Don't Tell Me That You Love Me and a Walk in the Park with Debbie Gibson's Song "Foolish Beat"

Age 16, on the Gulf of Mexico Enroute to New Orleans on Spanish Club Trip

My high school boyfriend, at my house, age 16, in December 1987

Age 17, August, 1988, St. Jude Educational Institute Senior Picture

Age 17, from Photo Shoot with Clifford Hunter for Debutante Program booklet 

Age 17, night of Debutante cotillion on April 1, 1989; photography by Clifford Hunter 

Age 17, on Chesapeake Bay During Campus Visit to Hampton University

Age 17, in photo taken at River Country on St. Jude Educational Institute's senior class trip to Disney World 

Age 17, in photo taken on senior class trip of St. Jude Educational Institute to Grad Nite at Disney World in 1989

I actually got depressed when my boyfriend, K, my very first and a cute football player at a public school, first told me that he loved me. I finally wrote the following poem one night to attempt to capture my reaction.

Don’t Tell Me That You Love Me 7/7/1988, Age 17

When you are a happy person
When you are yourself
When you can forsake all others
Think of no one else
You can then assert the feelings
That you have for me
Tell me that I am so special
Tell me honestly
When you know just what love is
Only can you share
The beauty that a love creates
And makes you want to care
Until you remove all the obstacles
Until you really see
Until you isolate your feelings
Don’t tell me you love me.

In retrospect, I realize that I was over-thinking the situation. Maybe I should have just taken it for what it was and accepted and respected his feelings instead of trying to illustrate to him from a philosophical standpoint his lack of a true understanding of love as a concept, in the midst of writing my poems about “The One” I hoped to meet someday.

He is, I must admit, also the reason that to this day I am such a committed epistolary. Already I was into writing journal entries and poems, and had had pen pals such as a girl named Barbara Riley from Tuskegee whom I’d met in eighth grade on a riverboat field trip, and Sister Sheila Shanahan, my fifth grade teacher at St. John the Baptist Catholic School, once she returned to the Motherhouse for the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in Bristol Pike, Pennsylvania; she died a few weeks after I graduated from eighth grade.

But he, more than anyone, helped me to commit myself to letter writing in high school by telling me one day that he had sent me one. I responded by asking “Why, I’m right here in town and we talk on the phone?” He said that he knew that, but just wanted to write me one to say some things. I waited for the mail for two days, somewhat nervously, wondering what he had to say that was so important it needed to be said in a letter. A few days later, despite feeling a little awkward about writing, I responded to him out of courtesy. From that point on, letter writing served as another important circuit of communication in our relationship.

We were introduced by friends and had started "talking" in December of 1987 as the holidays approached. It was fun. The night they came over for the introduction, his friend pulled his own girlfriend out on my front porch to sit in the swing in the December cold so that we could be alone in the living room. My cousin Lamar peeked in every now and then and served us water several times, but had me on pins and needles as he came in, for he thought it all was hilariously funny and really wanted to try to make me lose my composure in some way by pushing my buttons. Between Lamar and the friend who had introduced us and kept bursting in the front door to check up on how things were going, he and I managed to have a conversation that I could not remember today if someone paid me a million dollars. It must have been slightly less awkward than the one a few days ago on the phone. I had been in Tuscaloosa all day on a trip with my Federated Club members for our annual Winter Board Meeting, so this was also the end of a very long day.

My girl friend came in to thaw out and we were back in the kitchen at one point when the friend who had introduced us came back excitedly to tell me that "Riché, he likes you!" All of us then piled in the car and drove out to Turtles record store, which allowed us to continue to check each other out, and ended the evening by driving by to check out this house in my community that was drawing attention and carloads of spectators because of how lavishly it had been decorated for Christmas, a tradition that began that year and that was sustained for the next twenty-five years. Getting to know him in the ensuing days added to the fun and excitement of the holidays.

His friend who had introduced us called me the night that I officially became his girlfriend, December 19, to tell me that my new boyfriend had just left his house very happy and had recited a rap, when he asked what was up, that went:

Yo, man,
don't you understand?
Riché and I

are hand in hand."

In the days leading up to this, he had told me that every time he heard the Roger song "I Want to Be Your Man," he thought of me. I didn't even like the song before then, but after that, began to listen to it, and smiled to myself when I heard it.

Spring of 1988 was a happy and fun time during which we really enjoyed our relationship, as did the people around us. The news that I was dating a football player at a public school (“Who’s really cute!” they’d say), spread like wildfire at my school and people were curious about who he was. This was in part because of my profile as a “serious” student and student leader. He reported that several times, carloads of students from my school, the historic St. Jude Educational Institute in Montgomery, Alabama, which was best historically known as the final camping ground of the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers in 1965, drove over to his school after school to “check him out,” so to speak. Instantly recognizable by their gray and white uniforms, they would even get out of their cars and point him out. They also spoke to him at the mall by name, as if they knew him, he said. This was recognition that he got used to and even came to enjoy. At St. Jude, one guy in physics class, a senior, asked me, as word got around the school, and in words out very slowly “Soooo. . . what do you alllll dooo…liiiike… fooorrr…dates?” Then quickly, answering his own question, he said, “Go to museums?” He made this speculation while shaking his head resolutely, putting the answer to his question in my mouth as if that was absolutely the only possibility he could imagine. It reflected impressions of me that some people have had as a person who only enjoys “intellectual” activities.

I remember being nervous the first time that he came to a dance with me at my school, our first official activity there. I waited with him outside the gym for five minutes before I took a deep breath and finally built up the courage to open the door and go in with him. We passed the Coke machine in the lobby of the gym that I had recently had installed, which had outraged the coach. It was one of my many fund-raising projects as student council vice-president; I’d made building the treasury a priority. Proudly, I said, “Welcome to my world,” as we looked at the crowd inside. I knew that people would be curious and that we wouldn't have any privacy. We didn't. We took a seat up in the bleachers. Repeatedly, people climbed up to where we were to speak to us. I imagine that those who had missed the sight-seeing trips to his school wanted to make sure that they got a look at him up close when the opportunity presented itself. Some were bold enough to make themselves at home and sit down with us and chat. Some simply walked by down on the floor and looked up to see us, putting a hands over their eyes like visor brim to focus. When we went down to the floor and danced, it felt as if many eyes were on us. All evening, people came to check us out and introduced themselves to him. The most embarrassing thing that evening, though, was that my school's principal walked in, per her policy, and asked all the guys in the gym to take off their hats, which was embarrassing in front of people from public schools, including him, who happened to be wearing a baseball cap.

I was even more nervous when he invited me as his date to the Military Ball at his school. Beyond football, his main activity and obsession was ROTC. Repeatedly, he had learned from how they reacted when he told people he had a girlfriend at St. Jude that it was considered to be a very big deal by some. It’s like “an honor,” he said, to date a girl from there. He was taken aback by the big deal people always made of it. I became more nervous as he told me their speculations about me in the days leading up to the event. “She’ll probably be snobby.” “She probably won’t even speak.” He told me that they anticipated that I’d be “stuck up.” Even in college, when I was on a visit home from Spelman junior year, I was studying at Alabama State's library one day, I encountered someone with this impression. This guy, a student there, came up to me and introduced himself. When he found out that I was from Montgomery, he said, "You went to St. Jude, didn't you?" Taken aback, I said I had, and asked him how he knew that. His response to me was, "I just know..."  When I pressed him, he told me that "All St. Jude people look alike." I was too shocked by his claim to even be insulted. Historically, "Jude girls" have been stereotyped as having a certain look. In one of its greatest traditions, the senior pictures of most students who have ever attended line the walls in the hallways. Some families have attended for generations, and people can see pictures of their parents as they walk the halls. For me, the irony was that my hair was shorter by then, and I felt I looked absolutely nothing like the image associated with me at St. Jude and with some girls from there.

For the occasion, I wore a white Gunne Sax evening gown with a lace collar. I enjoyed the ball a lot, and the girls in ROTC looked pretty in their gowns, as all the guys in ROTC wore uniforms. It turned out that a girl who lived two doors down from me growing up and with whom I played as a child was the DJ for the evening, and I also saw her brother, who had taught me to ride my bike without training wheels at age 8. He had a talent for doing back flips, which he demonstrated in our front yard, and one Saturday, showed me how I should pedal. I couldn’t keep the bike balanced at first. Then, suddenly, next thing I knew, I was up the street with my grandfather, him, his sister, and their little sisters, all looking up in surprise as I turned around and returned. I was happy to see him and Laura, and proud to see what a talented rapper she had become and how deft she was on the turn tables. 

