By Anitra

I’m convinced now that going to the beauty shop is akin to looking through the peephole of life and getting a glimpse on what people think about thangs. At least a certain group of folks. I’ve talked about the conversations I’ve heard at my beauty shop. Some of them are pretty funny, some just kind of interesting. And some are…

How did I, a woman who wouldn’t label herself as a Christian, end up in such a well…Christian-oriented beauty shop? I’m not saying that Bible study goes on while folks are sitting under the dryer, I’m just saying it’s pretty evident that most of the stylists as well as most of the clients, subscribe to, at least, some of the tenets of Christianity.

Inevitably, the conversation last week turns to homosexuality. That MTV show, Date My Mom, was on and the mother’s son was gay. I feel the little warning bells go on, and I sit back silently to see how both my new hairstyle and this conversation will turn out. My hairdresser and the peanut gallery did not disappoint.

The peanut gallery was appalled that this young man’s mother was so OK with him being gay that she would actually come on this nationally-televised show and not only tolerate his sexual orientation, but also facilitate him - *le gasp* - getting a date with another man. For shame!

Why, she should be trying to convert him (straight from the peanut gallery, that one). The age-old “none of these guys look gay” came up, to which someone else said, “Have you seen that black guy on the Real World? I was so surprised that he was gay. And that’s so sad, because he is so fine.”

As the TV show continued, one woman got so agitated that she just burst out, “I can’t listen to this anymore! I cannot listen to this!”

This amused me, and suddenly I was torn. Here we were, my girlfriend and I (we share the same stylist and had made appointments on the same day, and were there at the same time that day), and these Good Christian Women were talking about gay folks like we are switches that can be flicked/converted - on, off, on, off.

I felt that I should say something. As for what, I wasn’t sure. But silence is complicity, right? My silence says that these ridiculous notions that you folks are carrying around are OK. When they’re not. It’s a weird feeling. You’re sitting among your people, and things like this come up, and it feels like you have to choose. How far out in the margin am I going to be today? You have to decide if this is even the right place and time to speak up (should you always speak up, being the fundamental question), and if it is, what you will say.

I admit, I feel a little perverse sense of…what? laughter? Internal laughter because here I am, sitting there, listening to them talk like they have the final-say on what is normal and appropriate. I am sitting right here in the middle of them, about as heterosexual as an extended Madonna house remix. And I laugh to myself, thinking, “Man, y’all mofos don’t know anything.”

But still I am torn. Because, if there is no speaking up, how else are people - Black people - going to get over this shit about “conversion,” these overdramatized moments of “I just can’t listen to this!” - to which I wanted to ask, “Why? Why can’t you listen to it? What is so difficult about listening to something that frankly, has nothing to do with you?”

Religion…is a rough thing. It’s nearly impossible to really and truly argue with someone about their religious beliefs, and God forbid (no pun intended), if you try to persuade someone who is firmly entrenched in their views that another valid view of the divine exists. I understand that, for me, sexuality is not an element on the conversion table and cannot magically be transformed from inches to feet, apples to oranges, etc. I understand, for me, in the end it doesn’t really matter (or shouldn’t matter) if someone was born loving someone of the same sex or if they loved someone of the same sex late in the game. I understand that dictating who someone should be boinking or loving, or believing that I have the power or the privilege to dictate or even try to, is not part of my spirituality.

But I also totally get that other folks may feel that doing the abovementioned is all completely relevant to their understanding of God and right and wrong and the rules of the universe, etc.

Seriously, though, I wanted to ask these women…is this what y’all are really here for, to sit around the beauty shop and condemn, no doubt from houses that have some sort of glass paneling somewhere? Is this really your understanding and manifestation of God?

If so, damn. More power to ya, but damn.

Sometimes, when I’m sitting in beauty shops, listening to conversations like the one I heard that day, I feel like being gay and black is never gonna work out in the minds of my people. It’s just never gonna gel. We are just going to continue to shut it down and deny and hurt and isolate and marginalize in some sort of obstinate refusal to accept that not only do black gay folks exist and thrive *second le gasp*, but that it’s not for any one group of us to decide what blackness gets to be.

I could be wrong - and I have moments where I feel that my own silence contributes to this not-gelling - but I left that beauty shop feeling…discouraged.

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