Toronto Stories 1.0

One of the nice things about living in the heart of a big city like Toronto is that crazy and bizarre stuff can happen on any given day.  This is the story of one such experience that took place this past weekend.  But in order to tell the story I have to go back to a little over a decade ago, when I was working in a makeshift film production studio located in the basement of a public housing apartment building downtown.  It was all part of a program put on by a local non-profit organization dedicated to finding and creating meaningful summer employment for inner-city youth.  Unlike the other kids in the program, my upbringing wasn’t exactly “inner city”, but at the time, my father, whom I spent most summers with, was living in a middle-class neighborhood not far from the housing project where the program was being run.

That year the organization decided to run a media arts program, so all the participating youth were divided into small production teams.  Each team would spend the first half of the summer learning the basics of film production and then spend the second half of the summer producing an original short film.  My team consisted of me and two other black kids, Michael and Kevin, both of whom were a couple years older than me.  Over the course of the summer the three of us got pretty close as we spent 8 hours a day together travelling around the city to attend workshops and editing sessions, as well as to look for sites where we could film.

The saga continues 12 years later when I randomly bumped into Kevin as he was coming out of Wellesley subway station.  I hadn’t seen him in a few years so even though he appeared to be in a rush, I attempted to quickly catch up on what was going on in his life.  I told him that I was still in school working on my PhD, and he explained that he was still working in television production.  I’d always known him to be tethered to the east end of the city so I inquired as to what brought him downtown that day, more as a way of helping the conversation along than out of genuine curiosity.  Before answering, he paused for a moment.  It was as though he was trying to think of a plausible story he could tell me to avoid revealing what he was really up to.  Eventually he came up with, “The gym!”  his face betraying eureka-like satisfaction at having come up with such a good answer. “Yeah, I’m going to work out at the YMCA down the street.” 

“Fair enough,” I thought.  But why the need for the long deliberation?  Anyway, we wished each other luck and parted ways knowing that we were bound to run into each other again at some point in the not-so-distant future.

As it happens, that next encounter took place this past Sunday.  Three of my friends, who had just finished checking out some of that day’s Pride Week festivities, were unwinding on a Yonge St. patio about a 15 minute walk from my apartment, so I decided to join them.  The group included a straight couple as well as my other friend Shanelle, who, as of about one year ago, self-identifies as “queer”.  As the night wore on, we were joined by Shanelle’s ex-girlfriend Joy, who was clearly not over her and Shanelle’s failed relationship, and so she insisted on infiltrating our group, probably against Shanelle’s wishes though she was too polite to object.

Joy happened to be an artist, who was well-known and well-connected in the black LGBT community.  In fact, she had just finished performing at Blockorama (Blocko for short), which is a street festival and stageshow put on by the black and urban LGBT community immediately following the Pride Parade each year.  Joy suggested that we go to one of the Blocko afterparties that was happening just down the street.  Even though we were getting tired at this point, we agreed to check it out, if only for an hour.

When we got there it was still pretty early so most of the revelers were hanging out on the large patio that surrounded the small, almost residential-looking bar where the DJ and the dancefloor were housed.  As we walked onto the patio, I noticed a group of young gay black men sitting on a large couch near the entrance.  The group stood out because, for some reason, the party-goers were 90% gay women.  One of the faces in the group looked familiar to me.  I slowed my walk to get a closer look and sure enough, it was none other than Kevin from the summer program!  Not only that, but at that moment he was getting pretty cozy with the man sitting next to him.

I can’t say I was surprised.  Deep down, I had a feeling that when I saw him at the subway station that day, he was probably headed to some LGBT-oriented social event at Church and Wellesley.  But I think at the time, I forced myself to avoid jumping to conclusions, partly because I realized I might be wrong, and partly because I wanted to believe I had reached a level of sophistication and progressiveness where it didn’t even matter if Kevin was gay.  Besides, what evidence did I really have?  All he had done was get off the subway close to the nexus of gay social and political life in Toronto.  And even at Church and Wellesley, there are tons of places that a straight person might want to go to.

Still, there was something about the way he seemed to be hiding something when he told me where he was going.  Plus his ultra-fitted, bright orange tanktop; cleanly shaven head; meticulously coifed, chinstrap-style beard; and large, silver hoop earrings that contrasted vividly with his dark complexion all suggested a level of attention to detail that, in my straight frame of reference, could only mean one thing.

