Life, Style & Privilege

In the future, I must insist that your cease and desist in referring to me as a lifestyle. A lifestyle involves choices between a love seat and a chase; a day bed or a king sized spread. The difference between Tommy Hilfiger and Phat Farm name brands; Martha Stewart Magazine and an Oprah Show favorite or Land's End.

Although this may fall upon deaf ears, my life is not a style. A style adds no purpose to the fabric of this pile, of flesh. A style is just worthless, when stuck in the pine wood strife of other's misled materials unblessed.

Moths won't feast within my closet of tart flesh because style adds no value to the flavor of truth within my voice, nor my moral choice between right and wrong; the tenor tone to the songs I sing; the color of my skin or the love I hold within.

Keep condemning me, judge the person you think you see as decadent, a social malcontent, stuck in hedonistic cacophonies. And I'll keep uttering, my life is not a style for you to bury six-feet under a red dirt pile with other fads.

Me a man not afraid to be called a fag, so don't let the smooth taste fool you, and the moral truth that lags your naked truth. The straight privilege that serves as your unbridled proof that I'm less than a man; lets your God daunt me less than, giving you a choice to bash me upside the head with your own sexual insecurities.

My mission is to check, and dismiss the delusion, I'm okay with being terrorized by my own kind. Within the confusion I'll go down fighting, not for a lifestyle, but for my life. I peep skin-folk who act like kin-folk, but no better than Nazis' faking like a catholic Pope, pulpit prophets spewing toxic ciphers to dash my hopes.

What concerns me are your choices as straight folk. Your mob mentality entitles you to feast on assumptions while frolicking with morality at your leisure. Demonizing the wickedness within your own fleshly pleasures.

Let utterance of this phrase resonate epiphanies; my life is not a sin, nor is it a "style". My God doesn't make mistakes. I didn't choose to be gay, it choose me. I just choose not to fight it. Embrace it, and not deny it my own naked truth.

I admire your ferocity to protect your life, style and privilege. Walking hand and hand on any city street; kissing in the park; government sanctioned unions that provide your children healthcare; no preachers yelling blasphemy at you and your lover after dark; bedroom activities free from public glare.

So I fight for a life that's limited with very few privileges. Me a black gay male, in a white straight world stuck in someone else's choices to define me, a fashionable fad while straight privilege allows you simply to love like decadent nomads.

Although this may fall upon deaf ears, my life is not a style, and let utterance of this phrase resonate an epiphany when you refer to me as a lifestyle again.

© Johnny Lee Jenkins Jr. | JyObadele