(DeFarra "Dean" Gaymon; if America were less dull and unimaginative, he would be alive today)
The American idea of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American idea of masculinity. Idea may not be the precise word, for the idea of one's sexuality can only with great violence be divorced or distanced from the idea of the self. – James Baldwin
While cruising a Newark, N.J. park for gay sex, DeFarra Gaymon was killed by an undercover police officer who claims Gaymon posed an imminent threat.
The irony in Mr. Gaymon's name is inescapable.
Judging from the photograph above, the name was simply the icing on a very obvious cake. Yet, he was married with four children. It makes perfect sense to me.
He could have been bisexual or had some sort of arrangement with his wife; but somehow, I doubt it. More likely, the successful CEO simply knew the score: America demands the heterosexuality of its citizenry and one must exhibit that quality no matter how peculiar, inauthentic, self-deceptive or self-destructive.
Like every other vice in America, the hetero-coercion manifests itself tenfold in the black community--as does the mania to accommodate it. And perhaps--if the undercover officer's story is true--it was that mania, that pathological need to be perceived as a "man" in the eyes of his tribe, that desire to not "disappoint," that drove Mr. Gaymon, at the risk of life and limb, to attack someone he seemingly knew to be a police officer, someone he apparently knew was armed, someone he knew--since he lived in America--would, if even slightly provoked, shoot first and ask questions later.
I imagine that the thought of his sexuality being exposed was probably, for him, a fate worse than death. And so he retreated from the officer, believing, possibly, that he was also retreating from the threat of exposure.
And maybe when he determined that he could no longer run, that he had no other place to hide, he did what patriarchal masculinity foolishly leads men to do when faced with the inevitable: charge headlong into the fray.
Or fall on their swords.
A member of Gaymon's family said: “We know that the police killed an innocent man, with no history of or disposition towards violence.”
But they might not know how they contributed to the (alleged) destruction of his innocence that evening with their invisible, omnipresent expectations, judgmental eyes and objurgate tongues; they couldn't know. Because it's likely that they--like everyone else I suppose--view the world through a very narrow and distorted lens. It could be that their particular vision is, to them, all that there was, all that there is, all that there will ever be and, most importantly, all that there ever should be--a vision that Gaymon willingly sacrificed himself for.
Or it could just be that it was Tuesday and the police officer felt like killing a nigger/faggot.
Both scenarios are equally plausible. This is America, after all.
Someone always has to pay the price of the ticket.