“Lord, if I was created in your image and likeness, please, send butterflies to kiss my tired soul, I’m a tired flower. Protect me from the strong sun and rain, I am tired of withering, in a black skin,” murmured Chuka, hunched on the red bicycle given to him by the international office of his university. He recited the poem whenever he remembered he was a tall black man in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He was a failed poet and MFA-playwriting student. On both sides of the door of his room were white papers, displaying this poem, printed in font twenty-eight—because he was twenty-eight—bold, and italicized; crucified with pushpins: one red and three white pushpins. Chuka wrote the poem because he often thought his was the only skin that blackened Fayetteville.
His fingers, wet, were coiled on his long handlebars. Sweat fell in droplets, large and small, from his eyelashes, lips, and nose, and vanished in the clear wind before reaching the front tire of the bicycle. He raised his back and face, the wind washing the parts of his body not covered by his shorts and shirt. It was his favorite thing to do when he descended the trail and no longer needed to pedal.
The trail was not all straight, curving mildly here and there. On both sides were trees and plants of different species, shedding rusty yellow, and green leaves that would often float or catch on a cobweb or fall into strollers or onto heads of little or huge dogs belonging to people taking evening or morning walks. Some of the trees drooped offering ripped shade for anyone or anything on the trail at any time. There were bridges connecting the trails; under the bridges, clean water flowed shushing over rocks of different shapes and sizes, and carried away unfortunate leaves that landed on its journey. When sunlight gushed from the sky, the shadows of the trees by the trail would stretch and shake in the water until the sunlight shrank. Often, Chuka would stop on the bridge under the railway track to admire the journey of the water; it made him think less and calm down. Today, he didn’t stop to watch the water.
The shirtless boys running, the husbands and wives pushing their babies and ugly chihuahuas in strollers, the girls jogging in a group and gossiping, and the white-haired grandfather and grandmother smiling at the memories of their young days—they all nodded and smiled to Chuka, but he didn’t reciprocate. His eyes were fixed to the traffic light in the distance. He thought their smiles and nodding were not genuine, that they smiled at him due to his black skin, not his being. But ask Chuka why he continued to ride his bicycle on a trail where he wouldn’t reciprocate greetings, and he would say he rode his bicycle on the trail because of the trees, that the trees were ejaculating God when they whispered. He called himself a failed poet, but he would often answer questions or talk with poetic lines. He rode his bicycle in the soft sun for an hour every evening, climbing up and down the hills of Fayetteville to build his thighs, heal his mind, be in amazing shape, be healthy.
This evening, Chuka was determined to call his friend, Tobenna, to tell him all the things his eyes had seen in America. He was excited to call him with his new American number. This was his seventh month in Fayetteville. He would apologize to Tobenna first, for ignoring his messages on Messenger and WhatsApp. He wanted to respond when he could think well. His identity struggles and the family members constantly calling him for dollars were destroying the little peace he had; he was trying to reclaim his mental health.
Chuka started packing stories in New York, his port of entry, where the immigration officer, an oval-faced African American woman who couldn’t understand his accent, almost turned him back. Chuka had been sharing that experience with anyone who cared to listen: his classmates, professors, white sexual partners, doctors at his school clinic, and even the white Uber driver who took him to Walmart on Thanksgiving. He was shocked, he never thought that a fellow black person could be unkind to him because of his accent. But he had stopped sharing the story with those in Fayetteville because no one seemed to understand him. Now, he shared it only with his therapist, a fat white woman whose empathy made him feel seen and loved unconditionally, who gave him stickers after every therapy session. Inspiring stickers that read, The storm is like your mirror see yourself through it, You are more than enough every time you start to think you are not enough, Grow through what you go through, The world belongs to your wings, spread them and fly, which Chuka would give to Charlotte, a beautiful optimistic divorcee. She was one of his gentle lovers who choked on his penis, swallowed his scrotum, and fucked him with passion and honest beauty, every time they made love. Tonight, he might share the New York experience one more time with Tobenna.
