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The COMPLETE DC Black Pride Manifesto

Okay, here are my complete thoughts on DC Black Pride aka DC Black Lesbian and Gay Pride Day.

Day One: Friday

I worked in the morning with my Kindergarteners, then got off for half a day due to staff development. (Subs don't generally go unless they are long-term.)

My online friend Ralph came down from New York with his two friends Curtis and Morgan. They were all very nice men who supported LAZARUS! I was so happy -- that really kicked off my evening the right way. We hung out in their room for a while before we headed downstairs to hang out in the lobby.

In the lobby, I saw Brent Dorian Carpenter, who inspired me to take my life and my art by the horns and self-publish my novel. And I told him so! He was really touched by that, and it felt good to give him LAZARUS directly from my hands. Brent Dorian Carpenter is the author of The 21st Century Chronicles of Thugg The Barbarian King , Bald Ambition, This Time Around, and Man of the Cloth. I got them all this weekend -- so should you!

At nearly the same time, I met Alphonso Morgan. I have already mentioned his hotness -- I think everyone at Pride felt that way. But did you also know that Alphonso Morgan is fuckin' brilliant? He and his cousin (I feel like her name was Ashley?)were really cool. Pick up his debut novel Sons available from his website. The cover on the site is different from the one that is currently on sale. So if you got the old one, get the new one too!

Ralph, Curtis, Morgan, and I went down to the opening reception, which was scheduled to start at 8pm and end at 11pm. EVERYTHING prior to this night said it would end at 11pm. Why did it end at 10pm? It is my understanding that the food was really good, but all that was left was cheese by the time I got there. There was some music and dancing, too. It would have been a NICE alternative to the club had it been open another hour and had some good hip-hop. But alas, it ended early, and back upstairs I went.

I am not sure how it happened, but I found myself in the lobby with this cat from NY. He was really cool! He seemed to know everyone. We saw Alphonso Morgan and his dog again. I'm sorry, I ain't like that dog. Lil bug eyed fucker. LOL. I'm a cat person. Laila would take him out!

It was also at that time that I also saw:
Maurice Jamal

and some of the cast of The Ski Trip, including Nathan Hale,

and Daren Fleming:

All of them were very fun, charming, and good guys. I remembered most of them from the year before, when they were promoting The Ski Trip. I won't lie. I was thinking damn, this is gonna be corny. In 04, all the cast and the filmmaker were wearing pink. I was like ewwwwww this is so corny. And maybe this was my own inadequacies, but I thought maybe they seemed cliquish? I dunno. Anyway, I wasn't as enthused about the flick as I have been about other gay films.

More on that later....

So it seems as though the Nathan guy also does some promoting or something? I don't really remember. All I remember is that Nathan was tall as hell and could probably beat my ass. Don't sleep on gay folks, y'all. We be in the gym pumping iron.

One thing I noticed about Maurice Jamal was his eyes. They were really dark but piercing kinda. Daren Fleming is also a drag queen. Now, forgive me if that's not the proper term anymore. But he was impersonating Miss Diana Ross at the reception and he was HILARIOUS! At one point in the performance, he ran around the room with this long flowing fabric. A mess!!! It was great.

So, back to the New Yorker....with him was Miss Z. (Zee?) Miss Z really looked like a chick I went to undergrad with. She was really sassy but sweet, and earlier in this diary, I said she reminded me of Nina from LAZARUS. More on Miss Z later...

There was also a cat from Rhode Island. I know right, gay black people in Rhode Island? Crazy. He was cool and really reminded me of one of my APO bros named JR.

I feel like there were other people there too, but everything is a blur. I didn't go out that night because I had to be up early the next day to attend workshops. Plus, I'm not much of a club goer anyway.

Day Two: Saturday

Got up early and went to the hotel. Came down the escalator and saw one of my frat brothers! It turned out that he was volunteering with Pride this year. I almost didn't recognize him because he was shaved bald. It was great seeing him -- I hadn't seen him since Spring 03, although I had spoken to him online since then.

We went to a workshop called Safe Sex Sells: HIV/AIDS Prevention Messages in Social Marketing. Which was cancelled. Because only a handful of us showed up, and I was pretty much the only one who stayed. (Not counting my frat, who was a volunteer.) Sooo...it kind of sucked, but the presenter purchased a book from me, so that was cool. (I had been carrying extra books in my bag in case it came up in conversation.)

