in my grandparent's drafty basement, their walls nearly caving in, a widescreen TV the centerpiece of this cavern of entertainment. I stood next to a worn out couch, my uncle's attention fixed on the television as he lounged on it. My brother sat kitty-corner from him on a smaller, similarly worn couch. And then my uncle said something that would change my life.

***

I don't know if I'm proud. Perhaps that's a blasphemous thing to say–maybe more blasphemous than my penchant for women. I can't say that seeing rainbows and drag queens and studs and glitter-filled men cascading up and down dingy streets brings me joy. I'm not not happy when June comes around, when companies remember that queers have to wear clothes, and drive cars, and eat food–or simply live. I'm just not always proud.

I went to my first Pride parade two years ago in Los Angeles with a straight girl I'd just met. I had just arrived in town to spend a summer interning for Circle of Confusion and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and needed to complete my rite of queer passage. She had planned on going with a group of friends who could no longer go and one of my three roommates connected us.

We had a magnificent time. The girls and gays were abundant and the sun scorched us while we galavanted up and down one of the gayest neighborhoods in the West. We even spotted Heidi Klum conversing with a group of queers and the uber-talented Daveed Diggs as we left. I thought I was proud. I thought I'd finally gotten past the atrocity of coming out, the fallacy of coming out, the unnecessary necessity that that act held within an Apostolic Black household. In West Hollywood, blending in with the rainbows–the alphabet mafia–I thought I was free. I wasn't.

***

"She bad," he said–the Black man's proverb whilst complimenting a woman in which he is attracted to. I turned to the screen and saw a familiar obnoxiously feminine face gracing it–some chick from Love and Hip Hop New York. I stared for longer than usual, my eyes scanning this bad woman, thought for a second, then walked up the stairs...thinking to myself she is bad.

I wasn't proud to have that thought. I was terrified. I knew it was both honest and off limits, that my affinity for her badness couldn't exist within the spatial confines of a Black, Apostolic household. So, I acted like it didn't happen, like I hadn't felt attracted to her badness...for six years.

I came out at twenty-one years old, not because I wanted to, rather because I didn't feel like dealing with the backlash of my family finding out I was queer via a social media post about a Black, queer co-host of a college podcast–maybe that's why I'm not always proud. Needless to say, coming out didn't go well–it was honestly quite worse than not well. Queerness easily made my life nearly unbearable–no, makes my life nearly unbearable. And if I'm being completely honest, I wouldn’t have chosen this life if God allowed us to determine our sexuality with a simple check mark next to gay or straight. Not because I hate myself, but because it hurts.

The paradox of Pride is simultaneously watching your relationship with your family mend over things unrelated to your queerness, while feeling disconnected from queerness, from the intricate parts that make up one small piece of you. It's realizing that the closet and coming out shouldn't have to be rituals we practice, and that they somehow still protect you from the more painful, unexpected alternative: living like it's no one's business who you love–who you fuck. Pride is pain. I'm not sure a rejection that cuts so deep to the soft flesh of you can ever be healed–it probably could be mended, but that would leave us with hand me down hearts.

I will never see a pot of gold at the tail end of a rainbow, merely specks of gilded residue where the joy rubbed off. Perhaps I'll grab them and piece them back together until I'm finally proud and say in a soft whisper, "Happy Pride."

Peace, love, and hair grease

–Dierra