Transcript
Into America
Aging with Pride
Archival Recording: Look how diverse this is. LGBTQIA+ definitely.
Trymaine Lee: Across the country and around the world, people are commemorating pride month. There are parades, concerts and parties, all celebrating love, community, and being seen.
Archival Recording: And to be loved and accepted.
Archival Recording: It's a safe space where you are able to thrive and absolutely be yourself.
Archival Recording: It's full of joy, happiness, and I think that's what pride is all about.
Archival Recording: For our community to be seen.
Lee: But pride isn't just about fun. Pride is about the spirit to never back down from a fight, because as the saying goes, “The first pride was a riot.”
In June 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York's West Village. Raids on queer spaces like this weren't uncommon, but this time the people of Stonewall fought back.
The Stonewall uprising marked a turning point in the movement for LGBTQ rights. More queer people began living openly in defiance of social expectations that demanded straightness as the norm. In the decades since, the fights continued.
In the eighties, as HIV and AIDS ripped through the queer community, people fought just to survive, going up against a public that ostracized and blamed them for a disease that was still misunderstood.
Archival Recording: Scientists at the National Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta today released the results of a study, which shows that the lifestyle of some male homosexuals has triggered an epidemic of a rare form of cancer.
Lee: Now, after years of HIV being a death sentence, medical advances have helped people live longer, often sharing similar life experiences as those without HIV. There's also been attacks on the ability to live freely as full citizens in the form of job discrimination and bans on marriage. But thanks to a series of legal crusades, sexual and gender identity have become protected classes, and the ability to marry is a given.
Barack Obama: This morning, the Supreme Court recognized that the constitution guarantees marriage equality. In doing so, they've reaffirmed that all Americans are entitled to the equal protection of the law.
Lee: The conservative right has continued to wage a culture war against queer people, passing laws aimed to control everything from bathrooms to books to bodies. People are fighting in the courts and in the halls of Congress.
Archival Recording: Now as the first openly gay black member in this body, I'm even more familiar with the vile anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. When leaders across the country, including sitting members of Congress are peddling age-old, hateful, and false narratives about grooming and pedophilia, these are the types of people who show up. Shame on them.
Lee: And through all of this, there's been the unrelenting threat of physical violence and hate crimes.
Archival Recording: Shots were fired inside a club called Pulse.
Archival Recording: Another transgender woman was found dead at this motel in Baymeadows Sunday.
Archival Recording: We know five people were killed. Another 18 people injured according to police in a shooting at Club Q.
Archival Recording: When there's back to back murders and in the same kind of fashion, it's the same targeted group, it raises a lot of concern.
Lee: Yet despite the continued attacks, more Americans than ever are publicly identifying as LGBTQ. According to a Gallup survey from last year, over 7% of people say they are not straight. That's the highest number since polling began on this question a decade ago.
Gen-Z adults have the biggest representation. 20% of those surveyed told Gallup they identify as LGBTQ. Among baby boomers, that number is 2.7%. It's these boomers, smaller number, that are the veterans of all these fights.
Archival Recording: Americans consider homosexuality more harmful to society when adultery, abortion, or prostitution.
Lee: These are the people who came of age during Stonewall and the AIDS crisis, pushing against a society that may have wanted to discard them and refusing to fall back. Now, the ones who survived are growing older, something many thought they'd never get the chance to do.
Paul Wilson: I never thought about the reality of a 67-year-old body because I never planned on getting there.
Lee: There's pride in reaching their golden years. And for black gay lesbian and trans boomers who have endured racism on top of homophobia, the joy of growing old is especially sweet.
What has that meant to emerge here in like black love?
Naomi Ruth Cobb: It's so delicious.
Lee: It’s sweet, delicious.
Cobb: Even when I'm mad with her. Even when she get on my last tiny little nerve, there's safety in this home.
Lee: I'm Trymaine Lee and this is “Into America.”
