Rainbow Roots in the Black Night

A queer, Black trailblazer, a young Atlanta performer, and a midwestern baby gay all walk into a gay bar . . .

Written by Ka’Dia Dhatnubia, Illustrated by Mr. E. Minx

The city of Savannah’s smile is sugary as Southernsweet tea. She laughs, mimosa bubbly, to includeeveryone in the joke. She is cigarettes in coldcoffee, shattered wine glasses on cobblestones,river water in fine china.

She is hot pink protesting, rainbow flag wielding, civil rights marching for civility’s sake. She is a child of tradition, running around barefoot and skipping over abandoned tree roots in her Sunday best. She is drunk on ideas of progress and liberalism and open-mindedness. And you are her gay, Black best friend. You are looking for home in her fickle arms.

"The queer environment in Savannah is still a work in progress,” says Anita Narcisse, “because Savannah is very like gay [masculine] forward, like [cisgender] gay [masculine] forward.” Born and raised in Savannah, Narcisse, also known by their stage name Rita D’LaVane, is the founder and executive producer of Savannah Sweet Tease, a queer and BIPOC-forward burlesque performance troupe. They also work at Club One—Savannah’s only gay bar.

This may come as a surprise, especially with Savannah being considered a queer-friendly city. “People like to say s**t all the time like, ‘Oh, Savannah is very queer-friendly, most of the bars are queer-friendly,’” says Narcisse, a non-binary, femme-presenting, trans person. Narcisse runs their thick fingers through their dirty blonde pixie cut. “I’m like, ‘First of all, I can tell you right now I don’t feel safe in most of the bars downtown, not just as a queer person but the fact that I have tits and was born with this biology.’”

For Narcisse, Club One is a safe haven in the midst of Savannah’s saturated nightlife not only because of its inclusivity but because it was after passing beneath that brick building’s blue awning that Narcisse discovered themself for the first time. On Narcisse’s sixteenth birthday, they rushed to get their hands on a fake ID. Not long after, their sister invited them and their best friend out to Club One to see her roommate perform as part of the cabaret. Narcisse jumped at the chance to see drag up close, because it was 1998, and drag and queer subjects, in general, were only whispered about in the presence of trusted company.

“So, I went to the drag show and it pretty much changed my life. What it taught me is that I didn’t necessarily have to be a man to be a pretty woman,” Narcisse says. Having come from a dance background and a Southern life full of pageants, seeing the drag performance solidified their future. It was sitting in that club, surrounded by their sister, best friend, and a crowd of beautiful strangers, Narcisse thought, “This is the direction I want to take one day. I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I don’t know when I’m going to do it, but one day.”

Tenderoni, 2021’s Drag Queen of the Year, popped out with the sharpest dance moves and pinkest fishnet tights as they pumped a cutout vaccine sign in the air while “Shots” by LMFAO played. Ramona Slick—a blonde bombshell in a slime-inspired neon pink and lime green number sashayed to Marina’s “Venus Flytrap.” Nico—a tall, slender devil in bright red flexed their long pointy-fingered gloves before yanking them off and setting off silver glitter bombs. When Nico blew a silver confetti canon as their performance finale, my hands rose to the air as tears fell from my eyes. The joy was euphoric, cathartic, a dream far removed from the reality of the pain my queerness had caused me up to that point.

In 2013, Narcisse made their own dream come true and Savannah Sweet Tease was born. The burlesque troupe dominates the performance scene, being voted Savannah’s Best Performance Troupe every year from 2014 to 2020. “Gender is not what one is but rather what one does,” wrote American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler. So, if we liken gender expression to performance, Narcisse would be leading the highly dramatized version of that, and they take their responsibility as an experience creator very seriously.

“Right off the bat, I knew that I wanted Sweet Tease to be something for everybody,” Narcisse says, “like, everybody in every sense of that phrase—every body, every person, every identity, and definitely queer-forward, because I also was just really tired of this heteronormative type of storyline that kept repeating, appealing to the white male gaze.”

That responsibility also runs deeper than advocating for bodies that resemble their full figure. Narcisse has a wide, round nose, lines carved into the dough-like softness of their cheeks. Despite these features that another Black person would recognize as familiar, Narcisse’s skin is pale as sun-bleached sand. They’re white-passing. Their earliest memory is of an old white woman following a two-year-old Narcisse and their darkskinned father around the local Piggly Wiggly, threatening to call the cops. “Where’d you snatch that child from?” she demanded.

