(The recent, re-discovery of thirty-year-old letters from a Nigerian friend has provided an excuse to reprise a piece that’s nearly as old. Some of you will remember it)

 

Birthright: To Dance

     It was 1950. It was a wet, windy afternoon in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. In the St. George’s Park Tea Room, two black men were slow-dancing to “You’re the Cream in My Coffee”. Except for the two of them, the tea room was empty. One man was, at that moment, profoundly sad. The other desperately wanted to lift his spirits. I was disconcerted by the sight. On the way home from the theater, that last scene of Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold…and the Boys” stayed with me. Was that character’s response to his friend’s sadness a natural one, or had the playwright erred?

     An old tinge of resentment conjured by that scene was preceded by happy memories of the very event which had created that resentment. Like the characters of Sam and Willie in the play, those memories were of black men dancing. Also like Fugard’s characters, the dancers I remembered were Africans.

     It was 1978. It was a warm, clear night in Brussels. At the Free University, the Nigerian students were showing a film of “Festac ’77,” the second World Black & African Festival of Art & Culture which had been hosted by their country the previous year.

     I was particularly interested in the film because of all the wonderful stories I had been told about the festival by two friends who had attended. One thing my friends had told me about their trip had made an impression initially, but had long since buried itself in the recesses of my mind. It was brought to the fore quite dramatically when the film ended and the after-party began.

     As soon as the tables and chairs were pushed aside, and the evening’s disc jockey put on the first record, the newly created dance floor was full. Almost all of the students in attendance were men, and they were all dancing with each other.

     I sat in awe. What I was witnessing was completely beyond my realm of experience. Men dancing with each other was not new to me, but in America only a certain segment of the male population did so. This was something different, something new, and I was not aware of my place in the scheme of it until the Nigerian student who had invited me asked me to dance. My place was on the dance floor.

     It was while dancing that the rest of those stories told to me by my two friends came back to me. They had been stories of men who knew how to touch each other in ways we in this country either shudder at, or envision in vague utopias. It was while dancing that the resentment which has never left me began.

     My own memories of cultural transgression and recrimination go back to early adolescence. I used to kiss my father. I didn’t live with him, so I made it a point when visiting to hug and kiss him hello and good-bye. While this may have been acceptable in some parts of town, it was not so amongst the older boys in my father’s neighborhood. One of my older brothers pulled me aside one day and asked me not to do it any longer. He said it embarrassed him in front of his friends. I could see nothing wrong in what I had been doing. It was true that the uncle with whom I lived used to joke about my hugging and kissing my aunt and not him. I think he was only half joking, but the idea of kissing any man other than my father repelled me. Now, my brother was conveying to me the idea that all of it was abhorrent. I was dutifully shamed.

     A few years after that, the same brother became the first male with whom I ever danced. In addition to whatever new dance step was en vogue at the time, in Washington, D.C., we always had three standard dances: the slow drag, the bop, and the hand dance. My brother was at the age when almost every Friday and Saturday night was party time, but he didn’t know how to dance. He asked me to teach him the hand dance, and we spun each other around the basement for an entire afternoon. Perhaps he had progressed in his thinking. Perhaps he simply didn’t care, since none of his friends were there to make him feel embarrassed.

     It was through dancing that I made a conscious decision, at age nineteen, to go beyond the American cultural barriers of male-to-male relationships. A friend who had grown up in the same neighborhood as I, and had attended Sunday school, junior high, and high school with me, decided that I and two other old friends were ready to cross those barriers. He took the three of us to a party. En route, he cautioned us to prepare ourselves psychologically for something “different” and implored us not to embarrass either him, or ourselves, by seeming out of place. It was going to be a “gay” party.

     As new an experience as that party was for me, it all seemed quite natural. I don’t remember feeling any of the awe I was to feel seven years later in Brussels. I imagine it was because I understood “gay” men dance with each other. It would have been stupid of me to have been surprised. Yet, I was surprised, as well as momentarily confused, by the dancing Nigerians. Not only were all those “straight” men treading on my cultural taboos, they were unaware such taboos even existed.

     Discussing the subject of how men touch each other with a Ghanaian neighbor reminded me of other things my Festac-traveling friends had told me. “Male friends walk down the street arm-in arm,” they had said. “They even sleep together.” My neighbor explained that, in traditional African culture, men spend almost all of their time with each other, thereby developing intimate relationships. In fact, men are a society unto themselves, a phenomenon stemming from the ancient warrior tradition. Certain customs and rituals, including dancing, carried sacred magical connotations that necessitated the exclusion of women.

     When I asked him why African men living here don’t appear to relate to each other that way, he replied that such relationships were discouraged by the way Americans view them. Of course, the type of male relationships described by my neighbor are not unique to Africa. The Third World abounds in similar examples. Even Europe can boast of societies where men dance with each other and relate to each other in ways we don’t dare. Indeed, in some cultures dancing often appears to be the exclusive province of men. Although I find this freedom enviable, I am not blind to the social implications of such practices. As positive as they may be, they appear to be a correlate to the male chauvinism of Western society.

     There are some who would argue that my priorities are mixed up, that in an age where the larger society seems intent on murdering us politically and economically, black men in America need not concern themselves with daydreams of a new fraternal order. Their argument would be valid if not for one sad fact: when a black man in America is literally murdered, it’s almost always by the hand of another black man. Who’s mixed up?

     Is there any hope? My neighbor from Ghana believes that the closest thing here to traditional African society was black society in the South before the sixties. However, I see remnants of that tradition in today’s South. I have witnessed a natural closeness among men there that I haven’t seen anywhere else in this country.

     Though my neighbor may be unable to see beyond what he perceives as their decadence, I believe that the relationships among black gay men come closest to approximating those of African men. In fact, if one focuses only on the non-sexual aspects, gay men very well could be the vanguard in the march of American men toward a greater understanding, appreciation and love of each other.

     Civilization is based on the positive interaction of individuals living together in large numbers. “Individuals” is the key word. What hope I have must start with me. I’ve gone back to hugging and kissing my father. I do the same with other male relatives and friends.

     I have one friend with whom I’ve been very close since third grade, so close that many people think we’re brothers. I chose him to be best man at my wedding. We’ve spent hours on the phone with each other. We’ve taken long, story-filled walks – though never arm-in-arm. We’ve slept together in the same bed without any thought of having sex. I remember once dancing with him at a straight discotheque. The dance floor was so crowded that no one paid us any attention. We love each other very much. I hope we always will.