Mark Wignall | LGBT misunderstanding and hate linger

In 1976, one of the hottest, upmarket nightclubs on Knutsford Boulevard was the Jonkanoo Lounge in what used to be the multistorey Sheraton Hotel. One Wednesday night, I was travelling solo as I walked into the club. A very famous dance troupe was performing. The bamboo dance, limbo, fire eating. The usual stuff normally seen in resort circles on the north coast.

I was 26 years old and with energy flowing through me like bolts of lightning. I was very taken up with the performance, the mento music, the drumming, and by no means least, the beautiful girls. At the end of the performance, I invited the troupe over and offered everyone drinks. After they left, a particularly sultry dancer decided, with little complaint from me, that it was ok for her to sit next to me and claim me as her companion. She told me that one of the girls in the troupe was recently married and the reception was being held in a suite rented by the owner of the dance troupe - that very night - and I was invited.

I was not prepared for what greeted me as I stepped through the door and into the spacious hotel suite. Ganja smoke, clouds of it. Then the shocker. Two male dancers by a balcony alternating between smoking weed and deep kissing each other. Huge throw-pillows, two girls on them kissing, touching. Many people dancing, most of the same sex.

I paused just inside the suite and told ‘my girl’ that I was leaving. “Why?” she said. “You look like an intelligent man. No one will be forcing you to do anything that you don’t want to.” Then she said something, the words of which I have never forgotten. “Come and take a look at the other side.” She led me to a seat, gave me a spliff, and called over the leader of the well-known dance troupe for introductions. I waved away the spliff. Didn’t know what else might be in it.

The troupe leader sat beside me, and in 10 minutes, it seemed that he had told me his life story. Then the shocker for the night. “I don’t grow facial hair and I am a real, real God-bless hermaphrodite. Two small sexual organs. And if you want, I will show you. Straight guys like you always get a kick out of it.”

I told him that I trusted him at his word. My lady came back from chatting with friends, cut a piece of cake from a chocolate cake on a stand and handed it to me. “The rooms at the very top of this hotel have a beautiful view of the city lights. If you rent one and I come with you, I can show you even more beautiful sights.” I glanced at my watch. It was close to 2 am. As I left, she said, “And just in case you’re wondering, I am bisexual.”

CONFUSION AND HATE

Many adults over time allow themselves to grow in new knowledge. The views I held on homosexuality as a teen were driven by the sexual mores of the times. Hostility and hate. ‘Dem man deh fi dead!’ And much of that was generated by our graphic understanding of what we saw as nasty acts. A lot of it, though, was baked into religion.

Just as how many black people in 1950s Jamaica saw the Bible as teaching the inferiority of the black skin as something cursed, people having same-sex relations was often mentioned in the same light as the worst of all human debaucheries coming out of the wickedness and sexual sickness of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Much of the confusion over the very basics of sexuality is alive and well at street level in Jamaica. Our people are woefully ignorant in understanding the full spectrum of sexuality. Try and explain that, and the typical response is, “A eediat business dat.”

But the most crucial misunderstanding operates where many of our people describe one’s sexual predisposition as a lifestyle. Which, of course, dwells on the assumption that we probably have a switch that we can toggle and freely choose to live in a sexual multiverse. I’m here. Lights off I’m over there.

I have also found that in families where youngsters who go through a mountain of mental stress because the sexual urges are not matching up with the gender they look like, whenever they break out of the closet, the parents who despise them the most are usually those who are the biggest evangelisers and church goers.

I did a little experiment in a few bars a few weeks ago. First, I led off by suggesting that Jamaican men knew quite a lot about human sexuality. A lot of heads were bobbing in agreement with me although I was spouting crap. Then I said that many families have a relative, near to or far from their direct family, who is gay or lesbian. The place would usually grow quiet at first until one brave soul giggles at first and then laughs. “Mi can’t swear but me did have one cousin a one cousin and every time way back when, dem always a sey him want sex-off him fren dem.”

Then slowly, many come around. With all of that in Jamaica many of our people sincerely believe that who one is sexually is a lifestyle therefore all one has to do is toggle that switch and come back home to normality. We still have far to go.

SSL ANSWERS

One certain way that much of the speculation over the collapse of SSL and especially the methods employed to purloin US$12 million of monies supposedly held in safe interest bearing instruments for him and others is to get interest in a commission of enquiry.

I will say this as if I am trying to occupy both worlds where I want an enquiry and I don’t trust many of the findings of past enquiries held. This time around, although I know that evil men and women still live inside the coats of sheep while baying at the moon as the wolves they really are, I am holding out the hope that with a living icon such as the Hon. Usain Bolt involved, such people can be shamed into spilling the truth.

Step-by-step operations must be tracked and backtracked. The many sidetracks must be explored. The very investors themselves must be placed at points of prominence in the enquiry. The FSC sending in a special auditor is a laughing moment.

Pressure must be stepped up to generate the critical mass needed. And of course, it suits the JLP Government’s fiscal responsibility stance to uncover just how the rot began and at which stages certain ‘actions’ were performed. And who were the producers, the directors, and those in the starring roles.

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.