Rashid Darden

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What About Love? A Terrible Essay About Moonlight

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Every time I’ve seen Moonlight, I’ve called–or struggled to call–the first great love of my life.  I want to tell him to watch it.  I guess I’ve already told him in some way.  We’re friends.  We’re collaborators.  I love him.  I resent him.  I hate him.  I forgive him.  I forget him.

I see Moonlight and I remember.

This film will be an emotional roller coaster for anyone who was once a gay black boy.  Your mileage may vary.

I have been asking my straight male friends to go see this film as soon as possible.  I have seen it twice now.  I want them to know.

I write the love that I want to see.  I write the love that I want to have.  I write the love I thought I had sixteen years ago.

I am 37.  I know what I am doing with every facet of my life except this.

The human brain is not fully developed until at least age 25, and I believe that.  I want so desperately to believe that the love I fell in sixteen years ago could be that impulsive, basketball and pledge boots love that became Adrian and Isaiah from my novels, that could have grown into the Barack and Michelle of the black gays.  I want to believe, also, that the bloody, transformative love between Justin and Dante in my last novel, could have been based in that kernel of love I once felt.

And the poems that I look back on.  I am ashamed.  I am embarrassed.  The lack of development in my brain is evident in the simple verse and histrionics, but what can you tell a 21-year old who’d had his first taste?

Moonlight wrecked me.  The actors, superb in any way, portrayed the kind of romance that I want:

Innocent love.

Forgiving love.

Redemptive love.

No one looks at me.  That’s what this feels like.

Ashton Sanders (Chiron) was my favorite actor.  Walk with me… he gave the kind of performance that Cynthia Erivo gave as Celie in Broadway’s The Color Purple revival.  With his body, he became Chiron.  Every walk, every tear, every mumble.  I believed him as I believed her, every toe point and frown.

What about love?

I believe Moonlight to be a love story, more than it is a story about mass incarceration, drug addiction, bullying, or homophobia–yet it is all of those things, too.  It has to be.

What about tears when you’re happy?

I’ve seen Moonlight twice now.  The second time, I saw how the actors looked at each other and I believed them and I wanted to be looked at that way.

Last week, I thought someone looked at me like that.

And I thought that perhaps not even he ever looked at me like that.

But I don’t think it was anything, really.  I think it was just a moment that I wanted to see, that somehow my hand pushed the planchette to the answer I wanted to see at that moment.

I write these moments.  I watch these moments.  Thank you, Barry Jenkins.  Thank you, Tarell McCraney.

But I do not live these moments and I don’t know that I can.

Posted without revisions and with all due anxiety.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

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Here am I with my friend Zoila who I hadn’t seen in years!

What a roller coaster the past few weeks have been!

For those of you who have been wondering, I have seen a few more films, namely The Boss (there were black people in it) and Eye in the Sky (there were black people in it and it was really good).  Although I enjoyed both films, I really just didn’t feel like writing about either of them.  I’ve also gotten a little bored with my overall mission of sharing my thoughts about race and representation in cinema.  I’ve been doing this for almost a year and I think I’m good.

I do still plan to stay enrolled in MoviePass and I will probably still review some films, but because I have so much else going on, I will only write about those films which I find particularly good, moving, or problematic.

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I got a new job!  I am a full-time teacher.  I don’t blog about work.

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But I do blog about the wonderful opportunities I have for public speaking!  The brothers of Chi Phi Fraternity at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania invited me to speak at their annual Biff Hoffman Diversity Lecture!  The organizer and my host was a delightful young man named Patrick who ensured that I was well taken care of the entire time.

My mission was to facilitate conversations and give thoughts about the intersection of LGBT life and Greek life (and inevitably race, because I personally don’t separate being black from being gay).  I visited two classes, one club/collective, and spend significant time at the Chi Phi house speaking with their leadership and their members.

As I told them, if I had sons who attended Bucknell, I would be perfectly comfortable seeing them pledge Chi Phi if that was in their hearts.  I really mean that.  Great guys.

The actual lecture happened on the day Prince died.  Even though it was a somber day for me, I still had to make sure I made the evening meaningful for the listeners.  I told my personal story and did my best to link it to their experiences at Bucknell.

One of the recurring questions was “How do we recruit diverse people if diverse people don’t rush?”  My answer was layered, but for simplicity’s sake, I will say this to anyone reading:  Generally, don’t wait for “rush week” to recruit your guys–recruitment is a year-round endeavor.  And secondly, I don’t think people from marginalized communities want to participate in cattle-calls for various reasons.  I mean, why go to an American Idol audition when you can get discovered singing in a local dive bar?  Chances are about the same, right?

So meet gay folks and people of color where they already are:  the dorm (they gotta live somewhere), the caf (they gotta eat), and class (they gotta get knowledged)!

I know it’s easier said than done, but wouldn’t everyone prefer recruiting organically anyway?

That was just one of my pearls of wisdom.  Hopefully those wonderful folks at Bucknell walked away with something.

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Of course, Prince died.  I am not sure what, if anything, I have to say about that, especially so soon after David Bowie’s death.  So many tears.  So much sadness.  Maybe one day.

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I will be at DC Black Pride again this year at the Writer’s Forum.  I haven’t been a panelist in a few years so I am excited to promote my appearance in 47-16, a tribute anthology to David Bowie.

More about that later as well.

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I thank all of you who think of me, check on me, and pray for me.  I really do appreciate it.  Stay tuned!