Frat and I went to breakfast at Shula's. It was so nice having one on one time with him, just to catch up on things. We talked a lot about the direction in which black fraternities were heading. Then we were rudely interrupted by some jerk. LOL, no seriously, this polite gentleman from Philadelphia asked us what was there to do while he was here. So we talked and talked and finally invited him to join us to eat. It turns out he was Stepp Stewart, who is the National Director of Dynamite National Talent Competitions & Conventions. He was a really cool guy who was extraordinarily excited for Pride. It was a great way to start my morning!

We were at breakfast for a long time and ended up being late to the
Black and Out at HBCUs discussion. However, we still went and it was really great! There were four panelists and it was really cool hearing their perspectives. Although there is a lot of work to be done, gay folks at black colleges are holding it down! There were enough Greeks in the audience to take a pan hell picture, too! I won't post it though, since I am not one hundred percent sure they want their pics on the net. :-)

After that workshop, I ran into my girl Courtney, who knows everyone in the universe. Courtney and I go way back to when neither of us was out! We sat next to each other in the town hall meeting -- Being Black and Gay in America: Speaking Out in Our Own Voice. I have plenty of pictures from that, which I will post on the gallery side very soon. Since this narrative is getting no shorter, I will just say that I enjoyed the panelists, but I felt that the moderating could have been....I dunno...better somehow. Oh yeah, I also sat next to my New York homie from the night before. I found out later that he is in the process of adopting kids -- my dream! I need to contact him about that soon.

Well, not SOON for me, but I don't want to forget about it.

Spent more time in the lobby....all my lobby time runs together.

I already mentioned that I saw The Ski Trip and loved it. It was really really really good. I guess I know how people felt reading LAZARUS for the first time...ya go in there with an open mind and no expectations and you get surprised and really thrilled that it's so good! It really touched me when Maurice Jamal got sorta choked up when he introduced his cast to the audience. I could really tell this was a crowning acheivement for him. I don't know nothin' bout birthin no movies, but if producing an indie flick is ANYTHING like self-publishing a novel, then I can empathize with Maurice one hundred percent. It's the hardest thing in the world...and for that reason it's most fulfilling.

After the movie, I gave Maurice a copy of LAZARUS. I know, just giving them out like candy, right? But that's what you do -- you can't expect to make money on all of them, some people need to just have them. I felt like he shared his baby with me, now I wanted to share mine with him. He told me when he would start reading it, and I was like hey man, don't just say that, I know how it is. And he was like naw, I'm really gonna read it. So I was like cool. Jasmine (I guess I am spelling this right) who I met earlier in the day, took these pictures of us:

Handsome, isn't he?

Now, after all this, and having run into several people who I either knew in some way or had purchased my book (much love to you all!) found my way back up to that pesky lobby. This time, I was with another frat brother of mine who I have been cool with online for a while now, just never really hung out. We were supposed to go down to the poetry slam together, but I ran into Brent Dorian Carpenter again and was sucked into the vortex that is the lobby. At least my frat got to go to the poetry.

In the lobby, why did I run into some Gamma Sigs? LOL, that was hilarious. I was like what da hell? But it was good seeing more familiar faces. I was with Courtney again, too. As well as Alphonso Morgan's dog.

Me and Brent went to dinner at Lulu's. We briefly had the idea that we would eat dinner at Shula's. HA! What the hell was I smoking? Needless to say, Lulu's got our money that night. The chicken tenders were good. Brent is cool peeps. It's hard to really get a grasp on all the things he likes and dislikes....but then I guess I am the same way. People make the world go 'round and all that.

Came back to the hotel and I ended up chillin with Wade again, who is New York homie, Shawn/Sean who is Rhode Island homie, and a few new faces, including Yarde' (who graduated from Duke Ellington the same year I graduated from Coolidge), Drew from NY, and a few others. Bryan (who I met at American a few years ago) was also there. We were basically playing the old bar debate game. Pitting certain singers and actors and tv shows against each other. I was in the minority when it came to Tyra Banks versus Naomi Campbell, lol. (I was for Tyra.) We ended up continuing the debates all night long.

That's the kind of shit Pride is all about. Strangers coming in, sitting down, finding commonalities, and leaving old friends.

(Why did that sound like the remix of the House of Alpha?)

I fell asleep mad late that night, but full of memories.

Day Three: Sunday

I was a nervous wreck.

No, really.

And you know what? It's really after ten o'clock now and I am too tired to keep writing. I will finish writing and editing this in the morning.

Posted by Rashid on May 31, 2005 7:37 PM

Comments

Commented by no 4real4real on May 31, 2005 11:59 PM

Commented by Ken W. on June 1, 2005 12:03 AM

Commented by Rod on June 1, 2005 10:27 AM

Commented by Kenneth on June 1, 2005 1:14 PM