Trapped In The Dark

Trapped in the Dark

With the force of a pit bull’s toothy grip on some poor soul’s behind, all sorts of images and reports of the DL (Down Low) syndrome seem to have emerged into both popular music and stark reality. A friend of mine recently sent me a link to R. Kelly’s ‘Trapped in the Closet’ video, part 2. You know the one, where the scorned pastor husband reveals he has a secret he’s been itching to tell too. His mystery woman, his secret lover, is actually a man. Very, very interesting and highly dramatic.

That was enough DL drama for one day, I thought, and I think many would agree. Little did I know that some more would show up in the newspaper, so I innocently perused the online version of the San Francisco Chronicle to find that Terry McMillan (Disappearing Acts, Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back) is divorcing her current husband because he’s now gay.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/06/26/BAGTQDF4S01.DTL

My jaw dropped. Any residual grogginess from my late Sunday morning sleep-in disappeared as I shared the news with another friend on my free long-distance anytime minutes. I relayed the news, piece by piece as I gathered it myself. Jonathan Plummer, 30, met McMillan when he was a ‘20-year-old kid’ from Jamaica. Within a time span of six or so years of marriage, he had arrived at the conclusion that he is gay.

Is that like figuring out that you don’t like peanut butter, or you prefer butter over margarine? Is it reversible? Like, could he wake up one day and decide that he’s heterosexual again? Is it interchangeable? Could he just declare that he’s bisexual, and jut keep everyone guessing? Oh it’s so confusing.

Truly, this man’s sexuality is unremarkable except he really screwed up things up for his soon to be ex-wife. For one thing, he doesn’t understand her ire, and that might be where the age difference comes into play. Reportedly he’s upset that she kicked him out of the house and called him a few derogatory names. He’s lucky that he didn’t find himself actually buried under the house, as far as I can see. Now there’s hardly any doubt that marrying someone twenty three years your junior would include a great deal of risk. Let’s see, when you’re 53, he 30, when you’re 73, he’s 50, when you’re 93, he’s 70. When you’re 103 he’s 80. You can probably see where I’m going with this. When you’re well into your hundredth box of Depends, he’s still jogging around the block.

But if you really want to mess a woman up rope-a-dope style, I mean if you’re really want to leave her a angry, frothing, humiliated mess, conveniently drop the gay bomb when she complains about you hanging out with that special male buddy too much. Don’t forget to act like you don’t understand what the big deal is, after all. She’ll be defenseless, then you can easily go in for the kill. Accuse her of trying to destroy you with homophobic epithets and demand that you get royalties for a story based loosely on your love life with her. Uh, sweetie, when you took that $62,000 from her account without her knowledge, you don’t count that as royalties? Just curious.

When I reflect on the ‘Trapped In The Closet’ video part 2, okay, we see how old R. is stuck in the clothes closet, and you can say okay, crazy pastor husband had been metaphorically trapped in the closet too, right? What about being trapped in the dark, which is the state a lot of women find themselves in when their mate reveals their true selves in some hurtful way. Everyday people face the demise of their love relationships and simply grow apart. It just seems that sometimes people forget to leave the other with at least a sense of dignity, and in this case a sense of personal well-being, sanity and health. I hope Ms. McMillan can emerge from this and find herself in a better place.

Chandra Adams
Author
Shades of Retribution
http://www.AdrolitePress.com
http://www.ChandraAdams.com