Today, during this last week of pride month, we hear two stories from opposite ends of the country on what it means to grow older as a black gay person, the challenges and triumphs, the unbreakable will to survive, and the love that continues to be worth fighting for.
Growing old isn't always easy. Health problems begin to crop up. Some face the challenge of living on a fixed income and housing instability. There can also be loneliness. But for many queer folks, the hardships are magnified.
20% of LGBT people over 50 live in poverty. According to a study from UCLA this year, compared to 15% of straight people and black LGBT seniors are twice as likely to be in poverty than their white counterparts. But growing old can also be a blessing and a celebration, one that's too rare for many gay black men.
Well first, I'd be remiss to say, man, the beard is gray and beautiful. I'm getting there. I got a little strip here. But you got the whole gray, man. Looks good.
Wilson: It is there. You know, it's funny because I was clean shaven for a long time. And at some point, I decided not to shave, and I discovered that it wasn't just gray, but by that time it was completely white.
Lee: That's what's up.
For Phil Wilson, getting to an age where he could grow that white beard of his was far from certain. He's been living with HIV for more than 40 years. Phil lives in Los Angeles, and these days he's retired, but he has dedicated his life to stopping AIDS with the focus on black people.
Wilson: Now, black folks were disproportionately impacted as early as 1984. Black women represented over 50% of the new HIV cases among women. So it was never a white gay disease, even though that's how we thought about it. That was the narrative of it.
Lee: Phil founded the Black AIDS Institute in 1999.
Wilson: So the root of the Black AIDS Institute was really in the essence, black people coming together, armed with the facts, using those facts to fight off the misinformation and the stigma and finding ways to create institutions and communities and organizations to save our lives.
Lee: He's still active in the community, putting on events like Dance for Life in LA, a festival that raises awareness around these disparities in HIV. But Phil's journey starts on the south side of Chicago as the oldest of four siblings, living in the Altgeld Gardens housing project.
Wilson: 134th and St. Lawrence. And it was the housing projects that Barack Obama was a community organizer in.
Lee: Did you grow up knowing any gay or queer people or any lesbians? Were they openly and out at that time in your community?
Wilson: Not at all. My consciousness of it did not happen until really I left home.
Fast forward, I was 23 when I finally came out, it happened very, very quickly. And for me, it was a revelation. Now less than a week later, prior to even having a sexual encounter with anyone, I told my mother and she said, “If you're happy, I'm happy. That's what's important to me.” And she said, “The only thing is, don't tell your father.”
The next day I went and told my father. And my father said, “I'm the last to know aren't I?” And I said, “No, the only person I told so far is mom.” And he said, “And she told you not to tell me, didn't she?” And he looked at me and he said, “You know, you're my son. And I want you to be happy.” That would've been 1980.
Lee: And so, had you been living a kind of heterosexual life or presenting as a heterosexual --
Wilson: I was. I was engaged to be married. My wedding was less than two months away. I absolutely understood that I was coming to realize I couldn't stand in that church and say “To death do us part.” And I had to find out why, because this was my college sweetheart. It was someone who I cared deeply about that I genuinely love, that we were happy. Apparently with no reason, I was all of a sudden unhappy.
Lee: So where do you turn to you? You have this kind of conflict that you have to resolve. You break it off with your fiancé. What happens next? Where do you turn to? Who do you turn to?
Wilson: Well, the first thing, I'm kind of an academic nerd. Books were my friend growing up. So the first thing that I did was to go to the library in a bookstore. I picked up a magazine and in it was an ad for “A gay fitness center”, which apparently was code for a gay bathhouse or a place where a gay men went to have sex.
And so the bottom line is I met Chris there, and he was the first person that I had an intimate connection with. He was different than any person that I had ever met. Now, he was skinny, skinny, skinny, white guy with this lion's mane of hair. And he just came up to me and started talking.
He was a communist. I'm a black here from the South Side of Chicago, grew up in a black church, and as my mother would say, black people haven't been up long enough to be doing downward mobility, you know. And so he was all these things that was very different, but he was extremely supportive. And we decided to start on this journey of life together.
