Black New World Order-Lee

Most striking about the condo, was on every wall, in every corner, there was Black art. The home looked like an art gallery. Paintings, huge paintings, small paintings, sculptures, and erotic photography of Black couples filled the walls; Marvin had never seen anything like it. Every lamp, every pillow, every pot that held a plant was stylized and coordinated with some other piece of art. Everything within the walls of this home had been carefully selected and chosen for its dramatic and emotional impact upon your senses.

His place, the one he'd just given up, he'd furnished with stuff his mother had given him from his grandmother's house when she died, stuff his very first girlfriend had left when she moved out, and stuff he bought from Wilmington Dry Goods that was on sale.

Before the shift, his old job paid him well enough that he could have afforded to buy a house, or get a swankier apartment at the very least. He could have easily afforded nicer furniture and even some nice décor, but he didn't have the eye or the inclination to ever do more than the bare minimum. He didn't feel like he deserved a home, a real home if he was single, he believed it was pointless to have anything nice if he didn't have anyone to share it with. While he didn't have milk crates and folding chairs for furniture, he also didn't have Architectural Digest begging him to do an Open Door video of his place, either.

Lee approached him as he descended the stairs and greeted him with a hand-carved tray with several different blunts, joints, and bowls, and an engraved, silver lighter with the Wequilibrium logo on it. "You must be starving. Enjoy one of these first and the food will taste even better than you can imagine. I'm going to suggest that you go lightly. You haven't eaten solid food in three weeks, and you have cleansed out a lifetime of toxins and debris so your system is clean in ways it has never been before. I don't want you to get so high that you sleep through the entire weekend."

Marvin knew that all the cannabis, all the tobacco, all the fruits, vegetables, and livestock; he knew that anything and everything that could be grown or made within the Wequilibrium community, was, but he had no idea which one to choose. He started to ask about the different strains but Lee had anticipated his questions and he was rattling off names and THC content percentages before he even had an opportunity to ask. Lee, trained to be hyper vigilant, and fully recognizing that Marvin was experiencing sensory overload, recommended the Golden Goat joint which was an indica/sativa hybrid that would give him a nice body high and amazing insights but not put him down for the count. Lee held up the lighter and allowed Marvin to take a hit and watched as he exhaled slowly.

Marvin felt, possibly for the first time in his life, spoiled. Spoiled wasn't the right word, merely being offered a selection of weed didn't count as being spoiled, but, in his mind, it was a rare sensation: someone was there to take care of him and didn't want or expect anything in return. He sat on the sofa in silence, still trying to take it all in. He only took about four puffs and put the joint out in the ashtray, wanting to save it for after he had had a meal.

The high hit just right. He felt relaxed and receptive. "I don't understand." Those were the only words Marvin could form as he looked at the dinner table that had formal plates, cloth napkins, and wine glasses and candles that looked like he was in an expensive restaurant. And the food smelled amazing. He hadn't felt hungry the entire time he was cleansing because he was sipping on all kinds of soups and broths, drinking smoothies, juices, teas, and water all day long, from morning till night, but the smells of whatever he was about to eat had him salivating like a Pavlovian dog.

"Get used to it. You're going to eat and drink like royalty every day. Speaking of, what would you like to drink? I have beer, wine and a multitude of different flavored moonshines. Anything nonalcoholic, I have. I bought some Patron for you. The beers we have are unlike anything you've ever tasted before so I can't say, 'Oh, this tastes like Heineken or Sam Adams or Coors Lite, but they're all really good.'"

"We don't have anything close to Hennessy yet. Everything we have is made by members of the family and our Distillers are still working on phase 1 of the plan. We have an extraordinary selection of beer, wine, and moonshine because, well, 1. We have an inexhaustible supply of fruit, fruit, fruit, and more fresh, in season, ripe, exotic fruit than you can shake a stick at and we figured that would be the easiest to experiment with. And 2. We figured that moonshine would not only be a perfect metaphor for the New World, and we could incorporate fruit, but it would also be the most forgiving as no one really had expectations of what it should taste like. I think we found the perfect balance of moonshine that tastes amazing and packs a punch."

