Sexual liberation is different for us. From the late ’90s, white women could look up to their Sex and the City idols, who iconically scandalized television with the idea that women could have sex like men—and the next generation of white girls followed in the footsteps of characters from its successor, Girls. For young women of colour, however, it’s more complicated. Who do Black girls have to look up to on the screen? Where are our brunch-table conversations about vibrators and orgasms and sex and love?
Few shows and films have given us accurate, contemporary representations of Black womanhood that are unapologetically sexual. In recent years, we’ve been graced with Olivia Pope, Annalise Keating, Nola Darling, and the ladies of Girls Trip—but other portrayals are still stigmatizing, and few films and TV shows like this had been made when I was at university. Even reality TV shows like Basketball Wives, Real Housewives of Atlanta, and Love & Hip Hop craft images of oversexed Black women who are gold-diggers, freaks, or baby-makers, unable to have healthy and faithful friendships and relationships. Some hip-hop artists still brand any sex-loving Black woman as a thot, hoe, or chickenhead. Movies continue to portray Black women as sexual deviants undeserving of love, and if we do attempt to explore our sexuality, we are punished by losing everything. In Tyler Perry’s Temptations: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, lead character Judith cheats on her husband and is punished by getting HIV. She grows old alone while her husband gets happily remarried to a younger woman. (Perry has a history of playing into negative, punishing stereotypes of Black women in his films.)
I knew the racist constructions of Black female sexuality were impositions of society, and yet I still felt so ashamed of myself sitting on that couch. I wanted to be like other women, to hook up and not worry about the additional stigma, to have sex like men do, to own my sexuality. But that morning, being judged by that woman in that fancy condo building, I felt like a cavity of darkness.
The mother continued to look at me, her mouth slightly parted, seemingly conflicted as her eyes darted between me and the door, and then she left to catch up with her kids.
Twenty minutes later, I saw my cab driving towards the entrance. I flew off the couch and quickly ran outside, taking a nosedive into the backseat.
“Oh my God, thank you so much for coming,” I said, as if he had a choice.
“You’re welcome, I apologize for the wait—”
“It’s okay,” I said as I put my seatbelt on. “You’re here now.”
I sighed with relief and slouched in the seat, savouring the unthreatening silence.
“So, how was it?”
I lifted my head, and paused, giving him a minute to retract his intrusive comment. But at this point my dignity was running on empty, and this cab driver was asking me a question I needed to answer for myself.
“It was good, until it wasn’t.”
As he drove back into Richmond Row, he gave me a list of reasons why a girl like me, whatever that meant, shouldn’t be doing the walk of shame, especially for white boys. I pretended to listen as familiar buildings—Jack’s, Barney’s, St. Joseph’s Hospital—passed by. With each new quarter on the meter, I felt more relieved.
By the time I reached home, it was 11 a.m. People who hadn’t embarrassed themselves last night were jogging, and hungover groups of friends were stumbling out of their homes for brunch, to eat and watch the girls run home in their body-con dresses. I paid my driver, thanked him for the ride (not the advice), and went inside. I made myself that five-egg omelette, took a shower, and crawled into my bed.
Act Five
CHORUS: We called in Tyra Banks in for a favour. [Cuts to Tyra]: I was rooting for you! WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU!!!!!!!!
The next time I went to Anthony’s condo, it was snowing terribly. An eerie haze illuminated the empty city, the snow on the ground was untouched.
He smoothed out the creases in the teal Egyptian cotton sheets his girlfriend had bought him. I ran my hand over them; it was a thoughtful gift, the kind that showed she was practical and nurturing. I felt that I was neither of these things.
I had refused to feel ashamed about this affair; it was his problem, not mine. But it was finally getting to me—her sheets, the two picture frames on the dresser he purposely put face down when I came over. As I lay beside him, he called his girlfriend and spoke to her so sweetly that I was jealous. After he hung up, he turned over to look at me. I didn’t challenge him back with my eyes.
“Can I ask you a question?” he said.
“No.”
“Why are you still with me? I thought you would have told me to fuck off by now.”
I paused.
“I don’t know.”
But I did, and it was embarrassing that even he knew I was better than this. When he was playing with my hair, making me laugh, kissing me goodbye, I thought that maybe being cruel was a way to hide how he really felt. I thought I just needed to try harder to help him past his own hesitancy about our relationship.
“What do you see in me that you’re still here?” I asked him, trying to deflect from my own bad choices.
“Honestly, I really like Black girls,” he said coolly, now laying on his back, his hands behind his head.
“So why do you have a white girlfriend, then?”
“Well, she’s really nice, she has a good job, and my parents love her,” he said. “I don’t want to ruin a good thing.”
“So it’s just for show?”
“I’m really attracted to Black girls,” he said again. “But I could never marry one.”
His girlfriend was kind, smart, educated, a hit with his family—things, it seemed, he didn’t think were possible for Black women. He talked about the expectation to get married and have kids. “Oh God, E, I hope you don’t get pregnant. I hope it’s not with me,” he said, laughing. “My nonna would flip her shit. She’d say, Tony, why is your baby Black?”
