Tag: Black Queer Life Matters

Other Countries Turns Ten!

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Together with fellow Other Countries member G. Winston James, B.Michael co-emceed this groundbreaking celebration on June 18, 1996. (The video’s date-stamp of June 19th is an error.) This day was proclaimed “Other Countries Day” by Ruth Messinger, Borough President of Manhattan, as B.Michael recites from the podium [05:36].

While the above footage does not capture the entire program, we do get to see, and hear read, five of Other Countries’ “veteran voices” in Christopher-Dana Rose, Allen Wright, Len Richardson, Guy-Mark Foster, along with B.Michael [07:16]. The evening includes remarks by New York City Councilmember C. Virginia Fields [02:16] and powerful performances by four literary giants, who also happen to be Black and Queer — Samuel R. Delany, Jacqueline Woodson, E. Lynn Harris, and Sapphire.

In addition to acknowledging Jacqueline Woodson and Sapphire, B.Michael gives shout-outs to some of the fierce women artists who supported Other Countries over its first decade [01:22:34], including Jacquie Bishop, Hattie Gossett, Gale Jackson, Sheilah Mabry, Mariana Romo-Carmona, and Pamela Sneed.

octogenarians — for bert

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A 1995 Chriskwanzaka gift from partner John!

  1. “widows overnight” refers to three people who lost husbands that year: John and Bert’s friend René Astudillo (Daniel Scott Strano), Olympic figure skater Ekaterina Gordeeva (Sergei Grinkov), and actress Candice Bergen (Louis Malle), who played the title character on Murphy Brown, a favorite television series of Bert and John.
  2. The “30-something-brother” is artist Ronald Harris, for whom Bert wrote Dew Locks.
  3. “Donald” refers to one of Bert’s closest friend, writer and poet Donald Walter Woods.

Aurelio Font + The Flirtations

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Bert had a special connection with Aurelio, whom he most likely met through Queer People of Color organizing in New York City in the late 1980s. Aurelio was a member of Hispanos Unidos Gays y Lesbianas (or HUGL, roughly referred to as “HUH-gull” in English) and would often rep HUGL at coalition meetings.

Aurelio also had a beautiful singing voice to accompany his activist heart, both of which he brought to The Flirtations. Here in this clip, Aurelio anchors an impromptu performance of “My Boyfriend’s Back” at a political demonstration, sometime between 1987 and 1993.

On Apple Music, Will Grega writes: “The Flirtations gained national prominence in the late ’80s as the only openly gay, positive a cappella group. It helped that they had tremendous voices and chose outstanding material. In a few short years, these media darlings became everybody’s group of choice as ambassadors of homosexuality for the world. Little could they have known that within five short years of their first Greenwich Village street performance in 1988, they would have appeared on The Phil Donahue Show, Good Morning America, Nightwatch, MTV News, and National Public Radio; gathered rave reviews across the country; and that they would actually be making a living doing what they love most: being gay and singing about it.” They also performed “Mr. Sandman” for the soundtrack of the Academy Award-winning film Philadelphia.

Bert saved these clips from the February 1991 issue of Angles, a queer publication out of Vancouver, Canada.

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^^^ Though hard to see, the caption in purple reads: “One of us had the same lover for eight hears. One of us was in the closet until he was 37. One of us was entrapped, arrested, handcuffed and beaten by police. One of us was an M.P. [Military Police] in the U.S. Army. One of us had been fag-bashed with a two-by-four. One of us has AIDS.”

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Aurelio sent this postcard, dated March 18, 1995, which Bert received just three months prior to Aurelio’s death from HIV. The book he thanks Bert for is Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS, which Bert served as Managing Editor.

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ALL SAINTS GOSPEL CHOIR

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A couple days shy of All Saints Day and Día de los Muertos, Bert made sure he was in Brooklyn to hear his dearest Ummi Modeste‘s last performance as a member of the choir at St. P’s, a church where three generations of the Modeste family had worshipped and helped steward the organization. Her granddad was the treasurer for decades and her aunt was leader of the vestry. Ummi, to hear her tell it, actually got kicked out as a teen because her mouth was too reckless in Confirmation class!

Bread Loaf

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B.Michael attended Bread Loaf, a life-changing summer program that braided his passions for learning, teaching and writing. He manifested a handful of poems (scroll to 1994) that are included on this site.

Below are a couple of B.Michael’s writing exercises from that summer.

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And here, for the record, his final grade!

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Black Hands-Green Thumbs

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B.Michael fostered growth in everyone around him. His deeply nurturing spirit also benefited the natural world. He was a big fan of houseplants and derived joy from caring for them in his urban settings.

His East Village home, which he shared for a time with lover John, included a bank of five sun-drenched windows, each connected to a tiny room, that ran along the same wall of the East 11th Street apartment building. The sills were chock-full of potted plants of different heights and widths.

Whenever B.Michael went away, he would leave John’s clear instructions for providing them TLC . . .

Scan

Yves François Lubin (aka Assotto Saint) ~ Rest In Power

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In 1994, B.Michael wrote a poem inspired by his Other Countries brother Yves the week after his passing.

Below is the iconic portrait of Assotto Saint taken by Robert Giard in 1987 and featured in the photographer’s Particular Voices, where B.Michael’s image also appears.

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Particular Voices

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Sometime in 1994, B.Michael and John Manzon-Santos were approached by the artist Robert Giard, who subsequently photographed them via the natural light in their apartment at 528 East 11th Street #11 in Manhattan. They donned their slightly wrinkled Commitment Ceremony shirts and the beads they had exchanged at that occasion on April 2nd of that year.

In 1997, they received a copy of Giard’s Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, honored to find themselves included among the publication’s 182 images.