Last month I had the pleasure and the honor to participate in the Telling Stories Love Jones Zoom hosted by my Spelman sis, the lovely Miss Diana Vega. I told the story of how me and the Mister came to live in our own little Happily Ever After. You can find the video here. I come in around the 44 minute mark. OR you can just read it for yourself here. Enjoy!
New York City. Fall 2000.
I had just moved here from Atlanta for grad school.
I am not from Atlanta but was willing to give NYC as least as long as I had given ATL. I had VERY early 2000 dreams of what moving here would be like. I dreamed of meeting a Black male artist that was as practical as he was creative. we’d live in Brooklyn (of course) brunching on weekends while sharing The NYTimes and talking about EVERYTHING.
My homegirl from undergrad and I were invited to a party so we got gussied up and went. The Event was in a dope space somewhere near Chinatown but not quite IN Chinatown. They played the cult classic Faster Pussycat, Kill, KILL on the walls and HipHop on the speakers. I sat at a table on the upper level people watching and making up stories about the folks I observed when I saw him.
He looked up at me JUST as My eyes landed on him. He has the most piercing stare I have EVER seen. it’s damn near lupine and chile, I certainly was ready to be Little Red to his Big Bad Wolf! He was the most beautiful man I had ever laid my eyes on. I’m far from religious, but He looked like Black Jesus. He had locs that were as long as my legs….i wondered how they would feel on my thighs.
I had to figure out how to talk to him. I scurried downstairs from THE UPPER ROOOM & spent the last few minutes of the party eye fucking him before it was time to go.... We didn’ t speak that night but since he was one of the event promoters. I swore to myself and the baby Black Jesuses I knew we would one day have that I would be back at this party as often as I had to be to make him mine.
My second time at the partay I ain’ t waste no time. My homegirl and I pregamed in my dorm room so I had plenty of liquid courage coursing through my veins. I batted my eyes at him until we found ourselves sitting on a banquette together and talking for the ENTIRE night. I told him I was a writer. He told me that he was an independent Hip Hop artist.
Remember that daydream I had about what I hoped to find in NYC? As we talked I heard that Quincy Jones song Septembro playing in my head. Being a Drama major, EVERYTHING in my life has a soundtrack.
In that darkly lit lounge at a party hosted by Brand Nubian, I saw my future with this Brooklyn born and bred MC. I think I hooked him the moment I referenced how Lord Jamaar had the worst death on the show OZ. “How wack is it to die in jail from eating eggs?”
We exchanged 2way info that night.
What followed was a rollercoaster of a courtship that felt like it spanned decades but really was barely only a year.
NYC Nightlife was our playground. He had to work and we HAD to see each other. I scheduled all of my spring semester classes after 12pm so that I could be out with him until dawn.
SO many dark overproof nights spent in darker clubs pressing each other pressing against speakers until the rhythm of the music and our heartbeats were one and the same. If he dared not pay attention to me, I would tickle his ears with his locs. Before we parted I’d tie the ends in knots. He called them forget-me-knots.
We were legos who just fit together no matter how we were placed. Like magnets whose pull was so strong NOTHING could get between us. We were madly, wildly, passionately in love. Our arguments were mercurial. Our making up celestial. We could have been the Hip Hop version of La Boheme, or Rent; in lieu of a terminal illness, one of us had an entanglement elsewhere. The other one of us thought we could live with it, but ultimately we parted ways in an ugly fashion.
And then....
Radio silence.
2004 Valentine’s Day I went to Club Cheetah. it was one that held MANY memories from our time together. I wasn’t surprised when I saw him. We chatted, closely. Having been in my cups for hours, I got my Mae West on & invited him to come on up & see me later. He accepted my invitation then had second thoughts and went home instead..
2006 I was out with a seat-filler, (you know, someone who isn’t REALLY who you want to be with but in the words of Zora, will do in case of a rush, or until something better comes along.) Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him. It was a quick glance but I knew it was him. I averted my eyes and walked past as if he were anyone else on a bustling train platform. I was trying to give the lame I was with a chance. As we passed, something electric charged through me and my breath caught. I felt him stop a few paces behind me clearly feeling the same, yet neither of us spoke.
For years we continued to bump into each other OFTEN in the most random of places. We could fill a whole page of Missed Connections with our encounters. The universe knows what you need even if you are too foolish to realize it.
December 3rd, 2014 my younger brother died suddenly. my love found out and reached out to offer his condolences.
6months later, he lost his best friend suddenly. June to November 2015 we chatted on messenger sorta like a small support group of only 2. On Veteran’s Day we met for dinner/drinks. When we first got there it was awkward. somewhere between round 2 and 3 of margaritas damn near 15 years evaporated and like no time had passed, we were back.
We made up for lost time QUICKLY. doing anything else felt unnatural.
It wasn’t ever a conversation about IF we were going to get married, but WHEN. We picked the palindrome August 18th, 2018 because it contains 3 infinity signs; for the past, present, and future lifetimes we loved or would love each other in. We got engaged at the top of the Empire State Building in October of 2017 and a month later we were pregnant. When we found out we were having a girl, he beamed and said “Baby, we are having another you!” It doesn’t get much more #girldad than that.
July 2018 we welcomed our baby Lola into our lives. 5 weeks later On 8-18-18, better known as THE hottest day in tarnation, we got married on the Brooklyn Bridge with a New Orleans Brass Band as our processional music.
I dreamed my husband up. Through some miracle I was lucky enough to discover that the man of my dreams not only existed, but dreamed me up as I did him. He is my partner, my lobster, my best friend. We trust each other wholeheartedly and without reservation. We can communicate whole sentences with just a glance. We make each other laugh like no one else can and love nothing more than piling up in our home with our two and four legged toddlers eating good and listening to music. We are living the life we BOTH always dreamed.
