Honoring Black Male Sexuality with "Black D*ck Matters"

Black D*ck Matters
Brownbox Theatre
(at Gay City)
August 22/24, 2019

I had the honor of seeing and hearing this provocative evening that it seems that no one besides playwright/poet Kathya Alexander has seen fit to write about. Her inspiration was a personal video a friend showed her that was pornographic in content, but it also celebrated black men and their sexuality.

Alexander decided to write a play "about" black male sexuality. It turned into this evening of a string of pieces, some very poetic, some more pornographic, all focused on holding up black men to honor and recognize as whole people.


It's clear that it had to include the degradation of black men in this fundamentally racist society, and the hyper-sexualization that has been applied to black men's sexuality by that society. The opening poem is a short, pungent commentary of a black woman speaking of her love of the black men around her, of the male baby she birthed, calling back to the slave trade that brought both men and women together into slavery.

She writes:

of the lovers and fathers and brothers and sons

who gave their lives for it / who were birthed thru me

whose blood was spilled by the policeman’s gun

or the hangman’s noose or during slavery

put his hand in mine as we ran together toward freedom

and when caught beaten til blood poured out of both of our bodies

One piece is from a woman's point of view of her husband and best friend of many years and their still-vibrant sexuality, as she describes a coupling in detail. Another is a young man of the streets describing an odd relationship with a man who isn't quite a client but isn't quite a lover. 

One piece is about a transman who has to look on the internet to find out how to try to have sex in his new identity, finding graphic gay black sex there to learn from. But there are also a couple of pieces that tear at the heart and mind, for instance describing a lynching and an extended torture session. 

One piece that Alexander didn't write is a transcription of a conversation with a 70-year-old black man who remembered his childhood and his dawning recognition of the importance of his maleness and dick. It was by turns poignant and also amusing.

The evening was less than 90 minutes and sometimes repetitive, but it felt like an important conversation to have. It seems like the subject area is ready for far more exploration, pornographic or not.

Directed by Tyrone Brown, on the even of his leaving for almost 2 1/2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer, the intoners of these pieces were: Verbal Oasis, Troy Johnson, Taece "Wisdom" Defillo, Kalisto "Listo" Zenda Nanen, Eze-Basil Chinwendu Oluo, and Tonya White.

Learn more about Kathya Alexander at: www.seattlestoryteller.com.