"How did you know that I like . . . Oh, the thingy I filled out," remembering the questionnaire as he sat down in the upholstered Louis the XIV dining room chair that had been reupholstered with a dark, navy blue, floral print that somehow looked very masculine to him, like a throne. "When I drink at home, alone, to get drunk," he added, "I'm a tequila man. I haven't done that in a while. The need to get drunk doesn't hit like it used to. I'll have a beer or two when I'm hanging out at a cookout or something, and I drink a Henny and Coke when out and about and I end up in some club smoking a cigar. I'll take some water aaaand something else. How about you decide."

"I'd love it if you tried this wine. I think you'll Love it. I made it and it's one of my favorites."

"Wait, you made it? You make wine?" The look on his face was so very typical of new members of the family.

"Just take a sip. See if you like it. When I first moved here, when I first joined the community, I didn't drink that much wine, let alone think I could make it. Before The Shift, when I drank wine, it was purely because I thought it was the sophisticated thing to do and it was expected of me in the social circles I ran in. This is a cherimoya wine and it really compliments . . ."

"Wait! A who what kinna wine?" Marvin interrupted. Marvin felt intimidated and stupid. Unlike before The Shift, however, he wasn't afraid to ask questions he didn't know the answer to.

"A cherimoya. To me, it tastes like bananas, and it's got a little taste of pineapples, maybe just a hint of strawberries. I'm absolutely sure you tasted it during your cleanse, in the smoothies or juices you had, you just didn't know what it was called. Like I was saying, I never really ENJOYED wine before, now, I Love it."

Lee poured some wine and waited. Marvin swirled it in the glass and took a whiff like a seasoned sommelier. He didn't swish it around in his mouth though, he just swallowed and added his best wine tasting review. "It's sweet, but not too sweet, and full-bodied, lots of flavor while mellow. I like it!" Lee smiled as he filled Marvin's glass just as he was filled with pride because, while he hadn't made that specific bottle, it was his recipe that he had perfected and that made him feel accomplished.

Raising his glass, Marvin said, "Cheers."

Lee added, "Here's to healing our collective wounds and residing in the lap of Love." The crystal engraved glasses made a beautiful sound as they clinked.

Lee served the first course. It was an avocado and crab salad with Cajun seasoning served on a bed of arugula with parmesan crisps with pomegranate/balsamic dressing. Everything tastes better when it's made from organic, home-grown ingredients and it's made with love so the pomegranate had more tang, the avocado seemed creamier, the seasonings packed more punch, and the lettuce had more crunch. Even the beautiful lace parmesan crisps were packed with flavor. Having grown up right on the Chesapeake Bay, Marvin loved crab and these were huge lumps of sweet crab.

One bite. One bite and Marvin's eyes rolled back in his head. "You have got to be fucking kidding me." Well, that's what it sounded like he was saying because his mouth was full. The look on his face looked like he was having an orgasm. Again, Lee beamed with pride because while he hadn't cooked one thing for the evening, he had selected the perfect menu items that pleased his guest.

The reason Lee always chose to meet his guests wearing a suit is that he wanted to present himself as if he was on a date and dressed to impress. Old World Lee would regularly meet new men in a stretched-out, faded t-shirt, ill-fitting shorts, and sneakers from Wal-mart. Placing a cloth napkin in his lap and enjoying the meal himself, new Lee flowed effortlessly and smoothly into engaging dinner conversation. "In the last two years, I've done almost every role in the community. I've been a Crafter and made wine, I've made candles, and soap and all kinds of body butters. I didn't make any of those recipes but I've followed a bunch of 'em. I've been a Tester and let me tell you, we had these Chopped-like competitions to recruit our first chefs, we even had a host and judges, the whole nine. We wouldn't just take a bite, we ATE like there was no tomorrow. It's amazing that I'm not 300 pounds the food was so good. You definitely want to sign up to be a Tester. You get to test EVERYTHING, from hot sauce to new hybrid weed strains to cars and everything in between."

