You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)

Goldie was my alarm clock.

I was born in 1981 in Detroit, which means my formative years were spent during a highly complex time in the city—a best-of-times, worst-of-times energy. I lived in a neighborhood that could have served as a case study for the impact of a declining auto industry, crack being flooded into Black communities, and the pride and love of a community of people a generation or less removed from the Great Migration. It was Sunday school and peppermints in your grandmother's purse; it was drug addiction and chaos up the block. It was my normal. All the ways of being that the world could imagine existed on those blocks, including Goldie.

I could write a Sesame Street-esque song about the people I grew up around. It was a cast of characters, plot lines, and the kind of dramatic twists and turns made for a "40 Acres and a Mule" production. As a kid who loved a good story, be it in a book or eavesdropping on my momma's phone calls, my block was a stage of one-act dramas playing out all day long, and Goldie was the Grand Dame of our stage.

Goldie, I now understand, was my first glimpse into the non-binary. They were tall, lean, and as dark as a ripe, sweet blackberry. I picture them with lips painted in gold lipstick, sometimes lashes, short jean shorts, and a bright red crop top. Time has made me doubt some of what I picture from my kid brain, but one thing is for sure: I may not remember the exact clothing details, but Goldie was for sure adorned with a song.

As I lay asleep in my childhood bedroom, that is when Goldie's day was getting started. I won't assume much about their nights, but adults talk loudly when they think children aren't listening, and most of the pieces of Goldie I know are from hearsay and whispers that spoke of cross-dressing, gayness, sex work, and drug use. What little of that I understood to be "bad" in the tone of the gossip swirling around me didn't matter a bit because Goldie was too cool in my brain for me to make sense of adults' weirdness toward them.

As night became day, Goldie would often come marching down the middle of the street, singing at the top of their lungs. Goldie's serenade was my sign that it was time to get up. You never knew what hits Goldie would give you that day. Perhaps today, they'd be Diana Ross telling us we can't hurry love, and the next day, it might be George Clinton.

A couple of years ago, during a particularly stressful moment, I went on a writing retreat in the mountains of upstate New York. More than writing (of which I did very little), I wanted to go off into the woods for a good scream. It was such a guttural feeling. There was a scream raging inside of me that needed to come out. During orientation, I asked the director of the camp where one might go for a good scream. “We’d prefer you didn’t scream anywhere, it might alarm our neighbors.” A couple of things about this moment: why the hell did I ask for permission to scream? Imagine me asking how to politely be a person experiencing rage and sadness. Secondly, Goldie would never— they’d scream, sing, or be.

Anyhow…

Goldie was my first streaming service. Every time I've thought of them over the years, I've smiled; those memories from that whirlwind of a time are made better by the hope I have that in those moments of singing, Goldie was expressing a level of joy and freedom that I am assured their existence outside the binary made harder to hold.

Goldie also had to be tough; they had to let people know, often, that they were not to be trifled with and that hands that had been conditioned to defend their honor would be thrown. Having to pull your softness on and off to address other people's discomfort with your existence is something that, as a Black woman, I have a bountiful empathy for through my lived experience.

As an adult, I've wished to have a conversation with Goldie to better understand their life, hopes, and self-concept and to let them know they helped me form my earliest definitions of joy and freedom. Living their life in the light, walking upright even when people believed they deserved to be bowed, and taking up sound space made this little Black girl better for the witnessing. You won't recognize all of your teachers in the moment of their teaching, but in due time, their lessons emerge.

Life is full of Goldies who deserve to exist safely for no reason other than being here.

Their work must be done. Their love must be experienced. Their songs must be sung.

Goldie, you shine ever brightly in my heart. I walk unbowed in your honor.

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