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Noah's Arc: The Movie: coming June 2025!
Showing posts with label Noah's Arc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Noah's Arc. Show all posts
Looking for Results
WHAT I WATCHED
LAST NIGHT
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| WORDS BY ZEON KANE |
It's the second episode of the second season of Looking, and after last week's 
Patrick (Jonathan Groff) and Kevin's affair continues, moving from the office floor and the woods to its most appropriate venue, a sleazy motel. It's hard not to rail against them: Patrick is a privileged WASP, and Kevin (Russell Tovey) is English. They're like hot young versions of Bush and Blair. (Now there's a stomach-churning image.) But seriously, I can't help thinking about Patrick's hard done by ex Richie (Raul Castillo), the blue collar Latino and the only character who acquitted himself with some dignity in season one. But regardless of the rights and wrongs of their relationship, Patrick and Kevin are very sexy together. What's hotter is knowing that the actors are out gay men. I remarked to my boyfriend as we watched, "Do you think they're at it off-screen too?" That's the added frisson Looking gifts us.
Dom (Murray Bartlett) takes a back seat in this episode, although there's some awkwardness with his daddy Lynn (Scott Bakula) over their open relationship. That's not going to end well, is it?Augustin (Frankie J. Alvarez) is back in the gutter (where he belongs) after getting trashed on drugs in the club. Privileged fags have that luxury, to get wasted and lay down in the gutter. (Or were we supposed to feel sorry for him?) Fortunately for Augustin, a decent blue collar guy came along to drag him up. Me, I wouldn't spit on the obnoxious bitch if he was on fire. But getting Augustin home meant getting him home to Patrick. Yes, it was Richie who found him drooling on the sidewalk, and so ensued an awkward reunion. Patrick was clearly gagging for it, Richie less so.
Richie's representation in Looking, and his fractious relationship with Augustin, is one of the most interesting, and important, aspects of the show. Rarely in gay media do we see any acknowledgement of class; race, yes, but rarely class. Looking tells us about a proud, blue collar Latino man, and the indulged Augustin, who only speaks español when he's trashed. (It's interesting that many in the black gay media took one look at Looking's cast photos, and wrote the show off as a "white show". In fact, in that first season, two of the six male leads were Latino, and one - Britain's own O.T. Fagbenle - black. Their loss.)
I was once told by a prominent gay playwright and activist not to talk about well-off, entitled gays, because that's how we're perceived by the wider world. But it's because well-off, entitled gays - like so many spoilt children in their exclusive city playgrounds - are most often seen and heard that we must stand up and say, "I'm not Augustin. I'm not Stephen Fry. I'm not the ghastly Ivan Massow." It's when we're silent that we end up locked out, and end up with movies full of college-educated trustafarians like the pretty people in Patrik Ian-Polk's The Skinny. Those characters might be black and Latino, but they're not an honest reflection of the lives of many black and Latino Americans, any more than those of their white counterparts in the likes of Queer As Folk are of white Americans.Back to Looking's latest episode. Patrick was fretting over an unusual blemish on his torso, with writer Michael Lannan extracting every last drop of comedy value from our pretty WASP's AIDS paranoia. Can HIV ever be funny? Are we now post-AIDS? It was very funny, but it felt a little uncomfortable laughing at a hot young San Francisco bottom's (unfounded) fears about the plague.
Looking continues to go from strength to strength. If you didn't get it first time around, it's not too late. Don't miss out.
Looking for something better
HBO's Looking has been renewed for a second season, news that comes as a huge relief to this fan. But not everyone gets the show, with critics and the audience divided over this tale of sex, love and friendship in San Francisco. It's been branded slow and boring, but if, say, Noah's Arc is your yardstick for gay TV drama, then Looking's slow-burning, nuanced, and unforgiving take on gay men's lives will inevitably disappoint.
On the other hand, Looking is a genuine attempt to shine a light on the lives of a group of gay men in San Francisco. It is slower than, say, Scandal, and if that's a problem for you, maybe Glee might fit you better? Looking is to gay T.V. drama what The Wire is to cop shows: profound, literary and cinematic (yes, it also looks visually stunning).
Looking, like HBO sibling The Wire, feels more like a novel, or arthouse cinema, than the conventional network T.V. we're used to. It forgoes intrusive background music and the tedious plot conventions viewers are usually force-fed. It goes deeper, and some people just don't get that. Looking isn't just the best gay T.V. series I've seen in a long time, it's one of the best T.V. shows in recent years. Look no further.
Skin Deep - The Series
LONGTIME READERS of kaos will know that over the years, I've expressed my disappointment at the racial segregation in gay TV series, from Queer As Folk to Noah's Arc. Only Rikki Beadle-Blair's cult drama Metrosexuality was brave enough to depict a world where people don't just mix with "their own kind".