Anthony said that he had always wanted to sleep with a Black girl, and he had been trying for years. The closest he’d got was when he actively pursued a maid who cleaned his room at a Cuban resort. “Thanks for being my first,” he laughed, then turned over to check his phone.
I heard these comments from men often in bars. But they were unprovoked strangers who were drunk. Said in passing, but still offensive. I didn’t want to believe that Anthony was like them, but in this moment, my concerns about our racial differences—the ones that had made me reluctant in the beginning—started to resurface.
“I should go home now,” I said, getting up to grab my belongings.
I stared at the backs of the frames, trying to see through them, desperate to see what she looked like, how different we were.
“I’ll call you a cab,” he said quietly, as he came over and quickly slipped the frames into the top drawer. But he forgot about the one hanging in the hallway. It was a large framed photo of Anthony’s family standing in front of a Christmas tree, his girlfriend’s hand on his chest, both of them smiling. She was thin with short brown hair, big brown eyes, and flushed cheeks, like his. They looked so happy. He kissed me goodbye in front of the photo. Wedged between his perfect life and a lie, I promised myself I would never come back.
Act Six
CHORUS: We’ve renamed you Oscar Martis because this man is trash and you apparently like living in a garbage can. Why do you keep going back?! We can’t with your sad and sorry ass.
It had been a week since I last saw Anthony, and it was the first weekend that he didn’t text me. His girlfriend was in town.
Instead of ruining Taz’s night, I decided to stay in and be miserable about my life decisions with my laptop and a mountain of snacks. As any bored person does on a Saturday night indoors, I creeped.
I tried to remember Anthony’s Twitter handle from a night when he’d shown me his profile. He said it was mainly full of him tweeting his favourite rap lyrics. “D
on’t add me though,” he told me, laughing.
Two hours of amateur sleuthing later, I found his account.
Hmm…he really likes the word nigga.
Wow, he’s talking to a Black woman? Oh, he’s talking to a few Black women. He’s been talking to them since we started hooking up.
Anthony’s Twitter page was full of interactions with Black women. He had just messaged a girl a few hours ago. Most of the messages were platonic, discussing music and radio shows, like the texts he had sent me when we’d first met. Others seemed obsessive. He was following a dozen Black female porn stars. Like a fanboy, he fawned over them, sending them his number, asking them to message back.
I’m a big fan.
Here’s my number, give me a call.
Let’s meet up, I would love to take you out for breakfast.
A feeling of disgust—of complete violation—moved through me, bringing me to tears.
He was obsessed with the myth of Black female sexuality. He was turned on by the parts of our bodies, the secrets of pleasure we held between our legs. And I was the lab rat he experimented on.
When he told me about liking Black girls, and me being his “first,” I hadn’t thought he was actively searching for us. But I had become a body with which he could play out his sexual fantasies, to build enough confidence to find other Black girls he could add to his hit list.
I cried myself to sleep that night and for nights after. It didn’t matter how much I showered, my body felt dirty and used. I walked around campus in a daze. Meanwhile, Anthony, oblivious to my breakdown, was texting me again.
Taz commiserated, but she didn’t understand the extent of my reaction. I didn’t understand it either, it was as if my body had known there was an intruder and shut down on itself. I couldn’t describe the detachment, the disgust I felt for this contaminated shell.
I thought I knew what an assault on my body felt like. I had experienced deliberate, textbook physical attacks. But this was something else. Anthony had violated me without force. It was a different kind of power and control, but still a taking. And this had made my own body foreign to me, a shameful burden. I hated this problem with no name, this invasion that I knew I’d never recover from.
My hurt had turned into anger. He had stolen something from me—broken my trust. He needed to be reminded of who I was, of what he would miss, before I walked away for good. I wanted to make him feel terrible for how he’d treated me, and I wanted to see his regret in person.
I went to his apartment one last time in the New Year, burning with shame but with nothing to lose. And when I saw his face—exhausted, his eyes distant, embarrassed—I realized that he absolutely hated himself. And in hating himself, he hated me too. I was a scapegoat for his weakness, his guilt over wanting women who looked like me, women he was raised not to desire. And I was relying on our moments of tenderness to once again prove that I could be with someone, despite them being unsure about me. “Take me home. Right now,” I said.
He nodded. “I’ll get the keys.”
The ride back in his rusty Honda Civic was extremely quiet. He apologized for the mess, throwing newspapers and old Starbucks coffee cups onto the backseat. I told him it didn’t matter and sat on them, my legs bare under my peacoat.
He looked over. “Are you cold? I’ll get you my jacket.”
He shuffled around the back of the car as I protested. I didn’t want his fickle chivalry now. Still, he wrapped it around my legs and turned the heat up.
We drove in silence until he approached my street. I knew we only had minutes left with each other. “If you’re so unhappy with your life, then why don’t you just change it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I wish I could be like you. You’re courageous and optimistic. You just love your life. But I don’t know.” It got quiet again. “I’m sorry I’m such an asshole,” he said, looking straight ahead, swallowing silently.
“It’s okay.”
