FEBRUARY | 2020 | LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS

AMOUR NOIR

Love is defined as an intense feeling of deep and constant affection. Many of us who’ve experienced its purest form can attest that there are times when it requires us to bend, but not to our breaking point. It tears down the walls we’ve used to entomb our vulnerabilities and makes martyrs of those who’ve used its name in vain. Whatever pain it can’t shield us from is met by the presence of its comfort, which keeps us throughout the night. The love of his body is Eros, of his mind is Phillia, and the playful love we demonstrate as we nibble at his ear is known  as Ludus. A rose by any other name is still a rose, and the same can be said for the longstanding Pragma, Agape, and Philuatia, the healthy kind of love that we reserve for ourselves. 

It's no secret that we specifically, and with care, craft our content with the same gender loving gentleman of color in mind, because that’s who we are. Another nonsecret is that we do our best to promote our kind of love, even though we understand that relationships, like many Tyler Perry movies, aren’t for everyone. Regardless of your stance on relationships, we hope you’ll enjoy this month’s piece, which is dedicated to the beauty and importance of that which cannot be purchased but stolen with a glance, the value of that which is worthless to one, but priceless to two, and to that, when translated from French, is Amour Noir. 

While global attitudes about our kind of love are slowly tilting in our favor, there’s still much progress to be made. None of us asked to be here, to exist, but we are, existing and thriving in ways that makes the blood of those who don’t agree with our “lifestyle”, boil. We do so in a world where our blackness is perceived as a threat by outsiders, where our maleness binds us to poorly constructed expectations of masculinity, and where our gayness often revokes our membership from the former and leads many of us to wear a mask of the latter. We’ve come a long way, but we’re still on a many miled trek when it comes to total acceptance. However, this is one of the things that makes our kind of love so damn fly. 

We’re all grown enough to know that love is the furthest from being a crystal stair, that it has tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor. That it can sometimes be bare. Love is less often the fairy tale we grew up thinking it to be, and sometimes calls for us to process and endure conflict, shifts in intimacy, infidelity, and discomfort. Loving someone can be challenging, but it's rarely impossible. Anyone who is, or has ever been in love can tell you that a dedication to its craft--to its art--, will make you a lifelong student of its endless lessons and teachings. 

This is true of all love regardless of race or sexual orientation. However there is something especially revolutionary about our kind of love, about black gay love at its best. It is as resilient as it is bold. The external pressures and struggles it endures simply exist to temper and hone the steel that already existed within us. Those of us who dare to display our love before the sometimes disapproving eyes of the public demonstrate a courage unseen since the end of the anti-miscegenation age. 

Its detractors rage when confronted with the comfort and familiarity we find in the “unnatural”, our unapologetic and unobjectionable involvement in the “sinful”, and the orthodontic way we rest in that which they classify as “deviance”. Even the instances where our backs are against the wall, we face our adversaries in “morality” with unmitigated gall, pride, and resolve. The revolutionary part about all of this, is that our Beaux is by our side through it all, as we are his. 

Our kind of love is revolutionary because we, in the face of all of the previously mentioned consequences that come with displaying it, find, create, maintain, and sustain ways to keep each other lifted, encouraged, and strengthened. And these aren’t the easiest of feats to accomplish. We keep each other lifted through empathy, and by serving as the calm to each other’s storms. We encourage each other through affirming and reaffirming our trust in one another, through respect that is not only demonstrated, but applied, and by constantly reminding each other that neither of us is alone. We strengthen one another not through a mutual extension of hands, but arms, and by looking up and to one another as opposed to looking down and through.

We don’t love because we have to, we love because we want to. We want to be near our partners and to support them as much as we possibly can, and the same can be said about them as well. The beauty of our love lies in the bonds we form with our Beaux, a bond that far exceeds physical realms and extends into the chemical realm. It is, or at least should be, born from a foundation of friendship and preserved by the trust resulting from that friendship. 

Our black ass, gay ass love motivates us be as near to our Beauxs as we are kind to him, and under its protection we find ourselves unable to be touched, unable to be harmed by the disapproval of the outside world. When we allow the barriers of past hurts to fall and “do” love right we discover that there is no freedom from it, but through it. And that’s what makes it so damn important. 

Science tells us that humans developed the ability to become attached to one another because at some point in our evolutionary journey it became essential to our survival. We’re all human, so this totally applies, but it becomes even more relevant when we consider where we stand in the opinions of the heterosexual majority. As same gender loving men of color, our survival depends on our ability to wear the masks of our oppressors, be they white, straight, or our family and friends.

While we learn what we can, when we can, our survival rates increase when we pair ourselves with a Beaux who has survived the same things. He knows the sting of homophobia, rejection, racism, and exclusion, as he’s survived them as well. Our Beaux, like us, is all too familiar with mustering the courage to come out, or the struggles associated with staying in the closet. Our bond--our LOVE--, is comprised of a mutual understanding of our childhood trauma, and from that we work in tandem to not only heal that trauma, but to transform it into power. 

A lot of us spent the bulk of our adolescence either hiding in shame or fighting for our lives. Many of us made it out of that no worse for wear, but the scars these experiences left us with run deep. This leads us into yet another example of why our love is as beautiful as it is essential.

Our past hurts are ours and ours alone, but recovery from these hurts goes a lot quicker when we’re coupled in love with someone who knows our reality because it mirrors theirs. This ability to relate is important in all relationships, however its presence in our kind of relationships is paramount because it literally allows us to see each other.  

This is the beauty of our kind of love, and the reason why we must do everything within our power to promote and protect it. The world is not entitled to our love, but it definitely needs to be aware of it enough to know that it is no less valuable than the heteronormative norm. It must be acknowledged and represented to the fullest ensures that those of us who are interested in it know that it not only exists, but that it is something we all deserve.

It is one of the many stitches that holds us together when those who disapprove would seek to tear us apart. So as we spend this time celebrating Black History, we must also find time to acknowledge the staircase of our black gay love whose steps we’ve been climbing, and whose landings and corners we’ve been climbing and reaching- because at the end of the day amour noir, and everything it represents, is not only a thing a beauty, but an experience of the utmost importance.