WEDNESDAY
11 JUNE, 1997
ISAIAH

               I sweat under the vinyl canopy of Red Box Roast though the sun set hours ago. The shipping container kitchen is too small to hold the heat produced by several ovens and gas hobs and it sweeps over the tables set up in front of it. It's almost surprising the plastic chairs don't melt.

The rocksteady on the radio and Damerae's singing spill into the street too, along with Lorraine's complaints that he sounds about as good as a cat stuck in a dustbin. Damerae only sings louder. He and Lorraine run the kitchen together and, despite being in their fifties, as siblings, they're always bickering.

Regardless, I come here almost every day. Which is why several of my books are greased with fingerprints, though they're hardly noticeable among the annotations.

I'm almost through the whole A-level book list, coming up with lesson plans for each so I can decide which ones to assign, come September. I'm working within constraints, sure — if it was my choice, we'd be reading Aimé Césaire, Anzia Yezierska, and  Abdulrazak Gurnah too — but there are good books on the list. 

Mrs Carter bought me copies on the school's budget. In addition to odd part-time jobs wherever extra hands are needed, I've been volunteering at the school for the past seven months to get to know the pupils and other teachers. Mrs Carter wants to pay me but I insist against it, so she found this loophole instead.

Lorraine appears at my side to pick up my empty dishes. 'Yuh want more?'

'No, thank you.'

Pursing her lips, she inspects me. 'But yuh so mawga and krawni. Yuh not eating enough.'

I smile. The first ten times we had this conversation, I forced the smiles to camouflage my exasperation but after months of this routine, I've discovered there's nothing but love in it.

'I'm full-full, auntie.'

Lorraine hums sceptically but returns to the kitchen. I read the rest of my page but when I stand to leave, she appears by my side with a takeaway container.

'You can't keep giving me free food.'

'I'll stop when yuh don't look like a stray dog.'

With an exaggerated sigh, I accept the box. As much as I play into reluctance, I'd never turn down her cooking. She'll be offended if I insist to pay for it. 'Thank you, auntie.'

I stack my book on top of it to carry them in the same hand as I walk to the car park, digging out my keys with the other. The evening sneaks up on me when I'm out of the kitchen's range and goosebumps rise to my arms. I'm sure it's warmer than it feels; it is June, but my body aches nonetheless.

I still pause before I open the car door, leaning against it with my chest to gaze at the sky. Stars wink back at me. They're so bright here. My soul belongs in the country.

When I get in, I don't start the engine and instead roll a spliff. I light it, inhale, and keep the smoke in my lungs as I pull out my cell phone on impulse. I'm so grateful I no longer have to resist the impulse.

Dorian answers after the first ring with a shrill "hello".

'Wah gwaan, cuz? You busy? I can ring you later–'

'No!' With a breath, his voice melts, though residual alarm croons in it like shards in a drain. He has his final presentation tomorrow where he has to play his two compositions to the examiners; I'm sure he has better things than talk to me. 'I was panic-spiralling about tomorrow so please don't leave or I'll start again.'

He wants to talk to me when he's stressed. He wants to talk to me. He's stressed and he still wants to talk to me. I get giddy and it has nothing to do with the ganja.

'Okay.' Nestling into my seat, I smile around the spliff. 'You'll do brilliant. Your music is stunning.'

'How would you know? You haven't heard it.'

'Because I have faith in you and everyting you do is stunning. Don't try to tell me I don't count cause I'm your best friend. I count.' I exaggerate both my attitude and my accent — which has grown strong in the past seven months, as is — and his giggles tickles my ear. 'You're gonna ring me the moment you're out of there tomorrow. Right?' When he only hums vaguely, I press on. 'Promise.'

'Okay... I promise. Aren't you going to wish me good luck?'

'You don't need luck.'

I take another drag and listen to the noise of whatever Dorian is doing, most likely going around his room in circles and playing with any object that happens to be in front of him. If he was with me, he would toy with the friendship bracelet back around my wrist.

The sound of his absent-minded fidgeting ends abruptly. 'Can I ask you something?'

'Of course.'