That seems to be changing, with Larry Kennar's promising (and multiracial) DTLA in production, and now David Summers' Skin Deep - The Series is in the works. Take that, Jill Scott!
"Skin Deep - The Series is a new scripted TV pilot that addresses racial and cultural differences within the gay community specifically in Atlanta. In short, it can best be described as Queer as Folk, meets Noah's Arc, meets Crash, taken to a new and vibrant level. The arc of the show will take us into the lives of three black men and three white men. The supporting characters will extend off into other racial arenas such as Asian and Latino, and will build as the series evolves."
Exciting stuff, and a project that deserves all our support.
Visit the official Skin Deep - The Series website, join the show's Facebook page, and enjoy the trailer!
Faggamuffin
THE KAOS THEORY talks exclusively to Noah's Arc writer John R. Gordon about his new novel, Faggamuffin
.
So what's Faggamuffin all about then?
My publisher GMP went under just after that, followed by a whole lot of other small presses, so I lost that outlet, though I kept on writing novels. I had a grim moment turning 40 when all my options seemed to have shrivelled up. But just after that – literally within six months - Noah’s Arc came along. I edited on the first series, wrote episodes on the second, and co-wrote the feature-film, and in between that I wrote the Bobby Blake autobiography, so I was keeping busy. I wrote a novel, Colour Scheme, which we’re going to bring out next year with Team Angelica, and then Faggamuffin, which we decided to bring out first as it’s timely and provocative and should help the imprint make an impact.
Money was a big thing. Logo (the cable channel) was always only modestly funded (by Viacom), and original drama is always the most expensive sort of thing to make. Noah’s Arc was a ground-breaking show that helped put the network on the map and give it credibility, but they wanted to make other narrative shows too, understandably, including lesbian shows, and they could only afford one show at a time. Also, due to if nothing else that passive racism that takes no interest in those different from itself, they didn’t manage to sell the show abroad (unlike their other big success, RuPaul’s Drag Race). Having said that it always sold ‘surprisingly’ well on dvd in the States, hence we got to make more episodes. If you’re wondering how the good sales could always be a surprise you’re right, it didn’t make much sense.
Since then Patrik’s been promoting various projects, (including singing in the band Fol Chen), and has gone back to his indie roots with a new feature-film, The Skinny, which he’s completing at the moment, and in which Darryl ‘Noah’ Stephens has a cameo, but that’s not a project in which I’ve had any involvement.
John R. Gordon was speaking exclusively with THE KAOS THEORY. Faggamuffin is available now, from Amazon and all good book stores.
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all about then?It’s the story of Cutty, a gay Jamaican who flees the country after a violent homophobic attack. He comes to the UK and stays with an acquaintance, Buju, a petty drug-dealer on the rough West London White City estate, and his resentful girlfriend Cynthia, who quickly gets sick of this ‘wasteman’ crashing on her couch. Cutty starts to fall for Buju, and starts to believe his feelings might be reciprocated – and they are, in the course of a house-burglary. Cutty and Buju start a deeply down-low relationship, but it’s when Cynthia catches them having sex that Cutty’s troubles really begin… So it’s a pacey, action-packed tale, but on another level it’s about the down low, and the particular risk of it: that it can cripple the spirit and make love impossible. Cutty and Buju have to fight to make a life they can live, and in that sense it’s about finding the heroic in the midst of the tragic.
Faggamuffin gets pretty steamy. Were you ever worried readers wouldn't be able to read it on, say, the Tube?
gets pretty steamy. Were you ever worried readers wouldn't be able to read it on, say, the Tube?I did think about how graphic I wanted the book to be, as I know straight folks can get a bit upset reading gay sex – and my mum loyally reads all my books too. But I didn’t want to self-censor, and I think it goes to character: what sort of sex do these repressed and self-consciously intensely masculine guys have? It’s not more graphic than, say, Alan Hollinghurst. I hope people do find it sexy.
You're not a native Jamaican - was it hard to get Cutty's dialogue right?
It’s intentionally ‘patois lite’ anyway, as I wanted non-Jamaicans to follow it easily. I hope I’ve caught some of the rhythms and phrasings: black British chums of Jamaican descent who read it seemed to feel I had, and helped me with spots where I’d gone wayward here and there. I had Damian Marley playing a lot of the time I was writing the book, and have some Blue Mountain theatre tapes that helped me find the register and structures. But I’ve loved patois ever since seeing The Harder They Come when I was a student, and I was listening to a lot of reggae back then.
Faggamuffinwas adapted for the stage, wasn't it? I caught the performance - (black gay singer) David McAlmont was in the audience! Tell us about that.
was adapted for the stage, wasn't it? I caught the performance - (black gay singer) David McAlmont was in the audience! Tell us about that.