Lee: Around the time, were you hearing about HIV/AIDS?
Wilson: So I came out in 1980. HIV came on the scene in 1981. I was in Chicago. And I began to hear about it early, early, early on.
The narrative of the early days of the AIDS epidemic were that it was about white gay men living primarily on the east of the West Coast. I was a black man who had just come out, living in the Midwest. As we began to learn more and more and more about HIV, or back then AIDS or ARC, most of us just began to assume that we were HIV positive.
Lee: It was so prevalent in the community that you're like, “We all must have it.”
Wilson: Yeah, exactly. That it's just a matter of time because for most of us, certainly in my life, I was seeing death and dying literally every day. Every day, there was a call from someone who just found out they were HIV positive, or before there was a test, there was someone who just saw their first lesion or just got diagnosed with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, or somebody was in the hospital, or someone had died. And so that was all around us.
In 1986, I believe it was, that's when I actually was diagnosed because they developed the HIV test. And I thought I was gonna be fine with the confirmation. But the removing of the doubt was devastating. It was very different, assuming you were HIV positive and having that information confirmed. Now my original diagnosis, they told me to go get your affairs in order, we give you about six months to live.
Well, first of all, no, I'm 27 or 28, I don't have any affairs to get in order. So I guess what I'll do is go on with my living. That's what I did. Four months passed, five months passed, six months passed, a year passed, two years passed, and I realized that the dying was gonna take care of itself, you know. But I could play a role in the living part and in the quality of the life and what this life might achieve when the dying did what the dying was going to do.
Lee: It almost sounds like hyperbole when people say everyone around us was dying. But I've heard it enough to realize that it actually felt like everyone around you were dying.
Wilson: It was absolutely factual and visual to many of us. Today, if you were to walk into my house, you would see quite a number of photographs of me with my friends. And I believe it is true, in every one of those photographs, I'm the only one alive.
Lee: Wow.
Wilson: A typical day for me, and I don't want to be hyperbolic about it, so it didn't happen every day, but I'll give you a sample of one of my days back in like, 1987.
We would get up in the morning, my partner would need help, whatever meds he was on, all those kinds of things. And then there might be a call from someone who just found out that they were HIV positive. That person would have to be talked down from that. And then there would be the need to pick someone up and take them to the clinic for treatments or whatever. Then there would be a move to visit someone at the hospital to sit beside a death bed.
Later in the day, there would be a call that someone had died, and we need to go and kind of make preparations for them. That evening, there might be a vigil or a funeral. Then sleep, repeat, sleep, repeat.
Lee: Phil's partner, Chris, was one of the people who died during this time. By the time Chris passed away from AIDS in 1989, more than 59,000 people had died from the disease. It was still considered nearly a hundred percent fatal.
But by 1996, there was hope. Scientists developed an effective antiretroviral therapy cocktail, a combination of medications that slowed the effects of HIV. The breakthrough came just in time for Phil.
Wilson: Now in 1996, right before the cocktails came out, I was in an intensive care unit at Kaiser Permanente hospital in Los Angeles. My doctors called my mother and told her she should come to Los Angeles if she wanted to see me. And the doctor told her, “If you catch a plane tonight, he might still be alive when you get here.”
Fortunately for me, that was at the beginning of the release of the cocktails. I am one of those Lazarus people at death’s door, and the cocktails brought me back to life.
How do people who live through, fought in the AIDS pandemic? How is our lived experience, how does it relate to veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome?
You think about it. If you went to Vietnam, the tour of duty was a year, and yet people came back with irreparable damage. For those of us, particularly who were infected in the early days of AIDS epidemic, we were on the front lines of this battle for years before there was any sign of hope.
Lee: What is it like to be among a generation that survived? It's almost like the great generation or whatever they call it, like people survived the wars?
Wilson: World War II, right.
Lee: The generation that you're in of gay men, especially, it is kind of rare air. How do you balance that? What is that feeling? How do you reflect on that?
