Whaddup? I know it's been a while since y'all heard from me and some of you have even inquired as to how I'm feeling. In a word: chillin', I'm chillin', 'layin' in the cut like a bandage' as they say. I'm happy, loving life. I'm working, back on my hotel grind, as y'all know I'm a supervisor now so that means long hours. I've even taken on a second job as of late all of this while still trying to get this book thing together. I'm trying to get the money together real quick to move out of my current crib before my lease ends this summer. The studio's starting to get kinda tight. This is my first apartment and although I have so many memories here (Lawd, if only the walls or my cat could talk...) it's going on three years. It's time for an upgrade, bigger apartment, better neighborhood, just all around moving things to the next level.
It's funny 'cuz just like I've stated here before, in the words of Carrie Bradshaw, living in New York, you can never seem to have all these things at once, the perfect job, the perfect boyfriend, and the perfect apartment. It seems that one of these things is always perpetually deficient in the life of a New Yorker, that deficiency toggling back and forth, contingent upon the ebbs and flows of the New Yorker's life. That brings me to my love life. My job thing is great, my apartment sucks, so that would lead one to conclude that I must be doing great in the love area. If that was your conclusion you concluded correctly.
My love life is great. I'm back with a wonderful man who loves me and knows me better than anyone else does. Granted we go through our shit, who doesn't, but at the end of the day we both know where we belong. That's it, that's all I'll say. This brings me to the subject of today's blog post.
I died y'all. Of course not physically, but the persona that was "Adam Benjamin Irby The Blogger" is dead. I had been making subtle changes in how i represent myself over the last few months, removing my more sexual images, not being as boastfully sexual as I have been in my writing. It's not really a conscious thing, I don't know, I'm just changing. I wouldn't want to necessarily say that I'm growing, because that would imply that my past actions were immature, I don't think that at all. I'm just feeling like I'm in a different place than before. Many people think many things about me, often they'll take one thing I say in one blog post and characterize me as that, not thinking to take the whole of my existence into account, not thinking to take their own folly and error into account, like they're so perfect. I recognize though, due to the size of this blog, depending on when you started reading my blog, so is formed your opinion of me. Opinions are a dime a dozen and at the end of the day I won't sleep any easier or harder contingent upon your opinion of me or my blog. You know how feel about the whole thing, my mantra has always been "If you don't like my shit, don't read my shit, bitch!"
This Easter weekend as the world celebrates and reflects on the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ I want to share with you the figurative death, burial and resurrection process I've been going through over the past few months. As a result of that I'm changing the direction of this blog to reflect the new person I've become. Upon my contemplation of this change over the past month I realized that I've never definitively, all in one place, stated why and what made this blog come into fruition. I never really explained what forces came together and what events transpired in my life to bring me to this place. So here it is, I attempt to present to you in the most un-lofty, most un-self righteous way possible "The Gospel Of Adam Benjamin Irby".
I'm very proud of the work I've done here over the past two years. I like the fact that I was bold enough to say, I met guys online, I fucked this one, that one and the third one, I got played by this one, I dated this one, I let even this one fuck me, I literally presented my reputation as a bloody, pulsating sacrifice, crucifying myself on the altar of public opinion, none of which has ever been easy. Boldly standing in the face of my detractors, seriously not giving a fuck what they thought of me wasn't easy. Publishing the events of my life in embarrassing detail wasn't easy either. Not getting the same type of respect that other gay bloggers who spoke of lighter fare got wasn't easy. Being looked down upon and as dirty and as a slut, knowing good and well that I was no sluttier than most of those who opposed me, I just wrote a blog about my shit, was no walk in the park. Some wondered, why Adam, why would you do this? Why would you sacrifice yourself this way?
