My first BDSM event was FUBU. The last large event I went to was FUBU. While I don’t question IF there will be another FUBU event, I do wonder what it will take to get folks to understand you can’t wake up on a Tuesday and in six months pull off the event to end all events.

I get it. You think that there is a void so you hop into it. That void is discriminate though, and it is 100 percent willing to expunge that which does not meet its standard.

While the women who with their machetes cleared the path weren’t experts, they did their thing. It started for the people, and that is what made it a success. While it didn’t stay that way, it started that way. The next up was for the people and they maintained it through the end. That’s how you sell out 2 hotels on your swan song.

This never felt like it was for the people. It felt like it was for the ego, and when its for the ego, it cannot be sustained. It’s not a matter of colored folk not wanting to learn. We do it all the time. It’s not a matter of colored folk not being Leather, many of us are.

It’s more nuanced and complicated, and frankly until you’ve parked your Black ass on one of those boards you don’t really understand HOW nuanced and complicated it is. I’ve been present for the making of the sausage, and I still find a way to eat it. I eat because I am a fat chick and I like food, but I eat also because it fills me.

So where YOUR conference at boo? I can hear the questions. I can hear them because they are the same refrain sung over and over when the goals are not met and out comes the cloak of defensiveness. I get that too. I am not taking it personally. This is not a jab its a conversation, from someone who bothers enough to give a shit.

My conference doesn’t exist, and I am frankly not sure it ever will. My vizion has never been for a conference, its always been for something else. My something else didn’t take root in Philly not because I wasn’t putting in the work but because I am not in Philly any longer. You know what I did have? The understanding that what I want to create needs someone who is professionally qualified to put that foundation in for us to stand upon. So you know who was in the Rolodex …or contacts for the youth who don’t know the pain us elders endured having written contacts in a plastic box on the desk…an event planner.

I don’t create these things for a living, they do. I selected a person who when I explained my vizion could give me the real deal on time, money, advertising, setting goals, making a calendar. I said this is what i want, she said this is what it will take to make that happen. She did it for a fee, and its a small price to pay to not be out here on these streets looking crazy or allowing the public, who aren’t necessarily invested in my success to throw the stones from their glass houses.

I took her information, and understood until I could meet that standard, there was little to no need to announce the plan. Then life plopped my fat ass in Baltimore, a kink and POC rich area and said what you gonna do now?

The short answer is get my fucking life together. The longer answer is move towards the standard, and when I hit it roll.

As told recently, I am pretty arrogant. I am not so arrogant though that I will allow my vizion for the people to be derailed because I want to look a certain way. There are plenty who can tell the tale that how I look to others is not my biggest concern. It confuses the fuck out of them frankly because through it all they still ask are you really okay with the narrative being ______. I am. The narrative doesn’t tell the story of me, and if its a matter of displaying something inauthentic to win the approval of someone that’s a sin I am willing to get in.

The weekend approaches and Thursday is now 2 days away. I am still rooting for you to pull something off. While I can’t support how it began, which is why I never registered even though the people I fucks with did, I don’t want to see you fall. I still hold onto hope that something will rise from this, that lessons will be learned. That a gathering will happen, people will bond from the experience, and during this time the actual work will be done.

Yes I know you worked this past year, but that work wasn’t the actual heavy lifting. Now that you see what went wrong, I am hoping you can now begin with what’s right. It may not be what you planned but it can be something. It may not even be something for 2020, frankly you need a good 18 months to plan the scale of your vizion. It’s not too late to say, this is what we wanted, this is where we didn’t hit those goals, this is what we learned, and now we can hit the restart button and start again. Sure some will talk shit, but the people, who this should be about, will respect that honesty. They like me want to see you win. They like me though, aren’t here for the tired narratives that POC don’t _______.

Anything less than transparency at this point will impair your ability to take another shot. Perhaps you don’t want to and that is fine. It’s a lot of work for not a lot of return, unless…you are doing it for something OTHER than yourself. If its about you, then do nothing. If it is about us, then you know what comes next.

48 hours can be an eternity. You can be AwesomeCon or you can be the fox who couldn’t reach the grapes and called them sour. Or you can be that which we need, the group who says we didn’t hit the mark and we are sorry, this is what we will do different. The choice is yours.

Aphrodite Brown