Reality in Fiction: How my short story, "Trigger," was born.

My friend Nakia does this thing on her Facebook page, (Shout out to Nakias' Open Book) where she posts a letter every Thursday about relationships. A lot of conversation starts on Thursday and takes us right through the weekend. As the Facebook world goes, my letter is now buried and is not being commented on anymore but I wanted to have it archived with my blog as well as it very much applies to my writing. So, without any further delay, my Thursday Letter:

           “Even in the dark, with his brazil-nut-brown skin blending into the night, the headlights from a car in the desolate parking lot across the street displayed the outline of a man I could never forget. Forgiveness seemed equally impossible and before I knew what I was doing, my hand stroked the cold steel of the handgun my boss kept under the counter for protection.”
            This is how my short story, “Trigger,” begins and though it is a work of fiction, the paragraph above is based in truth. There’s an ex-factor in my life that even 15 years later, I feel uneasy if I see his name or face.
            The backstory is young love, the college years, the guy I thought was the one so I was blind to all the signs that said he wasn’t. One major sign:  he told me that the reason why his parents stayed together as long as they did was because even though his dad knew he didn’t want to be with his mother anymore, he didn’t want anyone else to have her either. Like father, like son? It’s possible.
            We seemed to be on-again-off-again for almost two years. He’d never let me have a clean break because our friendship was so important but for me, the love was. Every tender comment he made during our off moments filled me with hope of our future together.  If it seemed like he wasn’t interested in reconciling, I pulled back for my own survival. That was cause for him to pull me in with proclamations of love and sticking things out. When we were on, he could hold my hand and cuddle with me around those who knew we were a couple, yet around others, it was the friend zone. After our relationship was truly over, mutual friends were actually shocked to find out we broke up because they never knew we were together. It wasn’t the emotional rollercoaster everyone talks about, what we had was a yo-yo. He flung me away and pulled me back in before I got too far away.
            The final straw was getting word of a family tragedy during one of our off times. I was down but a guy-friend was hanging with me and cheering me up. When the ex saw this, he approached me and told me he heard about what I was going through and he wanted to be there for me no matter what. In my vulnerable stage, I really needed that glimmer of hope. I held on to the thought of “us” when everything else felt hopeless, but when I needed him to actually be there, he was with another girl. I didn’t know until rumors got back to me and I did some math. He gave me a crap excuse for not being able to see me because he’d gone out of his way to be with someone else. That did it for me and I was free.
            Free, but still enslaved to a lot of pain and distrust: I didn’t make it easy for the man I married. It would have been best to just let me go and do my own healing instead of playing with my emotions. On top of that, to promise being there in my darkest moment only to hook up with some other person went deeper than anything else. Even thinking about it, I feel a heaviness in my heart and he’d been evacuated from it a long time ago.
            So one night, even though I’d moved on, fell in love, made real promises to the man I am married to, I saw the ex walking by the little pizza place I once worked at. I’d say almost a year had gone by since the break-up but the sight of him ripped open the wound and I wanted him to hurt like I’d hurt. The store owner kept a gun under the register. I’d felt it before while cleaning and got freaked out. There was no freaking out when I saw him. My hand felt up under the counter and caressed the hard, cold steel. I fantasized about shooting him. Would I take out his kneecap and leave him with the gun to finish the job if the pain got too unbearable? Could I kill him and make up some story about him trying to rob us to get away with it? By the time he was out of shooting distance, I was exhilarated with all the lovely images of his mangled skull and guttural whimpers. He lived to cheat another day and I was happy to have someone dependable at home waiting.
            The cautionary tale here for the guys is to be honest with yourself and your significant other. If you are only holding on so that someone else cannot have her, you are only hurting her more than letting her go. If you cared enough to be in the relationship, care enough about her to want her to be happy, even if it is with another guy. Furthermore, don’t promise anything you cannot deliver, especially if she’s vulnerable enough to believe anything you say. Don’t make a woman fantasize about killing you, not every woman knows when to leave a fantasy a fantasy.
            For the ladies, a sign is a sign. The first time he tried to pull me back by the yo-yo string, I should have remembered the story about his parents and cut the string myself. And real talk here, if you’ve got your hand on a weapon and finding joy in his possible pain, step away. It’s better to find love elsewhere than do serious time. You know those orange jumpsuits are NOT a good look.

African American Romeo and Juliet, where art thou?

I recently published an e-single for Kindle that is a historical slave romance. I know you can find stories involving true love between slaves (Toni Morrison's, Beloved for one); however, historical antebellum romance always makes me think of slave/master-slave/mistress love stories. I don't purport to have read them all and so forgive me if this is not the case for you. I, on the otherhand, am left to ask, where is our Romeo and Juliet?

A few years back, I bought Pamela Newkirk's collection of love letters, A Love No Less. Let me tell you, to read a love letter written by a slave who has been sold away from his wife where he says, "if we cannot be together in this life, we will be in the next" (paraphrasing here) was one of the most endearing things I've ever seen. (And I'm a sucker for love. I see it everywhere.) I felt as though it was something we were not taught and I also felt a little angry that I hadn't seen images like this enough.

Of course, slaves experienced true love. Of course, there were broken hearts and hand-holding. Of course, there was someone telling them that they couldn't be together like Romeo and Juliet (even more so.) I felt as though the entire existence of black love could and should have been fortified with the foundation that yes, our ancestors loved hard. Furthermore, they may not have had the choice to try to keep a family together but now you do. Why mess up a good thing?

So, I am left to ask if we'd have as much baby-mama, baby-daddy drama today if images of black couples in love were around? I remember hearing people say that The Huxtables were not realistic. I've heard that James Evans was killed off of Good Times because there were no married couples in the projects. (Interviews with John Amos suggest he spoke out against the negative portrayal of black people in Norman Lear's hit and was promptly let go.) If the Waltons were the Watsons, would we continue to share our partners or accept various forms of abuse? Would more men have a goal of finding a wife and having a family instead of a goal of conquesting as many women as possible? Would more women seek love instead of provision?

In my short story, "Of Bondage and Freedom," Curly and Gus have that real ride-or-die kind of love that, though tested, never falters. I don't know if you would think of them as the African American Romeo and Juliet, but I hope you can appreciate their image. It is now available for Kindle. (And uh, parental discretion is advised.)