Dana wanted to put this group at the forefront, and while I had misgivings, I trusted her (and again, nothing else was happening, at least at the same pace). I never lost my trust in her, but it didn’t take long to realize this was a collaborative effort in which not every collaborator shared a singular vision. When I went to a production office in order to shoot material for a reel, I noticed a whiteboard in front of me. It had the show name, a list of all the cast members, and some type of storyboard set for this scene they wanted to shoot for the pilot.
The scene in question curiously had my name in it, and below that was some note that referred to me having a disagreement with a person I had never met in my life. I know reality TV producers like to pit people against each other and stage settings to try and coerce real conflict out of people—so that folks like me will tweet about it—but damn. Could I meet somebody first before I was given too much alcohol to help me cuss them out better? Why was I already fighting people, anyway? Did I look angry? Was it the resting bitch face men—gay and progressive heterosexual alike—allegedly said I had?
Dana wasn’t there when I saw this, so I never faulted her for it. Besides, I was familiar with the production company that was her partner. “Let Them Hoes Fight” isn’t just an unreleased song with Trina and Lady Gaga, but a solid business model for that crew, so I figured this was their doing. Unsurprisingly, by the time I made it to their offices, most of the people originally attached to the project had fled.
I should have joined them, but I stuck around and ended up in that conference room for a meeting that felt like a Tyler Perry play got together with a hood lit novel written through a queer lens to troll me in front of white folks. It was such an interesting group of people assembled. I’m using interesting to be less of a bitch. That’s actually why I invoked Shereé: Thanks to the gift that is self-awareness, I knew I wouldn’t be a gossip like her, but I would more than offer an abundance of shade and free reads in my confessionals, with similar delivery.
I was certainly doing as much as I surveyed the conference room.
There was the stylist to stars I’d never heard of, practically tripping over himself to inform these television executives about the closeted married man whose dick he often sucked. He was definitely the kind of person who pulled out printed text messages at group gatherings.
There was the publicist to actual celebrities, a very nice man who appeared very much ready for his own moment. That was not a bad thing. I had seen him on television before.
There was the gay rapper who broke into a freestyle that had him sounding like vintage Lil’ Kim, only if vintage Lil’ Kim were simultaneously having an orgasm and a panic attack. I agreed with him that sodomy was totes lit, but if you’re a rapper, you should at least try to make your musings on the subject rhyme. Then again, a lot of rappers born in the 1990s need Google Maps to direct them to the beat, so what do I know?
At the very end of the table was the handsome older man who had too great a résumé to even be in the room, which put him at odds with the rest of the cast. I think he filled the “daddy” role, and yes, I’m choking on my own vomit for writing that in a sentence.
Keeping with the theme of folks who didn’t belong in this room, there was also me, sitting at the very end of the table, perplexed and vexed at what I was bearing witness to. I think my role on this would-be show was to be the “young” and “smart” one who had come to New York City to pursue his dreams of not dying a broke bitch in a fledgling industry with gross wage stagnation, wild uncertainty, and a bunch of people running what was left of it into the ground. I suppose I was Colored Carrie Bradshaw, post-recession.
The lead TV exec was a genial older white gay man who appeared to relish everything that was happening. Before we all did our introductions, he started with his. He shared that he was aiming to use this project as some kind of mission. As he explained to us, he hoped the show would cast light on the purported rampant homophobia in the Black community, as evidenced by the reactions his boyfriend’s Jamaican family had had toward their lil’ salt-n-pepa union.
No, you did not say that, white man.
When I did my introduction, I very southernly went, “My name is Michael Arceneaux, and respectfully, a lot of what I write about is against everything you just said about Black people.” I was respectful in explaining why making Black folks the bogeymen of homophobia was inaccurate for a litany of reasons, backed up with readily available data. I later found out that this feedback was appreciated, but at the time, I couldn’t wait to get out of that room. All of them surely noticed this.
I was never excited about doing a reality show, but like many people who are craving opportunities and have fears of dying in poverty, I considered the reality that there are only so many options for burgeoning gay Black male media personalities, so it behooved me to at least consider the “platform.” But as much as I wanted an opportunity to be on camera, I wasn’t thirsty for just any opportunity. Certainly not one that appeared likelier to result in me turning into an example of one of the very essay topics I routinely covered—tropes about gay Black men.
With that lingering uneasiness now for sure not going away, I turned for guidance to someone who knew a thing or two about big career transitions. Or someone I figured, better yet, would confirm my suspicions and lovingly guide me back to my original path. She was someone who had left her corporate career behind and gradually become the television personality she aimed to be. But she had specifically not turned to reality television in order to do so, and she did not mince words about finding it to be a foolish path for me to follow.
She was as always, fun, but when it came to broaching this subject, curt out of concern.
Name someone from reality television who successfully transitioned out of reality television into some of the more serious interests you’ve previously told me about.
Actually, just name someone out of the world of reality TV period that managed to transition out.
Bethenny Frankel.
Bethenny Frankel. You niggas always say Bethenny Frankel. You are not no fucking Bethenny Frankel.
