On failure, patience, and process
Wandering in the desert, hoping it will rain.
Today has been a day where I feel like a failure. I’m so frustrated by how long this project has been taking me to complete. I hate that it’s ongoing. I hate that time is something I have no control over and must accept. I have constantly felt in my career and in my life that I have been dealt enormous setbacks that I constantly have to strive to overcome. Some of it is self-induced. Some of it is just the reality of dealing with large-scale oppression as a Black transgender man in the world. I hate it all.
I started doing this project in 2016 when I was a masters student at the London School of Economics. My life was totally different back then. I was 27. I felt like I had so much time ahead of me. I was at the beginning of my transition, changed my pronouns from she/her to he/him and would start testosterone a year later. I wasn’t sure how to approach my project on ballroom history and I felt like I was shooting in the dark with little to no support. After collecting 9 interviews and writing a masters thesis on how the geography of New York City affected the history and evolution of the ballroom scene, I parlayed that into a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in their Africana Studies Department.
I thought I’d be safe there because I knew a number of the professors from my undergrad experience at Penn. I was looking for safety because I was at the beginning of my transition, a very tender place to be, and instead, I was met with enormous violence and hate. I dealt with transphobic vitriol from students and faculty. Semi-closeted queer second year students hated me because I was smarter and worldlier than they were, upending their hierarchical belief in superiority because they were a year ahead of me. I had professors in my department say transphobic things behind my back. Many of them made me deeply uncomfortable in their classrooms and offices. It was very clear that Penn wasn’t a safe place to be.
It was devastating because it’s where I spent my undergrad and I felt very much seen and heard in this place, especially in that department when I was an undergrad. In the PhD there, I learned very quickly that for some Black people as was the case in the academy, their transphobia was a result of ignorance and respectability politics. The longer I am into my transition, the more I have become aware that other people’s discomfort around my gender identity has little to nothing to do with me and everything to do with their own discomfort about themselves. I didn’t want to hang around Penn’s campus to be a mirror to other people’s unresolved issues around their gender or sexual identities. I also knew I didn’t care for the academy and wanted to make my work for a broader audience in television and film.
After a year in the program and after I got top surgery in the winter, I got real with myself and left the program to pursue my research and work on ballroom culture in entertainment, which was where I actually wanted to be, but was too afraid to go. I didn’t know anyone in Hollywood and I had no idea how to get there. I took informational interview meetings with Penn alumni and anyone who would talk to me who was related to the business to try to get a handle on how to make it what looked like an impossible industry to penetrate. During the spring of my second semester at Penn, I made up my mind to leave that Ivy League hellhole, move to New York City, and figure out how I could continue doing my work.
I achieved some success in New York with an article I wrote about “realness” for The New York Times. I was trying to get my work made into a book and had gotten a note from an editor to write articles as a way to raise my profile on the topic. Great. I wrote the piece after talking to Jenna Wortham, who was at The New York Times. The piece went viral and landed me in a writers room as a producer on Legendary on HBOMax. I did that show for two seasons, dealt with enormous transphobia and bullshit from the showrunners on Season 1 and 2, Scout Productions, the production company that did the show, Dashaun Wesley, the TV show’s host as well as Jack Mizrahi, my writing partner, whose career I supported through giving him access to my lawyer. Jack wouldn’t have gotten his credit as a Co-EP if it wasn’t for my lobbying for credits for us behind the scenes. Scout Productions refused to acknowledge my work as instrumental to the show and instead of giving me a Co-EP credit for both seasons in which Jack and I did the same amount of work and I even did more as I was in charge of the script, I was lowballed and only given a producer credit for season 1 and a Co-EP credit for season 2. As thanks for my effort, Jack spent the overwhelming majority of our time on the show trying to sabotage me and take credit for my work. I learned my lesson and learned boundaries around being “kind” to people who don’t deserve it. Don’t extend kindness to narcissists, they will only use it to try to undermine you.
After that nightmare, I got on two TV shows as a writer, The Vanishing Half on HBO and Tom Swift on the CW and I got into the guild. On both shows I dealt with even MORE transphobia and toxicity. Endless harassment from the Cameron Johnson, the creator of the show on Tom Swift, as well as a concerted campaign to discredit and disparage me from Cameron and the showrunner, Melinda Hsu. On HBO I dealt with obnoxious statements from the now deceased showrunner on The Vanishing Half, Aziza Barnes. After coming off of Tom Swift, I got to work in putting together my book proposal for the book on ballroom culture I wanted to write. It felt like the consolation prize after having to battle so many dragons and having to deal with so much discrimination and hate. I thought that this would be my time to finally receive some kind of karmic blessing to take my work to the top and so I could finally be seen and heard with the message and intent that I had.
