Hot Oil and Gold or, How We Got Here Lapis Luxxxury

Hot Oil and Gold or, How We Got Here By Lapis Luxxxury

I

Making fried chicken is a gift and legacy that is handed to a few. My grandmother Iris Simpson was a nurse, and owned her own apartment building in Brooklyn. Whenever I visited, there was always fried chicken, rice and beans [a thoroughly cooked bean, mind you {a bean shouldn’t fight back at you in your mouth when you bite down on it}]. I was taught by the best though; Markiss Sagee, LoveLee Day, Mothersistedaddy Queen, and Oborion. We have all made the love together, that is frying chicken. I have also fried chicken with a dear beloved friend now, Mother Ruth, Troy Clark.

Mother Ruth told me to brine the chicken overnight in a salt from not around here. This is when you put your love and incantations and prayers for the coming times. It helps to create high tones in your food so your food can and will be in high vibrations. As we learned in the beautiful novel, Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel, “Sometimes she would cry for no reason at all, like when Nancha chopped onions, but since they both knew the cause of those tears, they didn’t pay them much mind. They made them a source of entertainment, so that during her childhood Tita didn’t distinguish between tears of laughter and tears of sorrow. For her laughing was a form of crying.”

I am here to claim black, all the way through; myself, my story and what has happened to me; just so there is no deceit or twists as to how this journey is gonna go for us all. You may get confused, but center in yourself and hold to the ground that is beneath you. If things are unsettling, ground in your breath and move forward into a new understanding and growth, because now is the time for growth and understanding, and I am one your guides. You may be angry that it is me, not being the best writer on the face of the scenarios, but I am the one that made the effort, has the patience, and wisdom to offer to you what I know and have experienced directly in my 20 years with Radical Faeries in many different woods and communities.

II

I got here because of Gryphon Blackswan. Grand diva who had the brilliance, who is an ancestor, and had the bravery of gender non-binaries and opulence that is a gift bestowed upon myself. They laid this ground before I stepped on it. As a baby shamyn, Jesse Kessel summed it plumly: The truth is trouble. She is a beautiful dancer, a chameleon. She may be lapis in this queen’s eye and turquoise in another.

Truth is a funny thing when most folks don’t want it, banned and formed into a palatability suitable for the marketplace. When the truth is banned by the government you know you are in trouble. We are way past trouble, we are in the bubble hubble of the trouble now, hun. I actually can’t believe I’m the one to write to you about it.

In my life truth ain’t come easy. I have found sometimes there is inherent understanding that happens inside yourself with your body, gut and soul. Folks work with it. Living in a truth one has to balance what one understands with what folks can handle and that is often a very uncomfortable place to be, and yet isn’t this often the case for POCs in our lives? Being brave is what is called for these days. Have courage. Allow one to understand that days are going to be tougher, but that in the process we must allow ourselves to get and become better. Lately on my feed I have had to come out about how angry I am, understanding that the undue deaths of black people seem to be never ending.

III

I got here because a beautiful man one night loved me and shook me like I had never been and have yet to again—thanks Kencarl aka Everritt Wilde. That is how most gay beings get to where they are going, through love and sex.

In mountains far off I watch my sex not be centered, cherished and honored. I watched my words and imagination be fracked for a movement and not given in reciprocity; the way that my words and other black folks’ words made a middle passage through. In our full linguistic abilities we taught beings how to channel, how to actualize, how to train. Others helped, but Jupiter, she reigned. Now a whole court of empresses must hold the space she wielded so grandly. So grand. I’m here to celebrate living here while we can, because we don’t do that enough: in writing, in action, and in care.

I’m here because of the people who helped me to pass or if I kept my mouth quiet enough—if I did get where I am. My full grace and bow goes to Jombi not rock the boat—that I could change queers below Superstar aka Jeffrey Stovall. Our lives were both the Mason-Dixon line in Tennessee. tough, though Jombi had it tougher than I did, and These days I have to admit I am not sure I did they made ways for me to come through Tennesmore than create the goals I had set out to do, help see. I did not follow the guidelines my dear Mother to heal the ancestors at Short Mountain SanctuSuperior Superstar laid out for me when I said I was ary, and help to get a dance of all people there. My going to Tennessee to help make a Naraya happen, tokenism made way for so many other people there. and I had goals to heal the ancestors of a commune in the hills of Tennessee some twenty one years ago. IV Part of my mission in moving to Short Mountain I am here because I was loved by men who was to erect Jombi’s legend as an Eiffel tower might had the bravery to love me. I thank them, includbe raised in the center of Paris. ing and not forgetting leopard. I was only able to

I watched each of my people-of-color comrades remain on a short mountain because I was in a at a short mountain sancrelationship, functional tuary not be supported in or not, with them. Even if ways that worked thickly it wasn’t for all the right and deeply. I watched it reasons we functioned happen to me. I had come Truth is a funny thing as an interracial couple, to not expect understanding and had allowed myself to drown in what I thought was movement-making;

when most folks don’t want it, banned and formed into a palatability

the second one of legend to make it on the hills of Tennessee, where that love is not supposed to be but it was anger, self-pity suitable for the allowed or made to thrive. and doubt. I am here because of great priestesses I met along the way like Valencia Wombone. Whom

marketplace. When the truth is banned by the government you know V

To love me is to love skin, class, status, and weight. I met at a Move memoyou are in trouble. We are All of these I left behind rialization at Vanderbilt University, where Romona Africa was speaking. How I got to understand the

way past trouble, we are in the bubble hubble of the trouble now, hun. I

because I understood them to be artefacts, made by society in order to keep us separated and not together. beauty of my blackness, the actually can’t believe I’m Let’s dig a little deeper deepness of how hard it is to raise a child in the hills of Tennessee and to be, at

the one to write to you about it.

