It’s been almost a year since I covered a little show about the New York City ballroom scene and how gay black boys can finally see themselves in love & lust on screen.
Since then, fans and critics have been giving Pose 10s across the board. Billy Porter, who plays the hell out of emcee Pray Tell, became the first-ever out-gay black actor nominated for a Best Actor Emmy. Plus, the show has already been renewed for a third season. This is great news for the representation queer black boys so desperately need.
If you’re watching this season, you know Ricky (Dyllon Burnside) and Damon (Ryan Jamaal Swain) are no longer dating, but Pose is still bringing us gay black love and in a way that’s never been seen before.
This week, Ricky and Pray Tell made television history showing us two black, queer, HIV positive men getting it on. Before the opening credits even rolled our screens were filled with their beautiful bodies thrusting and caressing and embracing, ending with a shot of Burnside’s backside. When we look back at television and entertainment in the 2010s this is scene is going to be seminal, in more than one way.
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Major props to Pose for showing an older man desirable and sexy, and comfortable enough in his own skin to date a younger dude, who likes older ones.
“I have spent my entire career never having been an object of anyone’s affection in anything — until now,” Porter pointed out in a recent interview on the Television Critics Association press tour. “To be turning 50 on September 21, and having a very loving, connected sex scene is sort of blowing my mind.”
Once my mind was blown and my jaw lifted off the floor, I got a little misty. It was that powerful a moment for a gay black man like me, and thousands just like me, who have never witnessed such a show of affection on the screen until then.
And did you see them flip fuck and Ricky ask to bottom without any hesitation or shame? Here for it. In the episode prior to this one, Pray Tell scolded Ricky about bottom shaming. He’s clearly taking Pray’s lessons to heart. And by the way, how incredible was it to see Pray and Ricky all nuzzled up afterwards? In today’s world of in and out (pun intended), I was moved by the intimacy and vulnerability these two characters shared—especially as two black men.
As Porter also mentioned in interviews this week, gay men weren’t always sexualized in media, but when queer romantic storylines finally began showing up, the characters sure didn’t look like Ricky or Damon or Pray.
“They were always white boys,” Porter said.
Co-executive producer Janet Mock added, “It’s revelatory to see these men together, sharing their bodies…we’ve never seen that in mainstream culture.”
The first gay movie I ever watched, The Broken Hearts Club (to honor that wonderful film, I’ve named this column after it), starred Porter whose lover does him wrong and we never even see him on screen.
Related: Why the black gay love story on Pose is such a big deal
So, there I was a young, black, horny teen left to see himself in a sad (although fabulous) Porter for most of the film and lust after white boys Andrew Keegan, Dean Cain, and Timothy Olyphant who had on-screen romances and kisses. (Not that there’s anything wrong with lusting after white gay boys.)
Somewhere, there’s a young black kid watching Damon, Ricky, and Pray Tell (or is finding screengrabs on celebrity nudity message boards) seeing himself not reduced to just his dick for the exploration and experimentation of non-black dudes, but as desirable, attractive, sexy and worthy of love—even if he is positive.
Maybe, just maybe, he won’t have to hop from bed to back room to alley trading sex for validation—unless, of course, that’s what his heart desires.
ConnorBryant1658
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Kangol2
Don’t forget Noah’s Arc, which depicted and celebrated multiple Black gay and Blatino couples, including a storyline with a poz man, and also was probably the first show–in the movie that followed–that depicted a Black gay wedding.
I know people hate Empire or more specifically Jussie Sm0llett, but Empire also featured Sm0llett’s character in multiple relationships with other Black men–and a Latinx guy–and also featured not only a wedding proposal involving a poz man, but I believe the first Black gay male wedding shown on a primetime TV series.
Lastly, given that Pose is set in the late 80s and early 90s, the s3x should be depicted as cond0med because despite AZT, many poz gay men were still getting very ill and passing away, especially right up to about 1994-95, when a stronger anti-retroviral c0cktail appeared. It was very, very different from today, an era far great knowledge about HIV/AIDS, PrEP, etc. That said, Billy Porter and his co-stars on Pose deserve a lot of praise for their excellent work.
Gay Veteran
The real story is how the sex was depicted, it was as graphic as any sex scene I’ve seen on this type of cable network. None of the shows you mentioned came close to the opening of last weeks episode. BTW: I still love Jussie Smollett.
TinoTurner
Or they could have just kept a romance between two young people or they could have given Billy’s character a boyfriend his own age. Keep perpetuating weird stereotypes for the heteros…
Gay Veteran
Good thing you don’t write for the show. lol
Gay Veteran
This is the coverage this scene and show deserves. I feel like gay media(and viewers) has spent all this time asking for gay inclusion and we’re finally getting it… but the coverage isn’t there. As a disclaimer, I’ll admit that the problem could be that the actors aren’t verbally coming out but just a quick glance we have gay/queer actors working on On My Block, Pose, 13RW, HTGAWM, Euphoria,and Glow… and that’s just naming a few. The coverage just doesn’t seem to be there. It’s either the same buff white gay actor or a straight actor who’s not even an ally. We’re in this good place in terms of gay representation and it seems gay media is letting it pass by.