Wilson: Well, no, it is new territory, you know. While we had an ethos to survive, there was rarely any thought about what surviving would look like. I never thought about what happens when I have the reality of a 67-year-old body, because I never planned on getting there because it felt like it was a switch.
For most people who are not dealing with “a chronic terminal illness”, it is an incremental process, right? You have this experience of being in your twenties and your thirties and your forties and what have you. Our lives were so compartmentalized. Our emotions were so suppressed. The grief was unaddressed that now we're dealing with this. And I would say the biggest challenge is what do you do with 45 years of unaddressed grief?
Lee: What do you do?
Wilson: I'm struggling. I have to be honest. The normal life cycle is that you get to be 60, you get to be 70, and then you start to deal with mortality. Then you start to deal with the loss of family and friends and parents.
And so now in my remaining circle, people are starting to get sick and die at an age appropriate time, if you will. And I was lucky. I lost my mother when I was 65. My dad is still alive. Because of my illness, my mother and I talked about everything, you know. We talked about my death, my dying, we talked about her death and her dying. And we said things to each other, like, “We're gonna be fine.”
And when my mother died, it threw me. It unleashed all that unaddressed grief, you know. My friends who were at my mother's funeral said I looked like I was the event planner. I didn't look like I was the grieving son, because I was trained to behave that way, 40 plus years of dealing with death every day. There are things that have to be done.
You know, my friend died this morning, but there's a rally this afternoon. My friend died this afternoon, but we have to write letters to Congress tonight. I am nauseous this morning, but I have to figure out how to get over that nausea so that I can do the things I have to do this afternoon. That was our lives.
And my mother died and I didn't have something else to do. I not only had to deal with the grief of losing my mother, but I had to deal with the unaddressed grief of losing my partner 40 years ago, my best friend 10 years ago, now on and on and on. And so all of that grief, I know I am, and I think many of my friends are attempting to process that at a time when we also are processing the new reality around our mortality, but it's not going to be a passive process.
Lee: The experience that you're having now emerging from this generation that you're, you know, coming out of is pretty specific, but it's not unique to a whole cohort of black gay men, especially, right?
Wilson: Absolutely.
Lee: And I wonder how, as all of you are wrestling with that weight, how it changes the way you engage with each other and the dynamics with each other, when you look around saying, “Man, we didn't plan on being here, but here we are, 67-years-old, unpacking all of the trauma and hurt and pain and unresolved issues.” How are y'all engaging with each other now?
Wilson: I think loneliness and isolation is a very real issue. I think mental health is a very real issue. I know I'm having lots of serious conversations with my friends and family members about both of those topics. We are being thoughtful about spending time together and not being cavalier.
A few weeks ago, I intentionally made a call to a number of folks in my world and in my life and saying, “You need to check in more often.”
I looked up one day, it was like a Thursday, and I realized I haven't talked to a friend or a family member in four days. And so I called my best friend, you know, and I said, “You know, you have to start checking in on me and I need to start checking in on you.” And if I could feel that, now I'm engaged. You know, I'm involved.
Lee: So when you were literally on your deathbed, when the cocktails emerged, you survived in one way. But now there's a whole generation of young people who are living completely full lives in a way without the threat that you experience. What's it like for you to see these young people experiencing the advances of medical technology?
Wilson: I am so excited to be at the point where in theory, we actually have the tools to end the AIDS pandemic. So we have the diagnostic tools. People can find out they're HIV positive at home, get the results back in a minute or two. We have treatment tools. If you are infected today and you go on treatment right away, you actually should expect to live a long, normal lifespan as someone who's HIV negative.
Lee: Can you even imagine that when you look back to 1981? Could you even fathom this moment?
Wilson: Absolutely, we couldn't imagine that. And so I celebrate that and I'm thrilled. Sometimes I pat myself on the back because I was part of that movement.
I also worry because it is too early to write the obituary about HIV and AIDS, particularly in black and brown and other marginalized communities, that even with the tools that we have, the pandemic is not over. So it's a two-sided sword.
