Men on the down low: author J.L King exposes the sex secret that is devastating Black women

Jet, May 3, 2004 by Margena A. Christian

For 25 years, James Louis "J.L." King hid a dark secret. A secret that would dismantle his 8-year-marriage to his high school sweetheart, the mother of his two children.

King was living a double life and having sex with men and women, but he did not believe he was "gay." In his mind, he was living on the down low (DL).

Described as a discreet sexual lifestyle, being on the down low has become a term most often associated with Black men who identify themselves as "straight" because they have relation strips with women--many having a wife or girlfriend--even though they have sex with men on the side.

As a national HIV/ STD prevention educator, King put a face to that type of behavior in 2001 when he became the first DL man to publicly make his identity known. He has been credited by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention for exposing this lifestyle.

Today King's mission is to give a wake-up call to DL men and the women they put at risk. He is telling his secrets and the secrets of all Black men living a double life in his new book, On The Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives Of "Straight" Black Men Who Sleep With Men (Broadway Books, $21.95). It will be published on May 11, but the demand has been so high that it is being presold.

"Once you become a public figure, you can't hide anymore," King tells JET. "Once you accept who you are, you are no longer lying and hiding who you are. I want Brothers to know they don't have to continue to hurt and to hurt others."

The DL behavior is generating discussion in the Black community because it is complicating the efforts to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS with Blacks. This DL behavior has been cited as the No. 1 reason that women are being infected with the HIV virus.

King, who resides in Chicago, interviewed more than 2,500 DL men from across the country. They ranged in age from 18 to 78 and were police officers, ministers and thugs on the street.

"This is a desire that you have no control over," King explains. "The desire will hit him out of the clear blue. He may say no a few times, but eventually he will fall. DL men prefer women over men. They will always have a woman in their life. This is not a learned behavior. Who would want to live like this where you're constantly lying, hiding and scared of being busted? This desire makes some men lose all common sense. Look at the many celebrities caught with a prostitute, with a man or in the wrong place. Sex is powerful."

He says that nearly all of the DL men he interviewed in his book wanted to stop living a lie and tell the women in their lives the truth. Fear keeps them silent.

"How many women would stay with their man if they knew he was bisexual?" King asks. "Our society would never accept that a man can have a man and a woman. Not many women will share their man with another man, but it's okay to share with another woman."

King says that he can recall an "attraction" for the same sex as early as third grade. It wasn't until the age of 19 that he "tested the waters."

"I was in the military and the guys were older and from big cities," King recalls. "They exposed me to same-sex relationships and all of us had girlfriends. In the military, with that 'don't ask, don't tell' thing, we kept it on the 'low.' We used the influence of alcohol and got drunk on the weekend. We would always use the alcohol as the excuse, but it was our need and desire. It would keep happening week after week."

Men having sex with men and women is nothing new. The "down low" title may be new-fangled; but the behavior is known as bisexuality.

"Down low means masculine, unreadable, unclockable," King says. "It means I've got a girlfriend or a wife. It means you can't tell I'm having sex with men. In the Black community and in most communities, you can't have sex with both. If it was okay for DL men to have both, there would be no such thing as down low."

"On the down low" became popular in songs like TLC's 1994 tune Creep, Brian McKnight's 1995 tune On The Down Low and R. Kelly's 1996 tune Down Low (Nobody Has To Know). All the songs centered around infidelity between heterosexual men and women.

The AIDS rate among Black women is three times higher than Latina women and 18 times higher than White women.

And 75 percent of Black women who have contracted the disease have gotten it from heterosexual sex. One of the main methods of infection for the HIV virus is through heterosexual sex.

Men on the down low usually don't use a condom, says King, "because it makes them stop and think of what they are doing. Many DL men don't want to face the fact that they want to have sex with men. And most do it when they can get it. Many don't carry condoms on them, especially if they are married."

Don, a 40-year-old DL man from St. Louis, says, "Some men just like it raw and don't mind playing Russian roulette. Some have a disease already and don't care who they are with."

A CDC study in 2000 of 8,780 men found that the percentage of HIV-positive men who have sex with other men, but identified themselves as heterosexual was 25 percent Black, 15 percent Latino and 6 percent White.