Chuka opened his door, pushed the bicycle into the apartment he shared with another Nigerian, Femi, and locked the door with his left hand.
“I did it!” he said. He would say I did it, I feel alive, existing is better than trying to exist, I made it, I feel sane, there are little wonders in living, or miracles manifest at audacity, when he entered his apartment after every ride, or as soon as he got down from his bicycle in front of his backyard door and balancing his breath.
He rested the bicycle on the wall of his sitting room that had just one couch—his stay in Fayetteville was temporary so one couch did the job—and headed to the bathroom before his cold apartment licked the trails of sweat marking his skin.
“Femi, are you in the bathroom?” he asked. The bathroom door was locked and yellow light poured out from beneath the door. Silence answered. He pushed the door with his right toes, entered, locked the door, played Weyes Blood’s “God Turn Me Into a Flower” on his iPhone 14, and turned up the volume as high as it would go. He would shit and maybe masturbate. He didn’t want Femi to hear when his depressed shit dropped in the WC, or when he moaned.
Femi was Yoruba. He was the roommate any artist must wish to have, especially an Igbo failed poet like Chuka. Femi was an introvert and a good Christian. He didn’t drink alcohol, smoke weed, masturbate, have sex, watch ethnic pornography, or discuss beautiful women. The only time Chuka saw him was when he cooked in the kitchen, leaving or entering their bathroom, or leaving or returning from school. His presence in their apartment often gave it the calmness of a museum.
Sitting on his bed, a queen size, his naked shadow sprawled on the gray rug. A few drops of hot water rolled between the scanty hairs on his large chest. He reached for the cocoa butter cream on the table opposite his bed, smiling. He pressed the cream into his left hand, rubbed his palms together, and wiped them on his upper body. He untied his towel, pressed the cream on his thighs, and rubbed it down to his legs until he was satisfied. He stared at the paper crucified on the door as if he was seeing the poem on it for the first time.
SUBSTITUTE LONGINGS WITH WOUNDS BECAUSE HURT IS THE TRADITION OF EXISTING
Lightning does not open the sky like rain, because –
what exists out of pain is the storm.
Everything that has life loses their bravery to fear –
and the history of trauma.
What has roots fights for belonging more than love.
The storm has never broken the wings of a bird –
the wind belongs to what can fly.
Love belongs to what loves itself.
What renames their wound, heals the history.
Lord, if I was created in your image and likeness, please, send butterflies to kiss my tired soul,
I’m a tired flower.
Protect me from the strong sun and rain, I am tired of withering, in a black skin.
He shook his head and said, “A poet who failed effortlessly.”
He fell back on his bed, picked up his phone on the edge of the bed, paused London Grammar’s “Wasting My Young Years,” dialed Tobenna’s number, and let the phone slip from his delicious fingers. A white divorcee with red hair called the fingers of his right hand delicious after the nonsense they did in her big black Tacoma. The phone rang for six seconds, he picked it up and touched the red button before the network asked him to leave a voicemail. He dialed Tobenna’s number again. He didn’t drop the phone this time. He held it to his ear.
It was midnight in Nigeria, but Chuka thought Tobenna would be awake because he was an internet fraudster, speaking and masturbating with old white lovers over the phone. Midnight was a good time for that, because of the time zone, six hours difference. While the voice of a woman was saying, “The person you are trying to reach is unavailable. Please leave a message…”, Chuka sucked the cold air of his white room with his nose.