No, we don't want people to pretend or be delusional about the end of the AIDS epidemic already being here. But at the same time, we want people to embrace and celebrate the accomplishments we've made.
Lee: You know, you use the war analogy. And when you look back at the old documentaries and read the reports of people going to Vietnam, for many, they're in assumption that they were gonna die, that they weren't gonna make it. And those that did often suffer from a survivor's guilt.
And I wonder from you weathering the storm and going through the war of HIV and seeing your friends and loved ones passing away, and here you are from the brink of death, you've survived to have this beautiful beard full of gray. Is there a survivor's guilt? How do you wrestle with that you made it, that you were lucky and fortunate and somehow just, you made it?
Wilson: That's a great question. I don't have survivor's guilt. Very few of my friends do. And here's the reason why.
We have a responsibility to live because that is what we owe our friends who didn't get the chance. There's a commitment to remember them. There's a responsibility to be joyous because we want to remember them and because we owe it to them.
Lee: When we come back, we speak to 69-year-old, Naomi Ruth Cobb, about her experience growing up as a black lesbian in Miami, discovering community and finding love later in life.
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Lee: Even in 2023, queer people are still under attack. In many cases, the attacks are coming from conservative lawmakers, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who recently banned discussions of gender identity from the classroom.
Ron DeSantis: We're protecting kids. And we're gonna protect kids when it's popular. We'll protect kids even when you take some incoming as a result of maybe offending some ideologies or some agendas out there, but that's fine.
Lee: Earlier this month, the Human Rights Campaign declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ people.
Archival Recording: And just days into pride month, the Human Rights Campaign is declaring a national state of emergency for LGBTQ Americans. The move comes after a wave of anti LGBTQ bills proposed this year around the country.
Lee: But Miami native, Naomi Ruth Cobb, isn't backing down.
Cobb: I grew up in Miami, Florida in an area called Liberty City. We had our own theaters. Every business was black owned. They were all in walking distance in our neighborhood; donut shops that made their own donuts, ice cream shops that made their own ice cream, the cobbler made our sandals and our shoes and leather jackets. So there was just a variety of everything.
Lee: It was sunny and black. It sounds like a utopia.
Cobb: And you know, while you were in it, you didn't know that you were in a utopia.
Lee: How did sexuality play and the way people identify, play in your community?
Cobb: I did not know that we were the middle house between two homosexual families. And I'm using that term because that's how I'm identifying them for today.
To the west of me, a young lady named Laura (ph), who I babysat her son, and all I knew is that she had a best friend who would live with her on the weekends. Then to the east of me, there was another family. They would come down from Chicago to visit her mother. She would come with a woman who dressed very much like a man.
And so the talk in the community was that I lived between two bulldaggers. Happened to use that term once in my house, and I was chastised and never used that term again, and that our neighbors were our friends and that they were a part of our family.
Lee: Well, you were a young then. What did that mean to you? Like, the woman who dressed in men's clothing, they had these names for them. But did you have any sense of what any of that meant?
Cobb: Now, this is how much I paid attention to her, not knowing why I was paying attention to her, other than I could tell that she was a woman, but she would then change on the weekends. My father and her and Mr. Jackson, and this other guy, they would be working in the neighborhood together, fixing homes, repairing cars, just hanging out. My dad would have these 10 tubs full of beer, and they would all just sit outside and have beer. And she was just one of the guys.
Lee: How old were you when you realized that you were attracted to women?
Cobb: There was a girl that lived across the street from me named Lela (ph). I just thought she was the most beautiful girl I've seen in the world. And so Lela (ph) was the very first girl that I ever showed affection for outwardly. I remembered just having boyfriends and not absolutely understanding why they were not, they didn't feel that way to me, but girls did. I kind of kept that under wraps for a very long time.
Lee: What was the process like for you coming out? What was that process like for you? When did you decide?