Well, growing up gay for me was not easy. I grew up in a very religious household, both of my parents are, and are still ministers. Gay, although it was clearly all around us in the church world and in the world in general (I was born and raised here in New York City, the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement), was unacceptable. I knew I liked boys as a kid and I tried my hardest to fight it with everything I had. It's funny because as a kid other kids would tease me and say I was gay and as a teenager in high school they'd just come out and tell me that I was gay. And I was gay, queer, peculiar, different from all the other boys. What's funny is that last week I had drinks with my childhood best friend who I found on Facebook and I hadn't seen since the sixth grade and he told me that he even sensed I was gay even at that young age. He himself is also gay (go figure) and I never woulda thought it back then. I didn't really think of people in terms of gay and straight. I was eleven and all I knew was that i was not like the other boys whom I so desperately wanted to be like. As I grew into high school I knew I was gay but I didn't wanna be something that I was taught was diametrically opposed to everything I'd been raised to know.
I was supposed to be a preacher, that's what all the prophets at church said that's what they told my mama. I used to sing as a child. I was supposed to be a musician, a choir director, the sky was the limit for me in the kingdom of God but there was just one little thing I had to take care of first. Unlike a lot of people in the church and Gospel music communities I could never live the double lives that many of them live, being one thing in front of the church folks and another behind closed doors. I couldn't be that grown-ass man, curiously single with no kids at 45 or even worse the man with the wife and kids who fucks with dudes on the side. I'm a Leo and we Leos tend to live in precision and extremes, we either come all the way clean or stay away dirty. We either give our all, or don't mess with it at all.
I knew as a teenager that if I were to go into the direction of ministry, the path in the grassy knoll of life that was pre-worn for me, I'd have to do something about these desires I'd been having. So I prayed and I fasted and I asked for forgiveness and I cried and I begged of God many times many nights before I went to sleep for me to awaken in his arms, dead from this Earth, but everlasting in Heaven to escape from the painful civil war going on inside of me. Even though I thought about it I would have never committed suicide because I believe that it's only God who should make the decision of when we should live and die. Suicide to me is like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, literally.
After a few years of internal torment I figured out that God was just not gonna kill me and that these feelings I had had inside he just wasn't gonna magically take them away, no matter how much I begged him to. I wasn't sure how I was gonna reconcile my love for God with being a homo, but I knew I had to figure something out because obviously it wasn't his will for neither one of these things to suddenly vanish. Back then homosexuality seemed like more of a burden that anything (although I realize now that it so isn't, I love being a homo), but the thing about burdens is that God will never put a burden on you that you can't bear.
Somewhere along the way, I'm not sure when, I became a well adjusted God-loving homo and began to think that it would have been nice to have had someone to look up to during my teenage and young adult years. Someone who'd to let me know that being gay wasn't a curse, that I was okay, that homosexuals were normal people like everyone else, that we weren't all demon-possessed sexual deviants looking to turn out every man we could That we were human, with hearts and feelings and complex emotions and that we we're still men, that I was still a man, not a faggot, but a man who was capable of truly loving another man and who was worthy of a man who truly loved me.
Coming out I was the only homosexual I knew. I never had that 'Sex And The City-esque' network of close friends to encourage me, to listen and to share my heartaches with. I was alone. That's why I've always adored that show so much because I always longed for that sort of support system they had. Most of what I learned about my dealings with men I learned through trial and error. I was so young and open. I got played a lot. I didn't know any better, no one was there to show me the way. I sure as hell couldn't talk to my mama and daddy about what I was feeling inside. I had no gay friends, had never been to a gay club and the idea of befriending one of those double life-living church queens I knew all too well disgusted me.
Because I was always good with computers I ended up being socialized into the gay lifestyle via the internet. I didn't know where else to meet people like me. As much as I love the internet, it's my life basically, even now, due to it I was lacking the more organic element to meeting people. Because we communicate on the internet via text and photographs we tend to present more accelerated, abbreviated, more straightforward versions on ourselves to people, which isn't terrible in itself, but most certainly needs to be balanced out by the more nuanced ways of meeting and getting to know someone in person. This was why whenever I did run across a man I could have possibly just been friendly with I always tried to cross the line or even with a man I was dating I always tried to quickly push him into a relationship with me, usually scaring him off, sending him running for the hills. I didn't know the meaning of having another gay man that was just genuinely my friend. Every gay man I met I tried to forge a relationship with and when we broke up I was always crushed because I lost a lover and a best friend. I had no one to give me advice. I had no voice of experience to steer me into the right direction.
