September 21, 2007 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 9

eveningsout

Real life on the down low

Four Clevelanders share their stories in Abigail Child's second DL film

by Anthony Glassman

Much has been said about the "down low" phenomenon, first brought to light in On the Down Low by J.L. King.

He wrote a sordid volume three years ago about black men, ostensibly straight, who crept around behind their girlfriends' or wives' backs to sleep with other men.

Oprah had him on her show, and the DL hysteria was in high gear. Keith Boykin countered King's

book with one of his own, Beyond the Down Low, which refutes much of the earlier tome's claims and says it is not a new phenomenon, nor one exclusive to the black community.

A year before King's book came out, experimental filmmaker Abigail Child began coming to Cleveland and filming interviews with men "on the DL." That became her short film The Party.

Child felt there was

The black church is sometimes infamous for its pastors going on fire-breathing tirades about homosexuality while ignoring the deacon who is still a bachelor and the choir director who lives with his "friend."

And, as one of the men points out to a friend of his in the film, they already have a strike against them in today's society as black men. Being an openly gay or bisexual black man is not for the faint of heart.

Child's documentary has more in comABIGAIL CHILDS

Kerwin tells his friend Robin about his bisexuality in Abigail Child's On the Downlow.

more to tell, and once she received funding, she came back for much of 2005. She focused her cameras' attention on four men: Antonio, who spent seven years in jail and is dating recent high school graduate women, drag queens

two dates who longs to

men;

and tell his parents about his sexual proclivities; and Billy, who worries that if he stopped having sex with men, he could get custody of his kids.

Child used these interviews to create On the Downlow, a documentary making its Ohio theatrical debut at the Cleveland Institute of Art's Cinematheque on Sunday, September 22 at 9:15 pm. The filmmaker will be on hand to discuss her work with the audience.

Some may recognize the documentary, as it has been shown on Logo's Real Momentum series. But seeing it larger-than-life in the theater, along with the director and some of the men she followed that year, will add a depth of insight not readily available by simply watching it on TV. The men will also update the audience on what has happened since the cameras stopped rolling.

"This film began with my interest in bisexuality and the sense that 'down low' men are the 21st century version of this phenomenon," Child says. This is also her film's take on the subject, so different from King's.

There are no perpetrators and victims in the film, unlike in the mass market's Law and Order: Special Victims Unit view. Nobody is screaming that these men are responsible for the high rates of HIV infection among African American women, with all that passion but no hard data to back up their claims.

Child's film shows men who, while not necessarily conflicted about their sexual orientation, fear familial, institutional or societal repercussions for revealing the truth.

mon with Boykin's work than with that of King, who is only too happy to reveal the viper in one's bosom. King almost gleefully reveals his own sordid past, casting his own experiences as universal.

However, Boykin points out that living a double life has existed since the beginning of time, and framing it as a black American thing does a disservice to the reality behind it.

Child continues in that vein, painting Cleveland's DL scene as a millennial reconstruction of bisexuality, perhaps as a framework for creating a comfort zone in which these men have the ability to come out to more and more people without necessarily having the baggage of the terms “gay” and "bisexual."

They are all on their own paths, like anyone else, and at the end of the film, some audience members may begin to wonder what the DL is, whether it exists at all. These men seem far more like any other gay or bisexual man, simply choosing to whom they come out.

This is not J.L. King's sordid world of secret one-night stands, a world he falsely cast as a black phenomenon, despite the prevalence of married white men at truck stop tearooms and behind glory holes.

This is a world of complex young men, many wise beyond their years because of the difficulties growing up in the inner city. This is life, on the down low.

On the Downlow will be screened at 9:15 pm at the Cleveland Institute of Art's Cinematheque on Sunday, September 22. The Cinematheque is located at 11141 East Boulevard in University Circle. Tickets are $8, $5 for CIA students and staff and Cinematheque members. Abigail Child and some of the men in the film will speak after the screening. For more information, call 216-421-7450 or go to www.cia.edu/ cinematheque.

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