“Odogwu, why are you not taking your calls? I hope your client hasn’t died,” he laughed. “Don’t be angry that I haven’t responded to your messages. I am not on Messenger and WhatsApp that much now. I was going to call you after I settled. Guy, I suffered like Jonah before I found a roommate and house. Two-bedroom apartment. We are paying eight hundred and fifty dollars monthly. That’s over one million in naira. I didn’t even add the utility bills. But whatever happens America is still better than Nigeria. Guy. I should tell you about my girls. I am finally having sex with white women. They are crazy in bed. I have been packing stories for you. Now, I practice what Americans call non-ethical monogamy. It means that my women and I can fuck whoever we want. But God created American women when he was emotional and drunk. Here, if you text your fuck partner twice, she will fall in love with you. I have five women I fuck now, rich old divorcees, the oldest is forty-nine years old. They used to be just three, three that I met on Bumble, until the devil took me to FetLife and I jammed another one: tall, chubby, and crazy. She is a medical doctor who owns real estate. To cut the long story short, I fucked her. I fucked all the stories she ever heard from her patients out of her brain. That day, she moaned and cried and smiled and loved me. After, she begged me to fuck her friend, a university professor, who hasn’t had a good penis in two years. I fucked her friend, and she peed and peed and peed, and redesigned my yellow bedsheet with pee of pleasures. Now we are doing threesome. I like white women because they are very generous. Can our Nigerian women ask you to fuck their friends? They would rather die than live to see that happen. In America, sex is free, condoms are free. The University of Arkansas has free condoms for their students. I have about fifty condoms in my room as I am talking to you. I will bring condoms for you whenever I visit Nigeria, that’s if I will ever visit that stupid place again. Guy, America is where a man will ask you to fuck his beautiful wife. Do you know that Americans practice open marriage? Open marriage is where the husband and wife agree to fuck other people, married or single. Sweet lifestyle. I have fucked two married women in an open marriage. There is this happiness that comes from fucking another man’s wife. I fucked those women with the energy I never knew I had. Another thing is that every woman here has a dildo or vibrator. If you want to make money in America, sell sex products. My guy, forget what you people say and think about American women. You think their women don’t need men, you think their women are feminists, you think their women are better than our women. It’s all lies. Many American women need husbands. Many of them are lonely. On Bumble, I have matched women who wanted to be housewives. And we have more single mothers here. Nigeria doesn’t have half the single mothers here. Because American women don’t tolerate cheating. Small cheating in marriage, their lawyers will send divorce papers. Marriage will end. But I think their women love genuinely and purely. They don’t fake love like your Nigerian women. And could you believe that some of their women make babies like some of your Nigerian women? I have fucked a divorcee who has eleven children. I couldn’t believe that a white woman could give birth to eleven kids. Let me surprise you. Do you know that here the house rent is split between the husband and wife? Can this happen in Nigeria? Many Nigerian women would rather die than to support you with their money. Marriage is a shared responsibility in America, that is why I love this country. This is where you will take a girl out, and she will pay for her coffee or food. Our Nigerian girls will not even pay for the water they drink if you take them out. You will love America. America is not where you return the Coca-Cola or the Heineken bottle to the store after drinking, you will discard the bottle after drinking. This country is where time goes back and forth. They call it daylight saving. Can you imagine? This is the country where women in their seventies and eighties have boyfriends. Can you imagine? Seventy-year-old women are on Bumble and Tinder looking for love. It can never be Nigerian women. Nigerian women respect our culture even at the detriment of their happiness. Nonsense. American women and men can marry up to ten times in one lifetime, that’s why there are so many stepdads and stepmums in this country. Listen, age does not stop Americans from enjoying life. I love the way they live life. Everything about this country is fine. God took his time to create America. If you see their cemetery and the graves there, you