The Black Flamingo

by Dean Atta

You two are the ingredients to make something brand-new. You cannot unbake a cake. You can only slice. A knife is a mirror. A best friend can be a knife.

this is what it’s like to be black in this country or anywhere in the world. They interrupt our joy. Our history. Our progress. They know they can’t stop us unless they kill us but they can’t kill us all, so you’re living your life and suddenly interrupted by white fear or suspicion. They fear sharing anything. Our success is a threat.”

wondered if gay meant the same to him as it did to me, wondered if man was in mind or body. Because I wear my man, strip down bare to my man. In the mirror, there, I am. For me, man has merely been a matter of circumstance, not a journey or discovery. I rarely had to fight for it, rarely want to fight against it, never wanted to shed skin to reveal somebody else.

Men are sandcastles made out of pebbles and the bucket is patriarchy: if you remove it, we fear we won’t be able to hold ourselves together, we pour in cement to fill the gaps to make ourselves concrete constructions.

To have a loving family is to feel afraid and yet believe you are going to be all right.

“So who is The Black Flamingo?” asks Katy, with genuine curiosity. I reply, “He is me, who I have been, who I am, who I hope to become. Someone fabulous, wild, and strong. With or without a costume on.”

When it’s time to go onstage, know that you’re not ready but this is not about being ready, it’s not even about being fierce or fearless, it’s about being free.

“The Black Flamingo looks in the mirror of the salt lake’s surface and doesn’t understand why a shadow stares back at him. He doesn’t look like the other flamingos around him, he feels foreign to his own flock, within his own family.”

How to Come Out as Gay Don’t. Don’t come out unless you want to. Don’t come out for anyone else’s sake. Don’t come out because you think society expects you to. Come out for yourself. Come out to yourself. Shout, sing it. Softly stutter.

Be the glitter that shows up in unexpected places.

Remember you have the right to be proud. Remember you have the right to be you.