Open Water

by Caleb Azumah Nelson

  Policemen give each other a warning, like in this video, whereby on seeing an object in a young Black man’s hand, one of a pair screams to the other, ‘Gun, gun, gun!’ before they both unload, twenty shots in all, four connecting with a body that is no longer his own, perhaps never was, after all, it’s not a sudden loss of rights that enables a pair of men to destroy another’s body on suspicion, no, it’s not sudden; the perception of a young Black male existed long before this moment, before he fit a description, before two policemen and a helicopter deemed him to be the person smashing the windows of cars, despite not having proof, despite only being told ‘someone’ in the area was smashing the windows of cars, no, it’s not sudden, this moment has been building for years, many years longer than any of these men have been alive, this moment is older than us all, it’s longer than the 1:47 clip which shows me a ­murder –

  She grips your foot with slender fingers, anchoring you in this moment as your voice falters and you begin to slip away. Just a few minutes ago, you had been seated on her balcony, the air cool as she smoked into the night, a slight flutter of her eyes with every inhale. She suggested you read to her. It had been a while. You pretended to deliberate, scrolling through the document on your phone, despite knowing where your finger would stop the page. You began to read in that clear voice which you think resembles an old friend telling you a story. You began to read and you were taken back to the moment the video appeared from across the Atlantic, transferred by the sturdy boat of the Internet. How his body crumpled, and he fell onto his hands and knees, as if crawling. When your voice wavers, it is because you’re struggling with the weight of the reality you speak of. You’re mad too, because policemen give each other a warning, like in this video, whereby on seeing an object in a young Black man’s hand, one of a pair screams to the other, ‘Gun, gun, gun!’ before they both unload, twenty shots in all. You’re mad because Stephen and Alton and Michael and you, you too, received a warning but you didn’t know where or when or how the danger would arrive. You just knew you were in danger.

  You’re not in danger here, but the tears fall all the same.

  ‘Drunk,’ you lie.

  ‘It’s OK. You’re safe here.’

  15

  ‘Why did you ask me to hang out today?’

  ‘That’s a strange question to ask your friend,’ you reply.

  Golden hour swarms your senses. Colour tears through the sky in haphazard strokes. Your hand is bleeding and you’re sucking the spillage from your thumb; you tried to open a bottle of cider with a key and the jagged edge sliced shallow through your skin. You’ve both been touched by the heat and the alcohol, but it makes this meeting no less honest.

  ‘Usually, we just, you know, bump into each other or link up on the day. This felt kinda . . . formal?’

  You shrug. ‘I just wanted to carve out some time for you.’

  ‘I appreciate that.’ She takes a sip of her drink and comes up empty. ‘Shall we get moving?’

  When the day started, she was angry at you, and you didn’t know why. You had an inkling and pushed apologies towards her in the way one would do when diffusing a bomb in the ­movies: one eye closed, snip at the wire and hope for the best.

  She asked you to take her portrait. You placed her against the brickwork fencing her balcony and waited for both of you to relax. Your hands shook as she handed you her vulnerability, and you struggled to focus the lens on her features. When the contact sheet returns, the grid of pictures resembles a tussle; two people wrestling with how they feel about one another. The face does not lie. How the eyes widen, the skin around the mouth tightening, or, your favourite from the set, the last shot on the roll of film, where you trained the lens in her direction in a moment where her eyes were on you, not the lens, but you, and all guises slipped away with the ease of a gossamer sheet in the wind.

  And as the sun set, you whispered secrets and intimacies into the solitude of the now empty sky. She asked you who you ­were –

  ‘What a question,’ you said.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t know you, there are just bits and pieces that need filling in.’

  You wonder what it means to know someone, and whether it’s possible to do so wholly. You don’t think so. But perhaps in the not knowing comes the knowing, born of an instinctive trust that you both struggle to elucidate or rationalize. It just is.

  From south to north, mainline, Underground, emerging only to submerge. You enter a pub, and they direct you down the stairs, towards a ­bunker-­like basement.