Anyway, now that I had seen him reclining intimately with another dude on the couch at this party, any doubt I had was put to rest.  Once I had confirmation that it was indeed him, I made the decision to avoid him for the rest of the night.  Figuring that he had already gone out of his way to hide his sexuality during our last encounter, I didn’t want to have another conversation and endure the awkwardness that inevitably ensues when two people tiptoe around an elephant in the room.  Or even worse, I didn’t want him to feel ambushed in this space where he had gone to be among his peers.

I had been to the Gay Pride parade on one prior occasion with this same group of friends and I can remember bumping into at least one person whom I knew and who seemed uneasy about my being there.  I had had a feeling this guy was gay but I guess he was exactly out, at least not to me.  So even though I tried, with my à propos facial expression, to convey the idea that I didn’t really care that he was gay, I got the impression that, to him, my being there represented an encroachment into a protected and proprietary space.

And so, for the next hour, I made it a point to avoid Kevin.  Even if it meant I had to jump over the railing that lined the outer edge of the patio, I was prepared to do it, just to keep from having to acknowledge him.  I knew it would be too hard to avoid being seen by him, but I figured I could at least avoid having him find out that I had seen him, and therefore his cover could remain intact.  But my plan just wasn’t meant to be.  Within a 15 minute span we managed to cross paths no less than three times, each time both of us pretending not to have recognized the other one.  Needless to say, it was getting pretty awkward.  By this point I figured we both knew what was up, but we had this unspoken agreement that we would pretend to not notice each other.

Then as my friends and I were about to leave and I walked down the patio steps for the last time, I heard a voice call my name. “Kai!”

At that moment I thought to myself, “SHIIIIIT!”  The ruse was up.  I did the only thing I could do.  I turned around and shouted back, “Kevin?” as though I was seeing him for the first time that night.  We exchanged daps and went right into our ritual of each asking how the other was doing.  He asked what I was up to, and in an attempt to communicate my progressive politics, I said ebulliently, “I’m just here enjoying the party.”  Then, using the slang that I knew we’d both be familiar with, I asked, “What are you saying?” meaning “what’s up?”  Not a probing question by any means.  But as soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I had messed up.  My guess is that in his already defensive mind-frame, Kevin perceived my question to be somewhat accusatory, as in, “What the hell are you doing at a gay bar?”  Because now clearly the gig was up.  We both knew he was gay.  Not only that.  He knew I knew.  And I knew he knew I knew.

But then he did something that astonished me.  Apparently feeling the need to explain himself, Kevin replied to my question with, “Well, I was just filming the Blocko [festival] for my work, and a couple of the guys from the crew wanted to come down here and check it out so I just came down with them.” 

In the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, Kevin was mounting a half-hearted attempt to provide a non-gay explanation for this obviously gay situation (my own presence there notwithstanding).  I can only imagine what he would have said if I had caught him sensually massaging his male friend’s upper thigh.  It probably would have gone something like this, “I know how this looks, but the truth is I just finished this masseuse course at the community college and my friend had a killer charlie-horse!”  I guess when the moment of truth arrived he just wasn’t ready to come out to his old friend from the summer program.  So instead, he concocted this explanation that he hoped would at least give him some plausible deniability.

In hindsight, I can’t really blame him.  As I sat on the patio I recalled all the youthful banter that Michael and Kevin and I had engaged in, much of it homophobic.  I recalled the times we would crack jokes anytime we came across a particularly flamboyant gay man.  Or the times we would boast about our wildly exaggerated sexual escapades with young women.  In the case of both topics, Kevin would not only join in the discussions, but sometimes he would actually be the initiator.

I can only imagine the inner turmoil that Kevin must have experienced during that summer.  And it sucks to know that the immaturity, insensitivity, and homophobia that coloured my adolescent worldview probably contributed his struggle.  Still, I’m glad that I had the chance to see him again and to see that he was doing well (at least by all outward appearances).  Hopefully, the next time we cross paths on the streets of Toronto, we can look back and laugh at the whole situation because he’ll know that it doesn’t matter to me how or why he ended up at that party.  Nor should it matter.