By Kejhonti Neloms
The most evil man I personally know is an older white gay liberal who lives in Louisville, Kentucky. He has a house on Ashland, just south of the University of Louisville. But I bet he has another house—probably on Frankfort Avenue with all of the other boujee liberal older whites—where he doesn’t shoot up young queer Black boys with meth.
The second time I met Ryan I had just busted a fat nut with this cute dark skin Black boy. It was in my house in Old Louisville. It was the summer. No one was there. I must have been about 22 and the boy was probably about 20.
This shorty, who imma call Blue, was attractive. He had a short fro. His booty was fat and his dick was hella big. He was from a small town at the bottom of Florida, and he spoke like it. I saw him speak to his mom once, and it was a Blackness that I have never heard before. Very southern. Forgotten Black. Hated Black. Avoided Black. Black Black. I was attracted to him, and we had spent a couple of weeks in a chat room before I finally decided that I wanted to lay him down on my king sized bed.
We were smoking a lot of weed. His phone kept blowing up the whole time. I asked who was blowing him up. Blue said it was his ex-boyfriend, but his ex was crazy and Blue’s been trying to get away from him. Blue was scared, but he was young and Black so he acted tough, I could tell. I dropped the subject.
I had already seen the trauma etched into his eyes. He been gangbangin since he was way young, and I think it’s why his mama pulled him up out of Florida in the first place. I don’t know if she knew this, but she bought a house smack dab in the middle of another hood. Needless to say, he continued gangbangin. I went to his Facebook page, and I saw nothing but his dead friends. All teenagers. All young. All in blue.
Blue had just gone downstairs to grab his charger after he insisted and insisted that we have sex without a condom. I was put off by his insistence. Red flags. Caution tape. Bad energy. I just chalked it up to him being young. But his unmet insistence gave me a heads up that some shit was weird and possibly going to get weirder. It most certainly became weirder.
Blue was taking too long, so I went downstairs to see what the tea was. Blue was gone. My back door was unlocked. I didn’t feel good about this. I locked my door back.
And that’s when I met Ryan.
There was a rather aggressive knock on my back door. I do not answer doors I have not called for. I think I picked up this habit from slavery. I do not care who you are, if I am not expecting you, I will not even see who it is. You better call before you pop up, because otherwise I don’t know what to tell you.
The knock kept going, but it didn’t sound like a police knock, it sounded like a young Black person knock, so I thought it might have been Blue and went to see.
It was a Black girl who looked like Blue and Blue’s mom. She must have been 16 or so. Rich black skin. Small eyes. Big lips. Kind smile.
I didn’t open the door because I don’t answer doors that I have not called for, but I asked her what she needs. She asked me where her brother is. I answered honestly, Blue just left. I asked her how she knew where I lived. And that’s when Ryan came from around the corner and demanded I open the door. I laughed in his vaguely recognizable face. I said show me some ID. He waved what looked like a medical insurance card or something, so I just laughed harder at him. I said I didn’t know where Blue is. It was the truth. Shorty ghosted on me.
They leave. My Jack’d goes off. A message from a man with no face. 34, 6’3, white. His screen name is Mr. White. “Did you fuck him raw? How many times did you all have sex? Did you enjoy fucking that little slut? Did you know that he has HIV? He has a particularly bad strain of HIV. Ask his mother. The little animal infected my son and killed him. I’m trying to help you put this monster in jail.
I ask how he knows all of this. He never tells me. Instead, he says he can give me a pill to stop a virus he assumed I’d came into contact with, but I’d have to meet him at Blue’s mama’s house. I was frightened enough to do it because I couldn’t figure out how Mr. White found my address, not because of HIV. I walk over to Blue’s mama’s house, and I stand on the corner checking my phone, waiting for Mr. White to show up. His mama is on the porch, along with a very strong cousin. Blue is probably in the house by now.
After 30 minutes of us Black people just looking at each other in the sweltering Louisville heat, it becomes apparent that Mr. White is not going to come. I break the ice. I ask the mother who this white man is, how he found me, and how is this white man connected with you all. She says, Why? I show her the violent ass messages that Mr. White sent me. She calls Blue onto the porch.
“Why didn’t you tell that boy?”
“I did, mama.”
“No you didn’t, because I never ask,” I interject.
“You have to tell people, Blue. I’ve already had this conversation with you. You can’t keep doing this to people.”
“Ma’am, it’s not his fault. And I really don’t care about his status. I just want to know who this white man is, and how he found me.”
“When Mr. White bought me this phone I think he put a tracking device on it,” Blue says.
“He’s been giving us money and helping us out with things,” his mama says.
“What’s his name?” I say.
“We don’t know. We just call him Mr. White.”