  ‘What are you drinking?’ you say.

  ‘We are drinking . . . rum and Coke?’

  ‘Single or double,’ the woman behind the bar asks.

  ‘Double,’ she says.

  The barwoman gazes at us, two giggly fools at ease, and takes comfort in our joy. The measures she pours are healthy, spilling over the limit, and she gives us a nod, a smile, a small acknowledgement. You look around the basement and remember that being seen is no small joy.

  ‘I’m gonna go to the toilet before they start,’ she says, heading round a corner.

  As she leaves there’s a crackle of feedback from the speakers. Your friend Theo takes the stage, his band quickly joining. He announces himself, and this is a different person from the young man you know. This is a person who is more certain, this is a person who is confident in his honesty. The songs are full of nostalgia, which is to say they are full of mourning; one remembers that which came before, often with a fond sadness, a want to return, despite knowing to return to a memory is to morph it, to warp it. Every time you remember something, the memory weakens, as you’re remembering the last recollection, rather than the memory itself. Nothing can remain intact. Still, it does not stop you wanting, does not stop you longing.

  She joins you halfway through the third song, and has ditched the patterned kimono she was wearing, now stuffed in her bag. A band of black cotton covers her chest, stomach and clean shoulders exposed. You hand her her drink and she leans back into you, the spread of brown skin pressed against your chest, meeting the slither of flesh where you have unbuttoned your shirt one more than usual. One arm snakes around her, your fingers perched on her collarbone. She eases into you further and you’re in a rhythm, hips slinking slow, moving to memories of moments just passed. You are here and you are not. You are on the balcony, you are on the hill, you are in sunshine, you are in darkness, you are in the open air, you are in the basement, you are in perpetual joy, you are eternally sad. Her short black curls tickle your chin as her head winds this way and that. You wonder how long this moment could stretch for, and how much it could contain: you, her, this crowded basement of singles and couples and groups, the Black woman at the bar who sees you both, who you see too, Theo and his band on stage, nostalgia, melancholy, joy, concrete floors, makeshift walls, applause, a night too warm, introductions, cigarette split, eyes narrow, nicotine, one more drink, one more drink, one more ­drink –

  And you’re on a sofa in the pub, sticky leather on skin. Nur­sing what will be your last, she sits beside you, ­cross-­legged, your hand resting against the ridges of her spine.

  ‘That’s not a platonic hand on my back,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, my bad,’ you say.

  ‘No, it’s OK. I like it.’

  Maybe it’s because you need to make the journey back to ­south-­east London, maybe it’s because you’re both running out of steam. It could also be that, despite interacting with others, this has been largely an experience shared between the two of you, and a new venue might change these conditions, might cause the thing you are both holding onto to end.

  ‘Honestly,’ you say, just before your friends dive into another basement, a small group of you having walked from Stoke Newington to Dalston. ‘I think we’re done for tonight. Go enjoy yourselves.’

  They don’t need to be told. You split away, considering a taxi.<
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  ‘Let’s get some food,’ she says to you.

  The chicken shop you choose is cosy, yet sterile, the light harsh. They have opened their glass front, which is a set of enormous sliding doors, the night coming in with no filter.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asks.

  ‘Wings and chips. Please.’ She smiles, and orders the same, handing over a plastic note. You hold her close, to say thank you, and she lets lips she had painted purple graze your cheek.

  ‘Do you wanna eat on the way home,’ she says, squirting chilli sauce over her chips, ‘or sit in here?’ She fans herself, batting away the idea as she says it.

  ‘It’ll be cooler outside. Let’s find a bench or something, I’ll order an Uber when we’re done.’

  The place you perch ends up being the cool concrete of someone’s stairs. You point to a building opposite and tell her how, many years ago, a diminutive, ­softly-­spoken man spoke his joy in a basement full of strangers, playing ­long-­forgotten cuts and songs you grew up with. You tell her this but soon you have trailed off, tearing into the chicken, dashing the bones away into the gutter. Something heavy here, in the absence of your words.

  You feel her turn beside you. You wonder how long this moment could stretch for, and how much it could contain: you, her, the soft rush of cars speeding in the darkness, the gaze, seeing each other here, her heartbeat near audible, before she says, ‘I love you, you know?’

  She has swum out into open water, and it is not long before you join her.

  You take but a moment before saying, ‘I love you too.’

  16

  She makes you sleep on the sofa, and you’re glad because, in the taxi home, as she was leaning out of the window, you realized it was alcohol you were swimming in, not water.

  It’s better it happens this way.

  Sunday evening. She asked if you wanted to go to the cinema in the afternoon, Peckhamplex, ­five-­pound tickets and the promise of audience participation, but at the last moment had broken your date to see her family. Instead, an evening where she pants with the heat, on her sofa, watching reality TV.

  ‘I’m so full and hot,’ she says.

  And here, another problem: despite advocating for desire to bloom in the summer, the rays of the sun falling on faces, skin darker and full of life, gentle smiles for no reason but the sunshine, despite all this, one often finds oneself reduced to sludge when you haven’t eaten enough or eaten too much, dehydrated or had one too many, dropping off for unplanned naps or sleep deprived in the thick nights. None of which is conducive to being in the presence of others, yet you soldier on, you are determined to enjoy these months, leaving the house not knowing what the day might bring you, where possibilities seem infinite, where beauty and joy, too, can be endless.

  You while away the evening together, doing nothing really, which is something, is an intimacy in itself. To not fill your time with someone is to trust, and to trust is to love. And so you should say you spent the evening loving each other, on her sofa, eating, drinking, listening to music. She plays Kendrick, and you talk about that for a moment. But even this trails away, content in the absence of distractions, content in the presence of one another.

  It’s better it happens this way: that you have no intention of it happening. The time approaches for you to leave, but it’s Sunday and the buses have stopped running. You have work in six hours. You should’ve left long ago. But you’re here, in the dim darkness of her room, the night not quite black, some light seeping under the curtains. She welcomes you into her room, and asks you to close the door. Asks you to turn around so she can change her ­T-­shirt. To trust is to love and she trusts you. Asks how you’re gonna get home. An Uber, you guess. You check how long it will take. Ten minutes. You had no intention of this happening. But you don’t decline when she asks if you’d like to lie beside her and wait. You don’t edge away when she pulls closer. Your breathing weighs more here. She swims out into the open water and you join her. You’re here, tucked together, her back against your chest. It’s familiar, even when you reach under her shirt, and take a nipple, tender, between forefinger and thumb, the rest of your hand splayed against her warm skin. Your breathing weighs more here. Your Uber comes, your Uber goes. You hear your phone vibrating, the driver trying to find you, but you don’t pick up. Your lips are grazing her neck, and one arm is pinned between you and her, but the other, the other wanders, wanders down, down, down, a finger grazing her stomach, grazing the delicate curves of her hips and waist, grazing the black material which separates you from her, before you become surer, a little more firm. You don’t know if what you feel is a result of the heat or the heat breaking between you. What is a break? What is a fracture? What is a joint? To love is to trust, and she trusts your hand to break the thin wall, sliding your hand under the material. Your lips meet and it’s urgent. Your lips meet and you know you have needed to kiss her. You turn her on her back, your mouth now finding her stomach, working upwards to where your hand previously was, to what started this all, but no, she started this all, when she suggested you get an Uber to her house, but no, you don’t know; you don’t know where her roots lie but you can certainly trace yours to the dingy pub in which you met this woman with braids coming down her head, a ­kind-­eyed stranger, and you knew before you knew. Is this OK? you ask, hooking the black material separating you from her with your thumbs. She nods, you slide it down, down, down. Away. There is no wall to break now but there is more to explore and you know, you know what you’re doing, but only because it is her, only because you can feel her body tighten as you touch her, only because you had no intention of this happening, and so you’re not thinking, but feeling, and you’re not talking but your bodies are confessing their truths out loud. You run your tongue down her middle, from the hard bone of her chest, down her stomach, down, down, down. She stops you. Are you sure? she asks. You nod in the darkness and continue, your tongue meeting soft flesh, slow and steady, her body writhing in your presence, in the pleasure. She asks you to come back to her, so you lie beside her. Your lips meet, urgent. Lie on your back, she says. And she kisses you, working from your mouth, to your neck, the hardness of your collarbone, the softness of the skin on your chest, working down, down, down, down the middle. It’s not long before you’re giggling as you fumble in the dark with your best friend. She lies beside you once more and amidst the laughter, a short panic, which you thrust away in bursts, kissing the darkness, pushing each other, lips meeting, urgent. The heat has broken, and you know what you feel is the result. You’re swimming with her, holding hands in the dark with your best friend, taking large, sure strokes. You had no intention of this happening, but it’s better this way.

  17

  She spends the week apartment hunting in Dublin. She’s left it late; only a few weeks of the summer remain. You don’t talk about what happened, not really. But what more is to be said that your bodies did not? You do however, from a distance, fall into a rhythm like it is easy.

  On her return, you’re waiting at the airport, sat atop the empty help desk. Legs swinging like a joyous child. She strides through the evening, and she waves. You wave back, your heart swelling at this small gesture.

  You said to trust is not to fill time, but you would like to say to trust is to fill that time with each other. The heart does the same, in the immense darkness of the body, filling with blood, clenching it out, tight as stiff fist with nothing in hand. You fill time, clutching onto it as it leaves you. Clutching after each other in the moments you must separate. In between the weekly shops, the ­mind-­numbing television, cooking, cleaning, reading. Perched separately, but together, you often find yourself close to the balcony as it rains, heat breaking in thunder and lightning, like snare hits and ­hi-­hats.

  You’re like a pair of jazz musicians, forever improvising. Or perhaps you are not musicians, but your love manifests in the music. Sometimes, your head tucked into her neck, yo
u can feel her heartbeat thudding like a kick drum. Your smile a grand piano, the glint in her eye like the twinkle of hands caressing ivory keys. The rhythmic strum of a double bass the inert grace she has been blessed with, moving her body in ways which astound. A pair of soloists in conversations so harmonious, one struggles to separate. You are not the musicians but the music.

  18

  It’s one thing to be looked at, and another to be seen.

  ‘Can I?’ you ask, holding up your camera. You spend a lot of time gazing through a viewfinder, in what you think of as a perfect position: the objective observer, perched in the near distance, straddling the fence between here and there. The subject is aware but not distracted from themselves. Perhaps the observer will ask the subject to turn this way or that, will ask them to show them something ­else – not more or less, but different. The subject ­acquiesces – the resistance is natural. There’s an inter­action of sorts, between the pair, and this makes the portrait. The photo you’re thinking of: she gazes straight into the lens, as you’ve asked. Holding her neck for comfort. Single silver earring swinging soft from the lobe. She’s ­beautiful – subjective, but the bias is inevitable. The glint in her eyes you are always searching for before you depress the shutter. A moment cut from something you both struggle to describe. Something like freedom.

  In a conversation with a friend:

  ‘I’m about to nerd out so forgive ­me – so my biggest influence is this ­British-­Ghanaian painter Lynette ­Yiadom-­Boakye, her work is dope. She paints Black figures, but all of them are made ­up – which when you see the detail of them is hard to believe. By doing this, she’s externalizing her interiority, which isn’t something Black people are afforded very often. At the same time, her level of craft is ­nuts – there’s a lot of power in mastery of a form, being able to flex within that. Then with the motion stuff, I guess I’m always trying to make things which are reflective of Black music, which, to me, is some of the greatest expression of ­Blackness – that ability to capture and portray a rhythm. So maybe motion is the wrong word, rhythm is better. So like this shot of her holding her face, there’s a lot of stillness to it but there’s also a peaceful rhythm in that moment captured.’