| |
CUPID MUST HAVE BEEN working overtime. Or maybe my eyes were now being opened to the vast numbers of women out there for me to sample from. Perhaps, as I got older and more settled, I gave off something that made me more attractive to females – just like female dogs give off a scent in mating season. Whatever the reason, since I said “yes” to dating by opening my life to Belinda, more women kept coming my way. I had to be careful though, like a good fisherman, taking only what was useful and throwing back what was not.
The next woman to swim across my path turned up via my little brother, Ryan, one of my favorite people in the world. He was born eighteen years after me, a result of the sexual union between my father and one of his many lovers. In the early days, Ryan was inconvenient. I was a teenager who was now having a taste of real life and I certainly did not want any kid to mess up my perfectly dysfunctional single-parent home during my weekend and vacation visits with my father.
But he was like a puppy: the more I pushed him away, the more he was drawn to me, until I picked him up and gave him the attention he demanded. I was glad that I did. Ryan has grown into one of the finest young men I know. We have so much fun together when I see him. We wrestle to test each other’s strength and since he started using my weights, he has been winning most of those contests.
“A teenage body grows a whole lot faster than a middle-aged man’s,” I kept reminding him to quell his gloating. We talk about everything and I always take him some place new every time we go out. He never asks for anything and it is a joy for me to see the look on his face when I get him something that I know he wants. I worry about him sometimes for he is far better-looking than I am and I know that many girls want to take his underwear off, but for now we share the same morals, so the girls get the shock of their lives when he tells them where to get off. I am so proud of him. I would trust my brother with my life.
Ryan worries about me. He is worried that I do not have a girlfriend and he tries his best to set me up with women. I usually find some imperfection in them.
“She’s too young,” I said to him when he tried to play matchmaker with a gorgeous colleague fifteen years my junior. “I’m not going to be her daddy, boy.”
“You could spank her.” I rolled my eyes. “How about Andrea?”
Andrea was a girl from the church I attended. She had a good heart, but did not know when to shut up. “Too wild for me.” I sensed that he was getting fed up already. “Besides, she is too dark for me.”
“What do you mean now?”
“Do you see my skin?” He looked at it as if he was seeing it for the first time, and then he looked at me with a blank stare. “If we are both so dark, think of how dark our children will come out.” I did not dare add that the children’s hair might be a bit nappy too, since Andrea was of pure African descent. He would have floored me there and then. I thought that our young people were not discriminating enough when it came to matters of the heart or the body. As long as someone was breathing, that was good enough for them. Me? I overanalyze. Even genetics was important to me. Rie thinks it’s shallow but I think I’m allowed at least one harmless prejudice.
“Ms. Abrams is a good one for you, bro.”
“Yes. She is fine.” Melissa Abrams was an instructor where my brother and I took computer classes. She was tall, lean and brown-skinned with short black hair. Happily, he went about the business of investigating the availability and suitability of Ms. Abrams.
“So what did you find out?” I asked like some silly schoolboy after class one day.
His broad smile was contagious. “She is everything you want in a woman.” He said no more until I punched him.
“Give me details.”
“How much are you willing to pay?”
I twisted his arm behind his back and wrapped my free arm around his throat. “This much.”
“All right. All right.” I released him. “You’re such a pig.”
“It takes one to know one.” I was a child around him and I was glad that he brought out the boy from inside the man I was.
“She’s twenty-eight. Not too young like you’re always complaining about. She was educated here at the university and has a degree in computer science. Plus, she plays music – pan – and is very active in her church.”
I said nothing but I could feel my face relax in a smile. Suddenly I felt ten feet tall, or was it that I was actually floating on air? “Did you get her number?” I asked as we got into my car. He gave it to me.
I started the engine. “There’s just one other thing,” my brother said, staring straight ahead. I looked at him and waited. “She has a child.”
“Damn it!” I slapped the steering wheel, truly annoyed. The idea of Melissa Abrams and me played like easy-listening music in my ear. “How come the good ones are always taken?”
“I don’t think the child’s father is around.”
“That does not change the fact that she has a child, does it? Bro, I’m saving myself for marriage so I really don’t want a girl who has been around the block with every Tom, Dick and Harry.”
“Why are you so judgmental?”
“I’m not being judgmental. I just happen to know what I want.”
“Where do you expect to find a virgin in this day and age? People make mistakes, Clay, and you have to learn to forgive them.”
“I don’t want to raise no man’s child. Next thing you know, he’s always in my house looking for his child. Besides, some of those children nowadays are so rude that when you try to discipline them, the first thing they will say is ‘you’re not my father’. I’m not going through that, man.”
“Fine. Remain an old crotchety bachelor, see if I care.”
We did not speak for the rest of the way home. I had hurt his feelings, something I hated doing. My little brother was also my best friend and when we had realized how special our friendship was we agreed to not let a day end with us still upset with each other. It was not uncommon for him to call me after I had gone to bed to let me know that something I had said or done had really pissed him off.
“Thanks for the ride,” he muttered when we pulled up in front of his mother’s home, but I kept the doors locked. “So, you’re trying to kidnap me now,” he said, not turning in my direction.
“Ryan, I am so very lucky to have you as my brother. Thank you for looking out for me.” Silence. “Please say something.”
“I want to see you happy.”
“I am happy.”
“People have been saying things about you.”
“I don’t care. Look, one day I will meet the right woman and I will fall head over heels in love with her. And you will be the best man at the wedding.”
“As long as I don’t make it to the altar before you.”
“Even if I have to grab somebody off the street the day before you get married, I will beat you to the altar.” That brought a glimmer to his eyes. “You don’t have to worry about me, bro. Everything happens for a reason.”
