On Leaving Jamaica

When I came out as a lesbian in Jamaica I knew that I would meet some resistance. I knew that under the harsh glare of Jamaican Christianity, homosexuality is an abomination of the most shameful kind.  I fully expected the whispers and the stares. I was prepared for some people to avoid me. But I never even considered that I would be sexually assaulted, and I certainly never thought it could happen on the university campus.  I knew that in some communities (the inner-city and rural areas), there were rumors of men called 'sodomites' being beaten and killed. As a girl who lived and studied among intellectuals I thought myself immune to such brutalities. I convinced myself that--as horrifying as that is--that kind of violence only happens to effeminate gay men in the underclass.

Armed with those beliefs, I walked to the tree under which we all gathered at lunch and confidently announced that I was a lesbian, that I was only interested in sleeping with women, that men could talk to me but that their bodies were like plants to me--nice to look at, but nothing to engage sexually. I expected people to be shocked, but not offended. Ten years later I laugh at my naiveté.

I had spent the greater part of my teens dressed in miniscule shorts gyrating to songs that said my female body was not my own.

"Gyal me serious me haffi get you tonight
haffi get you body even by gunpoint.

                                                ('Have to get you tonight' by Buju Banton)

Me legal, me have me sexing ticket
And if me sex her and she dead,
nutten nuh come out of it"
                                                ('Stone' by Powerman)

Everyday, in every corner of the world, women are assaulted by men for far less "crimes" than the cocksure announcements I had made under the gathering tree.  I should have seen how the boys looked at me. At first, with fascination and images of a ménage á trois dancing behind their eyes.  Then later, after I had made it clear that my lesbian inclinations were not for their gaze, there was shock, incredulity, and slowly, but increasingly there was rage.

I had spent my whole life navigating that masculine rage. Without the protection of parents, a small girl learns to spot danger from a distance. As a teenager I had long given up on my mother or father coming to save me. I practiced the art of escaping men who saw me as sexual prey. By the time I got to the University of the West Indies I was skilled in the negotiations necessary to survive such moments unscathed. At twenty-one I was proud that, against the odds, I could say with conviction that I had never been really raped.

After I escaped the dozen or so boys who attacked me on campus, I congratulated myself on not being really raped again. They only hit me. Touched me a few places. Took off some clothes. Nothing happened really. No need to report it. There were just a few fingers. And fists. And forced kisses.  There was only one bruised nipple for God's sake! They didn't put their penises into my vagina. So nothing happened. I can still say I was never really raped.

But I knew it was only a matter of time before they attacked me again. I knew I had to leave. I did not know then how much I would miss the sound of the Jamaican dialect, how my own words would soften to ape the North American cadence.  In the moments before leaving, I was just grateful I had the lucky visa that would make it possible for me to leave.

And New York had its mouth wide open to receive me. It was the late nineties, so there was no better place to be an out, Black/biracial lesbian looking to belong: the confessional weekly meetings at Shades of Lavender and Café Rising in Brooklyn; and in Manhattan, Nannys, the Black lesbian bar, the passionate rants at the Nuyorican Poets Café, the pier, the LGBT Community Center--in 1997, you couldn't throw a rock in the Village without hitting a dyke. Even with the inevitable discovery of racism, I knew that I would stay. 

It seemed natural that I would settle in Crown Heights. The large Jamaican community, Nostrand Avenue with its plethora of Caribbean accents, and the familiar fruits and vegetables on display made it an easy choice.  Over the years, I have wrestled with the contradiction of shame and pride in being an out Jamaican lesbian in exile. From the vantage point of my stand-in New York City home, I have read of the increase in incidents of violent homophobia in Jamaica. When I go to Jamaica I am careful to avoid isolated spaces with people I do not know. I curb my lesbian tongue in taxies, and I touch my female friends sparingly in public.

Over the years it has become clear that my tale is typical in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities of color: from South Africa, East New York, to Surinam, to South Carolina, to Australia, to Montego Bay--lesbians and gay men confess to me that if they were heterosexual they would not have left their homes. I document this story, my story, to show that, in the context of human rights, our exile is relevant.  My intention is to illustrate the complexities of fleeing my home, and the subsequent ambivalence of having to find solace in a country that only reflects me in part. I write to show that my story is not unique--that for Black people/people of color, for women, for girls, for LGBT people, this survival against the odds is simply the norm.