Yes, by me for [the] Louder Than Words theatre event. Nathan Clough, who played Cutty, and is himself black British of Jamaican descent, actually said the language was somewhat of his father’s generation, and that modern patois is much more infused with African-American slang. I’d registered that from listening to music, but tended to play that aspect down for fear of creating the impression that I was writing an inaccurate mish-mash of Jamaican & black American registers.
I stupidly thought that as I had the plot and characters, turning the book (which is full of events) into a play would be quick and easy. It was in fact painfully slow and total torture, and on the day of the performance, I cut five pages near the end – and suddenly the structure snapped together, and it was really very successful. I had a great cast, which helps. It was a diverse audience, and it was interesting what moments sparked a very different response across racial lines. For instance in the play there’s a moment where Cutty punches Cynthia in the face, knocking her down. She at once jumps back up and carries on dishing him. This would make black people (mostly) laugh; whereas white people seemed more just shocked. Not because black people don’t care about violence: they just instantly liked Cynthia’s moxy & refusal to be a victim.
I ended the play with a ritual declaration of the power of love, and during rehearsals I wasn’t sure it would work, but as the actors were declaiming someone in the audience called out, ‘Amen!’
It was lovely that McAlmont came to see it, and took the trouble afterwards to say he’d enjoyed it. I’m a big fan of his music, in all its varied manifestations, from indie-rock to jazz.
With the election of the seemingly pro-gay equality Portia Simpson Miller, Jamaica's in the (gay) news at the moment, isn't it?
Yes, and how wonderfully encouraging it is: she made these very clear statements, and she won by a landslide! What’s great is that progressive-minded straight black folks here, in the Caribbean and in Africa, are starting to assert themselves; to say, simply, that reactionary religious zealots or malignant dictators like Mugabe don’t speak for them. It was great to hear, for instance, Wole Soyinka speaking up on behalf of tolerance when the situation in Nigeria is so bad right now, and when he so easily could have said nothing – or Desmond Tutu, who again could have ducked the issue, but has spoken out courageously and repeatedly in favour of equality.
It made me worry that I might be making Jamaica look bad in Faggamuffin, but I was representing things that were – and are, for all the signs are encouraging for the future - really happening there today; and of course the emergence of a strong liberal voice doesn’t alter the broad way gay and lesbian people are perceived. As someone astutely said, victory would be a hate crimes bill that included LGBTIQ people. As far as my book goes, I’m writing as best I can towards a black audience, so there’s no intention to, as it were, offer up Caribbean dirty laundry to a bien-pensant white middle-class audience for them to scold Jamaicans over. In any case, my intention is to have readers relate to people – a refugee; a petty criminal – they might normally not think about, or not think of as having complex inner lives. Or, if they are those people, to see their lives for once placed centre-stage in a tale, and taken seriously.
, but I was representing things that were – and are, for all the signs are encouraging for the future - really happening there today; and of course the emergence of a strong liberal voice doesn’t alter the broad way gay and lesbian people are perceived. As someone astutely said, victory would be a hate crimes bill that included LGBTIQ people. As far as my book goes, I’m writing as best I can towards a black audience, so there’s no intention to, as it were, offer up Caribbean dirty laundry to a bien-pensant white middle-class audience for them to scold Jamaicans over. In any case, my intention is to have readers relate to people – a refugee; a petty criminal – they might normally not think about, or not think of as having complex inner lives. Or, if they are those people, to see their lives for once placed centre-stage in a tale, and taken seriously.Black gay representation has always been all about America. Why do you think there's so few black gay books and films from the UK and Europe?
One thing is sheer numbers. A tiny percentage of any group become writers (or film-makers). There are, I think, about 30,000,000 African-Americans; by contrast there are about a million and a half black people in Britain. Black Americans developed a substantial middle-class out of segregation; black people in Britain are mostly working-class, and writing fiction is generally fairly much a formally-educated activity – though of course there are always exceptions. There was a whole black film industry in America in segregation times too. And then, thinking of here, the world of publishing has its establishmentarian gate-keepers who are unwelcoming to newcomers, and not interested in voices who want to speak to audiences in their own communities. Interestingly in the late 80s and early to mid 90s black gay playwrights emerged in some numbers – perhaps in part because you can scrub some money together and put on a play with relatively little permission from the establishment. Paul Boakye, for instance, and Oscar Watson, whose play Battyman Blues starred a pre-Wire Idris Elba in a gay part.
Mind you, black gay American writing seems to have settled into somewhat of a middle-brow rut, very much in the mould of E. Lynn Harris or the (straight) women’s writer Eric Jerome Dickey, somewhat conservative and written with half an eye on a female readership. Nothing wrong with that (the largest numerical audience for Noah’s Arc was straight black women) but there does seem to me a lack of more serious and demanding work. Though African-Americans have the same challenge as the rest of us over getting work published and out there.
