The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 39
I should not have read the article before the date but I did. In the subway on my way to meet that boy. The article was another one of those institute memos, those think pieces, those essays based on empirical data of the select pool variety. Apparently assortive mating is less and less an option for black women. Our eyelashes not curled at the right angle. We’re prescriptive, wrongly named, we are undesirable again. We are the most likely to be swiped left, they say. We are drowning in our degrees and our solo travels and each other again. Who wrote this?
I met up with him at a dive bar and I hoped he would remember my face before I would have to recall his. I promised this friend a few weeks before that I would stop ignoring men in the street after she sent me an essay about old-fashioned meetings—those “in church” “supermarket” “bumped into each other in the street” impossibilities that were once our religion. So I met this boy, this Johnny Boy, in the street. I never would have done that in my twenties but I have grown. I know better now than not to live. Two weeks later I was at a dive bar, nose in my phone, being corrupted by the contemporary doctrines of my unlovability and the reasons for it.
“Hey,” he said, almost shouting, almost afraid to touch my shoulder. We found a seat in a corner underneath a John Wayne poster, lit from above with a few strings of old Christmas lights, dingy lights of pastel colors that blinked to the rhythm of those songs I had not heard in some time.
“What were you reading?” Johnny Boy asked as if he had known me for years, as if this was not his first time asking me that question. Familiar. Is this how love stories in a woman’s thirties begin? I would not mind.
“Oh just … some essay,” I answered and blushed. And I guess I was too eager to hide my phone, because he prodded. “It’s about … it’s some essay about how difficult it is for black women to find husbands,” I said finally, I think laughing, just as the waitress approached our table, and she feigned a smile, an awkward smile, and glanced at him before rushing through our drink orders. She had heard me. When she left, Johnny Boy was smiling, a nervous smile, but confident. He knew he was handsome. He said: “Those things can be annoying.” My eyes questioned. “How everything is about race now, you know?” he continued, still nervous but unflinching. Neither of us knew what it meant. I felt guilty for finding his ignorance endearing. “I mean, I’ve dated black girls before and it’s been all good. I know other people who date … you know … I just … I don’t see color.”
Nika emailed. “Did you read that piece about the rise of black girl/white boy relationships?” she sent with the link. I was swirling. That’s what they called it. Johnny Boy was different. Johnny Boy from the Midwest, from the West Coast, from New Jersey. He grew on me but people looked at us as we walked hand in hand, as though we were naked, but deformed, and they did not know if they should be offended or feel sorry for us—us, those contrasting colors interlocked. Brooklyn was finicky in that way. It boasts of its progressiveness while at the same time is surprised by it, like an objectively beautiful yet insecure woman. I showed Johnny Boy the article that night and he laughed, as I thought he would. Then he said: You and your friends talk about race a lot. We do? I asked. And he nodded, a concerned nod, one with weight, one asking. Race was everywhere here, the here I called home now, although Johnny Boy avoided those conversations, although he could not see it. So instead we laughed as much as we could, visited botanical gardens while he compared me to flowers, listened to records, went dancing, ate with friends, spoke to Mam and Papa on speaker, took a road trip, grocery shopped, went to the dog park, went shopping for pants for his interview, went shopping for a dress for that date night, went to a Liberian restaurant he had found online in Queens, because he thought I would like it, went to the movies, went to shows, went to the Bronx, went to my accountant one time, but never went there. And progress kept looking, kept staring, kept wondering what it was about him, or about me, that made us flaunt our corruption in that way.
He was left. Far left. It was 2013 or 2014 and he was white and the Blackgirls were dying and the Blackboys were dying. He was angry. He felt guilty and ashamed. He was ambivalent. He touched my face. He kissed me long. He hated what happened to those countries in Africa. What happened to my family—our having to run and hide. He hated what was happening to those cities in the Midwest. Listened when I told him I’d experienced a thing again, at a store or at the office or on the street, and I thought the thing had happened because of my skin. It was because I was black in this kingdom where black was criminal, a stain, a deformity. A thing had happened and it reminded me of the first time—that time when I was a kid and I took too long to get my candy bar and that store owner pushed my sister and called us that word. But that was Texas, he said. But this is New York, he said. It doesn’t matter, it’s everywhere in this country, I said. I’m sorry, he said. I don’t understand