Mind you, this was before Bethenny Frankel’s talk show was canceled and she took her Skinny Girl Margarita–slinging ass back to The Real Housewives of New York (thank you, Bethenny). Either way, no, I was not no fucking Bethenny Frankel.
What are you going to do? Talk about how you were afraid to have sex because you didn’t want to die of AIDS for $1500 an episode? That’s what you think is going to make your career?
Sometimes love comes from a dragging. I was being lovingly scolded and I appreciated every second of it. It was like the angel on one side of my body flying over to stab the demonic thing on the other side.
As much as I’d like to say it was her compliments about my intelligence, talent, and potential that finally steered me away from charting a new path as Shereé-Whitfield-if-she-tried-harder, I was mostly stuck on the fact that she was right about me potentially showing my whole ass for pennies on the dollar. If I was going to allow a production crew the right to chop and screw my image into one of their making, I should definitely be making Equinox money. Fifteen hundred dollars an episode didn’t feel like that when you factored in New York, everything else, plus my student loans. (And I wasn’t sure that if this shit really happened I’d even be earning that much.) This network was cute, but like Burlington Coat Factory in a white neighborhood, it might have yielded a few cute items, but it was still all discounted and slightly irregular, beloved. Publishing money ranged as low as sneaking into Planet Fitness because you wanted some of that free pizza that’s been sitting out there the whole damn day.
I later found out that following the meeting, the network folks said they liked my personality but wanted to know more of my “story.” That just meant I hadn’t told them enough mess to exploit. Forgive me for not having grabbed fidelity by the dick and sucked it, even though I knew it was married, because I hoped to one day rap about it in front of a white li
beral. Clearly, I didn’t feel like channeling my inner E. Lynn Harris novel, so I left it alone.
Some time after that, I was told that the direction of the show was changing.
Instead of being focused on the lives and careers of gay Black men, it would be about gay men and their besties. Even better, the besties were actually now the focus of the series; the gay friends were relegated back to sidekick status. The whole point of the show had been to do something atypical for television, so of course television executives rushed to stop that from happening. It never made it to air. And that was just as well because I had already run free from it.
In the end, I’m glad that didn’t work out. I got approached for another reality project a little over a year later. I can’t recall their official log line, but I got The Real Homosexuals of Cardi B’s Internet teases. No thank you.
My attitude about gay Black men’s participation in the genre—how it should look, how it should not look—has changed since that ordeal. While I want to help diversify the images of queer Black men in mass media, much like the images of Black people more broadly, it’s important that we see variety—because we are varied people. Entertainment does not necessarily have to enlighten. In other words, I need to be mindful of what is presented before me and challenge gross distortions when necessary, but you know, watching a bunch of gay Black folks acting a fool on a reality show is fine.
In the same way I realize pristine images of Black people will not automatically make the ignorant less intolerant, I know that the same can be said of queer Black folks. I don’t want the support of those who generalize.
Also, Moonlight happened, and a few months after it won Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards, a digital series about a group of Black LGBTQ folk living in Atlanta premiered on YouTube.
Chasing Atlanta is a show following a gaggle of gay Black men pursuing their dreams in the big city. Most of the men who make up the original cast are out of their damn minds. I have never met someone who purposely introduced themselves as a “socialite” without being sarcastic, but thanks to this show, I am reminded that the folks on Instagram who list themselves as “socialites” in their bios truly mean that shit. It’s so embarrassing but, with a camera crew, enticing.
By natural order, the other jobs listed (both real and imagined) included the usual suspects who wanted nothing more than to be famous. A chef. A model. An actor. A designer. A choreographer. An artist. I’m surprised there wasn’t an artist who used to model but planned to perform for a while before taking on acting full-time, then retiring and releasing a cookbook.
Having said that, I am a gay dude that writes for a living, so who am I to judge anyone else for being a cliché?
But even as it sounds like I’m reading them—okay, I kind of am, but hear me out—I am also exalting them because they give me jubilee. They act just like every other batshit crazy person I enjoy on reality television—but they happen to be men whom I might spot in an Atlanta club on a Saturday night after I was given an edible and promised that I could pregame at Pappadeaux. That makes it special.
Chasing Atlanta is a Bravo show with a public access budget. Does that make it WeTV? Please advise.
When I say smaller budget, I mean on its series premiere, the cast meets up in a hotel room that viewers strongly believe is at an area Howard Johnson. There is nothing wrong with booking a room at a Howard Johnson, but Bravo should be able to do better. The same with the cast going on a camping trip at what kind of looks like a rest stop along the interstate. When they are making s’mores, it looks like it was filmed with an iPhone 7.
All of this is what makes the show all the more impressive to me. Yes, the show isn’t working with a big budget, but the production on it deserves kudos all the same. Their music supervisor is on point. As is the graphics person. Round of applause to their MacBooks for doing the most with what they were given.
The biggest applause, though, goes to the cast for being so entertaining. They all remind me of gay Black men I have seen across the South. They even argue about the same kind of dumb shit, too.
On season one of the show, Jaylon is beefing with Devon over the fact that Jaylon feels Devon doesn’t look like his picture on one of the apps. Seriously, that is their beef for the entire season. Petty as it sounds, people do drag those who look like their face was run through seven and a half filters and a gas station car wash.
