Loving A Blakkboy, Learning Me

so I spent a few days in NYCity as a panelist for an NYU/NAACP Black Solidarity Conference, conjoined with a benefit performance for J-FLAG sponsored by NYU and Amnesty International. Much of my time in NY was spent in Jersey; exploring the beauties of being platonic with a blakkboy I have found it extremely difficult not to love as deeply as I know how to love. make sense? So this weekend was our breakthrough... an opportunity to see one another differently, and still recognize and relish all that the years between he and me has taught we about how to be.... in love... and not... and friends.

We're both single now... but I had shared this letter some time ago with a friend or two and was reminded about it today... just after my return from NYC.... allowing the joy of friendship and the courage to get beyond my own passion guide my next steps... to more clarity about myself.... or those I may choose to try loving. I realize, more than a year after this initial letter was written, that it says a great deal more about me than it does about him... So I'll protect him, in this case. I'll call him "blakkboy", cuz that's what he (still) represents to me: a reflection of the gift of love that I long to give especially to myself.... black boy or not.

11.02.03

Blakkboy,

This is the letter I have not been brave enough to write. Yet nothing here should surprise you if you know anything about my eyes and how they look at you. Especially when you are there and me, here, I remember you best: brown and luscious and ebony and oil scented like the king I peeped on Christopher back in ’97. I have been in love since. And I am well aware that these feelings don’t make much sense. If I didn’t believe in spells before, I do now. For I have not been able to shake your touch… the rare and erratic moments when you indulged the possibility of filling the void that has been here since I first saw you. You are magic, and it troubles me that other men who’ve hurt you do not see this. It sometimes hurts me to know that I do and cannot be with you.

There is this immense capacity within me to be greater than I know is even imaginable. And when I’m with you I’m closest to this—as radiant as the sun. I glow in the potentiality of a life with you and in the resolve that I have not settled. I’m reminded most of this absence when I’ve tried to fill it with others who can not love me conscientiously as well as you do without even trying.

I need someone in my life who can dance with me and explore strange soul sensibilities in record shops. I need someone in my life who will inspire me to save for trips to the Dominican Republic, Brazil, London, or Capetown. You inspire something in me that believes love can be borne out of, especially, the empty spaces. I close my eyes and remember our dance and it is a shelter for every pain I’ve endured. I close my eyes and think of you and give myself permission to cry while driving. I wipe the tears into a grin. How silly I must be to think you’d ever be with me?

I have wondered if prayers or fasts can really make things happen. I suppose I have tried them all. And I sometimes think that someone like you will appear; and I’ll call you up, and you’ll know, unlike the times before when I’ve claimed finding love, that I truly have found another spirit in the universe with eyes, spirit, rhythm, and softness like yourn. I’ll be ecstatic to tell you that such a person exists; for no creator in my imagination would create just one of you. I’m not suggesting that there’s another you in the universe. I am perhaps suggesting that my heart will not know the difference, should I find the right person. I’ll be able to feel that same glow and happiness. And indeed, if only for moments, I have experienced this potentiality in others; albeit fleeting.

I know that my poetic superlatives have often made you uncomfortable. You somehow feel that you don’t deserve them. That I tell you of your perfection does not mean that I don’t see imperfections. It’s just that the imperfections are necessary to your evolution into yourself, as whole and perfect as you were born. You are Cassandra Wilson’s lazy run down the Mississippi, Omar’s perfect stretch for a note out of his range, Nina Simone’s unintended wail cracking into a melodious run, Ron Trent’s unintended, extended remix of Oya’, Rux, or Primitive rhythms. You are Kahlo’s imperfect eyebrow connection that Diego’s finger traced to discover something greater about the thickness and texture of black. You are Basquiat’s patient indifference to post-modern praise of his “Famous Negro” masterpieces. You are the only man I have longed to love in spite of his imperfections; and this is painfully perfect. Almost as sweetly imperfect as it would be if you someday accepted an invitation to be, and stay, and grow alongside me: one who has always been willing to be your friend, even as my heart longed for more; one who monitors your night-breathing or gives you space when you so infrequently desire it.

Blakkboy, you are a song I danced to and cried with and never heard again. You are a second wind. And however you should respond to this plea written bravery (e.g., “Tim’m, you off the hook”)…I will never forget that whoever is trying to love you….or me, that there is something special and enduring between us. I know you love me, and I don’t take for granted opportunities to tell you that you’re loved. I won’t forget you, in spite of my imperfect desire to express longings for things I dare to dream-- things I want but may never have. You remain: mine, friend, lover, blakkboy. You are a reminder of the beauty life holds for dreamers who remember that life, despite the madness, offers many beautiful possibilities.


Your boy,



Tim’m