Faggamuffin is your first novel since 1998's Warriors & Outlaws - where have you been?
is your first novel since 1998's Warriors & Outlaws - where have you been?, which we decided to bring out first as it’s timely and provocative and should help the imprint make an impact.You were pretty instrumental in the writing of Noah's Arc. Why do you think it ended so abruptly? Is there any hope for the future?
Series two looked more expensive but was cheaper because it was filmed in Canada, not LA, (bar I think Patrik was allowed two days to shoot exteriors in LA). We ended it on a huge cliffhanger (the car-crash) to try and make the network give us a third series, but behind the scenes money was getting tighter. So a third series was off the table. But once again good dvd sales perked up Logo’s interest, and they came to Patrik with the idea that as they could only afford half a season’s worth of episodes, why not make a 90-minute feature-film instead? Patrik started off in features (debuting with Punks, starring Rockmund Dunbar and Seth Gilliam [Oz, The Wire], which he wrote, directed and co-produced), and liked the idea.
A storyline was agreed on (by Patrik, me and Q. Alan Brocka). Patrik took a long time to deliver a script, and was then told that what was needed was a much cheaper, single-location story. He couldn’t face going back to the drawing-board and at the eleventh hour I was asked to come up with a totally new script, which I did, writing very fast. That got the production back on track, and with Patrik cutting, trimming and interpolating various scenes, the film was shot about six weeks later. It turned out well, and he promoted it with great adroitness, and it got noticed, and both cinema and dvd sales were once again ‘surprisingly’ good. It won a GLAAD award and the script got a NAACP Image Award nomination, of which I’m extremely proud.
Logo then floated the idea of a spin-off show, one that would see some of the core characters in a heterosexual world, which would fit in with their rebranding themselves as not a gay but a ‘gay sensibility’ network. This had the potential for a nice fish-out-of-water comedy-drama project, but unfortunately during the lengthy development process the entire Western banking system collapsed, and that was the end of that.
Some of your work has been taught in American universities, hasn't it? Tell us about that.
Yes, I’ve been taught in courses in race and sexuality in literature at the University of Santa Barbara, California, and Bodean College in Massachussetts. My work is teachable. Skin Deep stands out because it’s one of the few modern gay novels really exploring interracial relationships; and Warriors & Outlaws because it’s unusually concerned with the intersection of sexual and racial and revolutionary politics. I’ve been sent some of the students’ essays, and they’re quite fascinating, and sometimes suggest a brilliance in me I wish I could take credit for! For instance, on the first page of Warriors & Outlaws there’s a brief description of a child’s bedroom wallpaper – pink mice and blue elephants – which ‘foreshadows the debate on gender roles’ between the two protagonists (one macho, the other a flame queen). I was delighted with my own subtlety...
Tell us about your literary influences?
The writer who first made me see writing as a moral vocation, and whose work spoke to me so intensely it was almost physically painful, was James Baldwin. I loved his fieriness, his political engagement, and his fusion of the social and analytical with a near-mystical belief in the redeeming power of love. His writing just had this burning power, and I had a sense of nearness to subtle, intangible yet visceral things reading it: yes, writing could do this. The other writer who moved me in his intensity of language and vision was William Faulkner, the tragedian of whiteness, and I retain a love for the Southern Gothic. I’m also very influenced by the social realism of Richard Wright and the earlier novels of Chester Himes (who as a person I completely love): they had that fusion of harsh social commentary with the grip of a thriller that I very much wanted to get in Faggamuffin – though in Faggamuffin I also needed a Baldwinian uplift and affirmation of humanity. Himes’ later Harlem thrillers are brilliant too.
– though in Faggamuffin I also needed a Baldwinian uplift and affirmation of humanity. Himes’ later Harlem thrillers are brilliant too.In poetry, Essex Hemphill above all.
I also feel a peculiar kindredness with Amiri Baraka and William Burroughs, though not really stylistically: they both speak to me somehow as people, as writers, as does Raymond Chandler. Before I found my subject or began to really understand myself and my particular vocation I found a great youthful pleasure and stimulation in the horror fantasy of H.P. Lovecraft and Mervyn Peake, both of whom made me want to put down words to create some sort of effect, and in Tolkien, who I still love for the sweep and strength of his story-telling.
How do you feel about e-books?
I think they’re the future, or a big part of it, but I can’t get past the feeling that they don’t really count. I don’t think I’d feel I’d published a book if it never had any physical existence and was just a file on the internet like any other file of words. Also Amazon’s deal for Kindle isn’t very good. But they’re certainly here as a substantial adjunct to the physical book, and already academic journals, for instance, have become largely on-line affairs. Perhaps we’ll end up with a similar scene to what we have now for vinyl records: afficianados will buy physical books while most of us just get the download.