Here's the first part of the letter that I wrote him in thanks for the invitation to be his date:

"Dear K, I am writing to inform you of my gratitude for your invitation to the Military Ball.  Even though attendance was moderate, I honestly enjoyed the time that we spent together.  What a nice affair your school presented!  All of you guys really looked gallant in your uniforms . . . . . and you (second person singular) were simply charming.  I was overwhelmed when you were in your formation and noticed that your composure remained intact through the duration of your procedure.  You were drop-dead handsome and I mean it with all conceivable sincerity.  Again, thanks for the invitation and the beautiful corsage.  I was proud to support you in representing your school-I truly was . . . ."  

Otherwise, his best friend was the only other person I knew there. He was very proud to report after the event that the girls at the ball said they liked me and thought I was nice, and not at all "stuck up" like they imagined I'd be. That spring, he was also my escort to a cotillion, the Finer Womanhood presentation, my second on the path to the major debutante cotillion in which I'd be participating as a senior. Otherwise, we just had fun and focused on achieving our main goals, mine in student council and his in football.

To this day, that spring remains one of the happiest times in memory in my life, ever. The Saturday night before Valentine's, because it fell on a day when we would be in school, he and I paired up with our friends who were also dating and went to Godfather's Pizza to celebrate. He surprised me with a beautiful red satin heart-shaped pillow trimmed with lace and red and white ribbons made by a woman his mother knew. The very “heirloom” and “keepsake” thing that traditional high school girls have dreamed of getting for a hope chest, as illustrated in advertisements for Lanes classic cedar chests in my teen magazines, I literally got. I gave him a stuffed animal, which surprised him, too.

I had been on course for my student council presidential campaign. I did the art for a fundraising project called “Initiate Your Favorite Teacher Grinch” which was displayed in the school’s lobby and featured the Grinch in a cotton-trimmed Santa suit attached to his dog by a string on the opposite side of a Christmas tree, whose ornaments were falling off. I did a first-place prize-winning science fair project in which I built a model house to highlight the dangers of radon. Room to room, the house was built with lots of precision. I used medical tape to create baseboards from room to room, made a cloth ensemble complete with pillows for the bed, model cabinets for the kitchen, and miniature furniture. The fireplace in the living room was three-dimensional with a mantle and a screen. The garage featured a model car. I kept it top secret from my friends and competitors at school and he was the only one I allowed him to come see before I submitted it.

I served as commentator for the senior fashion show -the only junior invited to participate because “We like the way you sound.” I used the example of Shayla Simpson, whom I’d seen in the Ebony Fashion Fair a couple of times when it came to town, to write rhymes for the show, and then announced it from memory from beginning to end with verses like “Do you miss that summer sun? Well it’s time for some surfin’ summer fun!” My favorite one, for the marriage scene, for which I changed into a formal maroon tea-length gown, ended with my saying that “It’s locked in our memories, and sealed with a kiss, and it goes something, just like this.”

My campaign posters and speeches were a key project during this time as well. I had established a “portrait” style when running for the office of student council vice president the year before, which featured popular figures such as Janet Jackson and Ernest of “KnowhutImean” fame, that I revived. This time around, I used Oprah Winfrey, Ann Landers and Phil Donahue, and Max Headroom. I made five posters in all, and the signature heart-shaped campaign buttons with slogans such as “Elect Riché and Make the Difference,” “Vote for Riché, She Cares,” and the rallying cry that I established in a mock election for President of the United States in seventh grade and used the year before: “Riché Riché, All the Way!” I even obliged a friend I’d met the year before, who had tried to woo me by having a friend lie to me and say that he read encyclopedias as a hobby to impress me and get my attention, and used his recommended slogan, “Richardson Might Not Make You Rich, but Vote for Riché’ Anyway.”

I had exciting trips to places like New Orleans, Atlanta, and climbed Mt. Cheha, all 2,000 feet, with the Nature Club. On top of all of this stuff at school, I was enjoying things with him. A picture I took on the Gulf on the way to New Orleans captures the energy of this time, and so does the poem below that I wrote about him. His goal was to play his best football and I was focused on my dream of being elected student council president at St. Jude, a dream I’d had since ninth grade. These were things that we had supported each other in working toward in the spring.

I Adore You 3/18/88

Truly I adore your warmth and ever-present smile
For you I would climb a mountain and even walk a mile
You melt me with your simply charming beautiful brown eyes
I love it when we say hello and hate our sad good-byes
I’ll never forget our wonderful dance-
What a lovely event!
To be perfectly honest-
You were heaven-sent
I love the way you make me blush
When you say, “Oh, gee!”
My charming knight you are as kind
As kind could ever be
To you I shall now promise to
Always be true
For you I will always do whatever I can do
We’ve had so many special moments
We’ll have many more
You have an honesty that I can’t help but to adore
You deserve the hugs and kisses that make a life worth living
In you I will never cease my hope and willingful giving
I wish to you the blessings of our Great God above
May He protect you from all danger and shield you with His
Love
Perhaps on one day my feelings for you
Will mellow into more
In time I’ll shower you with kisses and tell you I Adore
For now let us grow and change
And become the best
And wish for love and peace and joy-
A world of happiness.

I lost my dog Dutchess on April 22, the very day that I found out I had been elected student council president. My Uncle Richard, who worked as a contractor in bricklaying, had gotten her as a puppy for my aunt and me on one of his jobs in Tallassee, Alabama, after he saw how happy Lady, the dog he got for his wife, our Aunt Mae, had made us. Lady and Dutchess were sisters and had brought me a lot of happiness in my childhood. Losing Dutchess hurt a lot, and I will never forget being in the vet and feeling so helpless. We were manipulated into thinking that she could be saved, just for him to get $75. And then he told us that we would not be able to take her home or bury her because she'd bitten one of the people who picked her up after they hit her and they needed to send her head off for examination. I resented the vet who did this and will never forget the image of her in so much pain in a cage where I could not touch her, and standing there telling her that I was so sorry about what had happened to her while I was dripping wet from the rain. This was the dog whom I had rocked as a puppy and to whom I'd sang lullabys.

When I was nine and the summer we got the dogs, we took Dutchess over to Aunt Mae and Uncle Richard’s to play, and left her in the backyard. I went back there. They had turned on the hose and were wringing wet with water and mud. Then they wrung themselves, and I ended up getting pretty wet, too. When the adults came to the back yard, I imagine that we were a sight to see. If there is a day that childhood reaches its very peak in a person’s life then that day was it for me. When I had every adult in my life who loved me, plus those pets I truly loved. One of the dreams that I have of heaven, in fact, along with being reunited with my lost loved ones again, is to have my dog jump into my arms. I loved her so much. The day I lost Dutchess, a part of me blamed myself because if I hadn't been so distracted by the euphoria of having been elected student council president at St. Jude, I might have heard her trying to get out, for she was very afraid of thunder and lightning, especially as she got older. I could never understand how she got all the way down to the Carter Hill Road. We had her from 1980 to 1988.

Later in the spring, I wrote the following poem out of frustration and uncertainty I'd begun to feel about the relationship, and in the midst of the friend who had originally introduced us suggesting that I break up with him the night that all of us went to the junior prom at my school

Lost Love 5/13/88

He used to say he loved me
He used to say he cared
I'll never forget the memories
The moments we have shared
He left me devasted
My gentle little dove
Our ties were just ill-fated
Can I get his love
He makes me scream and shout
He tears my heart apart
He fills my mind with doubt
He didn't at the start
I don't understand it
What changed the way I feel
This isn't how I planned it
Just what is the deal
I don't know what will happen
I guess it's come what may
But I will surely know
On our prom day

The prom brought us closer together and renewed my commitment. Our friends who were with us-for we did a lot of double dates-got out of the car and went in the restaurant, Sizzler, that night to eat. The presumption was that I'd take that time alone with him to break things off. Instead, we talked in the car all the while and never went in. Afterwards, all of us went to the park. I made sure to hold his hand as we walked along the paths, openly defying the pressures his friend put on me to leave him on prom night, which seemed horrible and cruel. By the end of the evening, we were as close as ever. Still, we hadn't kissed. I wanted to be sure the time and feeling were right.

My poem for his seventeenth birthday was written 5/17/88-two days
before his birthday-for which I bought him a T-shirt from Bennetton, and
it read:

Well at last the day has come
The day is truly here
This is a special birthday wish
And it is most sincere
Seventeen you are at last
Your precious day has arrived
It is a blessing from above
Remember-you survived
I won't make it long and wordy
I just want to say
I wish you lots of luck and
happiness
On this special day

I turned 17 myself on May 26. That summer was filled with excursions to the park, spending time with friends, or him just visiting me at my house and my tutoring his sister weekly.