All my life I had written. I love to write. My preteen and teenage years were filled with countless journals I'd started and never quite kept up with. In early 2007 this blog started as my digital journal, something I just shared with my burgeoning collection of friends, many of which could relate to my experiences. Those friends told friends who told friends and then other bloggers discovered me which led to more readers and more popularity. People admired and at the same time shuddered at my blunt honesty. How could he say that he did that? Sure people do it, but we don't talk about it. How could he put himself out there that way?
After a while I started to receive letters from readers, some writing to me saying that they cried reading some of my entries because they could relate to what I went through. I've had readers overseas in places like Africa and Jamaica, places where they hurt and kill people for being homosexuals write to me saying that they live vicariously through me here in America, that I gave them hope that one day they too could live as freely as I do. I got emails from younger gay people, calling me their internet big brother, living in situations kinda like mine growing up, not having an example of an older gay man to look up to and whose mistakes they could learn from. Readers would send me letters asking for my advice and I'd answer them on the blog. I, in creating something that was meant to be cathartic for me became the very thing that I needed so much coming up. I became the big brother to others that I wish I had coming up and out. How different my life would have been if there were an AdamsWebLog back in the day? It would have been nice to read about a gay man who still loves God, and isn't perfect, and makes mistakes, someone who's a normal guy like me, who works a nine-to-five and just wants to be happy like everyone else. This more than anything always encouraged me to go on.
The blog became increasingly popular not only did gay men read, but lesbians began to read, straight women and even a few straight men began to read. I started to get recognized around the city and even sometimes out of town at gay events. People started to attach terms like 'famous' and 'celebrity' to my name, people were emailing me saying that they were a 'fan' of the blog, terms which I always shied away from. One thing I can say with the utmost certainty was that never for a second in my life have I ever truly felt or said that I was famous. Britney Spears is famous, Madonna is famous, I'm just a guy who writes a blog. So what, a few more people know me than knew me before, I mean essentially that's all fame is, people knowing who you are before or without you knowing who they are, we're all famous to someone, but even this I felt made me no celebrity. I always knew that my anonymity was the key to my blog. I wrote my blog for the anonymous, the guy who doesn't get numbers at the club, the guy who no ones really checking for like that, that's who I was. A popular guy could never be as honest and as open as I was, he'd have way too much lose to put himself out there like that.
As time went on and the blog got bigger and bigger and as I started becoming more and more visible on the New York black gay scene, as much as I tried my best not to and as embarrassing as it is to say this I got sucked into the 'industry'. If you're not in the NYC area or are not black and gay you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. The industry is an officially unnamed, oft unspoken yet viable thing, it's the remnant of more visible people here in the black gay community in NYC, the club promoters, You Tubers, bloggers, podcasters, performers, entertainers and other better known people in the community, it can basically be characterized as the popular kids table in high school. And like in high school, with the reign of the popular kids not exceeding far beyond the doors of the high school edifice itself, this same thing goes for this black gay 'industry' we've created. The reality for most in the industry their popularity doesn't tend to go much farther than inside of the minds of the people who choose to believe in it, but you'd never think that according to most of them. Hearing my contemporaries speak of themselves as though they were really famous, like Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie famous was so perplexing to me. I mean they really believed this shit. 'I should get into the club for free because I have this YouTube show, or I write this blog, or do this podcast. I have fans, don't they know who I am?' It was all just so nuts. I mean sure the homos at the door at the black gay club may know your name, but who are you on Monday night when there are no clubs open? Who are you outside of our community, outside of your own head even? Now there's nothing wrong with creating entertainment or media content for our community to enjoy, that's great, and as we're stepping our game up as far our niche media is concerned we're starting to see ourselves slowly but surely make an impact in a more positive light in mainstream media. What's absurd is when we allow ourselves to lose touch with reality. Just because a couple thousand people watched us on YouTube or read our blog we shouldn't think that we're better than someone else or that we've arrived, when in the reality of things in the larger scope of the real world we ain't even got up, got dressed and left the house yet, we're still in bed.
