France as a Critically Black, Gay American – De’Andre Holmes

For the first time in my 28 years of living, I was regarded as an American—and revered for it—at a gay bar in Lyon, France, on New Year’s Eve, 2022. That evening, if you didn’t study it properly, would have appeared the same as any other New Year’s Eve, but those who are grounded in humanity, who are attuned to the subtle deviations in one’s facial expressions—even under a mask—would have, without incredulity, noticed the bleakness on my face and then a sudden joy that encased it with the power of several poor men vying for gold. My bleakness arose from the shock of being referred to as American, a part of my identity I had only acknowledged on legal documents like job applications or Medicaid forms.

But as each moment passed, with each drink drowning in my gullet, I became one with the privilege. For all intents and purposes, I had become American; I had become the image of America. I had become the one thing I feared the most—not just through association but through the looming specter of death by their hands: I had become a white man against every known protein travelling through my veins. I sat at that gay bar and allowed men to pour into me with the force of the mighty Seine, and I drank every bit of them. I laughed with them, sang with them, allowed the kisses and hugs, the drinks, the drug offers, the contagious smiles. And when I looked at myself in the mirror across the bar, I saw my Black skin dissolve into the myriad of white skin surrounding me, unable to differentiate myself. 

I had travelled to France to study abroad in Paris, but I made an early detour to the cities of Lyon and Marseille, spending two days in each city. Although Lyon was the catalyst to my sudden identity crisis, it was the city I enjoyed the most out of the three I visited. I loved eating Mousles de Bouchot at L’espace Carnot, practicing my French with the different Lyonnais and Lyonnaise people, and watching the children ride the Farris wheel at La Place Bellacour. However, on my first day in Lyon, I spent most of my time in silence. Alone, I was searching for something—something I couldn’t get in America. Maybe a place of belonging, or of safety. I wanted to be removed just enough that I could feel vulnerable while walking the streets, yet close enough that I could take in the splendour of it all. 

The next day, New Year’s Eve morning, on the Rue Victor Hugo walkway, I met a Black man who spoke English fluently enough that I thought he was also visiting France. I hadn’t thought too much about my motives, but at the time, I knew friendship and camaraderie were present on my mind. He was from Guadeloupe, a French colonial island in the Caribbean, but was living in Lyon studying medicine. I told him I was in Lyon for the rest of the day but had come to France to study creative writing in Paris. From there, he offered to show me around the city. We visited his favorite bookstore/cafe, Raconte-moi la Terre near the Saône River, where we bought bookmarks and had coffee. The rest of the day we spent walking along the river and talking about our respective studies, families, and cultures. He shared with me his experience with homosexuality while living in Guadeloupe and of his dedication to learning English—a dedication I was certainly glad of. 

That night, he accompanied me to the gay bar in Lyon. When we walked up, one of the bouncers recognized me because I talked to him the day before about coming back the following day. He let me in without my Passe Sanitaire, a pass needed to enter enclosed spaces during the height of COVID—and by association, let my friend in as well, who, by the way, lost his pass and was originally concerned about getting into the bar.

When the men crowded around, he stayed with me and took in the festivities. It wasn’t until one of the bartenders spoke to him in English, presumably because he was with an American man with very limited French skills—that he was quick to respond, “I am French, not American. I speak French.” I felt the tinge of insult in his tone, but what struck me most was his clinging to his French heritage, even though he wasn’t raised in France. I thought that because he was born and raised in Guadeloupe, he would consider himself Guadeloupean first and then, maybe, French second—if not Black. 

I realized then that Blackness in America is not the same for Black people in France. My Black friend, whom I would consider Black even before his Guadeloupean nationality, resonated more with his French identity than with his Blackness. But what is Blackness to him? Here in America, Blackness is a sign of resilience, of singing culture, of resistance. In France, Blackness is merely the color on one’s skin. It was comforting, at first, to relish in the fact that I could be seen past the color of my skin, but soon after, and with the swiftness of a mountain breeze, I felt completely naked. Without my Blackness, what and who am I?

I hadn’t always found comfort in being Black. For a long time, I shunned it because it was tied to violent and often detrimental stereotypes that permitted my people to be maimed beyond recognition, with the world ceasing to remember them. It took me a while to see the beauty in my Blackness—to take hold of it. It has become the root that stabilizes my tree, holding me upright when American winds blow my branches every which way. But here, in France, the root that stabilizes this tree is my Americanism, to which this French breeze doesn’t ruffle a single leaf. My thoughts of being freed from race, however brief, conflicted against the mentality that my Blackness is who I am and shouldn’t be looked over. When I arrived in Paris three days later and started studying James Baldwin, I began to feel guilty—and, unfathomably, shameful—about my night in Lyon. 

