Fly in the Buttermilk

Duncan Teague Courtesy of Duncan Teague

Two gay Black men share their insights to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Atlanta.

November 16, 2016 • By Joyce Angela Jellison 

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Over two decades ago, Duncan Teague flew from Kansas City, Missouri, (sans ruby red shoes and little black dog) and arrived in the metaphorical Oz of Atlanta, Georgia. The Peach Tree state seemed to sit in the warmed and gracious palms of the sun – so bright were the possibilities. It was ripe with progressiveness.

Atlanta was then and now persistently touted as a haven for gay Black men. It is has headlined as “Hotlanta” and been called without reservation as a “Mecca” for the LGBT community, particularly for young gay Black men.

A mecca of dying young gay Black men. However, Teague was not immediately aware of the paradox that is Atlanta.

It was 1985. Prince was lamenting the crying of doves and Janet Jackson was taking control.

Teague arrived with eyes wide and with no notice of the bad witch of his previous existence being unceremoniously flattened by his arrival. He was unintentionally beginning a new journey — be it noted Teague was not a delicate ingénue easily seduced by the immediate alluring aesthetic of Atlanta.

Teague had been openly gay back home. Atlanta was not, at least for him, beleaguered with the social conservatism marking many African American communities. Frankly put, homophobia is a hate many in the Black community seem to give a deadly pass.

Teague was thrilled with his new home. “I set myself free,” Teague said. Teague went for a vacation with no intention of staying, but within two weeks, he had his cousin cash in his return ticket and he never looked back. He arrived in a virtual hurricane blown by the attitudes that were epitomes of the times and still reflective of the present.

“I had never seen that many Black gay folks in my life, and I was blown away,” Teague told The Advocate in 2005 about Atlanta. “I could be whoever Duncan decided to be. And I was.”

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Teague discovered his yellow brick road was riddled with deadly potholes. Black men in Atlanta were and are steadily becoming HIV positive and being lost to AIDS at one of the highest rates in the country.

The statistics for Atlanta are beyond alarming. According to AIDSVu, an interactive online map illustrating the prevalence of HIV in the United States, 25,620 people in Atlanta were diagnosed with HIV in 2013; 80 percent of them were men and 20 percent were women; 69 percent of them were Black, 6 percent were Latino and 21 percent were white.



AIDSVu further shows that 1,470 people in Atlanta were newly diagnosed with HIV in 2014; 82 percent of newly diagnosed between 2010 and 2014 were men and 18 percent were women; 75 percent during that time were Black, 7 percent were Latino and 14 percent were white.

Not one for regrets, Atlanta remains a mecca for Teague, who remains HIV negative and is now an ordained Unitarian Universalist Minister. “It is a Mecca as it is a celebration of who I am and an affirmation of who I am,” he said.

Atlanta is a literal Phoenix, having been burned to the ground in 1864 by Union soldiers in the Civil War. It has risen from ashes and there are many like Teague who fervently believe the AIDS epidemic — metaphorically consuming the city in a seemingly uncontrolled blaze of denial, ignorance and silence — will be assuaged.

This mass consumption of Black male lives will be cease only if the silence can be broken, Teague cautions.

Ever pragmatic and simultaneously disheartened, Teague puts the stark statistical data within the framework of the Black Lives Matter movement. He speaks passionately and poetically with words rising and falling in steady cadence.

“It’s HIV, not violence against Black people, and it is stigma that is killing us,” Teague said firmly. He punctuates sentences with poignant silence, leaving the listener to think. “At some point the student becomes the teacher,” he said.

While Teague’s silence is poignant, it is pointed. He is strong in his view that silence and stigma are killing young Black men in Atlanta and those who are under 50 are weary to the point of silence. Teague states this movement for HIV/AIDS awareness is encumbered by denial and is not to be likened to the Civil Rights Movement.

“The Civil Rights Movement was not tied to sexual identity, that is more intimate,” he states and further explains that it was driven by affirmation from the community and, more importantly, the Black church, “that you are right, you are oppressed.”

Teague said the answers are complex as to why the numbers are increasing in a community of men who support one another and describes the situation as a “Hornet’s nest.” He cites the incidence of the Fulton County Health Department returning millions of dollars to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because of mismanagement of funds. “This affected the most necessary group,” he said despairingly, “young gay Black men.”

Teague speaks with deadly accuracy and authority, Georgia Voice, an LGBT media source, reported in June 2015, “Fulton returns millions in funding meant for HIV prevention…that since 2012, the CDC has awarded grants to the Fulton County Health Department totaling nearly $20 million to fund HIV prevention efforts. In the first two years, the county spent about half of the money and in 2014 they spent more than half, in the process leaving $8.7 million on the table that should have gone to the fight against HIV.”

This mismanagement of funds is especially disheartening when placed against recent statistics. According to the CDC, the rates of HIV and AIDS diagnoses are higher in the South. African Americans have the highest percentage of HIV diagnoses in the South, Northeast, and Midwest, and Latinos have the highest percentage in the West.



Built as if he could snatch a start from the sky, Jonathan Wells, 29, is a PhD candidate at Columbia University. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Wells is more wary to continue to see Atlanta as a supposed haven for gay Black men. He speaks with a very clear understanding of the AIDS epidemic and specifically as it applies to Atlanta.

“What is a mecca? What defines mecca?” Wells asked. “Is it a sense of community? Shared struggle? Mecca doesn’t always mean positive, but one can say, ‘in my struggle, you are there with me.’”

Wells, who is HIV negative, is in agreement with Teague in that the immediate answers are multilayered and complex. Like Teague, Wells cites stigma as being a deadly contributor to the epidemic, but he adds that the demands of what it means to be a male and masculine in the Black community are stressors.

“In my life experience, there is a difference being gay amongst people that look like me and being gay amongst people who don’t look like me,” Wells said. “There is a higher standard for masculinity that is expected more so then in other communities. Homosexuality is super feminized in the Black community.”


Wells asserts that these pressures on masculinity and the stereotypes of homosexuality lead to silence and denial of AIDS in the Black community.

“These are micro experiences that become overemphasized,” Wells said. “Such as speech, mannerisms. If I wasn’t crossing those markers of masculinity or meeting those markers at an appropriate age, this was scrutinized.”

Wells added that stigma does exists in other communities, but the expectation of masculinity in the Black community “is so much so, it’s not realistic.” He adds that Blacks and health care have a “bizarre relationship” and this is another layer of complexity to the HIV numbers as represented in Atlanta.

“Many Blacks don’t have resources in terms of health care,” Wells said.

Teague affirmed Wells’ statement as to Blacks and health care mistrust and access. His anger controlled, his speech steady, Teague said with a steadied voice, “You have all these Black men showing up not just with HIV, but with AIDS and didn’t know it. We have not said as a community that we are prioritizing saving lives.”

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