I sold my book at auction for an enormous sum. I worked my ass off with my literary agent at the time while I was dealing with all the transphobic bullshit on Tom Swift, hoping that my hard work would pay off. I was happy to see in that moment it did. I sold my book to Sugar23 and Crown, thinking this would be a great combo to finally do the multimedia work on ballroom culture I wanted to do — podcast, docuseries, scripted series, etc. Instead, I was met with endless enormous setbacks. Not only did I have to endure hateful feedback about my worthiness of being able to do historical work on ballroom from my own community, but I had an absent and indifferent editor, who refused to give me notes. After I spent a year of feeling lost and demoralized as a writer, my editor realized that she was approaching me in the wrong way as a writer by giving me the wrong advice. Really? After a year? Thanks so much for thinking about me while my industry was crumbling, giving me nowhere to turn for financial support.
I turned down moneymaking opportunities like working on a TV show as a writer in order to “focus” on the book as per my literary agent’s advice. And what awful advice that was! What great timing for me to turn down money before the worst writer’s strike in television history, when all TV and film would be on pause indefinitely. I was struggling for money as I have to independently support myself because I don’t come from wealth, I have no familial support and I don’t have a partner or a sugar daddy supporting me . Everything I have ever done in my life has been through intense level of rigor, discipline, grit and determination I have had to muster to exist in this world. It has always been a backbreaking exercise that means me daring to be compete and be in the world at the highest level, whether it’s academia, journalism, Hollywood or ballroom. I am more than often “the first” or “the only” in a room because of my identity. And it’s insanely exhausting to have to constantly pay the price for that with a smorgasbord of bullshit that most people never have to deal with — transphobia, racism, sexism, misogyny, misandry, the list goes on.
Last year I lost my book deal after conflicts with my literary agent and my editor. I did the thing you’re not supposed to do and I lost it in an email to both. After a Zoom call to try and salvage the relationship with my absent editor where I was belittled and berated, I just had had enough. I had no support in my work. I was constantly put down by my editor, a white, cis, straight woman who had no understanding of how hard it is to be someone like me, who has had to do so many things on my own. I’m like so many writers and creatives in Hollywood who is barely making ends meet and worrying about how bills are going to get paid. I’m like so many Americans who look at their credit card bills with worry and fear every day. I tried my hardest my entire life to never be in the position that I’m in and yet the ides of fate have it that my life has to get so much worse before I can even imagine it getting any better.
This project has been going on for 9 years now and while I have made enormous progress and have had enormous insights, massive breakthroughs, tons of healing, endless moments of transformation, I’m fucking tired. I’m so tired of having to work so hard. I’m so tired of having to continue to do this project. I’m tired of feeling like there is no end to this. I’m sick of feeling miserable. I’m sick of feeling hopeless. People always say to enjoy the journey and I seriously can’t imagine a more ridiculous statement. I hate the journey. Fuck the journey! Some of us just want the destination because at least there we can be safe. At least there we can have money and emotional support and guidance and shelter. At least there we can end our endless suffering and just be DONE. Some of us just want to be done with it all.
I told my therapist this past year that I was just sick of being here and we created a “safety plan” for me to not take my own life. That’s how bad it got. I was just so fucking sick of having to wade through this endless sea of shit. It was a turning point in my journey that prompted me to get a new therapist and start doing EMDR. Wanting to take my own life really called in my closest friends and chosen family for support and care. It was a reminder for me to keep going and that my journey wasn’t done yet.
I feel like I’ve had to deal with so many of life’s ups and downs and it is just so fucking exhausting to do this work! I didn’t even mention the endless existential crisis of the government attacking my very existence as we speak. I am grateful for the love and support of friends and chosen family that I have. It has been my greatest saving grace. But, I’m also just so fucking tired of having to constantly save myself every single fucking time. I’m grateful for the healing I’ve done that has shown me that I’m not alone. There is always the universe, god, the ancestors, some higher power that has my back. But, still. It’s hard to keep reminding myself to “keep going.” I do believe that better things are on the other side of this and breakdowns only lead to breakthroughs.
Considering the number of setbacks, hateful attacks, betrayals, disappointments, delays, and just endless oppression, I have to ask the universe when the lessons will lighten. I’m one who never complains. At least not publicly. I’m the one who just diligently does the work. It’s the life of an overachiever. We just focus on the goal. It’s just so fucking tiring, though. I know I’m not the only one, either. Every creative is trying to get their voice out there and have it be heard. It just feels like it’s taking so fucking long. Like Moses in the desert. I guess I’m strapped in for another 31 years. If anyone has some advice for those of us who are stuck in a sandpit of suffering, please lay it on me. I could use all the help and support I can get.
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