"Turns out, I suck at sewing," he chuckled. "I made an apron, the most basic thing you can make, and let's just say it was NOT the best. On the plus side, I'm a helluva sewing pattern cutter outter. No, seriously, I just made that name up. But any way that I can help the people who can sew, the people who can design and create the clothes we wear, anything I can contribute that helps me look this good AND helps out others, I'll do it."

Taking on a more serious tone, he continued, "Anything that requires attention to detail is my wheelhouse and anything that helps the larger community is where I'll jump in if I can. As a Builder I've made compost to build soil and I've helped build actual houses. I've been a Facilitator, a Transformer, I've helped Scholars, I've trained Nurturers how to work with our Stars." Lee had to take a breath. "Sorry, I mean I have trained caregivers to work with our seniors. It's funny how I'm so comfortable in this New-World and the language that we use that I forget that everyone hasn't had the same experience or speak the same way as we do."

Next, the entrée was served. Lee set the plate down in front of Marvin and his eyes said everything. "Sir, for your meal tonight, you have a portobello mushroom marinated steak with oh so sweet and tender caramelized baby cipollini onions," he threw up a chef's kiss, "sweet potato roses, and a tomato-basil summer squash blend. Everything is, of course, organic, home grown, and your meal is vegan, including your steak, as you're just coming off your cleanse and you really should eat clean for a while but if you taste it, you'll find that it tastes just as good as real meat. Cross my heart." He gave a sexy wink and a nod of his head and, again, waited for the response.

The plate looked like something off the cover of a magazine. Expecting vegan steak to taste similar to cardboard, Marvin was blown away by both the taste and the texture. Dinner was beyond anything he had imagined and dessert, a white chocolate lava cake, was probably the most decadent, sinful thing he'd ever tasted. Marvin cleared his plate and Lee cleared the table. Marvin offered to help with the dishes and Lee would have no such thing, insisting that he relax on the sofa and watch TV or go out on the balcony and enjoy one of the handmade cigars that could be found in the humidor, or, he was more than welcome to enjoy the hookah pipe that had a variety of custom blends.

With the dishwasher loaded, Lee sat next to Marvin on the sofa. He had been flipping through the pages of one of the auxiliary In Loving Color books while Lee was cleaning up. It held images he had never seen before and he thought he had seen them all. It was, not at all ironically, the interracial book featuring men who love men, with images of Black men and white men, engaged in the most beautiful displays of erotic connection he had ever seen. Page after page showed interracial couples fucking, kissing, being intimate and loving in gorgeous photography. Marvin was getting aroused but he didn't have the same obsessive compulsion for sex the way he had before The Shift any time he got an erection.

Lee brought the bottle of wine and poured Marvin another glass to finish it off. He took a sip and started to explain, "You know, I've read every In Loving Color story so many times I feel like I know the characters in real life. When I first got the book from my barber shop, and as I'm sure you know they were giving them away for free, and it had been hyped up for weeks before it was released, I looked at the stories and I was like, 'Nah, they too long, I ain't reading all that,' and I just looked at the pictures. I couldn't believe them. I had never seen anything like them in my life."

"I started seeing people commenting online about how the book changed their life, their relationship. At the barber shop, at the gym, everywhere I went, people were talking about the stories, about the characters, about how they were having deeper conversations with their spouses. Even then, I still wasn't motivated to read the stories. I went online and checked out the website and I saw that they had audio versions of the stories and workbooks and coffee table books with just photography, and even a relationship package that you could order. I wasn't really feeling any of that. But when I saw the videos, I was hooked. They blew my mind. So, the videos, like they, they compliment all the stories, they don't really tell the story, but they show the evolution of the relationship between the people who portray the characters. He stopped, "Oh shit, I'm sure you know all this. My bad."

"No, no, go on, please," Lee said. I absolutely adore hearing people talk about their In Loving Color experience. It's so satisfying to me because not only do I love the book and all the stories and characters myself, but I'm family with all the people who represent the characters. I was there before the first picture was taken."

That fact had never occurred to him before, Lee knew the people who portrayed the characters, he hadn't just met them, but he knew them, he had seen the entire process evolve.