We finally kissed for the first time- that June- six months after we’d started dating months earlier. I thought it was important to build true intimacy and get to know each other better before that happened, and he respected my wishes. I took my first kiss in life, which happened when I was 17 though we had started dating when I was 16, very seriously.

My standards and approaches in everything were set by my fantasies and goals for my future, which shaped my vision of love profoundly. Some of my poems revealed my perspective, especially the ones that had to do with my dreams of love and relationships.

The One 5/1/88

I'll love him more than my own life
I'll want to be his darling wife
To him I will be forever true
Anything for him I will do
I'll tell him my hopes
All of my fears
Our love will be fortified through the years
My feelings will deepen on each day
For his welfare I will pray
He'll be the reason that I try
I'll love him unconditionally until I die
I'll want him and trust him with all my might
In my life he'll be a light
I won't deceive him in any fashion
For him I'll have unyielding passion
My dream -the truest that I have known
Pervades me when I am all alone
My love-the One-who loves me, too,
Will be my dream 'till it comes true

One poem I later wrote in college, 1/29/90, is also characteristic of my poems in "The One" genre:

Because of Loving You

If I am spared by destiny
And if my dreams come true
I promise that we'll be together
And I'll always love you

Even if I have the answers
Or if I have no clue
I'll have undying faith in us
And I'll always love you

We will have a lot to share
I'll never make you blue
And my life will be twice as nice
Because of loving you

There was a part of me that looked intently into the future and thought far above the idea of a high school boyfriend. When a friend of mine signed my yearbook telling me to be sure to invite her to my wedding and baby shower, and put his name in parentheses, I was ticked off, saying to myself that "I'm not going to marry him." My body, my best in life, was for "the One" of the future, whoever that ended up being.

I once wrote a three-part poem series entitled "Black Wedding," "White Wedding," and "My Wedding" to remind myself of the type of woman I needed to be when I finally met “The One” and married him. And this is odd, for I usually refused to use imagery associating blackness with impurity and whiteness with purity. In the case of these poems I did for the sake of efficiency

6/15/88

Black Wedding

A sacred, wholesome wedding day
Because he stole her mind
Is forever locked away
Suspended far behind

She loves the one so hopelessly
Loves him more than life
He has to lift the blackest veil
When she becomes his wife

He longs for her so desperately
With all his strength and might
He surely has to learn the truth
On their wedding night

Standing shamefully dressed in white
She longs for chastity
She has to bear the cursed throes
Of lost virginity

I think I wrote that poem to scare myself into imagining how horrific it would be if I were to compromise my sexuality in high school. When I read this poem to my boyfriend, it slightly alarmed him, I think, for he asked, "What inspired that?"

White Wedding 7/24/88

A sacred wholesome wedding day
Fortified by love
Brings forth happiness and joy
The peace of a gentle dove

She loves the one so endlessly
More than her own life
And he will lift the whitest veil
When she becomes his wife

He longs for her so desperately
With all his heart and soul
He wants to give her joy and love
And make her truly whole

Standing proudly dressed in white
Vision of chastity
She is the one he truly loves
Sacred purity

Finally, I wrote the third poem in this trilogy, "My Wedding," 8/27/88, to describe my own philosophy and plan for the future

I'll have a sacred wedding day
Fortified by love
It will bring forth happiness
The peace of a gentle dove

I'll love the One so endlessly
(More than my own life)
And he will lift the whitest veil
When I become his wife

He'll long for me so desperately
With all of his heart and soul
He'll want to give me love and joy
And make me truly whole

I'll stand proudly dressed in white
A vision of chastity
I'll be the one he truly loves
Sacred purity

In general, I kept my focus on the big picture of my life and could never have imagined sex with a high school boyfriend because of it, or with anyone outside of marriage, for that matter. I was raised by my grandparents and a single mother in an extended family, and maintained high standards for my own life and sexuality. I have always set the standards and boundaries for the men in my life. However, many American women, in a world where so many people believe in casual dating and "hooking up," "f--- buddies" and "friends with benefits," make themselves available for the convenience and pleasure of every man they meet and expresses interest in them, and view sex as an entitlement and obligation for themselves and boyfriends. Growing up, it is sad that some have viewed losing their virginity as being as mundane and routine as getting a driver's license. But this is not the world in which I grew up and it is an ethos in which I do not believe and that I do not practice.

Notwithstanding all the stereotypes about black girls and women, I was certainly never in danger of becoming a teen mother in my youth. I would not have ever taken the risk of becoming one. Teen girls' mothers sometimes tend to watch very carefully when their daughters are menstruating, and my mother seemed nervous when my menstrual cycle was delayed a few days when I was 16. Inside, I burned with anger that she may have even been imagining that I was pregnant when the truth was that I'd never even kissed the boy at that point, and that I had never done so literally even after MONTHS of dating him. Coming of age as a black girl in the 1980s was a strong deterrent to teen pregnancy in light of all the social statistics surrounding this category. For me, it's been as simple as never opening myself and my life to the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy, and as time went on, mainly because of my love for God and obedience to His expectations and standards.

During that time, I was absolutely obsessive about not being associated with these stereotypes of black girls. Getting out of the car with my aunt and cousin Keri, I always distanced myself, and avoided contact with Keri in public lest she be presumed to be my child. In stores, I would stay out of her line of vision. When she first started to talk, she had the habit of calling all women in our family “Ma,” when asking for things that she needed. One day, she called me that in a store and I nearly dropped dead of embarrassment. I had steered clear of her when we were out in public since the day that, when holding her momentarily for my aunt in a store, a white woman had come and complimented me and said, “That’s such a pretty baby.” I said to her, “I’m only fifteen years old.” Sometimes, I’d say things to her or her sister Megan that a mother would not possibly say, just to establish my distance. When Keri and Megan were little girls, I never wanted to be the one holding their hand crossing the street, until they were five or six and out of what I perceived to be out of the “hot zone” and not presumed to be my kids.

In general, I would be very uncomfortable having a bond with the wrong man for the rest of my life through a child we mistakenly conceived. I would rather not have children at all than to have them the wrong way and out of the will of God. It is only at this point in life that I've realized that I have been playing with a very different deck of cards and living a life extremely different from many women and doing things in my life differently from the beginning, like never agreeing to "go with" any boy when I was asked in elementary school, having my first boyfriend at 16, and then insisting that we wait until the right time to kiss, which ended up being six months after we started dating. Many women underestimate the choices and the power that they have with men, but I never have. The idea of allowing any man to come into my life and "change it in a night" was unthinkable. In my own life, in spite of my shortcomings, I've always been more interested in pleasing God than man and have been able to focus on my goals and dreams because of that.

Growing up, it also definitely helped to get doses of wisdom in the Ann Landers column, including verses such as "When I met him, I liked him, when I liked him, I loved him, when I loved him, I let him, when I let him, I lost him." That would certainly never be me, I vowed. I also took the lyrics to Diana Ross's "Love Child" very seriously, a ballad and platform for pure and responsible sexuality if there ever was one that seems to have been all but forgotten in the contemporary era, as if these are words that people no longer believe in or want to hear. Aretha Franklin's video for the song "Jimmie Lee" is another useful example, especially with lines such as "He was the first one, he stole my heart, then he ran like a bandit, I don't understand it" and "won't you please, explain to me, why you left me behind you."

Girls at St. Jude were very popular and pursued by boys from other schools, who visited our campus many Friday evenings outside the gate in an attempt to meet them; I never circulated in that way socially because it just wasn't me; most evenings after school, I had club meetings or student council meeting, which was always crowded when I was student council vice-president as a junior because I helped to institute a charter system and charged each club $30 for membership, fined clubs and suspended charters when they lacked representation at student council meeting, put a Coke machine in the lobby of the gym and led bake sales two days a week to raise money for the student council's treasury. I was also always missing in action at that time because I was volunteering with the kids at the Y. Indeed, my boyfriend's visit to the Y one Friday evening to pick me up once had a strong impact on a younger female teen (13) who had asked me if I had a boyfriend and then suggested to me that she was thinking of becoming sexually active. I, being cautious, explained that he and I were getting to know each other and that we valued each other’s company. I stressed that he was my first one at 16 ever in my life and that waiting for such a person was worth it. I also stressed that girls should demand the utmost respect from boys and should not allow themselves to be pressured. I caught a pensive vibe from her, so hopefully she abandoned the idea of sex. I mentioned the importance of setting the standard high with boys and respecting oneself, and that I did not believe in sex before marriage. A few weeks later, he came over to the Y to pick me up after one of my sessions. A week later, she and another girl, a little awestruck, ran up to me when I arrived, told me how cute they thought he was and that they could not believe that he was a football player (he was wearing his school's lettered jacket); they saw through him that girls could attract cute boys who would respect them

For us, the summer of 1988 had begun with hilarious times like the afternoon we spent in Oak Park, one of our favorite places to go. He and I were sitting on a bench and a gardener, curious about what we were saying, over-watered a patch of flowers. After the gardener finally left, we went over to see the droopy flowers, and I said that their condition was our fault, and that he’d have to preach their funeral, and so he did. At a point, I interrupted his play sermon, and took off his hat, playfully hit him with it and gave it to him, and he put it against his chest as he spoke. One day when he got off his job at Taco Bell, I was sitting on the porch and looked up and saw him bring me a blueberry milkshake from Rax because he knew that was my favorite drink. The tension and anguish I felt as the summer progressed was totally opposite these moments.