Baldwin is a staple in my life. The first novel I read of his was If Beale Street Could Talk during undergrad. It was the novel that immersed me into Baldwin’s language, and from reading that, I was prompted to do research on him. To my delight, I found that not only was he Black but also a gay man. Before him, I had known of no other Black, gay writers. I was fascinated that someone could live so freely within the confines of their sexuality and race. Slowly, I started investing my spare time into reading more of Baldwin in hope of finding answers to my walked—but often ran—experience as a Black, queer man. My research landed Giovanni’s Room in my hands. 

When I first read it, in my late teens and early twenties, I rejoiced in the novel because it was the first I had read that exquisitely detailed the life of gay men hiding from themselves. Because it was Baldwin who wrote it, I never questioned or wanted to question David’s motives or Giovanni’s angst. In other words, I didn’t dissect the novel at lengths, (1) because I wasn’t equipped with the tools or resources to do so at the time, and (2) because I wanted to celebrate anything Baldwin wrote as a masterpiece—geared towards people like me and him—a motif to our struggles, a guarantee of our existence. I wanted David to be my savior.

This changed dramatically when I arrived in Paris and began studying the same novel again through a more critical lens. I allowed my looming identity crisis to decide for me what my new interpretation of the text would be.

For the entire two weeks in Paris, I contemplated why Baldwin decided to make David white and not Black in Giovanni’s Room. Baldwin, if I may, you once said, “The French, you see, don’t see me…[they] left me alone…I was freed of the crutches of race”. When analyzing the word “crutches,” I found myself questioning how you might have identified with yourself—or moreover, reconciled with yourself—a version of Blackness, specifically, American Blackness, that may have existed only within you. What I mean is that Blackness, within the confines of America, as a basis, is not the same for every Black person. We hold different values, and we base our values on our privileges and disadvantages. 

When I think about who you were, Baldwin, you were a Black, queer, man living in a foreign country, freed from what other Black people were facing in America. You described Giovanni’s Room as about a person being so broken that they lost the capacity to love anyone. Your lifelong partner, Lucien, married multiple women—most notably Diana Sands, an American actress—throughout the entirety of your relationship, which could have prompted the story of David. Although there was no shortage of Black people during your time, there were not many openly Black, gay men, and even fewer who dated outside their race (could you attest?). And if they did, it was common for them to do so to escape the realities of being Black.

I do not necessarily believe that the story would have been any more or less compelling if David was of any race outside of white. But I do believe the inclusion of a nuanced Black, gay character could have offered a perspective that not many people during that time experienced or knew about. It could have been a step in the path to normalizing homosexuality/queerness within the Black community. It could have made me prouder to be who I am.

There is a level of shame that is embedded in being Black, imposed by other Black people. I was raised to always regard authority figures, to talk softer as to not appear threatening, to get an education so that I can remove myself from the Black people who cannot afford it. And by remove, I mean compartmentalize them into nothingness. I was told to never question the rules laid out by skin-folk because they were meant to protect me. Essentially, I was taught to shrink myself smaller than everyone else around me for their comfort.

When my sexuality was exposed without my consent, most of those same people then taught me to forget everything they’d said before and focus solely on repenting and getting right with God by any means necessary. When their version of God told me that He would never accept my unforgivable sin, God’s love became synonymous with white approval. Their acceptance meant that I was redeemable in some way—and that was enough for me. 

My education granted me access to spaces many of the people from my neighborhood could not enter. My proximity to whiteness became blurred, and for a time, I really, truly believed I could be equal. Equal was what I wanted. This thought became most present that night in Lyon. Shame was the biproduct of that almost intoxicating feeling of being immersed—and, more pungently, the value I then placed on myself when I felt white people “accepted” me.

This is the same affliction I wonder if you, Baldwin, might have been plagued with. What would you say about whiteness, about Black gay men’s approval of it, and about the treatment of Americans in France? Coincidentally, “Equal in Paris” and Giovanni’s Room, to me, are the answers. 