What are you working on now?
A novel called Souljah, about a gay African former child soldier who is persecuted by local youths who just see him as an effeminate victim. He bashes back and begins a complex relationship with one of the youths. It’s also a strong look at religion and the damage faith can do, and the search for meaning and transitions on the road to manhood in our alienated society.
And I’m working on a new festival of new plays, to be given staged readings in (currently I think it’s) March and June at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. We dramaturge and develop them with the writers.
What do you hope readers will take away from reading Faggamuffin?
?That they’ve had an exciting read, and that at the end of it the reader realises he or she has thought about things more deeply than they realised they were doing at the time; that they entered into a world most likely unfamiliar to them and saw the humanity of the people living there; or, if they are closer to that world, that they saw something hopeful there that they could use. That embracing our diversity makes us free.
John R. Gordon was speaking exclusively with THE KAOS THEORY. Faggamuffin
is available now, from Amazon and all good book stores.
Noah's Arc officially dead: Darryl Stephens speaks
oah's Arc is over, y'all. There is no third season. (I've been getting lots of questions about that lately, so I figured I would address it one more time.) Go on about your business."
Noah's Arc lead actor Darryl Stephens has decided to make this point crystal clear on his Facebook page, leading to an outpouring of dismay from fans - including this one - who have clung on to the hope of a third season.
The sad truth is that a third season was, until recently, very much a reality.
In cancelling Noah's Arc after season two, Logo disappointed a large audience hungry for some variation in GBLT representation on the small screen. Noah's Arc was groundbreaking: A gay drama series about black and mixed race (and one Latino) men.
Despite the cancellation - which, by all accounts, was a financially motivated decision (so-called reality TV is cheaper to produce than scripted drama) - Logo commissioned a very successful one-off movie. Jumping The Broom resolved season two's cliffhanger, tied up a few loose ends, and introduced a new character.
The success of Jumping The Broom led to Logo exploring the options for a third season, which would have seen some major changes to the mix. But the failure to get Season Three off the ground - despite the principle actors signing up - is down to one person.
Not the network.
Not the actors.
The individual in question has let down the fans, and the black gay community in particular. His name is mud within the industry, yet with the fans he retains his halo - and that's a shame, because they deserve the truth.
Hopefully, one day, that truth will come out.
How can you expect to be taken seriously?
Patrik-Ian Polk - creator of Noah's Arc - has criticised Glee for its lack of black characters. But where was the diversity on his own show?
et's get one thing straight before we start: I love Noah's Arc. It's one of my favourite shows, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with a drama about four friends consisting entirely of a monoculture - just as I don't have a problem with Queer As Folk or Seinfeld being about four white friends. Nor do I want to see Noah's Arc have white characters crowbarred in, before we hear cries of "can't we have anything for ourselves?"
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| Queer As Folk: All white in the hood! |
But here's the thing: criticise Queer As Folk for it's Caucasoid-bent all you like, but the guys were often seen to hook up with other ethnicities (even if they were background artists, they were there, and they were visible). Brian was seen hooking up with black guys, and Emmett once had a devastatingly beautiful Japanese boyfriend.
In Noah's Arc, Ricky - the token slut (Brian's equivalent) - only ever hooked up with black or Latino hotties. The others - Noah, Chance and Alex - are never seen to date "outside of their race".
And that's not a problem - although it leaves us with the conclusion that they're an insular, separatist bunch - because, as I've said time and again, choosing to date one race over another isn't wrong or objectionable. It's a preference.
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| Bad white men attack! |
The problem arises when you, the producer of a piece lacking diversity, criticise another show for its lack of diversity. Pot, kettle, black, anyone?
Polk said, "They don't have ANY black dudes on Glee?" Why is it always a question of "no black dudes in a white show?" African-Americans who shout the loudest about black visibility never seem to care about the lack of visibility for Asians, or, say, Arabs. Don't they matter?
Noah's Arc did once feature a few white characters. They were the straight gay bashers who left Noah fighting for his life.
We Can Do It!
A new photo campaign by the Open Artist Movement, inspired by World War II 'We Can Do It' posters, features ka-os|theory favourites Darryl Stephens and Wilson Cruz flexing their biceps:
"We Can Do It! is a photo campaign to build solidarity and personal strength through positive messaging. The goal is to bring to life modern iconic individuals, by depicting them as powerful and not victims in support of the global LGBT movement worldwide."
You can buy copies of the prints on the website, and new shots will be added over time. Who would you like to see in the series?