“You’re a good kid.”
When he pulled into my driveway, the air thickened. Dawn was breaking. He parked the car and we sat in silence for a few minutes, the only sound the gentle chirping of birds.
There was no kiss goodbye, no words. I got out of the car, walked up the steps, and went to my room. I took off my clothes, got into bed, and cried myself to sleep.
CHORUS: And she wins the Academy Award for Best Performance for the Most Dramatic, Unnecessary Choices That Make Life Hella Difficult for No Reason (she is currently available to star in a lead role in any Issa Rae production!).
Epilogue
CHORUS: Shit, there’s more! [Pulls bag of popcorn onto lap, starts munching.]
My period was late.
Not “three days” kind of late. It was over two weeks late. Pregnancy-scare kind of late.
The day after ending things with Anthony, I got bronchitis and couldn’t get out of bed. It was like my body was trying to punish me. It ached like I’d been in the boxing ring, and I had a nasty bout of nausea and a heightened sense of smell that seemed to last for days.
And, my period was late.
Not only had I not been able to shake the feeling that one gets from being used as a racial novelty for the sexual pleasure of a white guy, I was now horrified that I was carrying his child. There were no Yahoo answers to help with this dilemma.
All I could think about was what he’d said about babies: My nonna would flip her shit. She’d say, Tony, why is your baby Black?
He would be ashamed; hooking up with a Black girl could be hidden within the walls of his bedroom. But a biracial baby? That was a mistake everyone could see.
I tried to think of ways to make the little embryo unstick itself from my uterine wall. I tried falling down the stairs like Drew Barrymore’s character in Riding in Cars with Boys, but I lost my nerve and slinked all the way down to the last step. I looked up ways to induce your period, which included eating copious amounts of parsley or shoving it up your vagina, but that seemed like the start of another problem rather than a solution.
I needed a pregnancy test, but I was too broke to buy one. In an attempt to rid me of my sadness, Taz dragged me to the bar so I could sulk in public instead. As I was walking to the washroom to check if my period had arrived, I found $10 in loose bills and change scattered across the floor of the stall. Then I found another $4 in loonies by the counter.
The next evening after class, Taz and I walked to the drug store up the street to buy the test.
Beside a sale sticker was a no-name brand test for $10.88. I was tired and scared that I was carrying the spawn of a race-chaser, so I whined about how I wanted the name-brand test, a whopping $22, because it claimed to detect pregnancy sooner and I really needed this whole chapter of my life to be over ASAP.
After I threw my childish fit in the family-planning aisle, we took the no-name test to the checkout to stand in an unacceptably long line. Only one cash was open, manned by an older woman with a Kate Gosselin haircut who looked like her name was Deborah. She moved extremely slowly, like she wanted to stay late at work, and the line behind us grew right into one of the aisles.
When it was our turn, I placed the pregnancy test on the counter face down.
Deborah scanned my test and put it upright, making me wince in humiliation.
“Your total is $18.76,” she said, loudly.
“No,” I said, leaning over the counter in a hushed voice. “It’s supposed to be on sale for $10.88. There’s a big sticker.”
She looked unimpressed.
“Ma’am, it’s coming up as $18.76,” she said. We engaged in a stare-off.
“Can you call someone, please, to get a price check?”
Deadpan Deb slowly picked up the phone and hit the PA button. It beeped. “Could I get a price check on a pregnancy test?” Her voice was a crackled echo through the store. The ent
ire line, about twelve people, was listening.
Another old white lady came to the front to collect the test.
“The brand-name test was on sale,” she called from the aisle. “It’s all sold out.”
“Is there another pregnancy test that I can give these ladies for a similar price?” Deb yelled back.
“No, there’s no other pregnancy tests here for cheap!”
“You know what? You’ve been very helpful, but we’ll just take the first one we had,” Taz said, sensing I was about to explode.
Deb got back on the PA. “Can you please bring back the no-name pregnancy test?”
I was sweating as I counted out the bills and change that I’d found last night on the bar floor. Deborah collected them slowly as my test lay there, the box once again upright and facing everyone in the line, who all looked quite invested in my misfortune.
She handed me the receipt. My test was still standing there for all to see.
“Can I have a bag?” I was bewildered.
“It’s five cents.”
Taz quickly grabbed the box off the counter and dragged me out before I unleashed hormonal fury on Deborah.
When we got home, I took the test. There was one line—not pregnant.
The next day, I got my period.
* * *
///
A year later, I still hadn’t made sense of my relationship with Anthony, or my own emotions about his Black-girl fetish.
I also hadn’t forgiven myself for getting into that mess, and I’d come to an understanding that my relationship to my body would never be the same. It felt marked and unfamiliar, something I didn’t recognize in the mirror—although nothing had really changed. That feeling didn’t go away, even as I started dating someone new. I didn’t know how to explain what I was going through to him, or my friends. Their problems seemed simple: their boyfriends sucked, they were jerks. There was no explaining that I had been on someone’s racial Fuck Bucket List. I walked around with this heavy shame, a problem with no solution.
They Said This Would Be Fun Page 15