The silence is heavy on his end. As if our phones are connected by a physical line, the tension pulls on my cell. I sit up, put out my spliff, and drop it into the cup holder; I've smoked enough to curb the pain.

A rustle echoes in the call when he sits down on his bed. 'What does "man", being a "man", mean to you? I mean that... I don't think it means anything to me.' He groans softly and I know his hand feels trapped around the phone, that his body is screaming with the need to move around though, if he does, he does so silently. 'They're just words that I use because of their function in language but they don't mean anything to me.'

In case he wants to continue, I wait a moment before I answer. 'I don't know how to explain it.' I regret blazing now as words slur even in my brain, though I doubt I'd have a better answer for him if I was clear-headed. 'Sometimes I like so-called feminine tings. I used to dress up in my muma's wigs and I wear women's jewellery. I listen to Cher.' I roll my eyes though he can't see. 'Folk might disagree, but I don't think that makes me less of a man.'

He hums in a way that's entirely inorganic, a rehearsed response learnt from observing social interactions. 'But do you think about people as men and women? Like... do you think of yourself as a man?'

'Yeah.'

'I don't. I don't think of myself like that.'

'Okay.'

Dorian's anxiety is palpable from two hundred kilometres away.

'Do you think that's a bad thing?'

'No. I think God created you in Their image.'

He makes a sound on the borderline between a sob and a squeal. I wish I could hug him, kiss his temple, do something to ease the anxiety that winds around him.

As blessed as I am to have him as a friend again, it turns out difficult over the phone. We hardly ever spoke on the phone before; our parents would see it on the bill and my line got disconnected every few months when Muma failed to pay it. Our communication was never verbal; the most important things were expressed in habitual touch.

Keep in touch. I wish I could keep in touch.

'Is that okay with you?'

'Why wouldn't it be okay with me?'

'Because you're gay,' he says. 'I don't want you to feel deceived.'

'I don't feel that way.' When the tension on the line only gets heavier, I continue to reassure. 'Yes, I'm gay. But I'm attracted to you, cuz. I mean was... No, I mean am. If you ain't think of yourself as a man, then I'll stop thinking of you as one too.'

Only half of my love makes it through the phone. Maybe it's better that way. Maybe I have too much of it for a friend.

'Okay.'

His voice shifts; he must hold the phone with his shoulder to free both hands. I don't have to see him to know he's playing Chopin against his thighs. The croon of panic grows into a clangour.

'At the yeshiva I went to in America, they tried to teach us how to "be men". I think that's when I realized that other people actually believe in gender beyond a linguistic function.' He does his best to inject humour into his speech. 'We had a whole lesson for masculinity training. I don't think it worked very well.'

Though I know Dorian might interpret it to be targeted toward him, I can't filter the contempt from my voice. 'What kind of school was this?'

'It wasn't a school.' The answer hooks into his trachea and I force him to fish it out even when it slices his throat open. 'It was conversion therapy.'

My spine is severed. My lower body loses feeling entirely while my chest is torn open. Blinded with tears, the car park disappears.

My egomania reveals itself in a sickening moment of eureka.

Dorian reads my silence as a lack of understanding and repeats himself. 'It was conversion therapy that they covered up by calling it a school. Though they called it "reparative therapy for reverse inclinations".'

'I search for something to say but all I manage is his name, rough and guttural. 'Dorian.'

'It's okay.' His voice is the opposite of mine: so gallant it makes him sound entirely unaffected.

'It's not okay. I'm so sorry.'

He went through all that because of me, to protect me and my education. I want to apologise. I want to demand an explanation: Why didn't he leave? Why did he go in the first place? Did he know? The night he left, did he know? And if he did, why on earth would he decide to offer himself as a sacrifice for my success? And how the fuck does he expect me to live with myself, knowing I hated every second I spent in Oxford, knowing that he gave up his spirit for me to do nothing but abuse myself? In moving back here, did I spit in your face? Why would you let me do that without retaliation?

I want to say all this but it'll only make this about me again. Dorian will end up comforting me.

'I'm so sorry you had to go through that.'

Now more than ever, I need physical touch. I need to hold him. I need to make him feel safe to cry and I know he never will over the phone.