I was immersed in preparations for a good start for the academic year, and so was he. By mid-summer, as the incoming SGA president, I spent my days diligently planning events like the program for the annual Mass of the Holy Spirit with Montgomery Catholic High School, which would be hosted by my school that year, getting it on the local news (thanks to the anchor Kim Davis, WSFA did end up coming over to film us releasing 200 white helium-filled balloons after the mass); a newsletter for SGA; how to get students out of uniform on birthdays and for the entire homecoming week; putting up bulletin boards to promote our athletics and the new letterman’s club that I’d supported the coach and another student in starting at our school and developed a plan for (in part because of inspiration from my own boyfriend's athleticism); and becoming newspaper editor at my school, another position that I really wanted.

I was shocked that in the midst of this busy summer, he proposed that I come over to his school daily to watch football practice. I responded by saying, “I know you don’t expect me to come over and stand out in that hot sun.” He replied, “The girlfriends of the other players come every day and watch practice.” I responded by saying “I’m not other girls.” I felt that we talked regularly, saw each other weekly, and that we also saw each other when he picked me up weekly to tutor his little sister in math at his house, something that I’d generously agreed to do when his mother asked me. But going to watch football practice, just to stand up and watch for the sake of watching when I had so much I needed to do day to day that summer, was unthinkable for me. I wondered what girls would actually go and spend hours every day just standing around cheering guys along on the sidelines?

Then, there was the day that he and his best friend wanted me to go to Tuskegee for the day to have lunch with his grandparents. From what I gathered, one of them or someone else in his family was linked to the new building recently dedicated on the campus. I had planned to go to lunch to meet them, but then asked my grandmother to call and cancel early on the morning we were scheduled to go because I was ill, with cramps. This is the kind of thing no girl wants to explain to a boyfriend. That evening, I suspected it had to be his best friend who convinced him to drop by my house unannounced and visit and who had given him suspicions that I was probably lying to him or seeing another guy, urging him to violate my requirement that he always call me first before dropping by. I was in no shape or mood to see him, and sent message to him through my grandmother that I'd call him later.  On the phone that night, he bragged about having met a "college woman" who told him he was cute, invited him to visit her, and he just went on and on about it. My response to his description of this doting older woman was that “If she can take you, she can have you.” 

 I'd also suspected it really was his best friend's idea to inflict what I considered to be the cruel and unusual proposition for me to stand by daily as an idle spectator at football practice. Tricks like this were increasingly getting under my skin, to the point that I felt that this best friend had “made my life a living hell.” The seeds for this conclusion were planted the day after we first met. The day after the friend who introduced us and his own girlfriend (who was a friend of mine) had come over and first introduced us and we'd all gone out on a double date, a Sunday afternoon, he brought his best friend to my house to meet me. He was also tall and happened to be extremely handsome. It was nice if surprising to see him again so soon. I was excited to have met a guy and his friend from a school whose boys I had always thought were cute as I saw them walking around the mall in their letterman's jackets as early as eighth grade. That December day at age 16, I felt on top of the world after they left. "At my house! Wow!"

But I was shocked beyond belief and jolted out of my euphoria and back into reality within an hour when the friend who introduced us called me to tell me that this other guy called when he got home and was upset with him. "How could you have introduced him to somebody LIKE THAT!" He wanted to know if I'd be his girlfriend instead of talking to his friend. He said he had a plan. I should pretend that I'd already known him before. He'd take care of the rest. He wanted to know if it was a deal. This didn't even make sense when it had been obvious that I'd just met him in my living room. I declined getting involved in this.

Months after we started dating, my close girlfriend confessed to me that her now ex-boyfriend, the one who had introduced us, did so mainly out of anger with his brother, for not getting home in the car they shared access to and taking him somewhere he needed to go, because he knew his brother liked me. "I'm going to get him good. I'm going to find Riché a boyfriend, and someone she's sure to like." He knew how his brother felt about me. She said that he got his yearbook, and decided to do some match-making, identified the perfect person, and the result was that double date. It all made sense. No wonder he had been so eager to see us get together that night! No wonder his brother was so rude to the both my boyfriend and me! We had hurt him, without any idea. Once I found out, I felt very bad about it.

All of this is how I really began to learn about how complicated men are, and how competitive they can be. It puzzled me that someone could deliberately set up a girl he knew his brother liked with another guy. It also mystified me that a guy's best friend who had known him since second grade could meet a strange girl and then compromise the lifelong friendship by attempting to take her from him, or rather, intercept her before he had a chance to get together with her. But both things happened to me as I was introduced to the world of dating and courtship in high school when I was 16. What was going on in my life all those months would have made a great teen soap opera. These riddles of my teen years are also part of the reason, even, that as an academic years later, I began to work on masculinity.

One day he got dehydrated and was taken to the hospital briefly but was out by the time I found out. He may have been hurt that I wasn’t very panicked or didn’t rush to see him, and told him that he should just drink more water. Then, as the date for school to start got closer, I learned that the first game at his school was the same night that St. Jude was having theirs. Once, when he'd asked me to wear his jacket, I declined, and told him that "That jacket is a reflection of your accomplishments, not mine." This was surprising to me, for I'd actually dreamed of something like that someday when I'd see guys from his school walking around the mall. But when the opportunity came, I begged off. In general, it was nice, though, that friends of mine said, from looking at his pictures, that if there were a poster to advertise the type, he'd be on it; with his smile, his baseball cap, his lettered jacket, he totally nailed and embodied the image, the fantasy. Tall with a muscled body, he was a model football player, the kind that also looked nice in an ROTC uniform. I agreed.

It was also always important to me back then to pay for my own food on dinner dates, like when we'd gone out with friends on double dates for Valentine's. The Monday after the prom, my male friends at school had joked to a girl friend and me in class, "Why do you all always like those muscle-bound guys with no brains." They mocked his deep voice as he shook their hands, an exchange that they imitated impromptu.

I promptly protested when he said his coach was encouraging him to attend trade school, and insisted that he think of college as an option. Coach this and coach that. I didn’t like it and it made me sick. He seemed to quote this man incessantly. I once even said, “You have a father, can’t you talk about him sometimes? You act like that coach is God.” He couldn’t seem to see through this man’s politics. On one of the evenings that we spent together, he brought me his school paper to see because I’d been so interested in becoming the editor of the one at my school. I got the flashlight and brought it outside, and it shone down on a Confederate flag in the middle of a center page. My face fell. “That would never happen at St. Jude.”

I felt that so many people, including this coach, were trying to tear us apart. I imagined him discouraging my boyfriend from "Having a ‘snooty’ girlfriend from St. Jude who wouldn't even take the time and come over to see you practice," for they had evidence on me every day I was absent.

In fact, I still remember the changes as a 16 and 17 year old girl in the South that all of those issues related to his athletic world took me through, even indirectly. I became the enemy whenever I spoke up about -and against-someone he so obviously believed in. My male friends actually used the Robin Givens/Mike Tyson relationship in imagining our relationship and who was in control. But as far as I was concerned, his friends and that coach were his main influences.

He didn't seem imaginative enough at times. One night on the phone, I encouraged him to fantasize. That night, it was so much fun to hear when he imagined himself as an executive, and then as an afterthought, add that he had "a secretary with nice legs." I loved it! The image of him, ordinarily so serious and reserved about things, taking a sly glance at her legs as his secretary turned and walked down the hall, was really funny, and I still laugh when I think about it. And he ended the scenarios by describing this fantasy about us, as a married couple.

One night, we rated people, which was a lot of fun. He gave me an 8 1/2 and I gave him a 9. I loved hearing about who else he thought was attractive, including this girl at his school; he came out of left field and surprised me again when he named this particular person and said he'd give her a "10-plus," which was a good on the spot vocabulary term to articulate his appreciation, and it impressed me. I also remember him telling me that he'd had just one girlfriend before me, when he was in ninth grade, but she started liking someone else; I was surprised when he told me her name. For I knew her and she was very attractive and popular the daughter of a minister, and someone I liked. It touched me, too, to hear him admit that he loved his best friend, whom he'd known since second grade, as a brother.