I had heard of a house in the southend with organized sex parties. Only Black bodies, all within my age group. I used to talk to this shorty on Snapchat. I’m going to call him E. I fell in love with E pretty quickly. Sometimes I would ask him where he was, and he would say he was in the Southend. Some months into our friendship, E told me more about the Southend house on Ashland. It’s a house ran by a tall white man. The white man always has plenty of drugs around the house, and that’s one of the many ways he maintains power.
E has never touched rock in his life. He’s a superstitious Black, and I have the distinct feeling he’s watched several of his family members become ancestors because of drug addictions. If I am being all the way honest, though, I didn’t believe him when he first told me that he’s never done meth. I asked, “If you’ve never done meth, why do you be in a meth house?” He wouldn’t answer at first, but eventually revealed to me that he goes so he can watch over his twin.
It’s hard to describe the feeling of watching someone you love knowingly take poison.
E and his twin G have had the same upbringing. They’ve seen the same people live and die. They grew up in the same house. They’re both queer, they both love to dance, they both love to be goofy as fuck. E is his brothers keeper and E would rather walk into hell than to send his brother into the void alone. I don’t know of a stronger love.
I asked E an ignorant question. I said, “Why don’t you get your brother to stop doing drugs?” E looked at me, and then looked at all the books in my room, and then looked at me again and didn’t say anything. He didn’t say it, but he must have thought, “How is this nigga so smart and so stupid at the same time?” Most valuable lessons come at the expense of someone else. I know now that G is grown and will do what he wants to do. E is only there to make sure things don’t go too far.
Gemmel Moore was a young Black queer man who lived in Texas for most of his life. He worked as an escort to make ends meet. His friends say he was very sweet and a blessing to a lot of people. That is until a wealthy white liberal named Ed Buck introduced him to meth and killed him in an expensive West Hollywood apartment in the summer of 2017. Gemmel was only 26.
I wonder if Gemmel Moore had a brother like E. Someone who could watch over him when evil whites beckoned. Someone who would make sure it wasn’t taken too far. Someone who could have protected him from monsters like Ed Buck.
But we all know that no one was there to protect Gemmel on that night. I know Gemmel had a best friend named Samuel Lloyd, but Samuel was struggling with his own demons at the time. Samuel was only able to hold Gemmel in his arms while Gemmel cried… just a few days before Gemmel was murdered. This was in July of 2017. This was the month I began to put the story of Ryan together.
I met my current love at the same time Mr. White almost got him. My love, who I am going to call Corey, had just moved to Louisville to attend college. Corey had dabbled with a few drugs before. Corey is young, Black and very attractive. I think Ryan hit him up on one of the dating sites.
Early into our friendship, I asked Corey where he was. He told me he was in the Southend. I got cold chills. I became sick in my stomach. This was the same month that Gemmel died was killed.
Corey came to my house after leaving the Southend. I asked Corey point blank if he was under the influence. I will never forget this night, because it was my first time seeing someone on a meth high. Corey’s pupils were huge, and he couldn’t stop talking. Corey is usually reserved and rather quiet, but on that night, he was jittery. He simply could not sit still. I was extremely disturbed, but I talked with Corey for 7 hours. We watched the sun rise. Corey has never done meth again after the conversation we had that night.
I asked Corey to describe the house to me. Corey told me that the man who owns the house is named Ryan. Corey said there were all sorts of sexy ass niggas at the house, and that the house was full of all types of drugs, but mostly everyone was doing meth. I asked if he saw E and G. Corey confirmed that E was there, but was only smoking weed, while G was doing a little bit of everything. I asked to see the chat between Corey and the man who runs the meth house. Of course, it was Mr. White.
I understood then. Reading Gemmel’s hashtag, meeting Blue, loving E, witnessing E love G, loving Corey. I understand now. Ryan introduced Blue to meth, and was furious when Blue decided on changing his life for the better. Ryan refused to let Blue go, so he followed him to my house. Ryan tried to paint Blue as a monster to isolate him and make him come back. Ryan tried to ruin Corey’s young Black life. Ed Buck killed Gemmel Moore. Ryan likes to watch young Black men destroy themselves. Ed Buck prefers Black boys who have never done drugs before. I personally know three victims of Ryan. They’re all Black, dark skin, poor, and under the age of 24. I know of nothing more evil.
Like Ed Buck, Ryan is in all sorts of esteemed leftist circles. I learned this when Corey showed me Ryan’s facebook page. I peeped the mutuals. He’s friends with key organizers in Black Lives Matter. I’m sure he’s in Louisville’s Showing Up for Racial Justice organization. I’m sure he donates to the noble causes. He is in our spaces, and because of this, like Ed Buck, it is nothing for him to escape accountability. Those circles form shields.
