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Invisible lives

The author of a bestseller about black men who secretly sleep with other men says he's trying to protect women. Critics say he's trying to make a buck.

TAMPA - A pensive Oprah Winfrey stared at the bald black man in the business suit who was seated next to her on the set. She asked him a pointed question.

"Do you then not consider yourself gay?"

His brows raised. He replied, "No, I don't."

How, then, does he explain the life he lived? For 25 years, J.L. King, who lives in Chicago, considered himself "on the down low," also known as the DL. For seven of those years he was married to his high school sweetheart, the mother of two of his children, but was sleeping with other men.

King has broken the silence with his bestselling new book, On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of "Straight" Black Men Who Sleep With Men. Tonight he will appear at Madstone Theater in Hyde Park Village as part of the fourth annual Central Florida Black Pride festival, a gay pride event that runs through Sunday in Tampa.

"My goal with the book was to facilitate a movement and awareness campaign that would go beyond the reach of conferences," King, now divorced, said in an interview. "I know there are secret men out there that are not being honest or truthful with their women."

Critics don't see his book as a tool to help people.

They call King a money-hungry gossip who is capitalizing on a discreet sexual lifestyle for book deals, speaking engagements and trips across the country. Some refer to King as a homosexual who suppressed who he was for years and has found a way to use that to make money.

"This book is not about black health," said Cleo Manago, founder of African-American AIDS, Support-Services and Survival Institutes Inc. in Los Angeles. "It's a gossipy book about black men on the DL. It sounds sensational and new, but it ain't no big deal. This one individual has found an angle to use a previously undiscussed issue and make money off it."

But even before King wrote his book, people were talking about the down low.

E. Lynn Harris wrote about it in the mid 1990s when he self-published Invisible Life, a novel about a black man struggling with his sexual identity.

Back then, down low had a slightly different meaning. R&B artists such as Brian McKnight, TLC and R. Kelly used it in their songs as a catch phrase for infidelity among black men and women. It came to mean keeping something a secret.

Over the past few years, the phrase has become associated with black men who identify themselves as straight because they have relationships with women but are sleeping with men on the side.

"It became something sensational," said Manago, who is starting an AIDS center in Atlanta. "That's just kind of a trickle-down thing that was done by the media and people in the community - using the term the way they used it."

King described the DL this way in the April 16 broadcast of Oprah:

"To be on the down low means to keep it hush-hush, to be unreadable, to be able to cover your tracks. Women who are married, women who are comfortable, women who don't believe that this could happen to them need to take another look at what's going on in their house."

In the past year, the idea of the DL has entered the consciousness of an audience beyond the reach of Essence and Jet magazines.

Last summer, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, a white gay activist who lives in Boston, wrote a 7,500-word article for the New York Times magazine titled "Double Lives on the Down Low."

A recent Law and Order: SVU episode featured a black DL character who had contracted HIV from his white male partner and transmitted the disease to his wife. And 20/20 plans to air a segment about the DL this summer, spokeswoman Alyssa Apple said.

For his book, which was released May 11 and is No. 6 on the New York Times bestseller list, King interviewed more than 2,500 DL men from across the country. The men ranged in age from 18 to 78 and included ministers, lawyers and police officers.

On Oprah, King said there are DL men in all aspects of corporate America. And there is no way a woman can look at a man and tell he is leading a double life.

King said he wrote the book because he believes men on the down low are the reason black women are contracting HIV at an alarming rate.

About 75 percent of black women who have the disease contracted it through heterosexual sex, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And black women accounted for half of all new HIV infections through heterosexual sex from 1999 to 2002.

"It's time for us to step up and take ownership of this epidemic," King said. "We're losing our young people, our brightest for the future. We're now losing our elders. Women are the face of AIDS."

The CDC, though, has not made a direct connection with DL behavior and HIV rates among black women, according to spokeswoman Karlie Stanton.

Phil Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute, is concerned that the issue has been presented in a way that scares black women and sends them on a witch hunt.

"It leads women to believe that if they make sure he's not sleeping with another man, then she's safe," Wilson said. "What if 10 years ago he was an injected drug user, and now he is sober and doesn't remember he was a drug user?