will be envious of the dead in the graves. I am not lying. They way they decorate and light their graves, Jesus! America is the only place where you can wear camouflage and nothing will happen to you. I have passed military men in the university while I was wearing camouflage shorts and cap, but they didn’t look at me twice. If it was in Nigeria, would I not join my ancestors that day? They will beat your soul out of your eyes for wearing a military color. I know that it is not the same God who created us that created Americans. I swear. You won’t see police on the highway stopping cars and collecting money from poor drivers. The only thing that stops cars on the highway is the traffic light. This is not where you take out your penis in a public place to pee. If the police or the camera by the road captures you, you will face the law. It’s an organized country. Do you know that here, people get married and buy dogs or cats. Can you imagine? Here, people throw away good televisions, chairs, desks, speakers, fridges, beds, microwaves, and other things. Everyone is rich so they throw away things when they stay in their house for too long. Fourteen-year-old boys and girls have cars here. Everyone uses the latest iPhones. Everyone is in love with someone or something. Everyone is eating eggs and chicken. Everyone has ugly and beautiful dogs that eat chicken and sleep in the house and understand English. Do you know that Americans don’t eat the bones of chickens? Let me not go there. People don’t die like chickens here the way Nigerians die every morning. They have the best hospitals in the world. Small diseases that kill people in Nigeria will not kill anyone here. My professors, wealthy men, ride bicycles to school. Will a Nigerian professor ride a bicycle to school? Here, you don’t know who is rich or poor because of their simple lifestyle. The sunset is still out and pouring at 7 PM. There are pantries where you go and carry free chicken, eggs, vegetables, tomatoes, bread, bananas, apples, anything that enters the mouth is at the pantry. If we had pantries in Nigeria, they would always be empty because Nigerians are always hungry, but I will blame our stupid government for making existing hard in Nigeria. Here people will proudly tell you they were adopted, no shame about it. Children of eight and nine years old go for therapy sessions here. What are they thinking? In Nigeria, even a ten-year-old kid is still pushing tires and playing in the rain. The one that shut my mind was when this American father I saw at Walmart, told me that his ten years old boy was an atheist. The voice of that bald man is even playing in my head as I am telling you this story. Let me repeat what he said, Grey doesn’t believe in God. But he’s the sweetest boy I know. Can you imagine? Americans allow their kids to be whatever they want that is why their kids are smart. At my age now, twenty-eight, can I tell my mother in Nigeria that I don’t believe in God? She will send slaps from Nigeria via DHL to tear my cheeks. I know an American mother who buys condoms for her seventeen-year-old son? At my age, I wouldn’t dare tell my mother that I am having sex not to talk of asking her for condoms. American kids call elders by their birth names. They don’t call their elders aunty or brother or mummy or uncle, they proudly call elders their original names. Everyone is equal here. My guy, you need to go to church in America before you leave this world. There are no prophets in American churches. In an American church, close and open your eyes, church is over. Their churches are soundproofed. They don’t disturb the community like the Nigerian churches that mount fat speakers on the church gates. They don’t bind evil spirits in their churches or manipulate people to pay tithes. They always have bread and egg and coffee for the congregation. We always eat to our satisfaction before service. Can that be a Nigerian church? Nigerian pastors will take the little food you have. The one that scatters my head the most is that their men wear shorts to church. Can you wear shorts to a Nigerian church? If you try it the pastor will preach with your name. Their women smoke cigarettes and weed. These people don’t care about so many things that is why they are progressing. My guy, this is the only place where your professor or classmate will bring food for the class, and everyone will eat the food without praying over it. In Nigeria, would you accept anything that will enter your mouth from a stranger? Try it if you want to join your ancestors. We are two hundred years behind Americans, that’s the only thing I can tell you. Books and clothes are very cheap here. I have bought all the novels and memoirs I couldn’t find