My Friend Died Before Living His Truth
I just hope he knew I accepted him. Unconditionally.
I will call my friend “C.”
He grew up in Washington, D.C., with me and our crew of Black boys.
He was gay, but we did not know it. We suspected, but he didn’t say it, so that was that. People would say he was in the closet, but he and some other gay friends who grew up in the neighborhood had been pushed out.
C floated in both worlds. Still, there was no doubt in his mind that he couldn’t ever come out on his own accord. It wasn’t safe on so many levels. Yet C was our friend. A Black boy like us.
He navigated the path of a closeted gay Black teen in the 1970s and ’80s, an era when most of the brothers who came across as straight never dared to suggest they were gay. Instead, they pushed back and sought to be even tougher.
C went to house parties. He read books. He played sports. He probably threw rocks at cars. He dressed up on Halloween. He got drunk. He got high. He dated girls. He hung out in the neighborhood and had a good time, as far as we could tell. His love life was his business.
Our all-Black D.C. neighborhood was like a village. We all knew each other. We were postwar Black boys. Washington, D.C., had become “Chocolate City,” and…