Marvin LOVED talking about In Loving Color. He was an In Loving Color snob. If he was at the barber shop and some dude was dissin' it and calling it gay, or someone only offered superficial analysis, he immediately put them in a category of someone he didn't like. "So, at the very beginning, when I first got the book, I thought it would be cool to have the book lying around when I invited a woman over and use it to get the panties, make her think that I was deep and sensitive. Then, one night, I said, 'Hey, let me just read a story, see what it's about.'"

"I read, It's our Anniversary first, and I couldn't stop reading, I couldn't put it down. The things Anthony was saying, about being a Black man, it was like he was saying things that were in my head. I wanted a relationship like the one he had with Cherida so bad. So all this is happening in the now, not in the Old World, right, and I'm still holding on to the ingrained homophobia that was my reality for my entire life. I'm saying to myself that I'm not going to read any of the gay stories when I had a married white dude who was sucking my dick at work every day."

"Lucky guy," Lee added.

They both smiled. "Right, so I started reading . . . I can't really remember what story I read next, but the depth, the nuance, the details, the emotion, I just couldn't believe that a story could have me so wrapped up in it. Aaaand turned on. Pretty soon, I didn't want to do anything but read the stories. I would order my groceries online and have them delivered because I didn't want to do anything that would keep me from reading. I think I probably read all the straight stories first and I probably read the interracial stories next. Whatever pictures showed straight couples, I read them first. Keep in mind that I had jerked off to gay and bi porn in my life too many times to count. My head told me, the whole time, my head was telling me that if I READ a gay story, I'll be gay."

"Then, I decided to read Bi The Way. The pictures of Kenya intrigued me and she was my type and to my conflicted brain, that was the justification I used to allow myself to start reading a story that I knew had gay men in it. When I tell you that Justin was saying things, he was telling my life story, the pain, the lies . . ." Marvin got choked up for a minute. "Suffice it to say, it changed my life, my understanding, my outlook. I had to start unpacking a whole lot of bullshit in my life."

"Anyway, I devoured all the stories at that point. I was like a scholar; I could have gotten my PhD in In Loving Color. Then one day, maybe just a little more than two months ago I'm thinking, I was on Reddit, looking for other people who were as deep into the stories and their meanings as I was, reading about other people's experiences, and someone said that if you go online and register with the In Loving Color site, you can read longer, more detailed versions of the stories. I couldn't get there fast enough. I read every story."

"I got an email inviting me to join a community, and it described Wequilibrium in detail and said that you guys were building a model that you wanted to spread across the nation. It said that you were creating a world where everyone was equal and everything was free and it described healing and gardening and sensuality and it sounded too good to be true. I knew immediately that I needed to be a part of it, I felt it deep in my soul. I had never done anything so impulsive and scary in my entire life."

"I called my brother, had him come over and help me pack up all my stuff and I put what I wanted to keep in his garage and we drove everything else to Goodwill. I was on a Delta flight to Atlanta that afternoon. I landed and I was greeted by a group of three Wequilibrium members and a total of 17 other newbies got on a private jet, I'm talking about some James Bond type shit, and we flew to Costa Rica to this resort that was so bananas that I was like, yo, I legit died and went to heaven."

"We cleansed and detoxed all day, it seemed like I was drinking something and taking supplements every hour. And at night, we would all sit around and talk about life, the Old World, about what we wanted in the New World, and we talked about In Loving Color. Everyone there knew all the characters, they had insights, they were all open and honest about their sexuality. I knew I had found my tribe. It was the first time I felt really free enough to be honest about my sexuality and my insecurities with anyone, let alone a whole group of strangers, both men and women."

"One night, I was kicking it with these guys who had been in the community since the beginning and they told me that there was a white guy and that he made Black men feel like Kings, like royalty . . . I felt something inside me so strong, like I had to know what that felt like. At the end of the three weeks, they offered us all the chance to stay and do some different types of healing and cleansing or we could come back to Atlanta and get oriented in our new accommodations. When I tell you I was so scared of being judged that I almost didn't ask, but I asked if I could book a session with you and no one even blinked an eye. And, here I am."