Black Queerness and the Cruel Irony of the COVID-19 Pandemic

It is another Friday morning at 6 a.m. I reach down between my legs and feel my intense erection and realize why I woke up so abruptly. When I arise, as I typically do, I reach for my glasses to look at my phone. I wonder if I received any text messages last night after I fell asleep. Indeed, I did, from my best friend who is three hours behind me, "I love you too man." I immediately feel warmth literally run through my chest. During the early period of the pandemic, we promised each other that we would check in on each other and give reminders, either through text, phone, or video chat, of how much we value and love each other. Before the pandemic, while I was in Arizona, we would do this often, and these check-ins were mostly in person. Still, the text message from my best friend is enough to get me out of bed and motivate me to embark upon my usually busy day of meetings, reading, and writing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for some Black queer individuals like me, technology has become the primary—and sometimes the only—way to stay connected to loved ones.

Right now, at this very moment, though, I am horny as fuck; tired of jacking off; haven't had sex in going on three months, mainly due to my fear of possibly exposing myself to the COVID-19 virus. I hear a message notification from the Black gay sex app on my phone. I see that I have a few messages, as I normally do, from attractive brothers asking me if I want to link up for some fun. I usually respond to get to know them better and see what they are into. But, eventually, when he asks me if I want to come through or can I host, I back out and stop responding. I want to do it, but then again, I don't.

Although I am battling mild depression due to a combination of loneliness, sadness, and fear about my current situation, I remind myself daily of the many virtues in my life. I am lucky. I own a beautiful home in downtown Indianapolis, and I am a tenured university professor. I have a guaranteed job, at least for as long as a job can be guaranteed in the US academy. I am healthy; I have good health insurance, and I am financially stable.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created paradoxical consequences and conditions for Black queer people. The pandemic has exposed the deep racial and gender inequities that structure our society. These inequalities are what it means to live in the United States for Black, Brown, and Native American and Indigenous communities. If one's experiences exist at the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexual oppression, it can seem rather dystopic. The multipronged crisis of COVID-19, socioeconomic collapse, white supremacy and virulent anti-black racism, and corruption, has exposed the myth of an American multiracial democracy. This moment makes crystal clear the deleterious wages of racial capitalism in crisis and the ways that the state will mobilize violence, the police for example, to quell decent, and suppress resistance to these conditions. Yet, far less obvious are the workings and consequences of structural homophobia. These consequences are clear for those who, like me, reject hetero/homonormative family forms, and those of us who have been rejected by these forms. During an infectious viral pandemic that thrives on, and because of, structural inequalities, Black queers like me have been quarantined from the very social, interpersonal, and communal practices and structures that sustain us through a public health crisis. It is a cruel irony.

I am a people person; I write, work, and live among community. I enjoy my space and my alone time, but I always look forward to having dinner, drinks or just hanging out with friends, friends who have been my actual family. I have never viewed my family of origin as family. I have written elsewhere that family is not...