Cobb: Well, I had actually got married to a gentleman who turned to be my daughter's father. And I came out to him thinking that he would actually take our daughter and I would pay child support. But to the contrary, he has still one of my dearest friends, always been a major supporter. I remember him saying to a couple of friends, “If you reject her, you reject me.”
Lee: Wow. So with - your former husband is one thing. You guys are obviously very close and have remained so, right? It's one thing to come out to him. But what was it like to come out to your family?
Cobb: Well, I think that Ellen, “The Ellen Show” helped me come out to my mother.
Ellen DeGeneres: This is so hard. But I think I've realized that I am - I can't even say the word. Why can't I say the word? I mean, why can't - I just say - I mean, what is wrong? That - why do I have to be so ashamed? I mean, why can't I just say the truth? I mean, be who I am. I'm 35-years-old. I'm so afraid to tell people. I mean, I just --
Cobb: She loved Ellen DeGeneres and she loved that show. And I said to her, “Mommy, do you know that Ellen DeGeneres is gay?” She said, “Of course, I know that.”
My mother was a very judgmental woman. But when it came to her children, she showed a mama bear kind of protectiveness. What she was afraid of, she said is what others would do to me. She had heard of the violence. She had seen the violence.
Because in our neighborhood, there was something called The Pool (ph). They were drag show performers would go past our house, and my father would help protect them sometime if they were running from somebody who tried to get them. My dad would feed them and sometime pile them up in the car and drive them down to what was called The Pool (ph). And that's where they would perform. So coming past our house, they knew they had a safety in my dad and in my family.
Me seeing that my whole life, I still had a fear because other people are one thing, having it directly in your family is another.
Lee: I'd also imagine the violence of the AIDS epidemic and the stigma around the community. What was it like witnessing at least the AIDS epidemic during the eighties and early nineties?
Cobb: I happened to be at the time in the eighties, also the Chair of the HIV Services Planning Council, responsible for the Ryan White CARE dollars that came into Fort Lauderdale, where I was living at the time.
The white gay male community challenged me with choosing sides. They wanted me to choose between being black, being a woman and being gay. And for them, my focus ended to be on white gay males who were at the time receiving treatment were blacks were not receiving the level of treatment, and certainly not women.
When the Minority AIDS dollars came out from DC, those needed to go toward black families. And there was damn near riots in our city because of that. And as a black lesbian, I stood my ground to say that I will not make a choice over any of my identities. We fight together to get treatments in all of our communities.
Lee: You know, for some reason, people assume some solidarity between marginalized groups. But I hear you saying is that there was indeed racism, even within the big, broad umbrella of a gay “community”.
Cobb: And there still is. The story was always from black gay folk that we felt excluded from your community. That's why we have black gay pride. Why do you need to have a black gay pride? We're all in this together. No, we're not.
When you look at the boards of HRC and you look at boards of any national organizations, you do not see black folk. When you see pictures of advertisement to come to South Beach and frolic in the water as a gay person, they don't have women with dreadlocks in those pictures. That racism and that separation exists even until today.
Lee: With that being said, how does being black, how does that inform your sexual identity, and how does your sexual identity kind of inform the way you move to the world as a black woman?
Cobb: I think what it does for me, it empowers me to never reject any of my identities. When I get up in the morning, I'm black. When I get up in the morning, I'm a lesbian. When I get up in the morning, I'm a woman of size. When I get up in the morning, I'm an American. I don't know what it is that you want me to say to you, to separate myself.
If we continue to dilute who we are in any way, I think the message is that we're not whole, that there's something wrong with us, with all of our identities. And I, for one being the torch bearer for ensuring that one's identities are celebrated and accepted, I won't allow that to happen.
Lee: Was there a moment when you found your community of queer black women?
Cobb: My friends tell me part of the reason I might have diabetes today is because I spent a lot of my time in a place called Sugars in North Miami Beach. That was a place that if I was blessed to live to another Friday, you needed to know that's where I was gonna be.