This was even after I called my friend Reginald one day and told him that I felt like the relationship was a stack of oranges at the grocery store. Every time they were aligned perfectly, this best friend would come and take one out and they'd tumble to the floor. I told him that I was at my wit's end and didn't know what to do. He responded that every time he does that, just shove the orange right back in. I never had a desire to change his life or come between his friendships, for it was important to me to leave him as I found him. However, I didn't like his coach and best friend having so much influence on him, and I imagined or was paranoid that they used it to undermine the relationship, though all of that in the end was not as important to me as achieving my goals as a student leader at school, and that is where I managed to keep my main focus during the summer.

Sometimes we even talked about the ideal way we should break up, which was to remain friends, and he insisted that we try to stay together until we graduated from high school. My fantasy break-up with him was like the one of Theo and Tonya on "The Cosby Show," who decided that their relationship had run its course, and she sweetly kissed him on the jaw before saying goodbye and moving on. That's the way I wanted it to be for us. A couple of times, I remember underscoring to him that he probably would not meet another girl like me and that his next girlfriend probably would not write poetry like me, or keep journals and that sort of thing, or even be tall like me, to at least prepare him for living in that cruel and harsh world out there without me someday. A couple of times I fell asleep talking to him on the phone, and that he hated. He accidentally fell asleep on me one night, too.

I felt that I was under pressure during summers where people wanted too much of my time when I wanted to do other things. The summer before, after tenth grade, when just I’d turned sixteen, friends thought I’d flipped out when I told them that I was going into “seclusion” and wouldn’t be talking on the phone. I developed a program for myself for academic development in a range of subjects, which also including vocabulary building and language study. I also developed a diet to try to gain weight, and tracked my calorie intake vigilantly. In retrospect, from old journal entries, I’ve understood this to have been what I’ve called “an eating disorder in reverse.” They called me to see how my seclusion was going. Finally, I compromised, and talked on the phone party-line style with them on Saturday nights. The previous summer, friends had interrupted my seclusion repeatedly.

Now, a year later, I felt that my boyfriend and his best friend were pressuring me to give up time that I wanted to keep to do my own thing. In general, I think that this “aloof” consciousness was shaped by my identity as a black Southern girl with a lot of ambition and a strong determination and will to leave Montgomery and go away to college. All I knew was that I was leaving Montgomery. The mindset that I had back then reminds me of that of the character Stephanie in Grease 2, who sang about wanting a “cool rider,” her dream guy, and “a whole lot more than the boy next door.” The boys around her, like Johnnie and the other T-Birds, resented her independence and refusal to go with the flow. Symbolically, she became the “enemy” for them. In some ways, she had outgrown the sphere around her, and was determined to achieve and live her dreams. So was I. And I couldn’t do that standing around at football practice every day or going on out of town excursions to Tuskegee when I had work to do. Being blamed or criticized for not cooperating got under my skin.

I’ve always identified with and loved this film character portrayed by Michelle Pheiffer, who embodies the quintessential “alpha female," because I feel that in a twist of fate, I could have also had the filling station part-time job she had, and it would have literally become the "position" from which I dreamed. For my great uncle Frank Jenkins owned a service station and car lot, where my aunt, then my mother, had worked on Saturdays. Had it been around by the time I was in high school, I may have ended up working there. The same "alpha female" consciousness and qualities and independent mindset that Stephanie has as a high school senior, I had as one, and all of this showed in how I dealt with my relationship. It was the part of me that dared to think and write a poem like "Don't Tell Me That You Love Me" and to remain somewhat indifferent instead of getting carried away and losing herself, among OTHER things, in the way that some other teen girls may have been tempted to do when a boy confessed his love to her. This is the part of me that could calmly tell him, without being uspet at all, that "If she can take you, then she can have you," when he bragged about how much the girl in college liked him. Stephanie's dream of meeting the “cool rider” was more important to her than any guys around her. “The One,” and later, “a man for all seasons,” was like that for me. No man I knew could measure up to him, and I was not about to let those around me distract me or derail me. As nice as it was to have a boyfriend as a teen, and a cute football player who was a hunk at that, to “love too hard” where he was concerned was not an option. I was never going to derail my broader plans and goals for my life for him or any other guy. I enjoyed my high school social life and activities but kept it all in perspective.

They say that a woman is always running toward or away from something. When I left Montgomery, this social world and its pressures and expectations is the world that I was running from and escaping, at least in a symbolic sense. I wanted freedom to just be myself. I think I started talking about breaking up that summer, as the school year approached, because I was concerned about managing my time effectively and efficiently. I didn’t feel I had much time to devote to going with a guy and fulfilling my obligations as student council president at St. Jude, a position I’d dreamed of having even before beginning to attend the school in ninth grade, and that I’d made a range of strategic choices in as a student from as early as ninth grade on to position myself to be elected to someday. I remember that at a retreat with some seniors that year, a senior officer heard some of my responses in a session, detected my leadership abilities and said, “You’re going to be student council president at St. Jude someday, aren’t you?” I jokingly said “I would be.” I was finally there. It was a dream come true.

In tenth grade at age 15, I'd won the award for "Most Outstanding Geometry Student," been 78 points ahead of all tenth grade sections on the curve for two quarters in biology and made perfect scores on my leaf collection and term paper, had been inducted into the national honor society and had also won first place in their essay contest the day of the induction, and was elected student council vice-president at the end of that academic year. Looking back on this time, I feel that timing for meeting him was no accident. By then, some people, including those in public, constantly told me I looked like a fashion model and had what it took to become one. As I would shop at Montgomery Mall, groups of boys from public schools would always follow me around; this was a way of life. Sometimes they waited outside stores until I came out and went on to the next one; I ignored them and just did my shopping. The look I had at the time and a range of academic achievements built my confidence, which advanced me socially and enabled me to "go to the line" and meet a boyfriend who was an athlete at a public school, something that I took for granted and didn't think or care that much about at the time. Public school athletes played at Crampton Bowl in the city, whereas our games were played at a junior high school field, so that's what was cool about him to people I knew at my school.

I've realized that I still think like this. Keep my focus and achieve my important goals as a professional (i.e. tenure), and then use that foundation as a basis to achieve goals in other areas, both personally and professionally. It's how men think. I'm not the kind of person who will ever settle in marriage. I will marry when I am sure that I am in the best possible position to do so, and am able to meet the best possible man.

In general, I was unhappy that he wasn’t more of a student leader, like my closest guy friends at my school. I was also feeling down as my closest friend, Reginald, was preparing to leave for college. I think I felt too much pressure and wanted to be able to focus on what I needed to do. In retrospect, I could have probably compromised some, perhaps by doing my student council work at my school but promising to go to his first game in the fall. I have always found it to be so ironic that we cheered on supported each other's goals, and we achieved them, but managing them was the very thing that began to cause tension and was what eventually tore us apart. The treasury was so loaded because of my constant fund-raising initiatives in the spring that we were able to pay cash for our side of the funding for the school's upcoming coronation ball to crown Miss St. Jude and other courts.

I began to take acne antibiotics (2 pills daily for a week, 4, then 8) that would incrementally break out my skin and bring all the impurities to the surface. I warned him of this, and before I began the treatment, he came over and we had one last hurrah. I was touched when he came to see me after I'd started to take the pills and told me that "It's not that bad," which made me feel better and was sweet of him to say. One of the most fun days we had, too, was when he took my girl friend and me to have our St. Jude senior pictures taken, and then we kind of hung out with friends for the rest of the day. The traces of that treatment are very visible on my forehead on my high school senior picture. He was genuinely sweet and good to me, and I am thankful, in retrospect, to have had a genuine “high school sweetheart,” as the saying goes.

The bottom line in all of this, again, is that he helped me to develop an interest in letters. Of mine, one day he told me that his cousin said, “She’s so formal.” I was like, “You let him read my letters?”

I’ll never forget how the letter from him below reached out to me across time and space one day, as an adult woman in my thirties, in my office as an assistant professor at UC Davis, when I finally took the time to go through some of the old things from home in the bottom drawer of my desk that my mother had sent me. In the midst of a white-centered and alienating environment, reading things like how he loved me and that he couldn’t focus on football practice sometimes because he was thinking about me gave me perspective on life when I needed it and reminded me of who I truly am and have always been.



8/15/88

Dear Riché

First of all, what’s up girl. I’m writing because I haven’t written to you in a while. I am also just writing.

Riché, this past week, we were discussing breaking up because of all that you have to do during school. But you see, things absolutely do not have to end that way. I mean like, the things I have to do will not keep me away from you. No matter what, I am still going to like you.

Everything I say to you is the truth and that’s powerful, too. For instance, if I say a certain thing to you I’m for real. I wonder if it’s the same with you. After you told me that Reg was leaving and you wouldn’t have anyone to turn to, I wished it could be me because if you gave me the one chance to understand you, I think I can.

Another thing I notice a lot is how if you’re sitting and looking away I know something’s up. It’s me half the time. If it’s me, why don’t you just say so, ok.

Riché, you say, well, I guess this is it. No, sweetie, I don’t think so. You know why? Because deep down inside, I know it’s not. I really don’t think you will give it up just like that. And the good times that we’ve had, it can still be that way. It can, so don’t tell me that’s it.

We haven’t really gone out on a date just by ourselves or things of that nature. And I enjoyed the dances and I would like to enjoy more. I know at times you understand. Deep inside I know that you do. I also know that you really care a lot more than you show but inside it’s more to it than that right?

Riché you really have to know that though you say I’m going to regret what I say I don’t care; it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters right now is wanting you and loving you. After Saturday night and being around, I really began to see that I loved you but after what you said last week what I felt kind of faded away. I think I couldn’t hold it back any longer. And I think that I really can understand you. Personally I think that. If I can turn you on with my certain words and with, last but not least, the bricks in the right place, it’s building for you to see. And Riché, you mean so-ooo much that I get miserable because you mean so much. So please understand me because if I lose you I will just cry. At least stick it out until we graduate from high school and until the next summer comes. There will be times that we will have weekends together.

You know every time I see you and dream of you a big bright smile comes upon my face. Honest to God.

Sometimes I can’t practice because I see your face. And I don’t care that much about football. I mean, I like it. You know what I really like is you. You are my sweet and lovely girlfriend and that’s hard to find these days. You are lucky and so am I. Very.

So please Riché, if you want to stay and I hope so very dearly that you do, no other girl could turn me on as you do. I mean no other, ok.

I mean, I really love you. In ways I’ve shown you. So again, understand.

Love always

K

P.S. What a relief. It’s off my chest. It’s not over. We’ve only just begun. You just have to understand and trust me on this one. So call me. Please Riché. Or write me back. Your choice. If you still like me you would.

I'm not sure I read this letter carefully enough back then or took it as seriously as I should have. It was a very mature thing for him to do, and it took courage.

I meticulously orchestrated projects for the first football game at St. Jude, including finding a student artist to make a giant hoop illustrated with football players that our team would break through as they ran out onto the football field. My friend Chris took on the assignment.  I'd set it up for football players to wear their jerseys and cheerleaders to wear their uniforms on game days. Yet, after all this work, and in the midst of all the fanfare, I didn't go to the first game and asked the other officers how all of our special effects came off. It seemed that he and I were becoming more alienated from each other, and the feeling was gloomy. I remember that when I listened to a radio broadcast of his team playing, I felt so good for him, and yet, so alienated from him, when the announcer mentioned that he'd just gone onto the field and into the game.

We broke up in September. It wasn't pretty. On a whim, when I felt that he was being manipulated by one of his other guy friends, and thought he was pursuing another girl and felt distance growing between us, I ended it, by saying, "I have just one more thing to say to you. You can kiss G's ass for the rest of your life while he kicks yours. But as far as I'm concerned, the both of you can kiss mine. And don't you ever say anything to me again!" And I hung up in his face.

This definitely was not the Theo-Tonya plan, from which I totally had flown the coop. That he was pursuing another girl turned out not to be true, a point that this friend, the one who had introduced us in the first place, clarified as he supported me once things ended. I wrote a letter in the aftermath, but then regretted doing so, and he asked me if I wanted him to go get it out of the mailbox before my now-ex could read it. I declined. My friend Vicki said, in disbelief, "Riché, you told him to kiss your ass?"

Debbie Gibson's song "Foolish Beat" captured the feeling of this whole season for me. One day later that fall, I was in the park for a club picnic and stepped away and walked over to that section of the park where we liked to go, and saw that patch of flowers. The song came on in someone's car. I started crying as I walked through this area. I wrote the poem below the day we broke up.

Just to Say Goodbye 9/11/88

If you need me, I'll be there
Remember that I'll always care
Although things are not the same
Never will I forget your name
Still you mean the world to me
In my heart you'll always be
Anything for you I will do
To yourself be forever true
I care so much -you'll never know
How much it hurts to let you go
Now it's time to say good-bye
Spread your wings, you're free to fly

If I Could Talk to You Right Now 10/26/88

If I could talk to you right now
My feelings I would share
Yes, I cherish what we had
And yes, I really care
If I could have you as a friend
I'd never let you go
I'd stick by you until the end
I'd never be your foe
I'd thank you for the joy you brought me
That's what I would say
You'll never know how much you taught me
I miss you everyday
I'd tell you that I'll never leave you
I'll be by your side
And if you need me I'll be there
to comfort, help and guide
Even though you did hurt me
That hurt I don't regret
And for it I've forgive you
Although I can't forget
I'd tell you that I don't blame you
You are not the reason
A person whom you would not suspect
Is guilty of the treason
At first I thought that you were wrong
And guilty of a crime
But you did not conceive of this
I understood in time
I'd never ask why you were blind
Why you could not see
I'd apologize for having been unkind
The day I set you free
It hurts that you're my enemy
That you couldn't deny
To you a stranger I would be
That makes me want to cry
If I could reverse the hands of time
I would not omit the pain
It has made me so much stronger
And that I would make plain . . .
Unfortunately it seems
That I will never see
The guy that you were in my dreams
He meant so much to me
If I would talk to you again
To who you really are
I would be myself as well
I'd be a shining star
If I could be with you again
I'd want to hold your hand
And let you know that I'm your friend
I'd make you understand
I'd tell you that I miss you so
That's what I would do
That's what I would let you know
If I could talk to you

From Journal Entry Dated December 31, 1988

I didn’t love him, but I adored him so completely. It’s kind of paradoxical. I was just looking through my old journal. Ultimately, I looked at the last letter that he wrote me. I cried. I’m still crying after all this time. It makes me feel so sad and empty because in a way, we shared a lot.

One of my Christmas wishes was for him to call. He did-last Monday. That was my best present of all. The conversation was short because his mom had to use the phone. I treasured every moment. That same night, Reg was there to support me. He doesn’t think that I should allow K to just walk back into my life like that because I would be left vulnerable. He’s so right. I’m going to have to talk to him sooner or later about what happened between the two of us. I simply don’t know how to bring it up. I don’t even know when. I know that I won’t call him. . . I won’ t risk my emotional stability. Maybe I’m not being fair, but I’m scared of getting hurt.

I’m sure that I don’t want to be his girlfriend again-I think. It would be stupid, and that’s highly unlikely. I guess I just want the two of us to be “friends.” I don’t think that’s asking too much. Things will never be the same again, and I’ll never see him as the same, but we didn’t have to throw it all away.

I’d longed to see him at the Bobby Brown concert, the highlight of my senior year, which I attended with my girl friends from school. We were in the parking lot, and my friend Vicki tapped me on the shoulder just as I put my hand on the car door to get in and said, “There’s your friend." I looked up and he and his brother and sister were coming toward us. He spoke, and I responded, “Hi, how are you?” It was kind of like Gunfight at the OK Corral for me. He told me eventually that he got upset that I talked to his siblings and barely spoke to him. He called me the very night of my debutante cotillion when word got back how great I’d looked and how extraordinary my dress had been ("I heard that Chris escorted you"), and again the next day, which was also Easter Sunday. His parents had attended the ball and brought me a gift.

Communication opened up between us again the night I graduated from high school. The St. Jude party was a big draw, and was held in a club house out by Montgomery Mall. The parents of my classmates were all there and had decorated the tables beautifully, which seemed too much really. He came to my graduation and the party after it. We were sitting downstairs with some others, and I was sitting in his lap, when another guy whom he thought I liked walked in, spoke to me, then went upstairs. The music was great and the party was really off to a good start. Then, the police broke it up over an alleged noise complaint. Five carloads. Which seemed excessive. The music was very low.  Our parents were there! Seeing the St. Jude party, of all parties, broken up like this is the most obviously racist thing that I experienced in my youth in Montgomery. It had been sedate. My mother was taking down the decorations, and in the midst of all the chaos, he offered to drive me home and he and I left together. The ride home was quiet as we processed the insanity of what had just happened, against lingering feelings for each other. He asked me, when we were almost to my house, if I’d really liked that other guy. He had been convinced that I was involved with him. He told me that the whole time that this guy had been walking up the stairs at the party, "He was looking down at you."