'If you want to talk about it, you can.'

'I wouldn't know what to say.' He interjects before the statement can land: 'I want you to know I didn't tell them anything about you.'

My brow furrows 'What?'

'We were supposed to. It was one of the things they called "cleansing". We were supposed to describe the sins we had committed in detail in front of everyone. They would use it for humiliation so we would learn to associate the experiences with shame.' His voice is disturbingly passive, as if he's recounting an anecdote as simple as going to the shops for panganat only to find it out of stock. 'I didn't tell them anything.'

Tears pour out of me so quickly they'll form a puddle at my feet soon. I swallow, try to hone my voice to parallel his. 'You should have. If it would've made it easier for you there.'

'No,' his response punches through the phone. 'I won't let anyone ruin it. I won't let anyone call it sin.'

The physical pain that ganja banished to the periphery only makes space for emotional agony. It becomes so ferocious that it might cut me in half. I have to hold my breath to stop myself from screaming.

Dorian's voice finally shatters. 'I don't believe any of that about you but sometimes their voices get so loud.'

'It's okay. Them ain't your thoughts,' I say. 'I'm sorry for giving you such a hard time about it.'

Fuck, do I regret that now. What have I done in my life that I didn't end up regretting? 

Love him. Loving him is the only thing and even that I could never do properly; part of me was holding back, part of me was preoccupied with trying to prove the hypothesis I wasn't good enough. If there was no proof, I would have planted it. If he hadn't left, I would have pushed him away. Our love was always going to end up in a conflict of interest.

Toni Morrison was right: love is never any better than the lover, and I am my mother's son. Loathing manages to find the crack in any surface.

My hubris would be funny if it wasn't so appalling. I absorb all the hatred in the world into myself and I claim it noble but I do it for the fetishistic pleasure I get from confirming my self-image as something wretched.

Which are the worst men? The ones who fell for the performance or the ones who saw through it — in other words, those who enjoyed the perversion along with me or those who knew exactly how easy it really was to hurt me, that, rather than being unaffected by their hatred because I already had plenty of my own, it was exactly that hatred which made me so vulnerable to theirs. How did I manage to sell myself a story of control?

How do I learn to love freely?

'I wish I could hug you.'

I need so desperately to hold him. He guided me here even when the fear of his parents nearly killed him. He was terrified but he came anyway. And I called him a coward. He was in profusely more pain than I understood.

'That would be nice,' Dorian muses. 'I miss hugging you.'

Just as I've managed to cut off my tears, they rush out again. My heart aches. Do you hear it call out to yours? I only pray that one day it'll be a lighthouse instead of a siren.

'I think that's part of the reason I never contacted you. I didn't want to make you deal with my shame. I didn't want to make you go backwards.'

There's no response that adequately encompasses how deeply I crave to help him that won't come off accusatory. So I tell him I love him and pray he knows how much. 'Just promise me one thing.'

'Anything.'

'Never do anything for me again.'

He exhales a laugh. Warmth spreads from the tea light between my lungs and I give myself a moment to appreciate the sensation before I press on.

'I mean it. This ain't never gonna work if we keep doing this self-sacrificial martyr foolishness.'

A hum. 'You put on your own oxygen mask first on aeroplanes.'

'Sure, I'll take your word for it.'

Reaching for the takeaway box on my passenger seat, I eat a few slices of fried plantain. I'm not sure whether it's the ganja or the crying, but I'm hungry again. Thank God for Lorraine  As the flavour hits my tastebuds, I become aware that I'm still in the car park and I can't stop the chuckle that bubbles in my stomach. I'm back to crying in car parks. How many minutes of my life have I spent crying in car parks?

When Dorian speaks, his voice is as soft as the breeze that caresses the blossoming apple trees surrounding Halsett. 'Okay, I promise.'

If he was here with me now, I would take his hand and squeeze it. 'Me too.' If he was here with me now, I would kiss the inside of his wrist.

Notes

Mawga and krawni: Meager (thin) and scrawny.

Panganat: Pomengranate

Passage from The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison that Isaiah refers to: "Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe."