They Said This Would Be Fun

by Eternity Martis

  But, that Friday, Nathan texted me to say he was in town—and that he was staying with a friend. Did he forget our plans? I tried to ignore my gut instinct that this wasn’t going to end up the way I hoped, and solemnly got ready—my hair big and curly, a tight yellow bodycon dress and heels on—to meet him at Jack’s.

  No sooner had I introduced Taz and Nathan than he said he was going to go find his friends.

  “I’ll catch up with you later,” he said, before rushing off into the crowd. I tried to dance off my disappointment, but I just wanted to leave. On the way out, I walked by Nathan as he danced with other girls. He pretended not to see me.

  The next morning, I woke to a message apologizing.

  Hey, I’m really sorry about last night. I hadn’t seen my boy in a while. What are you up to tonight? I’ll meet you wherever you are.

  I’ll be at Cobra. What time should we meet? I texted back. He didn’t respond—not that afternoon, or as the evening went on. I dragged my feet at Cobra, checking my phone every few minutes for his message. We left early again. As we walked home, I saw his black-and-red plaid shirt. Just a few blocks away, Nathan was sitting right in front of Jim Bob’s with his friend, flirting with two white girls.

  I stood there, unnoticed. I wanted to cause a scene, say “What’s Good?” then pop off in typical Love & Hip Hop style. But I composed myself, inching closer and closer as they continued to flirt, until I was standing right in front of Nathan. He only looked up when I said his name. He and his friend sat there looking like two busted-ass burglars. The girls immediately knew what was going on.

  Nathan and I engaged in small talk before I wished him a good night and walked off, going home to cry melodramatically. I spent all of Sunday waiting for an explanation while knocking back six Bud Light Limes and a whole pack of cigarettes.

  I was angry that I didn’t speak up the first night he arrived, that I had continued to give him chances. Was he intentionally trying to hurt me? Did he care about me at all? I was mad. Angela-Bassett-in-Waiting-to-Exhale mad. I wanted to channel her as Bernadine when she finds out her husband is leaving her for a white woman. I wanted to shout “A WHITE WOMAN IS THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD TOLERATE YOUR SMUG ASS!” and then put his shit on the curb and burn it. I imagined being Robin, schooling her no-good man Troy from the balcony as she breaks up with him for being trifling, dodging the oranges he throws in humiliating defeat. I thought about storing my anger until we met for drinks before hitting Nathan with Savannah’s epic line to Kenneth, where she claims she’s not mad, “And to prove it, the drinks are on you,” before dumping my rum and coke over his disproportionately big head.

  Instead, when he messaged me on Monday apologizing again, I ignored it.

  As final exams wrapped up in April and Taz and I figured out whether we’d spend our summer in London or go back to Toronto, I finally accepted Nathan’s apology. He begged me to stay in London so he could visit for a few weeks. “I need you,” he said. And because movies had taught me that impulsive decisions are romantic, I stayed behind.

  What I forgot about movies is that boys lie.

  During that month and a half in London, Nathan and I only texted a handful of times—even then, he didn’t seem interested. Taz had gone home so Nathan and I could have the house to ourselves, but now I was alone. I had stayed here on a whim for a guy who had burned me several times. Why did I think anything would be different this time around? Worse—why did I think I deserved to be with someone who wasn’t sure about me? That revelation was enough for me to be done with him. I deleted his number, and called Taz, who was more than happy to come back and spend the rest of her summer in London.

  The night she returned, we went for a drink at Jack’s. The bar was nearly empty.

  “I’m so tired of being treated like shit,” I said to her, hunched over the counter. “I’m ready to actually fall in love.”

  As I took a sip of my beer, a draft came through the entrance door, and in walked Amir.

  Even under dim lighting, his smooth, dark mahogany skin, tinged pink at the tip of his nose, was radiant, and his jet black facial hair and straight white teeth were striking. He was no taller than me, but the way he carried himself—a sort of cool confidence without arrogance—made him seem much bigger than he was.

  He was wearing a black-and-white sweatshirt and a black New York Yankees baseball cap. His eyes, deep brown, almond-shaped, and shrouded by dark circles, were already on mine.

  We started dating that night.

  * * *

  ///

  Amir and I spent the rest of the summer riding around London in his gold Honda Accord, sitting in “No Parking” spots drinking Tim Hortons double-doubles and smoking Belmonts while getting to know each other. During the school year, he went to university in Windsor but he came home on weekends to work to support himself, his parents, and his siblings.

  During those summer days, he fixed cars with his uncle; and in the evenings, he worked at Cineplex. At all times, he was helping people in his Sudanese community: his Bluetooth earpiece was firmly secured to one ear and his phone was always ringing. He held it in his left hand; the right was reserved for smoking a cigarette, or animated gestures that accompanied his rapid Arabic.

  He was notorious around London for driving with his gas tank sign flashing yellow and a trunk full of items that he’d find at Goodwill and resell. His serious, worried demeanour could be broken by his childlike laugh. Even when he was in a rush, he always made time to put on his watch and his bracelets, spritzing himself with cologne.

  When I was around Amir, it felt like my heart was bursting out of my chest. When I found old traumas and behaviours from my relationship with Joshua resurfacing, he patiently helped me through it. When I wanted to quit, when I yelled—my primary defence mechanism—he spoke to me calmly. When I was out of control with fear and anxiety and I pushed him away, he gave me room to breathe. He promised he would never hurt me and that he would always be my friend, even if our relationship ended. I knew he was telling the truth.

  I introduced Amir to my mother, and the two quickly became friends. When she’d visit, we’d all sit in her car, the two of them in the front smoking cigarette after cigarette, talking for hours. When my mom and I would argue, he was the only one who could calm us both down and get us back on track. I talked to him about my dreams of being a journalist, and though he didn’t understand much about the industry, he pushed me to keep writing.

  We shared the experience of being Black in London, and it brought us closer. I watched the way strangers engaged with him, the look on their faces when we were out in public, heard the questions (“Is this actually your car?” “Do you speak English?” “Where are you originally from?”)—things I was also dealing with. We debriefed about our experiences during the day, shared old stories about discrimination and racism, and cheered each other up when we felt like we were drowning.

  But, even before the end of that summer, Amir and I realized that we had fundamentally different values and beliefs, ones we both spent a lot of time explaining and defending. I was an opinionated twenty-year-old feminist, agnostic, and curious about experiencing everything. He was twenty-three and too serious, following cultural and religious expectations with haphazard dedication. Amir came from a strict Muslim family; as the oldest son, he felt he had to set an example for his younger siblings, and that meant working hard, focusing in school, and not dating, especially outside of his religion and community. The Sudanese community in London is small and tight-knit; so, while I had already introduced him to my mom, he wasn’t ready for people to know about me.

  We drove around the city with tinted windows—“For your privacy,” he’d say. He’d drop me off to get my groceries and wait in the car. If he forgot something at his house, he’d park the car in the communal lot and run in, me sitting alone with the radio on, watching the late-evening sun fall into darkness. He never
stayed the night at my place; instead, he’d drive home bleary-eyed in the early morning before his parents woke up.

  When school started again in the fall, Amir went back to Windsor to begin fourth year while I stayed in London and went into third. Every other weekend, I’d take the Greyhound to see him. We’d study together in the campus library—finally able to be together, away from prying eyes. He seemed much happier. But the pressures of emotionally and financially supporting his family made him detached and anxious. He decided to come back to London on some weekends to start driving his father’s cab, a way to get fast money. He drove all day and night, and stopped by my place in the evening for an hour break, the only time I saw him. He’d sit on my couch, a distance away from me, on YouTube or texting, so into his phone that he didn’t even hear when I spoke to him. Other times he vented—about money, about the stress he felt, about supporting his family. “You’ll never understand. You were born here,” he’d say. “I’ve been through real shit you’ll never experience.”

  Every time he didn’t hear what I said because he was on his phone, every time I put my hand on his or moved closer without reciprocation, I quietly nursed the rejection. I weighed the risks of asking for what I needed. When I finally brought it up, suggesting we try to spend more time together without distractions, that it would make me feel appreciated if he returned my affection, he said I was being dramatic, crazy, and irrational, that women shouldn’t behave like this—they should learn that men are busy, and just suck it up. He didn’t have time for my complaining, not when I didn’t understand real struggle. “This is my life and you know this,” he said. “I won’t stop you if you want to leave.”

  I didn’t want to leave, I just wanted to stop feeling invisible. Amir made it seem like I was asking for too much. I had done the opposite of what the magazines said. I was not cool and chill and compliant, and now I was being told by the guy I loved that I was being needy and delusional. I’d offer him the easy way out: if he was so overwhelmed with his priorities and I was adding more stress to his life, we could end it. Then he would put that responsibility back on me, a resolution never in sight.

  It was hard to talk to Taz about my relationship. It felt like she wasn’t there for me. She hated being single, so she spent more time dating, cancelling our girls’ nights in, our weekend plans, and skipping her week to clean the house. She would boast about all the things she could do with her dates that I confided that Amir wouldn’t do with me—ride around in the car with windows down, go on trips during the weekend, spend time together in public. With Amir in Windsor and Taz never home, I focused more on school and writing. Taz started going out with some girls she met at her part-time job, and when I’d be leaving to pull an all-nighter at the library, she and her friends were pre-drinking in the living room in their little black dresses and stilettos, asking me to come with them. When I got back home, empty bags of chips and red Solo cups were littered across the table, along with spilled vodka. Upstairs, Taz was asleep in her own bed, still in her sequined dress.

  I was gravitating towards the people in my Women’s Studies courses and had recently joined our campus V-Day group, an organization with chapters around the world, started by playwright and activist Eve Ensler to help fight violence against women and girls. We put on plays and helped organize the London SlutWalk and Take Back the Night. I loved being among women who were fierce advocates for sex positivity, who could recite any feminist text and engage in conversations about social issues that I cared about. I felt challenged by the discussions we were having—a well-needed departure from rehashing party stories with Taz. Still, I felt guilty that I enjoyed their company more than my best friend’s.

  Over the years, Taz and I shared so much with each other about our lives and who we were, but we never spoke about who we wanted to be, as if to admit that wanting something larger than the life we knew together was a betrayal of us. But I’d needed more from our friendship as I navigated the trauma of assault. I’d needed more when I became a target of race-motivated attacks when we went out at night. And now, I needed my friend to support my choices.

  My interactions with Taz, once full of giggles, now consisted of tight-lipped smiles and desperate attempts to pretend everything was fine. She looked down or away from me when we spoke. Her body tensed beside mine. Our interactions felt hostile. Eventually, when I left for the library, Taz’s friends stopped saying hello altogether, a silence filling the room. When I went to the mall now, I walked past the greeting card store. Neither of us wanted to address what was happening.

  One evening in late fall, I was getting dressed to meet my new friends for dinner, but I couldn’t find the blouse I wanted to wear. I had just bought it, the tag was still on. I asked Taz if she had seen it, and she offered to help me look, but it didn’t turn up. As the weeks went by, more of my clothes started to go missing. When I opened the kitchen pantry or freezer to cook, my food was gone. Letters from collection agencies piled up in the mailbox, jammed in to make room for new ones. While I studied in my room, I could hear the unknown-caller ringtone chime loudly from Taz’s phone, left unanswered. And then our internet and cable got disconnected, despite the monthly payments I gave her.

  One weekend when she was out with her friends, I went down to the basement to do my laundry. I found a handful of my clothes in her basket, including my now-worn blouse. In a suitcase she kept downstairs, I found the remainder of my missing items, some stained and ripped from careless wear.

  Taz and I had grown up together, seen each other through awful fashion trends and coloured contacts, high school crushes and overbearing parents. We had taken a chance on pursuing this adventure together, at the expense of our relationships, comfort, security, and cultures. And the oneness—that closeness—that had gotten us through the first two years at Western made it hard to admit that it was not impermeable, that we could still grow apart. Taz faced different pressures at home—marriage, education, a career in health care—that didn’t disappear even as she got the freedom in London she desired. I was privileged to have very few family expectations. I had been raised to go my own way, to be my own person, to date who I wanted and at my own pace. She was raised to live life for her parents. She hated that she couldn’t escape it; she hated that I could.

  My friendship with Taz had been a bubble of safety and comfort. When we moved to London, we had only been focused on having a good time, but I felt myself growing into someone new—a woman who cared about what was going on in the world, who needed more out of her university experience than just foggy memories.

  I wasn’t the perfect friend; I had inadvertently shoved my own freedom in Taz’s face. I’d asked her to take this journey with me to Western with little regard for the very real limitations she would face when she went back home after graduation. Living away from home was a stepping stone for me towards further independence. But for Taz, each time we went to bed after a wild night out, every semester that flew by, came with the dread that these moments had an end date. By pushing her to disregard this, I had trivialized her reality.

  By the end of February, in third year, the greeting cards that we once sent each other to get through tough times had stopped coming. Weeks before that, Taz had gone back to sleeping in her own bed. No one needed to say that we had finally reached the end of our friendship. And we never did, not even as I packed up my belongings and moved out of our shared home.

  Leaving our beautiful, baby blue house was a bittersweet moment. Taz and I had found our house together. It was where we had built some of the greatest memories of our lives. When we had a bad day, when our hearts were broken, when we bombed a test, it was where we convened to comfort each other. It was where we learned to take care of our home and ourselves; a refuge after school; a place where we looked forward to seeing each other every day. Friends and lovers all came and left, but inside our house we always had each other.

  My new place had no lavender-painted walls
, no stairs to run down to greet guests, no porch to drink and sunbathe on, no hardwood flooring that made it easy to clean up spilled vodka or pasta sauce. The Victorian charm of the blue house—present in the creaking floors and old-style door knobs—was replaced by modern fixings. Home was now a spacious, carpeted, one-bedroom apartment with beige walls.

  After classes ended in April, Amir returned to London to drive his father’s cab full-time. I was taking summer courses before beginning my fourth year. While Amir worked, I studied and wrote stories—fiction, personal essays, screenplays. I’d roam around the city to kill time, sitting on park benches eating frozen yogurt or writing on my laptop at Starbucks. In the evenings, Amir stopped by on his break and I’d cook for both of us. I massaged his aching back and shoulders. I left him a key to my apartment so he could come in to eat and relax when he was done work, long after I’d fallen asleep.

  I was still mourning the end of my friendship with Taz. There were no more movie nights, no more making dinner together, no more popcorn and venting—Amir didn’t have time to do any of those things, and he didn’t want to make the time, either. And I didn’t even have Malcolm anymore. We’d stayed close after second year, but he had transferred to another school abroad. I planned dinners and nights out with the few friends who were still in the city, but Amir objected. Women didn’t feel the need to do those things when they had a partner, he said. What would his friends think, knowing that his girlfriend was out without him, slutting around? He refused to discuss why it was okay for him to go out with his friends to clubs all night; his only answer was that there were just things men could do that women shouldn’t.

  I felt like a housewife, providing Amir with emotional and domestic labour, feeding him, listening to his problems, internalizing my own because he ranked his suffering as higher priority, sacrificing my social life—all because he felt it was a woman’s job to care for her partner at the expense of herself.