It was one of those places where Monday through Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, it was all white, white gay male. That was the black night. And we crowded that place out. It was $5 to get in and two tokens for a drink. You knew that you were going to see somebody that you knew from community there on Friday night.
Lee: You walk into Sugars and you see wall to wall people that look just like you. Describe the sound, the, feel, the smell, what you felt going in there.
Cobb: Oh, you just could hear this laughter, this sound of happy, and music would be playing and it would be thumping. You could fill it in your heart. And you walk in and there were certain groups of guys that had handkerchiefs in their hand and they would start to march around the room to the music, and someone would just pull you into the line. You maybe didn't know them, but if you were there, then you were part of us.
One night, I was in there dancing and I was dancing with this guy. And then he twirled me around. I looked up at this guy and he looked at me and he said, “Oh my God, you're the girl's mom.” He was my daughter's teacher at Miami Park Elementary. And I remember grabbing him. He almost felt like he saw a ghost or something. And I said, “It's okay. I'm gay. I'm a woman. I'm here with you. You're my brother.”
And that night I could see, he just had tears that he thought that he would be outed at his job. That experience taught me something about coming out, about how dangerous it could be for certain people, not just about losing their jobs, but about kind of losing what they thought their credibility was.
Lee: Those fears aren't totally unfounded because there was actual real repercussions and real violence, right?
Cobb: Absolutely. I mean, black gay men were targets. So you had to be this tough exterior.
Now, for the friends that were more flamboyant, they didn't really give a damn because they carry switchblades. They will cut your ass from one end to the other if you bothered them. But others didn't have that strength to be able to live their lives in that way, that had they acknowledged publicly who they were, they weren't quite good enough because they were this thing. That affected me in a big way, where even back then I wanted people to know that I was.
Lee: Naomi is now 69-years-old and has lived as an out black lesbian woman for more than 30 years. She's become a pillar in her community, considered a matriarch by many of the younger queer black people in Miami.
Earlier this year, community historian, Nadege Green, put together an exhibit called “Give Them Their Flowers,” that celebrated the queer elders of Miami. And Naomi was one of the subjects.
Cobb: That was the first time in my lifetime, and the first time in many other black gay and lesbian folk that we were seen in a museum. And to walk into that gallery opening and to see me there and to see an array of other black folk being celebrated for who we are in Miami was breathtaking. I'm not over that yet. To do that for someone like me whose family is Bahamian, to do that for other families who hailed from Jamaica, the intertwining of all of our cultures into one exhibit was, it was heart wrenching.
But it also did something else. I think for community. When we got there that night, I looked out into the crowd and I don't think I'd ever seen that many people in one room since I quit going to Sugars.
Lee: And after years of working to build that community where she could be fully black, fully lesbian, fully herself, Naomi is now in the midst of reaping the rewards, and as the cherry on top, she's in love.
Eight years ago, she got together with Shelly Levy, and it's been nothing but black love ever since, as the two have created a home and a safe space for one another.
What has that meant to find black love, of all these experiences and with different people, but then to emerge here in like black love?
Cobb: It's so delicious.
Lee: It’s sweet, delicious.
Cobb: Even when I'm mad with her, even when she get on my last tiny little nerve.
Lee: That's a great opportunity to bring Shelly into the conversation. But I do wanna hear how y'all met, because - and she is younger than you, right?
Cobb: Significantly.
Lee: Significantly. How much younger is Shelly than you?
Cobb: 28 years.
Lee: Wow.
Cobb: I could be her momma, Trymaine.
Lee: She don't wanna hear that.
Cobb: She don't want that, period.
But let me tell you, I've never met anybody like her. And I dated women older than me. I've never met anybody like her. She's my person. You know, I that's all I got to tell you. Even when I'm mad with her, she's my person.
Lee: Shelly, what's it like for you when you hear her talking like that? How does that feel? What does it mean to you?
Shelly Levy: I don't know how I got so lucky.
She's unapologetically black, a lesbian. She unapologetically everything.
Lee: How did you all meet?
