Last year @artfagmagazine sought to find queer artist under the theme “deviant.” A term I love and aspire towards within my work. When I saw it I got excited, thought about queerness and my own f@ggotry and how my desires for other men have historically been considered “deviant.” In the ideas I had, I wanted sex, orgies, my body among others but as I got excited on that I was reminded that this isn’t the life I live. My queerness isn’t actually deviant in the way I’ve aspired. I shared many times of my struggles with having the sex life I aspire to have and how that has placed me in depressive mindsets. I want to be a slut but I’m not and I feel to uncomfortable with my lack of experience to be that. In this negativity, I found light. I revisited the work of Marlon Riggs and Essex Hemphill to remind myself what Black Queer writers and filmmakers were doing, expressing the frustrations of how the world views Black bodies and what that means to not “have that body” I was reminded that pleasure as a gay black man is deviant, that me giving myself love and satisfaction is radical. I did just that, I took fabric that would hold my desire, my pleasure, my cum and took each session to cover it up. Once I finished I sewed each experience together as I watched Marlon Riggs “Tongues Untied” “Black Is...Black Ain’t” and “Affirmations.” “When nobody speaks your name, or even knows it, you, knowing it, must be the first to speak it.” - M.R #selflove