Richard J. Rosendall is a past president of the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, D.C. He can be reached at rrosendall@starpower.net.
Not your father’s gay rights movement
Activists must figure out how to better engage the ‘Facebook’ generation.
Taking the long view
Obama disappointed me during the Saddleback forum, but I’m voting for him anyway.
A new civil rights struggle
As City Council member, I will take marriage fight to the entire D.C. community.
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Richard J. Rosendall
Friday, June 13, 2003
THERE HAS ALWAYS been talk about Luther Vandross being gay, just as there has
been talk about his yo-yo dieting where he would go from 200 pounds to 340 and
back.
He has shown little interest in talking about his weight, and even less about
his sexual orientation. Concerning the latter, his standard response is, “It’s
none of your goddamn business.”
As a mainstream male R&B artist, Vandross plays to the market, which means
feminine pronouns and love duets with female vocalists. But in 1994 he recorded
the Roberta Flack standard, “Killing Me Softly,” without changing
the masculine pronouns. “I felt all flushed with fever, embarrassed by
the crowd. I felt he’d found my letters and read each one out loud.”
He sang it ravishingly, and the message could not have been clearer: There
was more to him than he had told us, and he would not be pigeonholed. It was
a gutsy move, because virile male vocalists are not supposed to sing heart-wrenchingly
about other men.
Now he has done it again. In “Dance With My Father,” the intimate
title song of his 15th and possibly final album, Vandross movingly evokes childhood
memories of his late father. “I’d love love love to dance with my
father again” is not a sentiment we are used to hearing from mainstream
male singers.
Once again he breaks a taboo concerning masculinity, which says that boys don’t
dance with their daddies. And this time, he didn’t just record the song;
he made it the title track.
“And I knew for sure I was loved.” The new song is all the more
poignant because its author has been in intensive care since suffering a massive
stroke on April 16, four days before his 52nd birthday. His friends and family
are not saying much, but they assured his fans that a tracheotomy that became
necessary was done so as not to damage his vocal cords.
IT FEELS PRESUMPTUOUS to demand career-risking revelations from a public figure
when so many ordinary folk still avoid the challenge.
For example, little notice is taken of the incongruity in the organizers of
Black Lesbian & Gay Pride Day shortening the name in their printed materials
to the closeted Black Pride and having a “down low” party. If Luther
is a creature of his time, he has enriched it extravagantly with what he knows
best. It seems oddly fitting that someone driven to conceal his own desires
has provided musical accompaniment to so many other people’s lovemaking.
Too often we use our penchant for classifying as a way of keeping things safely
segregated. Author Richard Rodriguez, in a recent commencement speech, mentioned
how far his shelf in the Borders bookstore is from those of his own favorite
authors. He is stuck in the back under “Latin American” while James
Baldwin is across the room under “African American” and someone
else is under “Literature,” each relegated to a different arbitrary
category. He said that at night after the clerk is gone, they all get together
under the espresso machine.
NO ART OR music belongs exclusively to a particular group; that is not how
human beings work. Legally or not, the borders have long since been crossed,
in art as in love. An extraordinary voice strikes a chord in us and we are seduced,
whether we are men or women, straight or gay — and regardless of how love
moves the man behind the voice.
It is hard to accept how fragile virtuosity is, how quickly it can be taken
away. Luther’s impeccable phrasing, his crisp articulation and silken
tone, his sinuous melismas, his sheer sensuality and eloquence — all of
that may be gone forever because of a stroke in the night. Yet here is his voice
beside me in the dark, as if his head rested on the next pillow.
Like familiar ghosts in a darkened bookstore, he will continue to inhabit many
strangers’ rooms, his caressing tenor bearing us up and finding just the
right words and the poise to deliver them when we are at a loss.
As I write this, the news says Luther is slowly emerging from his coma. That’s
it, guy, come on back. I won’t care if you are fat, aging and cannot sing
a note. I want the next dance.
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