He nodded and I released the lock on the door.
*
PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SAYING things. Ryan’s words lingered like the nasty Friday afternoon traffic did on the highway that afternoon. It troubled me as I got ready for bed that night. It troubled me though I had already made peace with myself on the subject.
So what if I’m an almost-forty-year-old man living on his own, and without a girlfriend? It did not mean that I was gay. I knew of some married men who were homosexual – bisexual really – and I had even heard that some men just used the girlfriend as a cover to throw off people’s suspicion about their true sexual orientation. I had decided that I would not be with a woman if I was not in love with her, or if I saw that our relationship would not lead to marriage. Why waste my time and my money?
In my lifetime I had been in only one relationship that had almost led to marriage. I had met Danielle Quentin through some mutual friends while she was on holiday here in Trinidad. I did not consider her a potential mate at that time: she was just another black American woman, with the cutest dimples and a soothing voice. At that time, I was in love with the image of the European woman and had clearly stated that to all who would listen, not knowing that I was in Danielle’s bad books for my color bias.
After leaving Trinidad, Danielle moved to England for her job training and we started writing to each other; it was platonic as far as I was concerned – initially anyway.
I cannot say that I was in love with Danielle the way I saw love portrayed on television. But I can safely say that I loved her. I liked her thoughtfulness when she surprised me with cards and letters for no reason at all. Sometimes she would call and when she moved back to the United States, she would visit whenever time and money permitted. I visited for two weeks one Easter break when I was on school vacation and immediately became her father’s favorite son-in-law; Danielle’s other sisters had married white men.
But as time passed Danielle wanted commitment. She was leaving her marketing job to pursue a master’s degree in literature at a prestigious university in another hemisphere. She mapped out our life together this way: she would study while I worked and then we would reverse roles. She did not understand the West Indian man’s psyche: I had to own my house, car, have money in the bank and be at the top of my career before I settled down and got married. Danielle was willing to wait but she needed to know for how long. I did not know how long it would take to qualify as a filmmaker – my dream job.
“Clay, I can’t put my life on hold for you.”
“Then you should follow your heart. I won’t stand in your way.”
Shortly afterwards, she made up her mind. The tears in her eyes spoke loudly before she uttered a word. But she did not have the guts to break up with me there at the restaurant, over chicken salad, on the ocean front on her last visit to Trinidad. She called me when she returned home and gave me the news. I shed a few tears and lived to regret losing Danielle Quentin. She was the only woman I had ever loved as an adult but according to one of my female friends who had been through a parallel situation at about the same time, I was not in love with Danielle. My friend said that if a man truly loved a woman he would do anything for her and nothing would get in the way of his spending the rest of his life with her. I had a feeling that she was quoting a cheesy Michael Bolton song from the eighties.
Danielle spoiled me for other women. No one else could ever measure up to her. She was a preacher’s kid, and even though many preachers’ kids have bad reputations, Danielle was not one of them. For one thing, she had been fat in college and her inferiority complex had not permitted her to pursue an active social life. I never brought it up, but I sensed that there were no skeletons of old boyfriends buried in her closet. While we dated we never got physically intimate for we had discussed keeping our underwear on early in our relationship. Even when I visited her in New York and found that she had lost so much weight that I did a double take when I saw her in a pair of jeans and she wanted to re-negotiate our carnal knowledge policy, I held firmly to our earlier decision.
Danielle was not materialistic; she was someone who enjoyed the simple things in life like a golden sunset, the sound of birds chirping, sipping cold coconut water directly from the nut on a hot day. She had a gentle spirit and a sense of humor that I had not been fortunate enough to find in any woman since. Now she belongs to someone else, she is a mother and I am very happy for her. If only I could turn back time...
Somewhere buried in one of the notebooks that I scribble in is my version of an ode to Danielle.
Sometimes I think about you
And I am filled with longing
I want to hold you tight
And let you know
That everything will be all right
Sometimes I wish I could be
All you want of me
But I can’t
Not when I am not
All that I want to be
Maybe one day
We’ll find each other again
Maybe I’ll love you with passion
Like you want me to
But for now
Go on and be happy
I love you and I miss you
I miss your voice
I miss your love
I miss your letters
I miss knowing
That there’s someone out there
For me.
There is a post script to this story that came years later when I decided to befriend Danielle on social media, just to see how life had turned out for her. She was doing well: married, two adorable daughters, and a career as a researcher for a powerful black organization. On her birthday I sent a message to her early in the morning because I knew that it was going to be a crazy day and if I did not do it then, I probably would have forgotten. So I sent her my innocent wishes for a great day. Within minutes I got a response, but it was not what I expected. It read:
Hey Clay. Why are you asking my wife all these personal questions? What state do we live in etc. That was on May 23. Wishing her happy birthday. Your (sic) emotionally invested in my wife. After 20 or 30 years (just how old did he think we were back then?) it is time for you to move on. I would appreciate it if you would stop checking up on my wife and family. I hope you get the message. Please move on. Thanks sir. Her husband, Rev. Charles Klinker. Have a nice day.
My initial impulse was to wait for a more opportune time to let Danielle know that her husband was going through her phone. Was she happily married? Why would her husband feel so insecure about me who lived thousands of miles away? What had she told him about our barely romantic past?
He needed to know that he had won. She married him. They had children together. He needed to stop acting like a politician who had won the elections but was still blaming the former administration for all that was wrong in the world. I needed to tell this most holy reverend where to get off.
So I texted back, OK, and never bothered to tell Danielle a word.
