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My heart flipped and my stomach dipped.
Untitledappearedin stark white letters across a black backdrop. I already knew it was a clip from Malakai’s film before it started rolling. It was even more stunning than what I had seen in the edit suite. Gorgeous vignettes of tessellating-toned, brown-skinned people, kaleidoscopic sizes and shapes that formed a deep, rich, bright texture, their voices overlapping and then separating to tell their stories. Blackwell denizens at parties, in the push and pull of attraction, swelling up with it till it made their skin glow with it. In campus cafés, at the libraries, on the quad. People in the audience laughed and cooed as they recognized themselves.
And then, there was my voice, speaking on a neo-soul instrumental that Kofi composed. “You know from the songs I’ve listened to... I feel like relationships are in the seeing. I think everyone just wants to be seen and to find someone who they enjoy seeing. Like... seeing them brings them joy.” And then, Malakai’s camera was on me, laughing at one of our dinners at Sweetest Ting, me sticking my tongue out at him across a lecture hall after he surreptitiously brought out his camera, me slicking lip gloss on my lips in my mirror, the reflection showing him mouthing a “damn” that I rolled my eyes at, my smile repressed. My chest felt tight, in a good way, like my heart had expanded, filled all the way up. “And isn’t it a trip,” I said, “when you find someone who you like seeing and who sees you?”
Now, I had taken the camera from Malakai, filmed him putting his durag on, swiped it to film him while he was watchingBoyz n the Hood,by his hero, John Singleton, the focus on his face, his mouth shaping his favorite lines, his eyes lighting up with inspiration, the bright in the deep. I’d focused on his lips.
“It’s such a miracle that people write songs about it. People pine for it. People get scared and sabotage it. People plead for it back, fists clenched, breaking it down in the middle-eight. Man, I just feel like the whole thing... the love thing... demands that you’re brave. Seeing people for what they are can be scary, that’s like... full investment. Responsibility. You have to care and be committed to the care. And you gotta care even while preparing for the fact that they’re not going to fit into your idea of perfection. Is it worth the risk? I don’t know. Only you can know.” A pause and then I say while laughing, “Shit, that was deep. Now here’s ‘Thong Song,’ one of the greatest love songs of all time.”
Malakai had filmed duringBrown Sugar. I’d got up and mouthed the lyrics to “Thong Song” with passion, eyes squeezed, fists closed, looking completely goofy and completely happy.
I bit my lip now and laughed. I liked seeing myself like that. I liked seeing Malakai see me like that. Then, there was Malakai sitting in a booth at what I recognized as Sweetest Ting. It looked like he was filming himself. He rubbed his neck and leaned forward.
“So, uh, when I started making this documentary, I really thought relationships weren’t for me. I almost approached it like... a wildlife documentary, right? I wanted to observe and understand why people would put themselves at risk of hurt like that. Why they would want to be tied to another person. Why anyone would even try. But then I met this girl.” Malakai smiled to the camera, his eyes full of something so warm and heavy and precious, my own started to fill too. “I met this girl with the sharpest, sweetest mouth and the biggest heart. Soft and tough and shy and bold. Beautiful man, so beautiful. And... she made me want it.Reallywant it. And I figured . . . that’s why people do it right?Be vulnerable and shit. Because they want to be close to the person who makes it worth it. It’s about connecting with someone who makes you want to try. And she made—makes me want to try.
“And me and this girl had an argument. It was rough. We both said really harsh things to each other, I dunno. I... my skin was inside out for her and that was the first time I really clocked it. I got scared and I backed her into a corner. She was going through something, and I didn’t give her space to feel that. I was thinking about myself. I’m always saying that I got her. But when she needed me... I didn’t have her in the way I promised myself I would always have her. And I’m shook I lost her because she is the best thing. Thebestfucking thing.
“Anyway, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out how to let her know how I feel, and then I remembered, in one of her shows she said that it just has to be true to you, just has to be real. Say it in the way you know how. So this is what I know. I know how it feels when I get the perfect shot. When the light hits a certain way, and someone’s expression is the perfect display of emotion. It feels like you’ve hit on something sacred. That’s how I feel when I look at her. She’s the perfect shot. And the perfect shot isn’t about something being flawless, it’s about the truth. She’s the truth to me. Clarity. The world isdoablewhen she is near me.”
Composure was threatening to leave my body. “Kai.” My voice was a hoarse vocal stumble. Blackwell was enraptured, camera phones up, interest piqued. I was frozen to the spot.
“I also know how my favorite movies make me feel. They pull me in and pull me out, I am totally in their world, but they also make me look in. I watch them and feel home, I watch them and feel like I can never know enough, I watch them over and over, always ready to discover the universe they create. That’s how she makes me feel. There’s a whole universe in her and I would be so lucky to live in it, explore it. Over and over.”
The film stopped. Aminah cleared her throat into the mic. Her eyeswere glistening, and she surreptitiously pinched my waist. “Okay. Well that’s it from our sponsor. Now we have our first call.”
She smiled at me and passed me the mic, as if I were capable of working right then, as if my brain was capable of coherency. She nodded at me with such command that I found myself say, in a choked-up voice, “Hi. Welcome to ‘Brown SugarSessions.’ What’s your song request?”
Malakai walked through the doors, phone to his ear, hand in his pocket, looking directly at me, into me, revitalizing the butterflies, gaze moving like a defibrillator. The crowd turned around to see what I was looking at and immediately dissolved into low woops and cheers, braps and bloops and gun fingers.
“So I was thinking, ‘When We Get By,’ D’Angelo. You know it, right?”
I was going to faint.
“Vaguely.”
“See that song,” the voice said, “sounds like sunshine to me. Sounds like how I think love feels.”
I shook my head and bit into my smile. “Corny.”
“Rude.”
I snorted.
“But then I wondered—and I guess this is my query,” Malakai continued, “if, even that song isn’t enough. Maybe this demands the greatest love song of all time. And I wondered whether if I arranged for the Whitewell Wailers to perform an a capella version of ‘Thong Song’ for her, the girl I can’t get out of my head would forgive me for being a dick.”
I laughed at the in-joke. “Well, objectively, I think she’s sorry for being a dick too. And that you’re already forgiven. I think a performance from the iconic Whitewell Wailers would help, but just in case you can’t secure the third-place finalists in the regionals for the National University Nonconforming Singing Group Competition, we can just play it.”
Malakai nodded. “Sure, sure. Except—”
My jaw dropped, as a strong, baritone hum ofbumbumbumbummmimmediately burred through the doors of the ballroom, quickly followed by twelve of Whitewell’s second-finest choral group, walking toward the stage, dressed in white tees and black trousers and solemnly informing me, in pristine harmony, that my dress was so scandalous, that there was a look in my eye so devilish.
Malakai’s smile was wide and he shrugged, eyes bright with mischief as the hall exploded into whistles and cheers and my eyes watered and I was laughing and I couldn’t believe how much I loved this ridiculousman.
I turned around and Aminah was grinning wildly as she shooed me off the stage. I hopped off and was followed by trails of “Get it, sis!” as I twined myself through the tables to where Malakai was by the doors.
The Whitewell Wailers found an engaged and appreciative audience in Blackwell, and everyone was up on their feet, clicking in time, and it smoothed over the atmosphere, subduing all residual animus, warming the air. With everyone suitably distracted, Malakai and I were essentially alone. We both paused, the silence comfortable, hot, tingling with energy, faces firm in their self-aware coyness.
“Hey.”
