"How many items do we have now? Let's count and make sure." As if it mattered to me: I'm just checking sizes before heading down to Century 21. "Just let me know if you need any help," she says. The salesperson in the clothing shop in SoHo - early 20's, white - is overly attentive, following me through the maze of aisles to the sales rack and the dressing room. Ain't no party started right without the likes of me. My attitude says, "This here's a diva moment. My chin rises higher to insure that my "class" is as "readable" as my race and sexual orientation. Late at night, waiting at the door of the Limelight or Crow Bar, I'm confident, almost arrogant. My body language says, "I'm too fierce for power games." When I'm at work at a university law library, I never let demanding lawyers-to-be get to me. On the A train, my face becomes a hardened scowl, my eyes thin slits as I read the morning paper. My face twists and contorts as I try to keep my balance on this highwire. Take a cab if it's after midnight, I tell him, and I worry until I hear his key turn the first of three locks on our apartment door.Īs for myself, I tend to confront adversity, real and potential, head on. But I tell Roger, my boyfriend of five years who is white, that he can do no such thing.
With little fear, I - a black gay male - take the A train by myself to 181st Street at any hour of the day or night.
From Washington Heights, where I live, to Harlem to Morningside Heights, Greenwich Village and SoHo. Sometimes I can glide effortlessly, never aware of how thin the wire is. MY life usually feels like I'm balancing on a thin wire strung across the city.