Jaylon is in a deep committed relationship with the word “boss.” I have never heard someone say “boss” so many times in my life as I have by this person on this show. As noted, I’m Black, so that means something. The rest of them will tell you that they are all bosses, too. Not as much as Jaylon, but still. If you told them that they couldn’t say “boss” for a month, the show would be a silent film. In future seasons, the cast diversifies to include trans women, and the arguments become more inclusive as well—introducing new participants like stun guns. I do not endorse violence, but I can appreciate an emphasis on realism.
There is now a spinoff, Chasing Dallas. As a native Houstonian, I have an inherent anti-Dallas bias, but with age comes grace, so please let the record show that I think it’s cute for something that takes place . . . in Dallas.
Someone on the show introduces himself as “a socialite, fashionista, and everybody knows my name.” I don’t know him. One guy is a “stylist to the elite.” Heard it all before, Little Miss Sunshine Anderson. Another guy is a makeup artist, or as he puts it, “the RuPaul of faces.” I’ll never know what that means, but if nothing else, it got me to pause and think about it for a few seconds.
Another guy is a trainer who specifically gets folks to have small waists and fat asses. As legend has it, his man told him he got too big, so he got IG fine. That man is apparently now gone. Men ain’t shit, but his ass is quite nice. Salute to the cheeks shaped by shame but now sitting high in self-confidence.
Another cast member is married but doesn’t want that to stop anyone from sliding into his DMs. It’s fascinating to know of a young Black gay married couple (although the husband does not appear), but what is most intriguing is the manner in which this cast member confidently explains their lifestyle and how it works for them.
The following are some notable quotables from Chasing Dallas:
“Since he don’t have any furniture in his apartment.”
“Where is your platform?”
“Do I give fish?”
“I was giving Beychella realness.”
“We apologize for the audio in this scene.”
They don’t say “boss” as much as in their inaugural season. They are more “secure the bag” homos. On one episode, in noting the apparent rift between the gay and straight communities, a cast member hosts a “unifying event” featuring Hennessy and fried chicken. I might have gone if invited. Chasing Dallas does offer a scant amount of seriousness—specifically one cast member revealing that he is dealing with a meth addiction before leaving the show to deal with it.
Altogether, the show has generated hundreds of thousands of views, which should be applauded but begs the question: Why aren’t these folks and all their ridiculousness on my TV yet? Why are they still only on the internet and YouTube?
If I can hear straight cisgender white men use “shade” on morning news stations and, well, Black women unleash a flurry of our jargon on numerous reality shows, why can’t I see the people who reflect the community that created it all cashing in, too? I should be able to see this chicken fried steak with steak sauce soap opera starring Black queer fame chasers.
The rebooted Queer Eye is genuinely lovely and I appreciate how it makes viewers—notably those who don’t interact with my kind—feel, but that’s not enough for those who don’t necessarily need to be enlightened while being entertained. I don’t want to see just fairy god queers who can extend to Trump supporters the humanity their votes deprive the most vulnerable of. I want to see mess, too.
Did I want to be on a show like this a few years back? No.
Would I do it now? Fuck no. But would I host their reunions? Absolutely.
I’m sorry for my previous insult, WeTV. Can you put them on?
Yes, I can see it on YouTube every week, but they deserve more. I doubt they even get $1500 an episode for sharing so much of themselves. They probably get club bookings to compensate, the way other reality stars do, but that, too, feels imbalanced because queer clubs aren’t working with the same level of capital. How could they? Most of us are not getting paid the kind of compensation that reflects our work.
I’ve learned this lesson over and over again throughout my life, but the reminder I got navigating this experience will forever be hard to top. My brief flirtation with reality television was borne out of frustration, and in hindsight, mild desperation, but it didn’t take long for me to recognize this wasn’t the best move for me to make. I strongly believe that if I’m going to throw a plate of fried crab dumplings at a coworker, and maybe right after the table it was placed on, and embarrass myself, it should come with a nice check. I can enjoy other people making a mess of themselves, though, and if you’re out there leasing your likeness to television producers for your come up and your entertainment value to us, thank you for your services.
And I hope you are being properly compensated.
QUIT PLAYING ON MY PHONE
The calls typically come as early as 7 a.m. EST and as late as 9 p.m. EST. Occasionally, though, they may give me a ring a little later than that—or too damn early. I will never forget being in Houston for the holidays and my phone going off a little after 6 a.m. I remember this so well because it took place on Christmas Eve, a day people of more elevated sensibilities would conclude is better served leaving people be. Even if the person calling doesn’t go up for Jesus’s b-day, and capitalism’s wildest orgy, ’tis the season to chill out on matters such as these. Or so I would like to think.
She sounded so cheery on the phone. Who calls someone to harass them about late student loan payments with such a disposition that early in the day on the cusp of the biggest holiday of the year? We’re about to celebrate the birthday of Jesus! You don’t remind people of their debts until at least the third day of Kwanzaa. She must have been a sociopath on her third cup of coffee.
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