Visiting Ryan’s Facebook page made me realize where I had seen him before. Years and years ago, my young, queer cousin was dating an older white man. I used to bartend at a beautiful downtown restaurant. I invited my mom to come eat with me one night. She invited my cousin, and my cousin invited his boyfriend, Ryan. I was mortified to find a picture of myself with Ryan that night. Years before Blue. Years before E and G. Years before Gemmel met Ed Buck.
The argument can be made that all of these young men come to Mr. White’s house on their own volition. He’s not putting a gun to anyone’s head. They can leave at any time. They can refuse his advances. I reject these arguments.
Ryan hunts these young Black men because he knows that they are vulnerable. He knows they need money. It is all very intentional and calculated. He knows he can influence them to do whatever he wants and that no one—not the heterosexual Black communities, not the white LGBT communities—will give a fuck. No one will come looking for these young, queer Black people. He knows he can ruin poor Black folks lives, and then just retreat into his money with no guilty conscience. A monster.
Ryan is killing young Black queer folks in Louisville, Kentucky in the exact same way Ed Buck murdered Gemmell Moore in that West Hollywood suburb. Both Ryan and Ed Buck are exploiting our most vulnerable people: young queer folk with no money, who are just trying to make it in this anti-Black country. There are Ryans and Bucks all over the world. This anti-Black world is a nightmare.
It is hard to kill these type of white people. It is harder still to bring them to justice. Even though Gemmel’s family had staggering amounts of evidence, Ed Buck had money, privilege and connections to powerful white lawyers and powerful white politicians. He was never prosecuted. Justice for Black life is structurally prohibited in an anti-Black world. Ain’t no justice for Black people as long as whiteness exists.
It is nothing unique for wealthy white people to go into the redlined areas of town looking for poor niggas to experiment on. I’m not going to go into the history of this phenomenon, but this evil, like all modern evils, has its roots in the transatlantic slave trade. I’m sure your grandmother has stories of wealthy whites doing the exact same when she was young. I’m sure they were never prosecuted.
Ed Buck is free right now, despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt. LA district attorneys refused to prosecute him. I’m not going to go into the details. That’s not why I am writing this piece. You can find those details here, here and here.
I have little interest in raising awareness, because I think awareness is a buzzword that doesn’t really do anything to change the material conditions of our people. It begs the question, “Awareness for whom?” We already know that white supremacy is killing everybody. We been knew. We are all witnesses. It been that way from the start. MLK going on live getting his ass beat did not end this reality. Body cams ain’t stopped no nigga from being murdered in the streets.
Those doing the work already know who the most vulnerable people in our communities are. We all have so much on our plates already. I feel that my audiences are already actively confronting white supremacy everyday.
This piece is different from what I usually write. It is deeply personal for me, because I know almost everyone involved. I have wrote other things that have clearer points. I like for my words to inspire change. I love being able to see how my truths influence the way Black people deal with the traumas of living in an anti-Black world. I don’t like to just inform (because again I think we—of all people—already know the evils of whiteness). I’m not in the ministry of persuading (because who is there to persuade?). I barely like writing calls to action (we’re already acting).
I struggle to see the change that can be inspired by this piece. Gemmel is dead, Blue is addicted to meth, E is watching his twin brother slowly kill himself, Buck is still wealthy. Ryan is still hunting the wretched of the earth. Ryan’s house is still poppin. I like to end my pieces on a positive note, but I don’t have any positivity to impart. Buck is free, and the Justice 4 Gemmel website has been taken down. Samuel Lloyd says there are an innumerable amount of young niggas that Ed Buck has worked to destroy.
If anything, I wrote this piece for me, Blue, Corey, E and G, West Hollywood sex workers, shorties trapped in the House on Ashland, Samuel Lloyd, and Gemmel Moore and his family. I write this piece for the living. I write this piece for the dead. I write this piece for the record. I write this piece to reject the revisionist idea that Gemmel died in the passive sense. Gemmel didn’t just die, Gemmel was intentionally murdered. He was killed by a wealthy, gay, liberal, white man who is still free to this day. He was killed by a world that he was never designed to thrive in. He was killed by white supremacy. Gemmel was only 26 years old. Blue was 20. Corey was 20. E and G were 22. I am 25.
I’m sorry Gemmel. I’m so sorry. I love you. You deserve so much more, but the least I can do is honor you with my word and my words. I believe you are watching over us. You don’t have to hurt anymore. You are finally safe. I will remember you forever.
Suggested Readings:
Timothy DuWhite, “Hunted by the State: HIV, Black Folks & How Advocacy Fails Us“, RaceBaitR, 2017
Hari Ziyad, “When a white man attempts to steal your soul“, IntoMore, 2018
George Johnson, “Meth Is The New Black“, The Grio, 2017
Kejhonti Nelomsis a queer student/teacher. He has dreams of starting a community center for black queer kids.