The future is black
John R. Gordon writes exclusively forka-os|theory about Gay Africa, held last Sunday at the Free Word Centre in London.
Gordon wrote the screenplay for Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom
, as well as episodes of the TV series, the short film Souljah, and for the stage, Faggamuffin. His novels iclude the award-winning Skin Deep
, Warriors and Outlaws
, and Black Butterflies.A Riff On Gay Africa For If You Couldn’t Be There
So it’s 3 p.m. Sunday. I’m dodging downpours cycling up through the West End to Farringdon and the Free Word Centre which I’ve never been to before (except I was there accidentally a week ago because a friend texted me on that Friday and asked Was I going to the Gay Africa thing and that made me think it was that Sunday, and I cycled all the way across town and found chains round the door-handles). But here I am back again in the empty business district running up the hill to something more residential, and the Free Word Centre is modish glass and wood boxiness next to Victorian brick terracing and on a corner lateral to an old-fashioned pub – lobby, large atrium a glass wall beyond it with books in display cases and in the window posters for Gay Africa hosted by the Red Room and English PEN, the image a map of Africa all pink and the quote The darkest thing about Africa has always been our ignorance of it (George Kimble geographer, 1912, not that anyone remembers that and nor did I). To the right a room where home-made snacks are on offer with traditional African hospitality and generosity and it’s a free event run by volunteers.I’m supposed to be making sure the main host of the evening has a copy of the DVD of Souljah the short film I wrote they’re going to be showing but I’m not sure if I’ve met him before, I don’t think I have, though later I do recognize him from other events - small, light-skinned, cute boho intellectual in black-frame glasses, soft hair pulled back exploding in a fro behind the band, and he’s got this together with Topher Campbell who
runs The Red Room and it’s like the opening credits of a Hollywood movie, Topher C presents in a Red Room event co-sponsored by PEN starring at the long table – well, that comes later. I say hi to Ajamu, friendly and unpretentious as always in a Belasco tee-shirt featuring a brotha with a paddle, hazing and leather – Ajamu the stills photographer for the event for the Rukus archive he and Topher are ongoingly creating recording black British gay & lesbian life – and later, and unconnectedly a good-looking black youth in a large hat with ear-flaps and a wide mobile mouth speaks confidently of the importance of art, of writing, rightly in this place the function of which is to assert the value of the written word, its importance in commemorating black gay lives in a hostile world, youth putting itself forward as is right and proper, almost the perfect ending to the event. (Though he talks too of self-hatred and how his afrocentric upbringing with its flip-side conservatism did not help him as a gay youth and how his Christian Jamaican mother accepted him in a way his atheist Zimbabwean father did not).
And Ajamu introduces me to Bisi (Alimi), a slender, fey Nigerian guy in a turquoise dashiki with silver trim and one of the event’s keynote speakers, who came out on Nigerian TV and now is living here, a refugee though whether from that craziness or other reasons he didn’t say, though he did say, Let’s not carry on in this belief that everyone in Africa is crazy and if you go there you’ll be hacked to pieces the moment you step off the plane. And I say hi 
to Topher, who is friendly and tall and handsome as always in a figure-hugging red jumper and nervy and preoccupied too with the event being a success (and as the event begins there are about 25 of us in the audience and 12 round the table invited speakers, the turnout he dreaded, but people come more and more till there are 200 at least, with latecomers standing round the walls and kneeling on the floor not Soon Come because as many of them are white as black pretty much – maybe the crowd overall is 65-70% black and so it’s a huge success and Topher is rightly proud and it’s a relief to have it proved that so many people will engage, that so many give a fuck and on a downpouring Sunday afternoon, and not all middle-aged – also a relief because the torch must be passed on even if not soon - because there are a lot of young folks there too, the camera filming the event in the wrong place though, with every late-comer, every fag- and toilet-breaker passing in front of it, some making a bob of obeisance but still in the main failing to actually get themselves off-camera).
I don’t know many people there and the friend who texted me the wrong week never showed up but I see Robert Taylor the photographer looking good in tartan trousers and a black fedora with a scarlet lining and dark-skinned immortality and his as-always shaved head, and his partner, and Dennis Carney and how many years has it been, one-time lover of Essex Hemphill as photographed by Rotimi, upright and big-eyed, grey in his Mohican now, in Batman villain purple and green (and later he gets church and is calling 
out agreements in response to remarks at the discussion table, and later disagreeing too with a call to play down the sexualisation of the presentation of gay culture made by Bisi or perhaps another African speaker, Godwin, so what is fought for is not a simple thing, nor all agreed upon). A shaven headed pretty Zimbabwean activist called Skye Chirape in a cute military hat and punk army coat with Gay Africa painted roughly on the back in white house-paint and a flaring multi-coloured hand-done skirt from Portobello Market tells me and Robert how her video-blog has led to her homophobic preacher mother being asked to step down from leading her church because she Cannot even control her own daughter. She is petite, delicate almost, and determined, and she is one of the invited speakers, and she neither gloats nor seems guilty. And Robert was in Zimbabwe with a white friend at one point on a farm repossessed by ‘war veterans’ and the white friend was asking what the farm’s new black owner thought about that and Robert wanted to shut him up and get to the airport.
