Africa, The Ghetto, And La Cage Aux Folles – Diversity's Bill Of Goods, The Scam Of The Century

Vicki Chalmers sat patiently as the last poet read her verses, this time about Africa, ‘heart and soul of diversity’, the primeval forest, home to sentience, pride, dignity, and the essentiality the future. 

Vicki fussed a bit, fidgeted, and squirmed in her chair. ‘Thank God’, she whispered, peeking at her program and seeing that this would be the end of the readings for the night.  She had sat through ‘Swish And Flounce’, the story of gay romance with ‘a taste of modernity’, a sexual metaphor based on the wine promotions of Napa Valley – ‘a touch of dark chocolate, hints of peppermint and orange’.

The gay men, Richard and Paul, ‘were as sweet as grapes on the vine, full, succulent, and ready to be picked’ and the wine made from their love was more beautiful than that of Romeo and Juliet – fragrant, silken, and complex.

She patiently sat on her hands as another woman read her poem about the ghetto, ‘that place of raw power, vitality, and promise’ and went on to create a Disneyland of pimps, whores, tricked out Caddies, and ermine coats. ‘Anacostia is like a Milan runway’, she read, ‘glamorous, glorious, and golden’.  The gunshots ‘ringing out like beats of a tympanum’, the cries echoing ‘in the dark canyons of the projects’, and the ‘redolent incense of weed’ rang in ‘the halcyon days of the black man’.

It was then that Vicki decided to stop the nonsense – the fanciful, ordained, canonical verses, and the impossibly childish impressions of reality dreamed up in front of a suburban bay window.

Africa was certainly the primal forest of humankind, the home of proto-humanity, attuned to the environment, sensitive to the subtlety of birdsong and flowing streams; but not as imagined by the likes of Hortense Adams who had taken the words of progressive black millennialists and turned them into treacly, fanciful images of her own making.

The ghetto might well be still mired in dysfunction, but there would be a more potent reality, a much more salient, meaningful existence there than her poet’s Hollywood version.

And the gay experience would certainly not be that La Cage Aux Folles musical comedy painted by yet another Bethesda matron.  It would be mature, socially responsible, and well-integrated within the straight world.

Vicki would have to find out for herself, go to the source, see the world the way it really was.

The first leg of her journey was to Africa – not the Africa of gazelles and wildebeests that tourists sought, but the countries that were the source of the diaspora, the tribal homes of the American black.

Despite warnings from her World Bank friends all of whom had No Nigeria clauses in their contracts, Vicki was determined to visit the mother lode, and set off for Lagos as soon as she could book a ticket.

Let it be said that the city lived up to its World Bank reputation – a foul, crime-ridden, loud, uncivilized place choked with traffic, touts, and beggars all intent on taking her money.  From the moment she stepped off  the plane, she was accosted badgered, heckled, and robbed and only thanks to a visiting American diplomat was she saved from the streets.

‘It was God awful’, she said on her return.  ‘Pitiful, dangerous, miserable.  What was I thinking?’

She has reassembled herself, took and advance from the consulate with warnings and good advice, but never got farther than a pestilential slum, shacks along a foul waterway choked with trash, feces, and dead bodies.  It was supposed to be a vibrant suburb, or so she was told, but it was nothing of the kind.  Standing on the banks of this cesspool, all she could see was horrific nastiness.

‘Give it more time’, the Vice-Consul said. ‘Nigeria really has a lot to offer. Have you tried the manioc?’ and with that, bedraggled, broke, and disillusioned, she returned home.

Leg two of her odyssey would be to South Beach Miami where she would meet gay boys who would be delighted to show her around, introduce her to the clubs, and exhibit the gay pride of which she so often had heard.

Yet, like Lagos, the reality did not match the illusion.  Beneath the Art Deco, the beaches, and the palms was this ragged gay underground, bathhouses, hustlers, made-up, garishly painted things, streetwalkers, horribly misshapen drag queens and their acned butch pimps, crack queers, and bums. 

‘Give it some space’, said one underground gay tour counselor. ‘Miami Beach has Glamour’  but none was to be seen.  The whole gay scene was a circus freak show, Barnum & Bailey at their very best.

Vicki hesitated before embarking on the third and last leg of her odyssey.

Maybe the whole idea was fiction and she best remain in the ‘codicils of justice’, the a priori assumptions of racial justice; but LaShonda Evans, a co-worker at her non-profit agency insisted and said that she would show Vicki ‘some real homeboys’

Now, no white person in his right mind would ever visit Anacostia, Washington’s inner city, a crime-ridden hell hole as bad as any on the East Coast, guide or not; but Vicki agreed.

It was worse than she could possibly have imagined – needles and syringes scattered on sidewalks, two-bit hookers on every corner, men smoking dope and drinking malt liquor on door stoops, and horrific sounds of screams and gunfire echoing down the cement and steel stairwells of the projects.

She never got to meet Pharoah Jones, the godfather of Anacostia, nor took the tour planned for her by LaShonda.  A trip down MLK Avenue was more than enough.

‘Well, that’s over with’, Vicki said, clearing her calendar of all poetry readings, Black Lives Matter rallies, Progressives for Gender Reform colloquies, and marches for democratic reform on the National Mall.

It was not that overnight she became a conservative – that takes time – but by the time she was ready to retire to a condo in Tampa, she had turned the corner, voted Republican and became an outspoken critic of the progressive agenda.  ‘More Catholic than the Pope’ said one of her newfound political colleagues, admiring the intensity and passion of this new convert.

‘Better late than never’, replied Vicki, for given enough time, most progressives become conservatives.