All Boys Aren't Blue: Act 3

I contemplated whether I would write about you now that you are dead.

You were Uncle Bobby’s only son, but y’all had a pretty estranged relationship.

To know someone else was having those same feelings validated everything going on inside of me. I knew it wasn’t fake.

The irony of me lying on the basement floor.

You were well known for your fighting prowess because people would often call you gay, too, despite dating girls all your life.

My crash course was happening right in front of me, and despite the guilt I was feeling, there was also a euphoria.

Furthermore, I realized that there were more people like me hiding in plain sight. And despite our antics to hide it, we could all see each other.

Our mannerisms, our talk, just our beings were exuding something that we all knew to be different from the “norm.”

It’s to say that I now understand it from a place that is not centered in my own trauma. I’ve created a space where I have empathy for my abuser—you—while still acknowledging I’ve been harmed.

The same masculinity and manhood ideology that forced you and me to hide our identities is the same masculinity and manhood ideology that got you killed.

I want to reiterate his actions were wrong, and I was a victim.

Make it a requirement to hold your abuser accountable.

His mannerisms, his demeanor—I felt for the first time that I had met someone like me who was also in my age range.

He was surveying the rows to see who was who. Minding his business while also ear hustling the conversations around him to gauge what people were talking about.

However, within the messages, there seemed to be a kind of inquisition going on. He was asking questions about dating and the prom and started getting to that question that I always dreaded having to answer.

I wish I had said yes that day. I so wanted to say yes to him, but I knew there was no way I could ever survive a confirmation like that getting out.

I was lined up right beside my best friend in high school, Janet Johnson, when “Pomp and Circumstance” began to play. I had heard this song before, after years of going to see cousins and family members graduate from high school and college, but this time...this time. It was my time.

I admit I wouldn’t have fared well in a new setting at a school that large.

Monique gave me the name with her Brooklyn bravado: “I don’t like Matthew. I’m a call you MJ.” Which was fine but also like, how you just gonna say you don’t like my name?!

It was something I couldn’t control and had no grace period to accept and make my own—I couldn’t defer it into eternity like a student loan.