I know this is even more scattered than my last post, but I had to get it out and put some distance before I attempt to hone it down into something more. There’s three different threads I want to follow, but each one is important, each one here. —————–

I’ve watched Moonlight twice in the theaters in two days–the weekend it was released. Something about it, my chest was tight the whole time. Nothing good can come of this in the sort of black world Chiron lives in. I fear at each moment for Chiron. I want to jump through the screen and hold him. Tell him he is safe and loved because he expects the opposite of that. When he experiences tenderness, the tenderness that shouldn’t be there, I am afraid that it will be snatched away at any moment. Suddenly, it will all go away. That, to me, is the tension of the movie. That the fleeting goodness might disappear.

And yet, every small bit of the movie brought me a fullness. Small moments of joy. One of James Baldwin’s friends once said that Baldwin was like Dostoevsky. “He is not a pessimist. He layers darkness upon darkness, pain, sadness, then he blasts you with light.” Moonlight could be in that company. The blast of light. That particular blast of light reminded me of another, perhaps more timely, piece. Frank Ocean’s Blond. Frank Ocean helped the writer, Nicholas Britell, visualize the scenes, the script. How? Channel Orange. However, I think Blond is a far better musical representation of Moonlight. In fact, one song could fully represent the movie: Frank Ocean’s “Ivy”:

I thought I was dreaming

When you said you loved me

It started from nothing

I had no chance to prepare

Couldn’t see you coming

And we started from nothing

I could hate you now

It’s alright to hate me now

We both know that deep down

The feeling still deep down is good

I love the quiet intensity of the movie. It kept me tight, wound up, both optimistic and terrified. I’d been thinking about the movie for a bit. It spoke to sexual fluidity, yes, but more to toxic masculinity–specifically toxic black masculinity. This is where, I believe, Frank Ocean, steps in. Our contemporary R&B artists tend to avoid emotion unless the emotion is lust or anger. This is where Frank Ocean stands apart. He sings almost exclusively about vulnerability. No. No. No. Black men do not talk about being young, innocent, and definitely not vulnerable. However, he does so in a way that wrenches the heart. In the same way, Moonlight does. I think it is because I want black men to be vulnerable and true to themselves, but I also fear the backlash for that.

Arm around my shoulder so I could tell how much I meant to you…

meant it sincere back then

We had time to kill back then

You ain’t a kid no more

We’ll never be those kids again

I am saying very little about sexuality in Moonlight because I know many people can dismantle it far better than I can, and this, this, moment of driving down the road listening to Blond brought tears down my cheeks as scenes from the movie flashed in front of me like a trailer. Layers of darkness. A blast of light. Moonlight is Blond. A blast of light in deep blue-black night. Moments to breathe. I have every intention to chew this over more, say more but for now, I have tears in my eyes and both pain and joy in my heart. What is it that I feel has not been said about Moonlight? I think it is encapsulated by Mahershala Ali’s short explanation about why Juan resonates with Chiron. To be an outcast. To feel adrift in the world. Juan feels it–albeit in a different way–and when he sees a young black boy, as young as he was when he realized he was an outsider, he can’t help but to step in. God knows, we miss our elder brothers/fathers to walk us through. It is a moment that makes us hold our breath, a father, a father who will love him and protect him from all of the things that destroy little black boys. Yes, Juan is the local drug dealer, but he loves Chiron fiercely (and wants more for him). I was heartbroken that Juan had such a small role, though powerful. He was a spectre behind Chiron, in a way that his biological father that we never hear of is not. The movie is definitely geared to black men, and I am very willing to play the back. However, it still made me turn inside out as it unfolded. It still made me quiet. I still cannot form words. Maybe it is because I see the pain my cousins and students struggle with all of this and I can’t help. Maybe it is because I want them to step into that blinding light that is self-acceptance. I don’t know. I’ve been working on this over the last two or three days, revisiting the notes I wrote months ago and feeling woefully ill-prepared to discuss this movie. I knew I was bursting, but no way of explaining it.

Last night, I had a long nightmare, the majority of it operated as my typical nightmares–some type of post apocalyptic world in strange things hunt and devour people. I fell. There was a giant tan and speckled crocodile snapping its jaws at me. I screamed “Daddy, save me!” and he appeared and forced it to retreat. Throughout the dream, the crocodile reappears and every time my daddy saves me. In most of my dreams, I am leading some type of resistance, protecting people, killing creatures, but–here, when I am cornered, I call for him. I don’t call for anyone in my dreams. I take whatever comes and if I cannot beat it, I push past it. But last night, I woke up crying for my father when it seemed, for once in the dream, he wouldn’t come. My close friends know that in my dreams, I take care of it. No help. Nobody. It didn’t help that it is very soon the 20th anniversary of my father’s death. How is this related? Because Chiron has been going through the world alone. Then there’s Juan. Juan is his first (and perhaps only protector). What I am saying is that Chiron probably relied on Juan in his absence the way I relied on my father. And that is a conversation we’re not having. Being protected. By our fathers. By our big brothers and uncles and cousins.

No, we aren’t talking about this. This movie is as much about discovering one’s sexuality as it is about discovering one’s need for nurturing. Nurturing and sex overlap, but are not the same thing. Men, especially black men, are told that physical touch only comes through fucking or fighting. And in this contemporary moment, “Netflix and Chill” is code for sex. Not to be physically close to someone, not to cuddle with someone, but to get that nut because to have sex is the only way most people get the physical attention they so desperately need. I was once told that people are starving. Starving to be touched, touch deprived in fact. Hold me. Let me feel you breathe, let me feel warm and safe.

But I am a woman, so they allow it. The thing is, do they do that for their boys? And what is the trauma of not having that from their father? I asked one of the most nurturing black men I know, and he said as a child, he always wanted to bring joy. “I was the hugger of the family. I had to fight back against being bullied as a pansy, but I couldn’t stop. I could see what people needed. When to smile, when to hug. I was naive, but no one hurt me. I just knew I wasn’t acting like the black man I was expected to be.” My father, my uncle, my cousin, they all touched. They were nurturers, the kind that they say doesn’t exist in black men. My mentor, my baba, I could go to his house when he wasn’t there and sleep in his bed. Get that nurturing I so desperately needed. But then again, I was a girl.

This is why Chiron is so thirsty. He’s thirsty for physical love outside of sex. When Juan holds him in the water, teaching him to float, teaching him to swim, it has power. No one has touched Chiron except to abuse him. When we see Chiron held so tenderly by Juan, that idea of the binary of fighting or fucking explodes. Chiron needs this. He’s silent in his starvation for love–conserve energy, don’t waste it, don’t drink too much water, you’re dehydrated, take it easy, slow now–and ekes by. He knows that maybe sex isn’t what he wants. He wants the feeling of love through nurturing in a way that black men are not allowed to know. Hold me. Let me feel you breathe, let me feel warm and safe.

Moonlight offer resilience and healing for black men. But it comes at a cost. You must eschew all false masculinity to get the necessary healing. This movie is not for the uninitiated. This is thick, frightening, sweet, dangerous, healing. It is asking to hold you, “I got you”, it says. It is Juan holding Chiron in the water, swearing to not let anything bad happen to him. It’s trying to hold us, and god knows we’re so starved, we should let it. I am struggling with this. This, sadly, is the best I can do. Hold me. Let me feel you breathe, let me feel warm and safe.