Narcisse internalized this and other experiences, processing their privilege of passing as both white and a woman, using it to advocate for those whose power is systemically threatened or diminished. “I also understand how hard it is for black and brown people to be visible and vocal at the same time because of the threat of violence,” Narcisse says. “And people don’t realize how much of a real thing that is in the South. People think that Savannah itself is just this bubble in south Georgia where everybody loves each other. That’s some bulls**t.”

The joy was euphoric, cathartic, a dream far removed from the reality of the pain my queerness had caused me up to that point.

One reason people may perceive Savannah as this liberal glass box could be the dominating presence of the Savannah College of Art and Design. Each year, thousands of young creatives are drawn to the city, eager to dive headfirst into their newfound freedom. One of these young creatives was Atlanta-native Chrush Graves.

In 2014, when Graves graduated high school and got accepted into SCAD, they moved to Savannah and never looked back. With an awkwardly lean but lithe figure, and skin the color of rich hickory, Graves had a lot of growing to do. The softly sculpted angles of their face—thick lips, and a wide nose that curves and slopes into a flat cone—read masculine, traits they had trouble accepting. It wouldn’t be until age twenty-one that they realized their gender identity rested more comfortably in the grey area.

Luckily, Graves found a place in Sweet Tease where all the walls and siding were lovingly painted in shades of gray. “When I first moved to Savannah, I was trying to find clubs to go to that were eighteen-plus friendly, and I heard about them through Club One,” Graves says. Dazzled by the extravagant performances, glittering personalities, and dramatic makeup, Graves thought, “Wow, I want to do this.” After a coworker who was already in Sweet Tease showed them the ropes, Graves won first runner-up at a pageant later that same year. Directly after, they joined Sweet Tease on tour as the stagehand, merch person, and sound person, learning how to costume, choreograph, and promote shows along the way. “And ever since then I’ve just been in it to win it,” Graves says.

Outside of Sweet Tease, though, Graves describes the queer environment as “strange.” Because SCAD students are young and dipping their toes into the gay pond, the queer community is one big game of musical chairs. “It was hard to find a group, or if there was a group, one that I fit in with,” Graves says, “I would usually just have like one to three queer friends at a time.”

I had a similar experience at SCAD, always being surrounded by queerness in the loosest definition of the term, but never with a solid group. It wasn’t until my junior year that I would explore how I fit into that wide, everchanging term. It wasn’t until I settled in the “just right” chair of bisexual that I joined the game. Luckily, I didn’t play too long, and now have a reliable circle to support me through every bout of bi panic.

If the queer community is a game of musical chairs, imagine playing after one-too-many vodka cranberries. Savannah’s main attraction is its bustling nightlife. Born from a history of having to hide under the honeyed haze of intoxication, sporadic spotlights, and blaring music, the queer community’s ties to that nightlife run deep. “I feel like there are a lot of spaces that aren’t open for people under the age of eighteen,” Graves says. “And sometimes people just don’t want the nightlife scene and just want to hang out with people during the day while sober.”

After my first and only night out, a drunk girl throwing up two feet away from me, catcalls, and leering eyes, I can’t help but agree.

While clubs may be the problem, they are also actively working to be the solution. “I’ve seen events that are brunch burlesque or brunch drag, where people can go [out] . . . and not drink,” Graves says. Dry brunch festivities also allow for anyone of any age to attend and find comfort in a community they might have never found otherwise.

Even Narcisse regrets how limited their outreach to youth is, aware of the inherent conflict of their more mature occupation. “And that’s something that I do miss because I do feel like it’s important that the youth become aware of how the world actually is,” Narcisse says. “If you’re Black and you’re queer, you’re taught from a young age how to mask your identity.”

Masking your identity is exhausting, terrifying, but it’s necessary to stay safe. The threat of homelessness looms heavy over the city’s Black queer youth, especially when women’s shelters only accept cisgender women with children. Narcisse cries, “What happens to people who are vulnerable, who are getting sexually assaulted, who don’t have a shelter to go to? Who is advocating for them? Who’s giving them counseling? Who’s giving them resources? Where’s the outreach?”

I am but a chopped branch that will grow roots elsewhere.

Before reaching out, you have to reach in. After unwillingly coming out to my parents during my junior year, it was only in the aftermath that I could process how lucky I am. I had to get my own phone and I cannot visit home, but I have my own apartment, my own job, my own life. I am but a chopped branch that will grow roots elsewhere. I’m choosing to grow those roots in Savannah, messy and complicated as it may be. It’s where I first found myself for myself; it’s where I found the power in admitting what I want without worrying if it made those around me comfortable.

“It starts out very small, but as you put yourself out there and be vulnerable with the community and with yourself, you find your community and your family,” Graves says. “It’s like a game of telephone but ends up like a big family tree.”