Killed Myself When I Was Young

Back in San Francisco, I would usually find myself walking around through the many different neighborhoods trying to soak everything about the city into myself; trying to start a new life; trying to forget about Seattle. The only thing that was holding me back was the music on my iPod. Ninety-eight percent of the songs on my iPod were songs that I had downloaded from hearing them on television shows or Indie Rock Cafe while living in Seattle. They all reminded me of Seattle and my friends and Madison Pub and my apartment. My first few months back in California, I wandered the streets listening to songs that reminded me of a place I had abandoned. When I felt I could not take anymore of being homesick, I told myself that I would spend ten dollars a week downloading new songs that would become a new soundtrack to a new chapter in my life. The funny thing was that even new songs reminded me of Seattle. I would go out back at night and have a cigarette listening to The Wooden Birds, Olin & the Moon, The Boxer Rebellion and, still, find myself thinking of Seattle, dealing with my broken heart and putting myself back together.

I came across a new group named Endochine when I found their song 'Music To Drive And Cry To' and downloaded it. The music, the lyrics, the guitar rifts...everything about the song reminded me of my life back in Seattle even though I tried to move on, and, in some strange way, I felt I was moving on while dealing with a severe case of homesickness. I still listen to the song, and it's lyrics continue haunt me.

you, you're breaking down the day
you, you're soaking up a storm
run, away from what you are
run, you'll always have a scar

one more night is falling
one more heart is broken

wait, you're driving me away
would you stay and watch the darkness fade

one more night has fallen
one more heart is broken
one more night is calling
one more heart has spoken

A simple set of words set to a thriving rock tune closing with piano and strings...the ending is as powerful as the lyrics are poetic. I am reminded of walking the streets of San Francisco, living in Seattle and wanting to survive a world full of confusion and assholes and sex and disappointment.

Music has always been my cushion, my safety net - a set of arms ready and willing to take me in without a question of why or how or cost.

I am reminded of being a kid back in D.C. living on Hunter Place across the Anacostia Bridge. I remember that while we lived in Washington, D.C. that Sundays were usually lazy days. My parents and siblings would lay around watching old movies on television. If I wasn't out playing with my friends in the street or in the darkened auditorium of a movie theatre, I was often watching movies on television or scribbling something down in a notebook or reading the Sunday paper. 

Ah! Sunday mornings. I would get up early and wait for the Sunday paper to come, anxious about getting The Mini Page and the Arts & Leisure section. During my wait, I would sit in the living room by myself and listen to music. Now, back then I was the weird kid who loved motion picture scores. It did not matter if I listened to Ohio Players or Gladys Knight & The Pips or my older brother's rock albums, I was still the weird kid who listened to the background music from movies. But on Sunday mornings, I would sit by the stereo and turn the volume down low and listen to two albums that had become permanent pieces of my music collection: 'That's The Way Of The World' by Earth, Wind & Fire and 'Light Of Worlds' by Kool & The Gang.

I could sit here and write loving critiques of the classic R&B funky grooves of 'That's The Way Of The World' and the funk-infused jazz sophistication of 'Light Of Worlds' but I figure that you can go anywhere on the internet and read up on the records. However, I am reminded of a time when I was discovering books and writing, learning about sex and masturbation, leaving behind a reputation of being a sissy back in my old neighborhood to become a street punk roaming around D.C. between Hunter Place and my aunt's place in Temple Court and downtown Washington. I kind of liked this girl named Valerie but ended up making out with my friend Ivy's older brother, Sylvester (who was beautiful and dumb as a bucket of rocks as I went from 6th grade to 7th grade, he was still lingering in elementary school).

Anacostia was a bit different from the other neighborhoods we had lived in. It was more...ghettoey, if you will. Yes, we and my aunts and uncles and cousins all lived in the ghettos of D.C. but Anacostia was something a bit different. It was more than a neighborhood, it was a lifestyle, a place a lot bigger than what I was used to. I did not feel a dangerous edge to it at all. However, it was more like a community. There was a guy who would show movies on the side of a building during the summers. There was a public pool we would attend when school was out. I first attended Moten Elementary School which was just up the hill from the homes and apartment complexes, and then Fredrick Douglass Junior High which was a few blocks from where I lived. The home of Fredrick Douglass was only about three blocks away and the border to Maryland was just a couple or so miles out. It was the first place in my entire life where I encountered a gay couple that was tolerated, spoken to and respected...

The apartment building across the street from where I lived was huge. It was longer than the building we lived in, still the same design and color. In that building lived a family of musicians who often played parties and venues covering the latest and greatest in rhythm & blues. They had a brother named Teddy, who was effeminate and wore faggoty clothes and didn't much care what someone said about him. He often had a few friends come over. These, too, were black gay men and it was my first glimpse into what black gay men looked like up close. Usually, I would hear demeaning stories from my brother and cousins about the faggot up the street or the faggot on the bus or, even, once witnessing all the kids in Temple Court harass a gay black man - effeminate and somewhat violent in his reaction to being the focus of names being screamed at him. I remember one old man crossing the street and asking everyone to leave the faggot alone. I knew I liked boys, but I didn't feel like the faggots I'd often been told about. However, I became what people told me that I was.

Anyway, Teddy had a lover. Teddy's boyfriend was handsome and strong and masculine. He was a part of Teddy's brother's group. All of us kids would often go to see and hear them practice in the back of the building. I remember one instance when we were watching them rehearse. Teddy was there with his short hair straightened. He wore a demin jumpsuit and smoked a cigarette. Everyone talked to him as if he was just a regular person. I was impressed. Sometime later, Teddy tried to break up with his boyfriend after a fight they had had. The boyfriend would not hear of it. They played around and Teddy pretended to be mad at him. At one point, the boyfriend picked Teddy up, put him in the trunk of his car and said that he would not let him out until Teddy told him that he loved him. Everyone laughed. Teddy pretended to be upset, and his family did not get involved. They liked his boyfriend. Later on that night, I went outside to see if I could find any constellations. The street was empty except for Teddy and his boyfriend who were quietly talking about their problems.

That was my first positive brush with being gay and gay love.

How in the hell did I get from music to being black and gay and in love?

I guess from my current reading of Ceremonies by Essex Hemphill (also a d.c. native) brings back a few memories from my life. Memories of growing up black and gay; memories of family and friends; memories of growing up.

My parent moved us to North Carolina in 1976. The only time I ever went back to Anacostia was after I graduated high school and lived with my sister in Maryland before going into the Air Force. Me and my high school buddy Alvin were driving around and I was showing him all the places in D.C. that I used to live. In the 80s and 90s I had heard that Anacosta had become a drug-infested war zone.

"Ma got us out of D.C. just in time," my older brother once told me.

And I guess he's right. There is no telling were I would have ended up if my parents did not remove me from the seed of my emergence into a street punk...and a gay street punk at that.