I have not slept since Thursday really so the full monty so to speak won’t arrive until I can reconnect with the gangsters I live with, until I can sleep and until I can process the emotions of this past weekend.

The emotions are many, my current level of coherence….not as much.

 

As a preview though I give to the good, the bad and the ugly.

 

The highlight of my weekend was of course being with B and a.  Those two people are my world. If I doubted how important they were, and mind you I never did, but if there were to be doubt, that is all the way squashed after the last 24 hours.

Another highlight was being in a place where everyone around me, or almost everyone around me resembled me.  There will always be a magic that is attached to collecting brown kinky people and that won’t change.  While the method that delivers that magic might change, or might not, the magic itself is as powerful as ever.

Highlight: laughs with old friends, connections with new people, queer round tables and a marked  difference in the visible presence of that which is not Het Normal.  I am going to dedicate a full blog to that alone.

The Bad

Same as it ever was.  The issues that have plagued Black BEAT over the past decade don’t disappear no matter how shiny and new they tell you the nickle is, don’t believe the hype.

There is still disorganization.  There is still incompetence.  There is still attitude that is not consumer friendly.  This year there was a little something more but that will get its own space as well.

 

The Ugly

This was my farewell Black BEAT tour.  It is never my intention again to pay money to this organization.  Never is such a strong word, but I use it here to describe my intention not necessarily my reality.  As long as that man that I love B is in my life?  As long as Black BEAT limps along to irrelevancy?  There is a chance that I will be back in the proverbial house.  If that happens attribute it to my love for that man and not my position on as someone said it as I left at 4am today “my people”.  Yes ma’am I caught that shade you threw.  Like the shade you’ve thrown over the years though because I choose to I will let that fly.

What was especially ugly about 2014 and the experience “In the Dark” was watching in real time the vindictive behavior of the founder who might just be the reason why Black BEAT ceases to exist.

So I am headed back to the lab to talk more about the weekend.  Enjoy in the meantime knowing that yes some of what I will share comes from a place of love while other things will come from that place my  give a fuck used to live.

 

 

Aphrodite Brown