The summer you flirted with taboo

If I’m being completely honest with myself, it all started in the airport. You were the first one I saw. I spotted you while I was on the phone and decided not to wander over to our gate for fear that you might already be sitting there. The thought of spending the next few hours making small talk did not appeal to me in the least.

How did I even know it was you? Well, true to my generation, I had already spent a substantial amount of time stalking the Facebook profiles of everyone in our program. It’s silly really, to think that a picture taken in a context unfamiliar to me, with other strangers I’d never know, could teach me anything about how one would deal with living in a foreign country, especially Ghana. A tagged image was not enough to make a judgment call about how any one would handle themselves without a fan in the middle of a sweltering night, or how we would deal with shitting in the forest during a bush stop. I remembered you from my hours of stalking but you never really used Facebook so there wasn’t much that stuck out at me. And anyway, I could not expect an outdated profile picture would give me answers to questions I didn’t even know to ask.

I remember when I first met you there was something magnetic about you. I wanted to seem cool, and smart, and poised but also funny, down to earth, and interesting. You used to make me crazy in the beginning (and also at the end). The first days I was around you felt charged but you never seemed to notice. I knew that for me there was something unmentionable between us and I wanted to find out what that was.

When I finally discovered it we were lying across our beds, my legs bent at the knee, your head resting on them. You put your hand between my thighs and looked up at me surprised. In that moment I wanted to run. My body was producing the stuff of wet dreams (literally) and I couldn’t undo what had already been discovered. My subconscious, my sexual mind, my body had all “outed” me. I was afraid and excited, apprehensive and ready. I wondered what you were thinking in that moment.

Remember that time we sat on the rooftop of our guesthouse and talked to the guy who worked at the front desk? Remember when he asked me if I was gay and I turned bright red and repeated “No. No. No no no.” three too many times? Remember how that wasn’t the question he had asked at all and that I had either misinterpreted it or misheard it all together and how we laughed about that later (well really you were the only one laughing)? I think about that often. I also think about how much I used to crave you. I think about what it felt like to have your hand unexpectedly graze my ass. About the peaceful feeling of surprise I got when I felt your body for the first time and how my hands knew exactly where to go, where they would fit, and what felt right.

I don’t think you ever felt we were right. For you our love was unthinkable and wrong because I was white and you were black. We were taboo because you had never imagined that you would — or really could — love a white person. Do you remember what your mother said to you the day you told her about me? “This was the last thing I ever thought I’d hear you say.” I’m guessing her dismay was probably the same as yours: how could you love “the enemy”?

We found love with each other in the fucking shadow of a slave dungeon. And you, the poet, must have believed this to be too poetically perfect.

Our love was unthinkable, prohibited and wrong, and yet I know how much you found safety in that. You convinced me that my whiteness was all I had. You persuaded me to hate myself, because I believe you felt better in this pain and misery. If I hurt more than you did then maybe you had won. Maybe then blackness had won. You fucked me with your hand over my mouth, a glimmer of hatred in your eyes and I could not understand then how this was the epitome of everything you had ever wanted. You had whiteness, literally in the palm of your hand.