This whole thing started in the spring of 1988 the year before, and I actually think our relationship started to unravel when I went to a party my cousin gave as a fundraiser, without him, a party that this guy had attended. I was bored and wanted to get out of the house, but he claimed he didn't want to go, and so I went alone. I'd danced with someone there after he pulled me onto the floor, and as things go for me, he happened to be a student at my boyfriend's school and to be sitting at the lunch table the following Monday describing me and trying to figure out, along with his friends, who I was and the school that I attended. My boyfriend knew about the party and figured that it had to be me. "He was describing a tall girl with long black hair. How many people look like that? "He was wondering what your phone number was and I started to go give it to him!" My boyfriend said that this other guy in question was at the table and could have easily told that guy I'd danced with who I was, because he knew, but did not for some reason, and just quietly ate his lunch as that group talked. He presumed that "The real reason he didn't speak up is that he wants you for himself." He also convinced me that the guy with whom I had danced at the party was married and had a baby, which seemed extreme and is now hilarious, though I later found out this was due to his panic that I might develop an interest in him. He became convinced increasingly that something was going on with the other guy, like Othello, and made it a self-fulfilling thing. Ironically, I did eventually develop a huge crush on this guy in question, but not for the reasons that my boyfriend imagined back then; he just happened to be someone I had an interesting conversation with one evening and I began to like him more as time went on.

I met this guy when I was 15 on trip to Disney World sponsored by my federated club. I’d boarded the van to Orlando in the middle of the night, and slept like most of the passengers. When I awoke as day broke, I realized that I'd fallen asleep on someone's shoulder.  I looked up in his face and he was looking down at me. On the trip, he came into the girls’ room with one of his friends to hang out, and as the evening wore on, announced that he was spending the night.  He had been lying on the bed talking to one of my club sisters, the same one I was supposed to sleep in with her, but I refused to sleep in the bed with him (the very idea was unseemly for a girl my age! The nerve of him!).  When it was clear he wasn't leaving, I snatched off some covers and slept on the floor as he lay up in the bed above talking to one of the club members late into the night, some about me as they thought I was sleeping. The next day, out in the pool, he looked carefree splashing around in the water with the others. I just sat on the deck of the pool and looked. How dare he be the reason that I ended up sleeping on the hard floor the night before!  A year and a half later, at a party at the Y where we saw each other, the first one I attended with my boyfriend, we looked at each other and didn’t speak; I was still feeling angry and bitter about how he had humiliated me on that trip. And then that night, dancing on the floor with that guy, he was actually dancing by himself and coming in our direction. As I had danced with that guy, he'd danced by himself in the dark and toward me, getting closer and closer, and my heart pounded in panic. Then just like that, the lights came on and the music stopped altogether, and life returned to reality.  After having spent most of it up front talking to my aunt.  Dancing so carefree again on a practically empty dance floor. So carefree. The nerve of him! Always, such nerve. And, I was caught up in the dancing and feeling like the ultimate rebel in this moment myself. And then the suddenly lights came on and the party ended. I wasn't thinking about him or noticing him consciously then. When I talked to him months later, was the turning point for me.

10/28/88

Last night I talked to R. That really excited me. . . We talked about college. He’s thinking about Fisk, Morehouse, A&M, and University of Alabama. He wants to be a dentist. Gosh, I really do want to get to know him better. He made me forget my problems. I like him for who he is. He is different. He has a distinct personality. That’s what I like. People really say crazy stuff about him. For instance, once he got a pass from class to get lint off his sweater. He keeps his playing gear in a garment bag. When they play basketball, he ensures that his socks and other articles are looking all right. Some people think he’s snobby. I think that he’s a great person. I’m meticulous about certain things, too. In some ways, he is like me. I want to get to know him better. He really impressed me last night.

11/10/88

I’m crazy about him! R is something else. He is such a level-minded person. I’m just so impressed with his level of maturity. I just talked to him. Now I believe that heaven is a place on earth. That’s certainly how I feel right now. We talked about Vietnam, communism, the anti-establishment movement, the election, talk shows, sports, goals, concerts, music, camping and school. He is an extraordinary guy. It feels great knowing that such an interesting, smart guy exists.

11/19/88

I’m home-and I feel so lonely. I’m just thinking about R. I’ve been thinking about him all day. He is such an incredible person, and I enjoy talking to him so much. It’s truly heaven on earth. He is so level-headed-that’s what I like. If only he could know me for who I really am. Gosh, I bet he thinks that I’m a hopeless geek-just a brain. And it hurts because that’s not true. The trouble comes in where convincing him of it is concerned. I want him to know me for who I am as a person. If he were to give me half the chance to prove myself, I’d be most appreciative.

 
I’ve liked him as a person for so long. Recently, I got the courage to talk to him. He has the sexiest voice East of the Mississipppi. I could listen to him for hours. I want to be with him, to be around him. He’d probably laugh at the idea of spending time with me. That is, the me he thinks he knows. I do like him. I want to get to know him as a friend first. There’s got to be a way to prove to him that I’m not a weird bookworm of a geek. I simply have to find it. If only he would meet me half way and let me know that it’s okay to be myself. I even wrote a poem about him. He’d flip out if he heard it. It tells how I really feel. He is such a social chameleon. I like the fashion in which he maintains his personalities. He is a mirror image of me. The ironic thing is that I like him for the things that a lot of people can’t stand him for. At least he’s consistent. He believes in himself, and he lets it show. I admire that. If only he would give the two of us a chance to become better acquainted. I don’t want to put a ball and chain on him –but there’s no denying that I like him in a profound way. I wouldn't mind if he magnified his other side. The other side of his personality MAKES me like him! In fact, he could bring out the other side of MY personality. I’ve given him the key. If only he’d use it to unlock the door and unleash the real me.

10/29/88 I Like You, R

I’ve liked you for so very long
Indeed you’ve cast a spell
My feelings for you are so strong
I want you, R
My eyes would never yield a clue
They would never tell
How much I truly value you
Come to me, R
You inspire mystery
I like that about you
I like your personality
Why must I live without you
If you opened up your eyes
Maybe you could tell
That my feelings are on the rise
I like you, R

3/29/89 The Prize Unclaimed

If only you would take the time
To notice that I’m real
I would tell you everything
Exactly how I feel
You are such a mystery
And I want to unfold you
I’d like to hear your voice again
I want so much to hold you
We’d have such a nice romance
I’ve liked you for so long
But you won’t give me half a chance
What am I doing wrong
Each time that I see your face
You send me to the sky
And I nestle in “cloud 9”
Whenever you say “hi”
It hurts because I have to keep
My feelings locked inside
But if I told you how I feel
I’d have to lose my pride
I am scared to say a word
Because you might reject me
And because I am unheard
At least you do respect me
I bet you see me as a girl
Who simply wants to tame you
I would never hold you back
I’d never want to maim you
At first I’d like to be your friend
For I would like to show you
That I am not the girl you see
I so much want to know you
When I look at you I see
An image of myself
And another guy won’t do
For you’re like no one else
It hurts me to the bone you see
Because deep down I know
That I will never be with you
You’ll never be my beau
And even now I do have hope
I hope that I am wrong
I hope that I can be with you
I’ve liked you for so long
You’ll never claim my adoration
Regardless of its size
I’ll have to lock this prize away
And keep it in disguise
The safest place is in this rhyme
I’ll seal it with a kiss
But I do think I’ll always hope
That someday you’ll know this
I still want you to look at me
And notice that I’m real
So I can tell you everything
Exactly how I feel

I read the latter poem to the friend who had introduced me to my boyfriend, and was shocked when his only response was, "You mean to tell me that you wrote that beautiful poem about old black tail R?" I said, "Yeah, G." Alluding to our respective roles at our schools, he joked about how you all would be all right "If he weren't king for a day," then added, "-and you weren't queen. They make you queen everyday at St. Jude.

Yeah. That was it. If I weren't queen for a day, in the sense of the Thompson Twins, and could be free of all the trappings of leadership and the expectations that came along with it, then maybe we could get together. My ultimate fantasy as a senior in high school was not to be queen for a day, whatever that meant. I felt like Patty Simcox in Grease to his Danny Zuko, or like the Sandy. It didn't help that his sister, who was in a club with me, turned her attention to me asked me out of the blue and in a genuinely curious way the next morning while we were sitting in the kitchen with some of the other girls in the kitchen, after I'd spent the night at a their house at a slumber party, "Riché, how does it feel to be perfect?" She was someone I truly liked and had always had fun with when we saw each other because of her great sense of humor. I underscored that I'm not perfect, that I was "only human" and made mistakes like everyone else. On the spot to answer this cute and out of the blue question, I riffed on the "Human League" to explain that I was made of flesh and blood like everyone else. She didn't seem convinced, in that "you could have fooled me" way. I was almost sure that back in his room that morning, he may have been eavesdropping and overheard this exchange about my alleged "perfection" as a person, and that it doomed my chances with him even more.

