with all of the permission
You are temptation
and goddess perfection.
Moaning their lyrics, behind the bass line, the whole band was going hard and hitting that beat. I felt every note in my gut, really underground in me. And the whole crowd was feeling it too, and I was swept into our collective energy.
I’m not gonna lie, I was also feeling super awkward, because I ain’t even know if I knew how to dance at first. But then this girl next to me out of nowhere starts to groove with me. I still remember what she got on, she was so magically pretty. She was looking all witchy, with a lavender-colored Afro and white boots and a necklace of mandarin-colored flowers. I started dancing back before I could think about it. She was real smooth with her movements, twirling around me and dropping it low, like bow! I was like, damn . . . I did a helpless version of my dad’s two-step, and to my surprise, she seemed impressed. She soul clapped at me even—like I was killing it. She smiled and I just kept doing my thang, grinning back at her. And I don’t know why I still remember this, but she smelled good too, like cocoa butter, jasmine flowers, and a little alcohol on her breath, even though there was an X on her hand like mine. All of a sudden, a crew of her friends came back with drinks, and she smiled at me and then floated away among them and I got pushed farther back. It made me feel a little disappointed, but I get it: Those were homies. But for some silly reason, I had wished we coulda danced all night together to BLK LVRS and I coulda maybe even known something about her. Next thing I know I hear a familiar voice.
“Mabel, they is so fresh! I had to get on this dance floor and do my thang, baby!” and there was my mama behind me, shimmying and old-lady twerking her heart out to the music.
* * *
• • •
We played BLK LVRS on the ride home and I was still buzzing from their weirdness and freeness and Blackness. I tried to relive all I saw on the stage that night: the bass player, BLK Rose, who is tall and dark with a pretty smile and a pink fade, and his jumping up and dancing all over the stage. And BLK Dahlia, their drummer from Senegal, who was raised in New Orleans. She moved between every style of rhythm from congas, wind chimes, to her drum kit to a djembe drum that she played on some of the slower songs. The keys player, BLK Iris and her glittery periwinkle dreadlocks past her fat, fine butt, wearing a mint-green wedding dress, her eyes closed as she did rhythms on her beat machine. And of course, my favorite, QWN Asantewaa, and their emotional voice.
“She’s a butch, right?” my dad said from the front seat, promptly killing my vibe. “She could sang her ass off. That falsetto was a young Prince in his hey. Ooooh and she play real good, like Jimi all day on that guitar. I’m glad we went, ladies.”
The way he said “she” and “her” really annoyed me. Like he knew them or understood something about them because of how they rocked they hair or clothes. “Why can’t you just enjoy the music, Dad? Why the first thing you wonder about them is if they butch? And they don’t go by she,” I blurted out, feeling heat in my face. Then both me and my dad got quiet.
“Sequan, the singer—QWN Asantewaa—goes by ‘they,’ baby,” my mama said. But she didn’t stop there. “And oooh, that little cutie, QWN is a fine, little tender-roni. I can see why all y’all kids be acting wild behind them,” she said, revealing cougar feelings about QWN Asantewaa that nobody was wondering about.
“Right, they, not she. My bad.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror, but I don’t think he noticed me rolling my eyes. “They used to call ’em butch or stud back in the day. I wasn’t trying to be mean, I ain’t know. I did enjoy the show, though, I said that. I liked it.” I just kept rolling my eyes at his fumbling. Whatever.
“There are still butches or studs, but there are they and thems and more too.” Mom put her hand on Dad’s. “This indigo generation is next level. It took me a while to pick up on it, but I get it better now. I know you wasn’t trying to be insensitive, ’Quan, but just be mindful okay, honey? They go by ‘them’ and ‘they.’” After my mom broke it down in her own way, my dad and I both stayed quiet the rest of the drive. I felt like I wanted to cry for some reason and a couple tears came down and I wiped them slow, so no one would notice and I felt even more dumb, since I was grateful I got to go. My mom turned up the volume, and as QWN’s voice filled up the car, I looked at our city glitter by.
Even though we still close, my dad gets weird around me in certain ways that makes me awkward. I don’t know how he would feel if he knew I liked girls, because he was kinda too geeked when I got a “little boyfriend,” as my mom put it when I first started chilling with Terrell. I’m pretty sure my mom wouldn’t care, since she’s always had lesbian and gay friends. I think my dad would feel some type of way about it, like a little disappointed or confused, to be honest. I don’t feel in a rush to talk to them all about my feelings, because . . . nah.
Listening to QWN tonight on the mix reminds me of that night a little. Low-key, a little bit ’cause I always wondered what happened to that lavender-’fro girl, to be real. I just wonder if she thought about me again, which was a long shot, but what if? What if there was a Whitney-and-Robyn connection? Either way, that BLK LVRS show was the dopest night of my life—even with my dad being basic. It’s weird that even listening to QWN, with myself alone now in the middle of the night, two years later, I feel like I’m still in that room and a part of them in a way that gives me a good feeling.
AUDRE
WHY I HAVE TO LOVE SOMEONE I CAN’T LOVE? My mother beat me and shame me for being “nasty” and I start to wish myself dead. But if it nasty, I find that nastiness in the church I try and avoid my whole life.
My mama and I was always different but the older I get, the harder it is to live with she. She never seem quite at peace with life. She certainly never seem to feel peace with me. When I was young, she would be in she bedroom for hours, sleeping or watching detective shows. Queenie would come by and cook and lime by us and sometimes comb my hair. When my mama was happy, though, that was my favorite world to live in. We going to the beach, she buying new clothes for sheself and me, she would get new lipstick, perfume, and things that make she feel pretty. We cooking and liming together. But if she in she shadow place, nothing is okay, and I staying out of her way and in my own world. When I was eleven, in addition to going to Queenie’s on Saturdays, I started going down the road by Auntie Pearl and Episode’s house, watching TV and exploring the hills with our other cousins and neighborhood kids. Episode is Auntie Pearl’s youngest son and my favorite cousin.
My mother’s dad died from drugs and madness when I was twelve; that is when she started getting really into church. I remember my grandfather Ivan was funny and kind to a point, but it was only on the surface. I ain’t know if it was because drugs or he had a hard life, but he would promise my mama something and then he wouldn’t do it, or he’d do something else stchupid she ain’t ask for, like bring me a bike with two flat tires when I asked for them shoes with the wheels in the heels of them. Then he get mad when I was disappointed, like he brought me what I ask for. He was always doing things like that. He blame it on when Queenie left him in the eighties—just like his mother did his father when he was a boy, which he seem to blame Queenie for too. Either way, after he dead from overdose, my mama decided to start going to church on Sundays, and then church was all of the time. The next thing I know a corny, clear-skin man always hanging around and that seem to be the official thing that separate me and my mother: a husband named Rupert.