And while Flex now offers baskets of condoms and lubricant, Wallace says that many of the club's patrons still don't use them. Today, while there are black men who are openly gay, it seems that the majority of those having sex with men still lead secret lives, products of a black culture that deems masculinity and fatherhood as a black man's primary responsibility - and homosexuality as a white man's perversion.
Wallace and the other black men who frequented Flex in the early 80's worried just about being spotted walking in the front door. He was 22 then, and AIDS seemed to kill only gay white men in San Francisco and New York. Twenty years ago, Wallace came here for fun. (Flex recently shut its doors temporarily while it relocates.) Flex is on the East Side, and it serves a mostly black and Hispanic clientele, many of whom don't consider themselves gay. On the city's predominantly white West Side, Club Cleveland - which opened in 1965 and recently settled into a modern 15,000-square-foot space - attracts many white and openly gay men. In small rooms nearby, some men are having sex. A naked black man reclines on a sling in a room called ''the dungeon play area.'' Along a hallway lined with lockers, black men eye each other as they walk by in towels. In the basement, the mood is different: the TV's are tuned to porn, and the dimly lighted hallways buzz with sexual energy. In the common area, on the main floor, men in towels lounge on couches and watch CNN on big-screen TV's.
There's a large gym with free weights and exercise machines on the third floor. Your thoughts on all things Tom Swift thus far? Drop ’em in a comment below.In its upper stories, the Flex bathhouse in Cleveland feels like a squash club for backslapping businessmen. They’ll have to ask what it would do to their relationship with their actual best friend.”
“There’s platonic friendship chemistry between Zenzi and Tom, which means any choice that they make about Isaac have a lot of to it. “There are a lot of women who have had a crush on the same guy as their gay friend, and the only difference here is that there’s chemistry between all of them,” Johnson says. Complicated doesn’t even begin to describe this love tria… squa… shape. Which is why we’re especially eager to see where things go romantically for Zenzi, who has expressed an interest in Tom’s bodyguard Isaac (Marquise Vilsón), whom Zenzi previously thought only had eyes for Tom, who has his own eye on several different gentleman callers. Tom’s aspirational friendship with bestie Zenzi (Ashleigh Murray) is also resonating with viewers, some of whom consider it the love story they care about the most. The audience is seeing things we didn’t even know were there.”
Johnson was recently pleased by many viewers’ responses to an experience Tom had in the show’s second episode: “I saw dozens of people tweeting about how common it is for you - whether you’re a person of color, a minority, a queer person, whatever - to get harassed and made fun of, and then have everyone get mad at you when you defend yourself.
Legacies EP Reveals the Character We (Finally) Would Have Met in Season 5Ĭandice King Talks Caroline's Journey to Legacies, How She Scored Her Daughter a Role in the Series Finale And to talk about stuff that goes beyond the very surface-level explorations of race, sexuality and family that you see on TV.” But what we’re also interested in doing is examining the challenges of the day through the lens of our witty, fun, exciting show. “They love the fashion and the reads and all of that. “It’s been really wonderful to see people connect with the show and understand what we’re trying to do,” Johnson says.