My first true love, is tall broad and sensitive. this eyes are the darkest brown imaginable, they reflect the sunlight and they almost seem silver.He was the first man to ever see me as a woman, he was the first to treat me like a woman.
He is the standard by which all men are measured. I remember when he made an inpact on me. it was 1999, it was hot and i was feeling good, i was in my mid teens as was he. we met walking up a hill and he was so physically imposing he was able to lft me off the ground by my wrist using his right hand. we larked around that whole 3 weeks.
He confided in me. He used to be a chubby child and was always around but i obviously never noticed him, or i did not recognise him. i acknowledged that, i could not recognise him. I said he looked ok and he should not worry so much about physical things. he was a church boy and i was comparitively wayward, well as wayward as a disciplined black girl got in 1999.
I could confide in him. we talked about life, his in the caribbean, mine in England. I confided in him things i couldn’t do with all my friends at school. How the pain of racism affected me, how i was shunned at danced when it came to slow dances, how people treated clever black girls, how bitter it was when friends would quickly throw your race at you as an insult if they could not win an arguement. He just listened intently. I told him how it hurt that black boys who were my peers rejected black girls as girlfriends in favor of white girls even the white girls who said things that were racist… How being a black girl was like being invisible in England. How some white people hide racism behind, class issues, or immigration fears, how they used white flight to make sure that they did not have to integrate. I told him not to follow the accepted wisdom that a great life always awaits you in another country. I told him the things that my grandparents had to endure when they came to England, and how that kind of behaviour was gone but how people can hide their intent in a thousand small tiny conspicious actions designed to fly under the radar. How i thought that the best way to improve your life was not to flee but to make the country better.
he told me about his life, his mother and siblings, his absent father. The pain that caused him, why he was a church boy. why his mother drank. over those 3 weeks it was like something blossomed inside of myself. It was like hope, Going to school then, watching all your friends get boyfriends and start exeperimenting, while you stood on the sidelines it created self doubt. Then suddenly there was this handsome man, and he liked the way you looked and the rapture…. liked what you had to say, he listened. then he gave me my first truely passionate kiss. it was last kiss for many years.
we wrote a few short notes to one and other. Notes that i cherish to this day 10 years later. we were separate for 3 long years. i returned to europe, and i had to shroud my tender heart to the coldness of people. It was 3 years of having nothing but people pretending i did not exist. just before i returned , i broke out in a horrendous rash, covering my body from the navel up to my hairline. i was devestated. i was sure that he would be put off. i tried in vain to stay indoor and wear clothes that covered completely up despite the 30 degree celcius heat.
when i saw him i kept my head lowered, he asked what was wrong with my skin. i told him, expecting to be polite and then make his excuses and then be gone. to my surprise he was so devoted . he defended me from people who did not know me as we walked through town. now in our late teens we were chaperoned at all times and we never shared a kiss that year.
the next year my skin had improved slightly, and he was even more handsome, we walked together for so long, we talked for hours day turned to night. and i was still self conscious, but he still kissed me, he kissed even the discoloured bruised skin on my neck. we spend my last night on the island together on the beach while the tide came in the wind was up and blew salt air in. our chaperones walked ahead and we spend that twilight together, we kissed until my mouth was exhaughed.
we were apart for 2 years, i had all but completely recovered and i looked good again. he still like me i loved him, we went out to a huge nightclub with friends we snuck out, we had sex finally in 2005 and it was perfect and i felt elated. we had been through so much, from 1999-2005. we swapped letters throughout the whole time.
i returned in 2008 and the difference was palpable, he was truely now a grown man, working and he had his own home. he was less handsome, but still physically attractive, he was no doubt strong. we talked about life. he seemed to be made and i well not so much. he still desired me. but he needed a wife and the truth was we never really had the chance to be boyfriend and girlfriend properly without chaperones. he is coming over to watch the olympics in 2012 he said he wants me to be truely independent by then and driving and then we can try it out for a month, before he returns and if it works i go to be with him, if it doesn’t well we tried.
Truth is i’m scared, if he flounders he is the only man who has ever known me truely, he knows everything about me. If he disappoints them what man stands a chance? if i fail then i can accept that, i am fallible i know all too well.
I will always hold him as precious, he is a treasure. i a perfect world i would love to be with him forever and bear his children.