Fame is funny, unlike most other things else in life, self-esteem, self-worth, looks, confidence, unlike all of those things, fame and sexual prowess are two of the only things in life that must be validated by other people to be real. I don't care how good in bed you say you are, you're gonna need witnesses to corroborate and substantiate your claims, same goes with fame. No matter how famous you tell me you are, it doesn't mean shit. Actually, someone truly famous would never even have to tell anyone who they are, people should already know. As much as I tried to stay away from this 'industry' I started to fall into it too a little bit. The attention I got from people, although it was still a little weird and I never quite allowed myself to get comfortable with it was still no less electric.
The pinnacle, the defining moment of my pseudo-fame would have had to have been my 25th birthday party last year. I was more popular than I'd ever been and dammit I was gonna show it by throwing a big ass party that I couldn't afford for a whole bunch of people I didn't know. So I put on some tight ass silver lame coochie-cutter shorts (those were actually female shorts by the way) that showed off my dick print quite pornographically, got some photos done and threw a silver-themed hedonistic celebration of me. What a party it was, legendary even, packed out, line around the corner, and I didn't even charge you a dime. It was legendary, people still to this day, almost a year later still complement me on that party (Click here for pics from the party). You couldn't tell me I wasn't balling that night in my $300 silver jeans as a part of a $1,000 outfit I knew I'd never wear again. I couldn't afford none of that shit, but at the time, the high of seeing all of those hundreds of people, presumably there for me, seeing them part as me and my entourage made our way to the VIP section, made the fact that I had to take a jar of pennies to the supermarket to the next day just so I'd have money to eat for the week worthwhile. Now don't get me wrong, I'm still proud of that party, that was a hot ass party, a lot of work went into that party, but I didn't need it. I wouldn't be any less wonderful or any less great or any less Adam if I had not had it. But because there was opposition to it early on and there were people who told me that I couldn't do it, being the true Leo I am I had to turn it out, even if just for spite.
The most terrible thing about my descent into the 'industry' was the fact that my blog then began to suffer. The innate realness and almost childlike innocence of it all, being a gay man, discovering this gay lifestyle was all but gone at that point. The more popular you become the harder it is to be unabashedly transparent. The more friends and acquaintances you pick up, the more alliances you join, the more visible you are, the more you have to lose by telling the whole truth. Many times I'd find myself at a loss to write, filing my thoughts down to unrecognizable slivers of their former selves in an effort not to offend anyone, or even to embarrass myself. It wasn't enough to give dates and random dalliances mere pseudonyms anymore, because everybody saw me with him at the club last night or in that picture on Facebook, they're obviously gonna know who I was talking about. Something that started as being about me had become about other people because I had become about other people. I felt like a phony. Even more terrible was when I realized that due to power that came along with my blog's readership that I could attack defenseless people who'd wronged me and in my anger I could shame them by making the hidden details of their lives headline news to spread like wildfire all across the 'industry'.
I was beginning to lose my purpose, I jumped the shark. The thing I'd set out to do from the beginning I wasn't doing anymore, I couldn't do it anymore. Speaking at Yale in February made changed my life. Seeing those young people, Ivy league students who came out to listen to a nobody like me who didn't even graduate from college, reading their emails and Facebook messages after the event, just thanking me for my presence, representing as an everyday regular black gay man made me realize what a gift this blog truly is and how important it is. Reading emails is one thing but meeting and touching people who have been touched by your words, not even in a grand, 'pomp and circumstance-y' way but just in the fact that you keep it real and are just a regular-ass dude is amazing.