I make the mistake of choosing a hard chair, seduced by the curve of the back, but four hours of anything needs some padding for the backside and I’m soon squirming like a kid. A crazy-seeming white guy with grey hair and white-stubbled beard a few seats up from me writes cryptically in red on a copy of Time Out. A cute, hard-faced black youth in close-fitting trousers, dashiki and winkle-pickers and holding two mobile phones and a camera changes seats constantly in front of me, filming moments on his 
camera from a dozen different angles, his Cuban heels clicking on the floor as he moves round the discussion table. Topher introduces [the host, who] introduces the white gay guy from PEN who gets a laugh by doing almost nothing more than pointing out the toilets and the fire exit and lets them get on with it then the two moderators are introduced, a (self-described) straight black woman at one end of the table and a gay African-American man at the other, whose main role is to call what he calls a Gay Time Out to break debate to listen to poems or songs or show in an alcove round the corner, short films, and the host's, which turns out to be a short personal piece about being homophobically 
attacked on the South Bank for holding hands, sad and a corrective to the debate we’re having about being gay in Africa which as several people point out half-assumes everything’s alright here (and later a flamboyant youth speaks angrily of being refused entry to a club by a Polish bouncer who claims because he’s black he can’t be gay and Dennis seconds this; and another talks of asking for a drink as white as my boyfriend – my boyfriend’s white – and being given Vodka with blackcurrant well blackcurrant isn’t white is it – so we need to address racism here as well as worrying what’s happening in Africa, he snaps, and no-one denies it. Still, it’s a cry from facing the death penalty).
They tell us the idea of the table is once the debate’s got going anyone can come up tap someone who’s spoken on the back and they’ll leave the table and the new person can sit down to make their point but of course everyone’s too shy at first, and it takes some urging to make that happen and it’s apparently a classic format but I wonder as I didn’t speak but might have liked to ask questions of those who know more but there’s no space for that. What’s good good good though is we hear a lot of Africans speaking, activists, refugees, Jide the preacher who I met 
once before, Zimbabweans, Ugandans, Nigerians as well as black British and Caribbeans – these last two in particular talking of identity connectedness responsibility and the power of holding a UK passport and how that power gives a duty to speak out. And talking of listening to what gay Africans need and not imposing agendas and what that means (to be gay to be 
African/Nigerian/Yoruba and so on) and what is needed and what those agendas are, Bisi and other activists alluding to being co-opted and dropped by western gay rights groups and yet John Bosco, a Ugandan refugee, talking of being at a protest where all those protesting bar two were white gay campaigners and so those who opposed them said Why are you doing this There are no Africans here, and he spoke of the need for those gay Africans who get here to make themselves part of the struggle and not just exhaustedly leave it to others. (And later a white queen with a shaved head, I look like I should be in the Coleherne he said talked of being the only person trying to hand out flags in Brixton for J-Flag and he was a Buddhist and said the straight black Buddhists he knew were not homophobic and stood up for gay rights and he had a Scottish accent but later a friend said that off-stage he didn’t, and it was a sidebar to talk about religion and there are 20,000 Buddhists in Nigeria, he said).
And Lee Jasper was there as a straight man championing (black) gay rights and I thought of the awful emails he sent that girl and how he wants to rule the black turf like an old-school machinery politician but he was there and you’ve got to respect that, for four hours on a rainy Sunday with the gay folks where he spoke for only three minutes, so there was something genuine there. And Bisi said of his mother You stick with your Christianity and live your life and I’ll stick with my atheism and live mine, and I was relieved that several of the African activists announced their non-belief and religion was not given an easy time in the room as it was clearly in the case of Christianity an American imperialist religious-right-backed fuck-over intervention in countries already in difficulties just so far as basic functioning to scapegoat, 
abuse, jail and murder gay people, or (take a deep breath) LGBT and now I people (a friend asked: Intersex, I guessed, and it turned out rightly), and it was mentioned that women’s rights are foundational to gay rights. Jide in South African flag lapels and clerical collar spoke up for an inclusive Christianity to what seemed to me only polite response when I was expecting more We’re gay and Christian and that’s okay, and Islam was little spoken of in the Christian contexts of Nigeria, Uganda and Malawi, where mad campaigns are being waged – but Jide won respect for taking part in debates about sexuality in Africa after an African Sexuality conference in Lagos where the only speakers on gay issues – raised at only 2 of 22 meetings – were white Americans and Canadians – and Jide determined to get Africans in particular gay Africans speaking on these issues. But it was very different from an African-American gay meeting where Christian belief would have most likely been the order of the day, and a relief to atheist me, who sees these religions as the problem, Christianity and Islam both religions of empires imposed on traditional beliefs though there was no excess of sentimentality about those beyond the truth that the church and the mosque construct a particular and virulent homophobia.