anywhere in Nigeria. Camara Laye’s The African Child, Binyavanga Wainaina’s One Day I will Write About this Place, J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. The list is long. I am reading all of them once because Nigeria took the time I had to read those novels from me. Do you know that the pronouns of most people here are they and them, not he and his or her and she. If you tell your Nigerian mother or uncles that your pronouns are they and them, they will tie you with a fat rope and drag you to church for prayers. Our people are behind in the 21st century. I love the they and them pronouns. The pronouns are powerful. But don’t call me they or them oooo. Guy, guy, guy, guy, I just remembered something that happened after I came here. I should have started with this story. Guy, after I came here and downloaded Bumble, I matched with this beautiful woman, but guess what? He was a man, as in, transwoman. This transwoman started begging to suck my penis. He said he wouldn’t tell anyone whatever we did. With kindness, I told him that I don’t do transwomen and unmatched him. I know you would have insulted and cursed him if you were me, but America is not the country where you beat or insult transwomen. If you insult a gay person here, the law will come for you. They have a law that is working, that’s one of the many reasons I love this country. The one thing I don’t like about America is that half of the population don’t cook, they eat drive-through pizza and burgers and other things that don’t have good taste. In fact, some of my classmates told me they prefer canned food and drive-through because it saves their time. Imagine. Their food is GMO that is why there are many cancer patients here. Even innocent kids suffer from cancer. Seeing those kids in ads shatters my heart. I spend a lot of money on garri and egusi and others, because I will continue to eat what I know. I also don’t like the way their government taxes people. When you receive your salary, you will pay tax. If you buy tomatoes, you will pay tax. Buy soap, you will pay tax. Buy toothbrush, you will pay tax. I hope I don’t start paying tax for the air I breathe in this country one day. Do you know about ADHD? Almost everyone here has ADHD, and they take medicine to be able to focus. I am also thinking that many Nigerians have this ADHD, but religion and illiteracy will not allow them to seek medical help. Here, you will see people talking about mental health the way we talk about Jesus Christ in Nigeria. Americans don’t joke with anything mental health. They don’t associate mental health with demons or water spirits or ancestral curses like our Igbo people. Last month, a white policeman killed a black boy, when they took him to court, he said he has mental health issues. Now, that case is pending. But black Americans and some good white Americans have been protesting in different parts of the country. They want justice for the boy, and they will get justice soon. I wish the law were not dead in Nigeria. Those policemen who raped and killed my only sister, Chichi, shouldn’t be seeing the sunlight. But I know they will die a traumatic death. They will cry when they die. They will die in this world and die in the afterlife. Agu, just enjoy your night with my little gist. I will offload gist for you later.”
After he ended the call, and allowed his phone to slip from his palm, he remembered that many Nigerians don’t use the voicemail feature, they rarely play their voicemails. He never sent voicemails when he was in Nigeria, and he never played one either. He started using voicemails after he arrived in America. It was a new thing to him. He smiled. He knew Tobenna would never play it.
He didn’t sleep with anyone’s wife. Five women in an open marriage had messaged him on FetLife, but he blocked them because he wasn’t comfortable sleeping with another man’s wife. And he had never had a threesome in his life. Ever. When a bisexual white woman he matched on Hinge proposed a threesome to him, he declined because he was scared. He knew he wouldn’t be able to satisfy two bisexual women who may be sex addicts. He also didn’t have as many lovers as he claimed. He had just two lovers, Charlotte and Angelina, but had had hookups here and there with doctors, nurses, and engineers; his standards were very high; he didn’t just sleep with anyone.
Most Nigerian students in America like to brag about what they do with white women to their friends in Nigeria. The narrative in Nigeria is that white American women like Nigerian men, and students like Chuka who had slept with white women exaggerate the story, and most things about America. They add lies to the stories they tell their friends to make America interesting.
He didn’t tell Tobenna that he realized he was black after arriving in America. He didn’t tell him that he had occasionally been sad and lonely since he came to America. Or maybe he was happy, he didn’t really know, he couldn’t tell, he was not suicidal. He loved life and wanted to be a famous playwright who would inspire generations. He didn’t tell him that he had started smoking weed. He often felt he was mad thinking about his life and identity, because he was not the only black man in Fayetteville; but after the white doctor who approved his weed card at Karas Health Care, a bald, slender forty-five-year-old man, cried after hearing his stories, he knew he wasn’t mad after all. Finally, he felt seen and understood by someone who wasn’t his therapist. The tears of the doctor validated his hope and his little American dreams. He didn’t tell Tobenna that his soul was always blowing up when he walked on the street, because he feared he could be shot by the cops, or the white people who often laughed or took pictures of him from their cars. He didn’t tell him that most white people he saw at Walmart were irritated by the color of his skin and cursed him with their eyes. He didn’t tell him that he was not happy like he used to be. He didn’t tell him that some white undergraduates poured beer on him on Dickson Street, and laughed until their eyes produced tears after the beer soaked his shorts so the size of his penis could be seen. The cops on Dickson Street saw what happened, but instead of helping Chuka they drove away. He didn’t tell him that a lady who was living on the second floor of his apartment called the cops on him, after he returned her lighter that fell into his balcony. That was the day the cops could have shot him considering the way they banged on his door, but luckily for him, George, a religious fanatic, one of the few white friends he had, was in his house to teach him the Bible. Seeing George, the cops put back their guns in their holsters and warned Chuka to never leave his house except for school activities. He didn’t tell him that an old white woman spat on him from her GMC truck the evening he was returning from one of the classes he taught. He was on his bicycle, on the trail by the road, and ginger-colored saliva dropped on his left lap like the dropping of a sick bird. His eyes met the face of the old woman smiling and fulfilled. He was speechless, waited for the woman to shoot him too, but immediately, the yellow fall leaves on the road ran after the two fat tires of the truck blurring in flight. It broke his heart because she could be the grandmother of one of his students. And he was right, she could be the grandmother of one of his students; everything we dread or never think is possible on earth often happens. He didn’t tell Tobenna that no white person ever sat close to him at First Baptist, the church he used to attend. He always had a pew for himself. He stopped going to First Baptist. He didn’t tell him that he had had uncountable nightmares since settling in Fayetteville. In one of the nightmares, he was shot in the shoulder by the cops who patrolled Cambridge, his neighborhood. He didn’t tell him that there were times he felt like he was going to die; he shared it with his friend, Adaa, who was studying in Canada. Adaa laughed and told him he was experiencing an existential crisis. He had held onto that, existential crisis, to keep living and believing he would be fine someday. He didn’t tell Tobenna that most white people would rather stand than sit beside him on the bus. He didn’t tell him that he was poor and broke and almost suffering, because his F-1 visa restricted him from working outside the school. He didn’t tell him that he was a suspect at most bars and restaurants he had been to; he had stopped going to bars and restaurants. He didn’t tell him that he had a therapist, because why would he have a therapist? Tobenna, Chuka’s mother, and uncles think that therapy is a white man’s thing, and believe that America is where God lives, and everyone in America is happy and healthy. He didn’t tell Tobenna any of those things because they wouldn’t matter to him. He would discard them with laughter.
His therapist would tell him that she sees and understands his trauma, even the trauma he doesn’t have a name for; the assurance consoles him. Chuka would burn the incense, Rain Forest, his therapist recommended for him every evening before going to bed. The smell was nostalgic; it helped calm his anxiety. He took a breath of atonement. His phone vibrated. It was a text from Angelina, “I’m here.”
It was sex night with Angelina, the thirty-seven-year-old American realtor, ex-wife of an American millionaire, sex addict, lover of black men, who masturbated with Chuka’s photos when they were not together. He jumped out of his bed, dragged his camouflage shorts off the black sofa opposite the bed, threw his long legs into them, and used the Dove deodorant beside the cocoa butter cream. He rushed to the wardrobe facing the bed. His fingers pressed an invisible piano while he thought of the shirt to wear. He went to Walmart every week and bought clothes that were on sale, often shirts and trousers. It was always a burden for him deciding what to wear. He removed the white shirt that outlined his large chest and arms from a white rubber hanger. He wanted Angelina to wet the green veins that encircled her thick thighs—seeing his muscles—before they got to her white duplex on a green hill. His brain took shots of the four rooms in her duplex, he wouldn’t fuck her in any of the rooms this evening. He would fuck her on her yellow porch, where sunflowers bloomed heaven and love and healing. He needed to see beauty around where he made love, because sex had become a trigger since his only sister was gangraped and killed. Occasionally, while making love with Angelina or Charlotte, he would stop thrusting and cry or leave the room or rush and punch the door, after remembering the dark blood that glued and twisted the hairs on his sister’s vulva when he saw her lifeless body. He had shared his struggles with Angelina and Charlotte, so they understood him. Charlotte would hug and cry with him. She was empathic. He took his phone, wallet, and keys.