So for the weeks since then I've really been thinking hard about the future of this blog. The thought of closing it has crossed my mind as I can never go back and make this blog what it once was because I'm not the person I once was. I'm stronger than I used to be. I most certainly can never not be known again, I can't tell the stories that I used to tell the way I used to tell them because I have to be cognizant of other people's feelings now, so what am I to do?
Upon further introspection I realized that popularity and being recognized is not the problem, that was bound to happen. If you do something, anything, that enough people start to like and and get into, you can't help, but to become popular for it. It's what you do with that popularity and recognition that's important.
So what does this mean, well for all intents and purposes, the Adam that used to kiss and tell is dead. He died on the altar of public opinion. I'm just simply not in the place where I can do that type of thing anymore and to do that now would serve no edifying purpose. I did that already, I passed that stage, check the archives. And besides I really don't have much to tell in that department. I'm with one guy and he's with me, that's it. And even if I were dating other guys, divulging the gory details of the goings on with every man I date would be repetitive as I've been down that road already and have learned the lessons that go along with that. One thing I've appreciated during my time away was the value of privacy. It felt good to have something that I have to myself, that belongs to me and him only. I haven't felt anything that good in a long time and I'm going to continue to feel it. So if you come here looking for my latest titillating morsel of reality show-esque sexual prose you will find yourself pretty much disappointed from this point on.
I also will never use this blog to air out my personal problems with people again. sure, there's a way that you can tell a story of a situation to convey the emotions it makes you feel, then there's a way to tell it to be shady and drag a gurl's name through the mud. Even if you're telling the truth I've learned that even some truths aren't meant to be told in certain ways. So I won't be doing that shit again. It's petty and childish and my blog is better than that, plus who needs to give someone you don't like free press?
Now that I've said what I'm not gonna do, here's what I will do. I will continue to be as frank, upfront, blunt, opinionated and sexual as I've always been, just in a more cerebral way. Not enough to alienate people who aren't Rhodes scholars, because at the end of the day I'm from the hood just like you are, still living in the hood, I just want to us all to elevate our minds a bit. Y'all know I love to hear from you, keep those cards, letters and emails coming. I'm still gonna do the advice column and answer reader letters, even more so now.
So this Easter weekend I'm rising again as not a totally new person but a wiser person that the one that went into the tomb. In life change is a constant, if you cease to change, you cease to live. Hopefully this weekend we can all follow Jesus' example and bury a part of us that needs to die and become resurrected into a more powerful form of ourselves.
Happy Easter/Resurrection Sunday!
-Adam
PS: People have come to me telling me that this one is saying this and such and such one is saying that about you, what you think? You know, at this point in my life and growth as a human being I don't even care enough to investigate. If people have nothing else better to do than to talk about my life, rehashing old shit, I mean if that's really what pleases them, who am I to deny them of that enjoyment? I'm personally over all the drama. One thing I will say though is that all the church songs I've heard all my life are absolutely right, 'your trials do come to make you strong'. I am so much stronger a person having gone through what I've been through as of late. Not only has it made me myself strong, but it's made my relationship stronger. Me and my shawty are stronger now that we've ever been, it's crazy. I guess you never know how much you really love someone until that love is tested. We passed the test with flying colors, smiling in the faces of those who've failed. It's like the Bible verse in Psalms 23 that's tattooed on my arm says "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies..." I'm chillin' at the Lord's table, grubbin', filling up on all the blessings that he's bestowing upon me and letting the haters hate. It's like another thing the church folks say 'what the devil meant for my destruction, God turned it around for his construction'. What else can I say? People like to hold on to your past because they themselves have no future.
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Playing In The Background
"Lamb Of God Pts 1 & 2"
by the New York Restoration Choir feat. Donnie McClurkin
from the album "Thank You Jesus"
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