I watched my brothers and sisters and in-bewatched jobs be passed over and around me and then tweens, for one reason or another, be cast out of and people wondered why I was poor; or how I made my exorcised from houses, sanctuaries and communilife work, because it wasn’t supposed to work within ties. It is still happening silently, deftly and strongly. the guidelines. Now it isn’t funny—but back then I It’s hard because many have just supposed it is the made it funny. natural way things have gone, and it is a shame that The other day I posted on my feed that we are so many opportunities have been asked for, in as angry. For two days there were crickets. It was somber tones as we could. I watched myself and an experiment that I’m not sure was successful. I other brothers and sisters be maligned when our was writing this article, and I was really mad, at so language was still being used to fund and keep the much, and I needed others to be angry as well so culture moving and profiting. I foolishly believed I we could conduct that anger. I call it shamangry: was the exception, that because I had a spiritual hall Shamyn + Angry = shamangry.

into my shamangry, shall we? It’s juicy down there. Producing kool-aid chalthat time, not fully apprecilenges, casserole cook-offs ated for that work. All that and events every season at was hard and is still hard to SMS to help keep the comwitness. munity thriving and afloat. I

The one thing so many people are afraid of is a black queen’s anger. I test my audiences all the time, they never know when it is gonna happen. It’s why I don’t always get all the good dicks (not that I haven’t gotten some good dicks, mind you, but…). In the dark, allies may objectify and take in the black man’s anger, but in the daylight, silence. Where is the black diva’s truth then? Lost inside, like a mummy wrapped in silence that turns in on itself, but should be instead composted, loved, and allowed to turn into the beautiful flower that they is. I understand folks ain’t gonna go out in their cars to do a million-car march about how racist our president is. These days they fear an army of armed bigots coming for them. And yet when those they stood up for, all those days ago, had the same if not more up against them, they stood as we actually must now.

I’m here to talk to you about truth, not anger. It seems in life one must again offer a homogenized, consensual truth, one palatable and nourishing of the time. If your truth is too fermented or sour, it may not be digested. Palatability has been a trick so many have had to balance and make work.

VI

I searched for my ancestors James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison, the council of wise, read and published authors. They had dealt in an unhomogenized racism that was raw hot. Our racism is more invisible now, nuanced, sly, subtle, untouchable, swift and deadly, like a virus. Racism and classism have mutated into larger forms of themselves.

I received no easy answers from the elders for you. So I have my own experiences in my life to reflect on, so that I can give you, maybe, a way through and forward.

Many, many decades it took me to alchemize the hate that was in my body, the words used against me, at me, toward and about me. Whatever the crisis, inner workings and resilience must be formed in one’s self to work out the days, weeks, years, and decades of violence that falls upon yourself. We have no choice but to work out our stuff and the stuff our parents gave us in the here and now, and as James Baldwin mentions leave a light on for when someone else comes down the trail looking for themselves. So if you are struggling to work it out: Please, I understand this inner work isn’t easy but may I offer you space, light and understanding to do whatever inner work you have to do now. Your guides and gay angels are there to help you in this journey.

VII

I was taught to lay chicken in coconut milk for at least two-and-high hours before frying. Markiss Sagee taught me that I was never to allow water to hit your fry oil while cooking or your whole batch of oil is ruined. They are correct. So often our wisdom gets hated on because we know and have been through things, not because we ever want to be right.

I am here because a kind man from Jamaica and a sometimes wonderful British woman adopted me. Bill Simpson is one of the most patient men I have ever known and I am here because they adopted me. When a brown boy in Roswell, New Mexico, could not accept their skin, I was taken in and raised as best as they could. My father is a great man and I am blessed to have them still and present in my life. Now I am so thankful for them and the love they share with me.

I pass this alchemy onto you, dear reader: Find a way to love in the midst of all that is in front of you. Never let someone tell you who and how to love. Find a way to turn what is before you into a gold that works and is available to more than yourself. I am here, dear reader, to encourage you to alchemize this racism into love, into truth and into a light that we will all hopefully dance under like beautiful “disco healing rays, ” as Jombi Superstar would say.

“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you, But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak these truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women, while we examined the words to fit a world in which we believed, bridging our differences.” The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde

“Just like that chicken coop, everything has four sides: his side, her side, an outside, and an inside. All of it is the truth one has.” Mama Day, Gloria Naylor.