Cobb: So one night, I venture on a drive to get out the house, going to this club called Rumors (ph). And there Shelly is in the club twerking. And I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen in my life because --
Levy: It looked ridiculous.
Cobb: Yes.
Lee: You felt good doing it though, right? You felt good.
Levy: Yeah (ph).
Cobb: And she then tells me, comes over - saunters over and tells me, “Oh, I got a backache and I've been taking” --
Levy: Just some pain pills --
Cobb: -- some pain pills, and drinking. And I thought, “You can keep right on walking with your little druggy ass, okay.” So we didn't even really connect that night. I mean, we just said, “Hey, let's, you know, let's stay in touch.” She's very funny.
So January of 2017, I had a party and I was going through my list of people to invite. And I said, “Oh, there's Shelly. I'm gonna invite her.” But like Shelly, she didn't respond to the invite.
So I think the day of the party, she calls me or something and says, “I'm coming to the party.” And at the time I said, “Oh good. Are you bringing your wife?” Because I saw on Facebook that she was hooked up. And the rest of the story is Shelly is sitting here today. We never parted from the night of that party until today. And two years later, she asked me to marry her. And here we are as an old black lesbian married couple getting on each other’s nerves.
Lee: What's it like now that you guys have found each other and you've been together for a while now? What is it like to be growing older together?
Cobb: Sometimes it's difficult, Trymaine, because I am getting old. I was older when I met her. But I used to say to her, “Are you ever gonna get out your thirties? God damn.” I mean, everybody --
Lee: Well, listen, you're the one who went and got a young thing. You're the one who went and did that.
Cobb: Don’t --
Levy: Exactly.
Cobb: Don't worry about all that. But, “when are you going to get out your thirties? So I can at least say you're 40 something? 41, but 40 something now.
We laugh about it. Sometimes I cry about it because I know that I'm older and always tell her I don't want her to take care of me if I get sick or something and can't do. I want her to go and have - and go out and have - and she gets so angry when I tell her that.
Levy: How about say, Shelly, when you hear her talk like that, how does that make you feel? How do you respond?
Levy: It's reality. It worries me sometimes. But she has such a young spirit, and I'm such a old spirit that we met somewhere in between. Sometimes the age, you don't notice it until something happens, you know, or I'm about to experience something that she's already experienced, and she's trying to tell me not to do it. Or my knee pain hits and she already got the medication next to the bed.
But, you know, I didn't have to go through a lot of stuff that she had to go through, you know. And sometimes the generation of my people in my age group, we take for granted the freedoms that we have.
Lee: You've created a safe space within your home and, you know, a broader community of people that you're connected with through your network, and all the work that y'all do. But outside of the home and the network and the bubble is the State of Florida, passing some pretty violent laws against all means of marginalized people, black folks, the LGBTQ community, immigrant groups. How are you all doing with all of this swirling around? And does it make you question whether or not you should stay in Florida or not? Have you gotten to that point?
Levy: I have often - because you know, I'm not native from here. I'm from Philly. So I told her, “Where would we go?” Because I want to jump ship.
Cobb: She wants to dip. And then we think, how do we stand our ground, since this is a great stand your ground state? I'm gonna stand my ground. My ancestors ain't gonna let you deal with us the way you think you want to deal with us.
DeSantis, that fascism that he is engaged in is going to also be the demise of him. I was born and raised in Florida. He was not. The salt of this air is in my blood. The crabs that crawl around are in my blood. So we're staying for now. If it leads us to leave, I'd go anywhere with her.
Lee: Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook using the handle @intoamericapod or you can tweet me, @TrymaineLee. It helps spread the word about the show. You can do that by rating and reviewing “Into America” on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening right now.
“Into America” is produced by Isabel Angell, Allison Bailey, Mike Brown, Aaron Dalton, and Max Jacobs. Original music is by Hannis Brown. Our Executive Producer is Aisha Turner.
I'm Trymaine Lee. We’ll be back next Thursday.