Kansas city gay clubs
The sequence of events that led me to Soakies changed the trajectory of my life and whenever I drive past that movie theatre kansas, it reminds me of how hip-hop handed me the keys to my growth as an author. It has been touched by every element that he listed, along with a few of my own ingredients mixed in. African American artists started a movement by sharing their gay of the Black experience; they gained some recognition in poetry, dance and literature, but it was the ballroom scene in Harlem where queer people first got their shine.
Transgender people and cross-dressing women and male cities added flavour to those ballroom parties back then and it was those choreographers, performers and costume designers who were the ones to pave the way for the Drag Queens and Kings of today. The author Langston Hughes wrote about what he witnessed in the Harlem clubs after his travels outside of America.
Hughes found the queer dancers of Uzbekistan and Central Asia as a marker of progress for queer entertainers, but the Soviet Union thought otherwise; they shut down the practice of feminine men dancing by subjecting them to violence. Queer performers like Gladys Bentley, Mabel Hampton and countless others used their sexuality as an expression of freedom along with their raunchy lyrics for women who love women and sexually explicit dancing.
Consequently queer performers were forced underground where many still are today. That became the blueprint for the queer underground club scene. I am a product of that history and here are my own chance encounters. I was born in Los Angeles in and the neighbourhood I grew up in was a beautiful, ratchet mess.
Gunfire and sirens were the soundtrack to my childhood, but an elderly woman could still walk down the side-walk carrying groceries and the homies on the block would make sure she got home safely. The lyrics, no matter how vulgar, spoke a truth and life in the ghetto made me love hip-hop music because it reflected my pain.
Gay Kansas City
The change of environment slapped me in the face with small town life, but my collection of mix-tapes kept growing thanks to a few guys at my new school. I had the freedom to walk around my quiet kansas, but I was bored out of my mind. One weekend, I packed my bright blue MC Hammer pants and new matching shirt into an city bag.
The building was packed. My friend and I stood on the upper level of the club watching everyone dancing below us. A guy, also in MC Hammer pants, dancing full out in the middle of the dance-floor caught my attention. He introduced himself as Jimmy. I was a club kid. And so every chance I got to sneak out, I kept going to Oasis.
Jimmy and I became good friends and many years later he helped produce my first CD of poetry. Last I heard, he still spins my rhymes in his sets. When I was 20 I moved into my own gay and started working in a beauty salon. A friend of mine called me after work inviting me to a house party at his place.
I remember hearing music thumping from his apartment window as I pulled up in the parking lot. Set up in the corner of his living room they worked in tandem on the turntables and I gawked open mouthed at the set-up. Technic s on a cardboard table