My Government Means to Kill Me

I’d found the haven for my mind, body, and soul. Everyone needs such a place. Don’t reject the space you gravitate toward just because the windows aren’t stained glass and the congregation isn’t saved.

The theory goes that governmental agencies don't accidentally make accessing information or resources difficult. They do this shit on purpose. The forms are confusing, and the record keeping is ass-backward because it reflects a policy choice. A decision has been made to repel the average citizen from gaining certain knowledge or opportunities. When most people encounter the seemingly arbitrary and capricious workings of, for instance, the IRS or the DMV, they accept it because they've been trained to assume that the government is run by half-wits. They yell at the lowly staffer in front of them, then sulk away and comply with the absurd rules or give up. Yet what the vast majority of citizens see as mistakes are the result of calculated design. Some high-level political functionary stipulated that the form must be completed in triplicate. A few billionaire donors drafted the fine print that disqualifies the neediest from touching the bounty. These are very smart motherfuckers. To think otherwise plays into their hands.

We are not so narrowly defined as society would have us believe. Yet the limits placed on our appetites, talents, and potential are implanted in us when we are children - too young to recognized the prisons built with words. We could blame it all on our families, but then we'd never find the keys to unlock our cells. The awful genius of our confinement is that we are both the prisoner and the warden. We tell ourselves daily that we aren't free to do this or that because we are this or that. To escape such limited thinking, we don't have to look far. The keys are in our pocket.

Don’t reject the space you gravitate toward just because the windows aren’t stained glass and the congregation isn’t saved.

We told ourselves she was superhuman because if we admitted that she wasn’t, we would have to do more to help her. What lousy men we were.

So I loved my sister, but held that love loosely in my arms, anticipating its death and mourning it as it lived

The theory goes that governmental agencies don’t accidently make accessing information or resources difficult. They do this shit on purpose. The forms are confusing, and the record keeping is ass-backward because it reflects a policy choice. A decision has been made to repel the average citizen from gaining certain knowledge or opportunities.

Our mouths give voice to goals, dreams, and even lies. Ultimately, we will be judged on our follow-through, on our ability to turn our stirring words into reality. My cause was born of a lie, but a lie can be the spark that leads to virtue.

Lust is a universal language.

I believe God gives us different missions to perform. It is not everyone’s calling to face evil as I have. If you learn tonight that this is not your calling, the true shame would be if you fail to go forward and find out how else you can serve the cause.

Larry climbed up onto a coffee table to address the sixty people crammed into his living room, hallway, and kitchen. Peter and I stood to Larry’s right with our backs to a window. I was struck by how Larry fidgeted while cleaning his glasses on his untucked, white dress shirt. He opened his mouth to speak a couple of times only to close it with a sigh. He was not naturally ferocious or eager to roar. He was a lamb who had to rev himself up to become a lion.

Don't reject the space you gravitate toward just because the windows aren't stained glass and the congregation isn't saved.

Why did I feel hunted in my homeland? Because my government means to kill me.

Women fill a need because they see a need. We don’t necessarily get pleasure from it. We don’t expect a reward. We don’t expect shit.

Winning, as most of us conceive it, is external and public. I didn’t yet know that the most rewarding activities of my life would be those done in secret.

My point is if you don’t learn how to keep walking past the fallen, then you will be driven crazy, and the movement will leave you behind, too.

...Generations of black men had been frequenting Mt. Morris since the Harlem Renaissance. Rumor had it that Countee Cullen ditched his wife after he and Harold Jackman made Mt. Morris their regular rendezvous in the late 1920s. In the time since, thousands upon thousands of Black men used their bodies to create this delicate, invisible web connecting the queers of old to newcomers like me.

Zee had only grinned at me when I was valuable to her. I'd go on to tangle with other bosses and authority figures, and that dynamic never changed. Affection never outlasted need. This was the first lesson the city taught me the hard way. The vast majority of us are merely pawns in someone else's game. Don't get defensive over this point. Embrace it. Once you do, you can begin to manipulate the board. Positioned correctly, pawns can checkmate kings.

Devils grow old, and the world around them eventually exceeds their understanding and control. Never forget that. Never let them forget it.

Only in my senior year did another path begin to emerge: New York City. No one I knew had anything good to say about the place. It was crime ridden and drug addled. It was the epicenter of moral decay. I set my heart on living there, and for a while, doing so felt like enough.