“All of my ex-lovers look like mass murders.”
Like Dylann Roof, and James Holmes, and Adam Lanza. Like those Columbine boys. Boys like these, I would fond over in 3rd period Chemistry class. I’d catch their names while the ordered coffee in front of me before morning seminar. Boys like these I woke up next to. Boys who’s music tastes were as unimpressive as their style as their inability to interact socially. Boys who saw my eagerness as possibility for saenguination.
There was always something about the ones who didn’t quite fit. Misunderstood, kept to themselves. I was compelled by the challenge — offering the heartless, warmth from their own tundras. That guy. Those boys. Him, over there. The boys that pretty girls snickered at. The boys that bigger boys ignored. I believed I knew their feeling.
Before knowing what bodies would feel like pressed together in Massachusetts basement against metal cabinet after midnight, I heard Texan and South Central aunties warning me to not bring home a white girl. Before knowing what boys could feel like pressed together, I began feeling the weight. Before knowing what heavy was, I could feel them on me. The nocturnal squirm of pubescent nightmare. Before knowing how heavy my own body could be, I fit yoke around my neck to provide love labor in theirs.
Somehow I convinced myself, I could fuck the terror out of these boys. That my immaculate Black cock would save disturbed white souls from the violence that perspired from from their skin. The arrogant naiveté of some empathies. On every inch a top the trauma and imagination of being I carried the weight of white men. I asked to hold them and they required it. They required shifting and settling and holding. I obliged to carry the weight.
Even now, I want to chalk it up to boyhood. I want to dismiss pre-calculated violence as my own misunderstanding.
I want to say boys will be boys, but I’d have to mean white boys will be white boys meaning antagonism will be killing, will be theft, will be entitlement, will make it harder for me to walk down the street.
I’ve grown tired of seeing mugshots of boys I knew from behind. Tired of the absence behind their eyes. Tired of trying to paint monster as man, as mine as lover. Because terrors, like white boys, are exhausting.