"We all have a responsibility and an ability to protect ourselves and to protect our partners. Our responsibility is to know our HIV status."

Wilson, who appeared on Oprah with King, wonders how many black men are actually living on the DL. He worries that the book won't make much difference in sexual behavior.

"His current message is sensationalism," Wilson said. "And it scares people."

Felecia Wintons, a single black woman in Tampa, said the book frightened her to the point that she looks at the men in church differently. King's first homosexual encounter was with a fellow churchgoer.

Wintons remembers a story in the book about a young man who contracted HIV from a man and then transmitted the disease to his girlfriend. He later died of AIDS.

"It doesn't paint a pretty picture," said Wintons, the owner of Books for Thought in Temple Terrace. "It frightens me because now I don't know what percentage of people are doing it. It made me not want to date."

Marie Curate, who runs a Tampa book club that is reading the book, said she felt King was blaming women for men being on the DL. She asks the men she dates whether they have ever been with another man. She said most DL men are probably not going to answer truthfully.

"For him to push it off on women, I really didn't care too much for that," Curate said. "I think people need to be more aware. Women need to pay attention to their intuition. . . .

"What about married women? You hire a private investigator? There wasn't a lot of meat to the book."

The discussion has also failed to address the reasons black men are on the DL in the first place, Wilson said.

Most DL men want to tell their women the truth, King said. But they are scared. The black community's attitude toward homosexuals keeps them silent.

"You're considered less masculine," said Lorenzo Robertson, program director for Operation HOPE, an outreach organization in St. Petersburg. "You're not a leader anymore. That lends itself to why black men are so leery of standing up and saying, "I'm gay,' because of the ridicule and alienation they're going to receive from the black community."

King said he kept his indiscretions a secret because he had so much to lose.

He describes the day his wife caught him as a "sad, sad day." He was lying across the bed in his male partner's house, thinking he had the best of both worlds. When he came home, his wife was crying.

She knew.

"If I never did this, there would still not be a brother today who would step forward and talk about his life," King said. "And that's what's important. I want women in our community to stop being so ignorant about it."

He acknowledges that black men on the DL still may not tell the truth about their lives, but he scoffs at the suggestion that his book perpetuates the behavior.

Gay pride organizers are hoping that the men who hear King speak tonight will own up to who they are. They expect many men on the down low to come to the festival from out of town.

Ricc Rollins, one of the organizers and the founder of Breath of Life Fellowship Church in Tampa, is hoping King's speech serves as a wakeup call to women. He knows that some may walk away feeling more empowered, and others may leave more homophobic than ever.

"Oprah did this because sisters are being infected, and sisters are being infected by men on the DL," he said. "It was not about J.L King. It was an opportunity for a brother to . . . be honest about certain facets."

Even King's critics say discussion about the DL could be good.

But if the media focus on how black women can recognize a man on the DL, then the discussion is a waste of time, said Keith Boykin, author of One More River to Cross: Black and Gay in America.

"We have to get beyond the blame game," Boykin said. "Pointing my finger at someone infecting me is not going to prevent me from getting infected. We have to create a healthy pool of black men who can be responsible partners."

Operation HOPE's Robertson said he wants to see the dialogue continue, but with genuine conversation about the issue, not sensational talk that demonizes black men. He knows that black men on the DL may stay there, but at least black women will begin to ask questions.

"I think you should talk to your partner, find out whether he has been with other men, and then you can make an informed decision about whether you want to continue that relationship with him," Robertson said.

King said he now considers himself bisexual. He tells women he has sex with men, and then he asks them, "Do you still want to be with me?"

Some say yes. Others run.

But at least, he said, he's giving women a choice.

"This is not about me," King said of his book. "Who cares if J.L. is making a dollar? I'm getting the message out there. It's making a difference, though. Because people are talking."

Megan Scott can be reached at 727 445-4167 or mscott@sptimes.com

J.L. King will appear at 7 tonight at Madstone Theater, 1609 W Swann Ave. in Old Hyde Park Village. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at Books for Thought, 10910 N 56th St., Temple Terrace, or at the door. For more information, log on to www.floridablackpride.net