He was like a built-in best friend, and I took pleasure in being his older brother. We both grew up in a little city called Plainfield, NJ, with two working parents and an awesome support system led by our grandmother. My little brother is about 3 years younger than me.
RELATED: Learning to love myself as a Black queer man in a Black Greek Letter Organization The world has not created a safe haven for those of us who are queer, and continued efforts from the state and our communities to reinforce heteronormativity force us to make the decision of hiding our identity not just out of protection for ourselves, but also the ones we love the most. Societal views of the closet correlate with deceit and promiscuity, never addressing the lack of safety for those of us living publicly “out.” Regularly imagined as sneaky and dangerous, the truth is that many “DL” people can witness the shaming and abuse that queerness elicits and consciously choose to avoid it. The tragedy is that he had to hide it in the first place.” In an article by Gerren Keith Gaynor entitled “The real tragedy in Patti Labelle’s outing of Luther Vandross”, Gaynor makes a profound statement that I’m sure resonated with many queer people: “The tragedy is not that LaBelle outed Vandross without his blessing. Regardless of where you stand on that issue, it is undeniable that Patti’s statement opened up a necessary dialogue about what queer people go through when making the decision to stay closeted for reasons outside of themselves. Although many knew about Luther Vandross’ queerness-confirmed by his friend Bruce Vilanch in 2005-some still felt what Patti did was wrong because it wasn’t her secret to tell. Furthermore, it endangers the person-especially Black trans women-who are often met with violence and death upon such discovery. When a person is outed, they lose the agency to define their own story. “Outing” is a major problem in the LGBTQ community, with dangerous implications. Many stood divided as to whether Patti was right to have said what Luther no longer could. He told me that he just didn’t want to upset the world. The singer stated that Luther “did not want his mother to be –although she might have known–he wasn’t going to come out and say this to the world. On a recent episode of Watch What Happens Live!, Andy Cohen casually asked Patti Labelle about Luther Vandross’ sexuality. Sometimes, it is a shield used to protect the ones you love so much that you could never embarrass them by not being perfect in a world that says queer can never be.
Often, that closet door is a shield, and not always just for ourselves. The closet, for many of us, became our place of safety and a second home. The place where we could sneak off to and party with our gay friends, only to return back to work, or school, or home, and pretend that we were “too busy with _ to have time for a girlfriend.” The place where we brought all of our lovers to do sexual things in the dark. The “closet.” A colorful phrase used to describe the lives of people like me who were too afraid to live as a queer people publicly.
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