Allies were spoken of, and supporters, and those who would listen and not impose were welcomed regardless of race or nationality or sexuality, and how Africa was many different countries and each country was very different, and within each country were many different languages and how would you approach this man in this village in this language, no big broad-brush agenda could simply succeed. A Father Christmassy bearded white man spoke of poverty as the big problem and cited its intersection with multiple abuses of bad governance, and John the Ugandan refugee later pointed out that because of its Workers’ Party roots the abusive and violent government of his country had been nodded at by 
Blair and Brown’s government here and asked how far it was possible to differentiate the violence against and abuse of LGBTI Africans from other abused and violated Africans, and what that really meant in terms of priorities and things to be done – and I felt the paradox of it because if LGBTI rights have to take a back-seat to sorting out the poverty of the entire world then we can give up right now because that day will never come and we will be in second-class perpetuity. And that paradox – the paradox of a single-issue focus in a world full of problems (and yet you have to look at things one at a time and you have to respond to what moves you most viscerally and emotionally or you just look away and do nothing) led to a tensity in the debate that was perhaps profoundly irresolveable though not preventing of action. And homosexuality as an identity as a Western cultural construct and gay rights as a recent Western idea, were raised but did not dominant an arena where activists outnumbered academics, and their activism predicated on being gay or being lesbian as the source of their oppression their exclusion their exile.
And I’ve mostly spoken about the men (and even the title of the event Gay Africa subsumes women’s experience within men’s) but the women (making up near half the panel and audience) spoke incisively and wisely and a woman who’d toured the first-ever play with a lesbian storyline around Cameroon said she was surprised how easily people had accepted it and been interested in it and that there were debates they wanted to have and not all Africans were against gay people despite the crazy preachers and Jide praised Desmond Tutu as did Lee Jasper for always speaking out for gay rights on the continent when he could so easily have stayed quiet and I said amen to that. And the poets read inbetween all this, rousing politically engaged verse from the Rhymes Won’t Wait Collective, four feisty sistas, two I think white, two black, and the two black women curvy and dark with flame-red braids, and one read a piece about her Nigerian father and how he thought Elton John and David Furnish should have adopted a girl and she was surprised by his engagement with the issue until the punchline, A boy they will be bound to molest. And Keith Jarrett (his one-man show is on at the National) reads more personal poems that touched and engaged us, uneasy though the change of gears between debate and performance often felt, as it did with the films, Souljah so overtly coarse and violent, though the audience did engage not knowing how long it would be or with any preamble and cheers broke out when Stanlake kicks Cuts in the face and takes his knife.
And Peter Tatchell came up to the table and spoke, powerfully and harshly and his voice lacks a certain warmth but he is a powerful speaker, and he remembered African freedom fighters and how they had not excluded what we now call LGBTI Africans from the struggle and reminded us that when Huey P Newton spoke of gay rights to a Pan-African audience of revolutionaries they applauded and didn’t boo or reject him, and challenged an arm of the debate about African solutions for Africans that had in truth not been raised at this event, or not at all in the terms of rejection he was considering, but talked nonetheless rightly of the African Bill of Human Rights that was indeed devised by Africans for Africans, yet made a late-comer’s slip: We cannot understand the awfulness of what people have been through in these countries, he said to us all when we who had been there for the whole event had been listening to those who understood precisely because they experienced it in their own lives speaking out, and Peter was used to talking to an all-white room, I guess, and while I salute his courage and relentlessness and admire his determination to speak out and act on gay rights on a world-wide basis there’s a lack of engagement there somewhere, and a friend of mine spoke of stations of the cross.At the end a surprise guest, a black girl folk singer with electric blue nail-varnish, debuted with her guitar, surprising us too by being very good though I forget her name, and one lyric stayed with me, lines about her mother: You know how to push all my buttons, she sang. But then I guess you installed them… And then it was over, four hours twenty minutes after it began, and for all the seriousness of the situation and for all the impossibility of drawing up some simple action plan that would include all points of view it was somehow optimistic and the rain had stopped and I left the hubbub of post-event networkers feeling life was somehow full of possibilities.
Words and art: John R. Gordon.
Photos: Ajamu X.
Title quote: "The future is... black." James Baldwin, American writer, 1924-1987.