Chuka didn’t want to keep sleeping with these women, sexy divorcees. He knew they fetishized him. He would hate himself every time he slept with them—a white nurse once asked him to marry her to give him a Green Card; he blocked the nurse and deleted her number. He also knew the women had nothing to lose. They were single mothers who were just living and partying and smoking and doing drugs and drinking and sleeping with any young black guy available. He had everything to lose, his big dreams. He slept with them because he was sad, lonely, dealing with white racists, struggling with his identity, the trauma from the death of his only sister who was gangraped and shot in the neck by policemen, and the hurt from his last relationship. His ex-girlfriend, Amaka, who he met at the university of Nigeria, ended their three-year relationship at Murtala Muhammed International Airport, the morning Chuka was leaving for the States. She didn’t want to relocate to America or any country that was not an African country. They went over the issue many times, but she wouldn’t change her mind even though she loved him very much. Chuka was hoping she would change her mind since he was her first love and the guy she gave her virginity. He was hoping she would reconsider when he got to America and began sending her dollars. He watched Amaka block his number and leave. She didn’t hug or wish him a safe journey. On the airplane, Chuka didn’t accept any food or drink from the air hostess. He scrolled through his texts with Amaka, and read the promises they made to each other. He didn’t leave his seat until the airplane landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. After he came out of the airplane, tears rushed down his cheeks to his lips. He licked the tears and wiped his face with the back of his right hand.
Chuka wanted to fall in love with an intelligent girl, marry, and start a beautiful family. He wanted to be a good man and lover for his unknown future wife. He was ambitious; he would wake up at 12 AM every night to work on his thesis, The Metamorphosis of the Last African Prince. The two short plays he wrote two months after settling in Fayetteville, Brethren, Cook with the Bullets and The One Safe Black Man Without a White Wife, were selected for production by Neutral-Race Theater Group, a local theater company. He was succeeding as a playwright. He wanted to be a playwriting professor; he wanted to be awarded the Genius Grant someday.
Every Friday, he went to the Dickson Street Bookstore to buy self-help books he would not read: Dr. Nicole LePera’s How to Do the Work, James Clear’s Atomic Habits, Christopher Cook’s Healing What You Can’t Erase, Lysa Terkeurst’s Forgiving What You Can’t Forget, Brianna Wiest’s When You’re Ready, This is How You Heal, and others. Among those books, the only book he had attempted to read was Dr. Nicole LePera’s How to Do the Work, and that was in his dream. The night after the white girl he was going out with told him she still loved her ex-boyfriend, who cheated on her with her seventy-year-old grandmother, he slept that night and had a dream where he was trying to read Dr. Nicole LePera’s How to Do the Work. When he woke up and remembered the dream, he smiled and shook his head. He didn’t even try to read the book.
Chuka was trying to heal; he wasn’t waiting for fate or hope to liberate his longings. But tonight, he needed to fuck Angelina one more time before making any decision or healing or anything. He wanted to raise her gracious legs so bad. He wanted to hear her call his name and cry and scream with her American accent. He wanted to fuck racism out of her red hair and silver eyes that often shimmered in a certain darkness.
Heading to the parking lot, his penis inflating in his shorts, “Lord, if I was created in your image and likeness, please, send butterflies to kiss my tired soul, I’m a tired flower. Protect me from the strong sun and rain, I am tired of withering, in a black skin,” he said and vanished in the angry darkness.
Angelina didn’t drive after Chuka entered the car. The engine was on. They kissed. Stopped. Kissed. Stopped. Kissed. Stopped. The dome lights came on and died immediately. Anyone in the parking lot would have seen Chuka’s smooth buttocks against the foggy windscreen. The car started bouncing.