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My Werks |
World AIDS Day 2008 Remembering Sylvester Whether in full drag or a white tuxedo, soaring in falsetto or crooning in baritone, prancing onstage or being wheeled in his last parade, Sylvester maintained his integrity. He was true to himself at every stage of his public life choosing not to participate in the lies black people enforce upon ourselves about who we are and who are not. Sylvester refused to wear “the mask we fear we cannot live without but know we cannot live within”. While he at times paid dearly for it, when the books are balanced, I believe he comes out way ahead and in the black. He may have lost many things, but never himself. This World AIDS Day, let us hold Sylvester up high with pride, mark his place in history, and continue to uncover the lessons he offers for our now.
It was during this star kissed season that I first encountered the fabulous Sylvester. It was a Friday night, and I was trying to catch Dance Fever, one of the hottest disco TV shows but both sound and picture were distorted. A high pitched wail sliced through the buzz as a full figured silhouette flanked by her backups shimmied within a flood of berry colored snow. “Who’s that Craig? She sound good,” my mother asked from upstairs. “Don’t know,” I responded tilting my head to catch a familiar feature through the purpled haze. Just as I yelled “I think its Aretha” both image and voice sharpened. “I feel real, when you touch me,” she said as she materialized into an other, someone unlike any I had ever witnessed. “Naw, uh no,” I stammered. “It’s not Aretha.” It was another queen. Like the soul legend, he too was at the vanguard of a cultural revolution. Disco. And the community that beckoned my inevitable entry would soon crown him as the genre’s queen, despite Donna Summer’s reign. My skin crackled as I watched him sing and twirl exalting the very “damaged good” I had stuffed deep down inside, where I prayed no one could see. How could he be so free with it? How could he Be? I felt my chest pulling inward, its force wringing my insides into gnarled tissue. Was it the purity of him, at the peak of his powers, weaving incantations to unshackle my soul? Was it too pure for my shame fed guts to take in? I wanted to change the channel before my mother came downstairs and saw her son’s reflection. But I was too transfixed. Adorned with a billowy red top, his flawlessly painted face was crowned by reddish brown ringlets. The sheer black aesthetic of that falsetto voice slung high up over his head in gospel abandon, pitched by blues technique, sounding more like Patti Labelle than Smokey Robinson. Yet he was not unfamiliar. He was not only one if us, unmistakably black. He was one of us that we scorned. One who is cast out by outcasts. What made him alien, unbearable to watch and impossible not to, was his defiance. The mascara framed joy that winked his overcoming. He was unmarked, unapologetic and without explanation or cover. He was not the sissy joke in the beauty parlor scene , he was the Sissy, and the joke was on all who gagged at this displacement. Within a year of that holy night, I began celebrating my salvation on the dance floor with that voice ringing above me. Once at 96 West, I recognized him at the bar surrounded by a casual entourage. I rehearsed my greeting before daring to approach, anticipating a swift dismissal. I braced myself, and shared my admiration. I think I addressed him as “Mr. Sylvester”. “Oh why thank you, thank you very much,” he responded with a subdued grace I will never forget. I was no longer spectator, watching the spectacle whose performance was more real than my own real life masquerade. The year before, I could only behold him from a distance as vast as that between deadening silence and the spoken word that sparks life. Now I could touch him, speak to him. In order to step into that reality, I had to dare walk off the stage to which I thought I was tethered. In the winter years that ensued, AIDS stole the sunlight from our heyday, and plucked away many of the angels I looked to as north stars. By 1988, it had been 3 years since my first symptoms had appeared. I knew that our Sylvester had been stricken, not from rumors but rather by his own disclosure. Wheelchair bound, he appeared in the San Francisco Gay Parade and was wheeled in front of the People With AIDS banner. A month before his death, in a Jet Magazine interview, he stated, “I would like to think that by going public with this, I can give other people the courage to face it." But most of all I remember the Village Voice article in which he revealed that he wanted a boyfriend but doubted if anyone would desire him “looking strange”. The personal dimensions of that small reflection creased my heart. Even in his last days, Sylvester walked in the light. At that time, I was still making excuses to explain away my swollen lymph nodes to men like Craig G. Harris and Colin Robinson who were AIDS activists and artists. I cried onto the paper as I realized that in sickness he was still teaching me to be free. Sylvester died on December 16, 1988. When I think of Sylvester, I think of a diva who as Thulani Davis once wrote about Aretha, “let her nappy edges show” and thus “could be trusted with ours”. He refused to be closeted or “butch up” in heteronormative drag as his record company once insisted. He did not use female pronouns to indicate a woman love interest in any of his original songs. He was a performer who performed to please but not to appease. When he was diagnosed with AIDS, he did not hide or offer more socially acceptable factors to explain how he was infected. Ironically, by the shared standards of both dominant and Black gay male culture, Sylvester would be judged as an inappropriate model for us because he was overtly feminine and thus not a “real man”. Many would assert that his persona reinforces limp wristed stereotypes. For black people, long burdened by anxieties about masculinity and male performance, Sylvester offers all of us an invaluable model. Whether in full drag or a white tuxedo, soaring in falsetto or crooning in baritone, prancing onstage or being wheeled in his last parade, Sylvester maintained his integrity. He was true to himself at every stage of his public life choosing not to participate in the lies black people enforce upon ourselves about who we are and who are not. Sylvester refused to wear “the mask we fear we cannot live without but know we cannot live within”. While he at times paid dearly for it, when the books are balanced, I believe he comes out way ahead and in the black. He may have lost many things, but never himself. This World AIDS Day, let us hold Sylvester up high with pride, mark his place in history, and continue to uncover the lessons he offers for our now. "You are a star. You only happen once." Sylvester (Sylvester James) 1947 -1988. |
In the fall of 1979, I was on the cusp of accepting the butt naked truth of my sexual orientation. My mother was cueing me to “come out”, not to disclose new information or confirm what was not definitive, but rather to have the family articulate the fact we all had so artfully dodged. I was a virgin overripe on the vine longing to touch and be touched. Though I grew up in the New York City, the same city as