In your essay, “Equal in Paris,” Baldwin, you talked about whiteness and Blackness in conjunction with French law enforcement. You understood that your Blackness was not a threat to the French but also understood that your Americanism—or rather, your New York-ism—would not be enough to slide you out of the hole that landed you in a prison cell. But what struck me most was when you stated, “…I was not despised as a black man. They [Frenchmen] would simply have laughed at me if I had behaved like one.”

As if anything you did as a Black man was disassociated from the way in which you were viewed. In other words, you did believe that there was a “Black” way of acting. Consequently, you must have believed that there was a “white” way of acting, too. And if you believed that “acting Black” would generate laughs among the French, you must have also believed that “acting white” would command significance, attention, and seriousness. 

I took to Urban Dictionary to provide a solidified definition of “acting Black.” It states, “Any forms of deliberately and/or unintentionally simplifying vocabulary and pronunciation of such (which includes, but is not limited to) slang terminology, speech slurring, and destabilising sentence structure. In addition, the act of being excessively irritable with a heightened emotional reaction, violent or otherwise, to everyday occurrences.” The site provided an example of a Black person getting into an argument with someone for stepping on their shoes. It concluded with “by a real Black man.” As in to say this definition and example have been examined and proven true because a Black man wrote it and cosigned for it. Was this the definition you were referring to, Baldwin?

In interest of the times and the still wide dissemination of this essay today, using this modern definition will help to further solidify the implications of this idea for today’s audience.

Baldwin, if the French men would have laughed at you for “acting Black,” what would be the alternative? If I had to guess, “acting Black” anywhere else, but more specifically, American jails, might have had more serious outcomes than those of their French counterparts. We have been trained to view concepts as opposites: white and black, serious and funny. But when we transfer this ideology to people, it becomes wealthy and poor, life and death. No longer can we reduce this philosophy to simple colors; the idea is too complex, too fragile. So, Baldwin, what did “acting Black” mean to you? Tell me more about what’s funny about it.

You once stated that the two driving forces for Giovanni’s Room—homosexuality and race—could not live in the same space together, that the two would drown each other out because society was not ready to accept either, and the premise of the story would be lost. James, if I may, you were the walking embodiment of such a conundrum. I am the walking embodiment. To deny us that space feels like a rejection of our Black complexity—as if to say, if you are Black, you can only be Black, and every conflict that exists outside of our skin is inherently not Black; it is othered.

To further elucidate: Black people can only ever fit into the category of “Black” because that is the only avenue society regards as an “acceptable struggle” for our kind. But what, then, is “Black,” if not defined by a Black man on Urban Dictionary? What is Blackness, if it is not always under scrutiny by those who choose to not understand us? Is Blackness only significant when attached to a tribulation or death?

Sure, this could be the narrative I am defining for myself, but nonetheless, it hurts. But what hurts more, Baldwin, is defaulting to the very people who denounced our queerness during their religious colonization. It feels like a painstaking jab to our ancestors, who—before the popularization of Africa—with each of you and my most influential identities—accepted every single piece of us. 

But to digress: if race was not an issue for you in France at the time, what compelled you to create David as not only white but traditionally white, with features like blond hair and blue eyes? What were you afraid of, Baldwin? If I may ask, how much of David did you see in yourself, James? How many times did you cry throughout the process of writing this book? And how many of those tears were for David or Giovanni and not for yourself?

These questions I may never have answered, but I wish I could tell you that I loved you anyway.

As I reflect on my last days in Paris, staring at my pasty yellow walls, wondering what those men in Lyon might have really thought of me, I quiver at how volatile my thoughts became. I knew nothing of what being “American” meant; only that it single-handedly caused me the most misery of my identities.

What does it mean to be admired for the one portion of yourself you never felt a part of? Baldwin, I will never know the true intricacies of your life while living in Paris. I believe you were smarter than to let anyone in like that. I stood in the same places you stood, wrote in the same cafés you wrote, and sauntered along the same streets you sauntered. Yet, I could not feel your essence invade my body like I wanted it to.

I contemplated my life in conjunction with yours while staring into the Seine, trying to piece together what it was that carved such a hollow hole in my existence. Sadly, I returned to the States with an answer I wish I never found: I could not sense you because what I was really looking for was David, Giovanni, Fonny, and Tish. It was they who moved me when I was young; they were the pieces of you, Baldwin. But now, those pieces are too fragmented, too dispersed. 

Baldwin, I never knew you.