My friend to whom I had read my "The Prize Unclaimed" poem also jokingly threatened one night that he'd tell a girl we knew about my crush, for "She'll put it all over St. Jude AND [his school]." I nearly dropped dead and made him promise not to. The threat sent chills up my spine; I liked her more genuinely than I ever did anyone at my school, and I knew that she would never have spread gossip about me in a malicious way, and I remembered how enthusiastic and faithful she and her friends were as supporters in helping as I had campaigned for SGA president. But I knew that she might not hesitate to try to "help" me along. Her past attempt at helping me and attempting to matchmake flashed through my mind from tenth grade.

I'd liked a certain guy at my school. A friend in ninth grade and I were out to a basketball game at Alabama State with her mother, who didn't know her boyfriend was a senior. He came up to say hello in the bleachers, and nearly stumbled, for he had been drinking. It was hilarious as she tried to play it off and get rid of him before her mother noticed. After that, we went down on the floor. She was like, you thought it was so funny, I'm going to go tell so and so that you like him." And she did.

He came right over and sat down next to me. "You wanna rap?" My eyes widenend in absolute shock and fear. "You wanna be my girrrlfriend?"

Oh gosh! I nearly died. I couldn't bring myself to say anything. By then, it got back to this aforementioned friend in question, and she got busy with her girlfriends trying to match-make and help us get together, in much the same way that they had helped support my campaign. I told her that it wasn't true. I didn't like him. And I was surprised to learn who his girlfiend was at school. She said that she thought I was nicer and prettier, but I forgot him after I learned that he was involved with someone. To make a long story short, I definitely didn't need her to get a hold of this information about R.

I eventually heard through the grapevine that R's girlfriend was actually Miss 10-plus. So all of my feelings had been futile and I'd spent months thinking about a guy who wasn't even available. I remember having an offhand and funny fantasy thought of how nice it would be to see her with my ex since he thought she was so hot, and to have my crush. But he was best admired from afar.

It was nice to bump into him from time to time when I was in college, and the last time I saw him was when I was out with my three guy friends at a club the night before I moved to begin graduate school at Duke; he came over to our table, a courageous act for any guy given the scene, to say hello to me, getting my attention by coming up beside the stool where I was sitting and pinching me on my side on the waist. Only he would get someone's attention in this sexy way. As always, the nerve. I was surprised to look up and see that it was him and got up and hugged him, and then he said hello to everyone and we promised to keep in touch.

How good God was to enable this chance encounter before I went off to begin anew at Duke, with someone whom I had so much genuinely liked and admired! A girl friend of mine would tell me whenever she saw him around town, which was always nice to hear. She'd report everything he was wearing. I got upset and stopped trusting her when I felt that she deliberately waited two weeks after he got married to tell me about it, to try to hurt me, because she knew I'd liked him years earlier. She could have said something, knowing how I'd once felt about him. I mean, it wasn't as if I'd go and do the Vesta Williams kind of thing portrayed in the video "Congratulations." I'd never even been his girlfriend or dated him, and he wasn't close enough to even regard as a friend. But I resented being robbed of the fun of the fantasy. A warning would have been nice, instead of her telling me the way that she did, almost gloating about it, it seemed, for she'd seen the announcement in the paper before the wedding. I never trusted her again after that, and I think that that planted the seed that led to the dissolution of the friendship several years later. I was not amused by that little scheme of hers, designed just so that she could drop the bomb on me that "He's married now and you can never have him." It was one thing that ultimately cost her my friendship. Though my crush was long gone by then, it was just the principle of the thing. I remember the day in graduate school at Duke that I said to myself, "I know I'm truly a Christian," when he left a message for me on my answering machine, and I felt it would be improper for me to call his home, even as a friend, because he now had a wife.

Similarly, I had been very hurt when a close girlfriend, after my boyfriend and I broke up, said that "She likes someone else and did not care anything about him," because she knew how I felt about a certain guy at our school for a while. This break-up broke my heart, and I resented her saying something like that. I never got over it, especially after I had supported her so much in her relationship and other things. I withdrew and did not trust having close female friendships in general for a long time after that, preferring, throughout college, to hang out with my male friends, to whom I referred as my "brotherhood."

The song “Reunited” by Peaches and Herb literally came on the car radio on the drive home from the party after my high school graduation. I had thought of him whenever I heard Natalie Cole's "Miss You Like Crazy." Sitting on the porch, it seemed as if we were back to the summer a year ago, and as if no time and distance had ever separated us. And we finally faced each other for the first time and talked honestly, and admitted that we missed each other. I asked him when he’d last kissed a girl. His response was, “The last time I kissed you.” What a turn-on that was. And then, we kissed each other and held each other for a long time, more deeply and intimately and passionately than we ever had when we dated. Only the headlights and seeing my mother outside coming home brought us back to reality and to what had just happened at the party. She came up on the porch and spoke, then unlocked the door and went inside.

I stood up and we embraced goodbye for a long time. I'll never forget the feeling of that final hug that night, for I began to notice that it felt different from the ones one on those summer nights the year before, and even kind of funny. My eyes widened and suddenly I realized why; in the course of those months, I'd actually, literally, outgrown him. I was now taller than he was. That hug that night I graduated from high school was how and where I realized that I wasn't 5'11 3/4 anymore, my height through most of high school. How and when did this happen, I wondered? My debutante dress the month before had been perfect for my body and everyone talked about how beautifully it fit, but I did not imagine that it was now on an even more statuesque body. This revelation that that intimacy revealed, standing and embracing someone with whom I fit so well before, was an unexpected turn of events. He didn't seem to notice. It may have been an unconscious choice and instinct, from a developmental and "evolutionary" biology perspective, as I was literally if unknowingly growing taller, to give up my relationship with a football player at Lanier, and to begin to think about and idealize, in my own mind, one of its most popular basketball players.

A few days later, I attended his high school graduation. The next day, my aunt took me over to drop off a gift I’d bought for him, in part because his parents had given me one as a debutante. He wasn’t there. I was stunned to see a picture of him and his prom date on the living room table. I felt that I was far more attractive than that girl whom he barely knew, had tutored his sister for a whole summer in math, and yet, already, someone was enshrined there when there were three different events that we had attended and taken photos, including the Finer Womanhood Ball, the junior prom and the Military Ball. Standing in the living room that day, at age 18, I vowed that “I will never like or trust another man’s mother again in my life.” I was a totally different person when I got in my aunt’s car. And I was feeling angry with myself and guilty and regretful for kissing him a few days earlier so many months post-breakup, and for how intimate it was, though at least it made me feel a sense of closure. I'd turned him into an enemy and phantom in my mind for months, but that evening, I could just look into his eyes and hear his voice again and get the truth I was seeking.

Seeing that picture, though, was the main thing on my mind, and it made me angry. It really hurt me and changed me and destroyed my ability to trust at that level. Though it had nothing to do with him per se.

I also hesitate to let men get to know my family. For he was well liked by my family, and would stay and have good visits with them even when I wasn’t home. When we broke up, I felt like there was no escape, and our breakup seemed to inconvenience everyone around us, from his mother, who had arranged for me to tutor his sister in math, to my cousin, who was just enjoying rides home with him and his best friend from football practice as a rookie player. My first cousin played football with him and liked him, and it seemed that I became the enemy when this relationship ended, and he assured him that a certain guy he was worried I liked and was interested in seeing (R, the aforementioned one) would never set foot in the house to see me. His name was one of the first ones that my toddler cousin learned, and in the spring of that year, remembering him, she’d actually walked out into the living room and called a guy from AUM by it who had come to visit me in place of going out on the date to the movies and pizza that he’d originally proposed, for I wasn’t in the mood to do that.

In spite of everything, because we were intimate to begin with, we always seemed to feel comfortable with each other whenever I saw him after that, like when we got together at 19 and went to the movies one night, or when he’d call me sometimes when I was home from college visiting.

On one of those first calls, after my freshman year, he told me that he'd "do it all again if I could." My silence foreclosed that possibility, because by then I was thinking about a guy at Morehouse. I felt honored nevertheless. I also knew that I could get over any guy when I was a college senior and he met up one night at a club with my three guy friends and me, as their guest, which was a gesture they made when they had bumped into him, in part because of guilt over how they'd joked about him in high school by doing things like mocking his handshake and deep voice in front of me. He had always wanted to get to know my guy friends from high school because he told me that "you come to life with them." He always enjoyed the way I laughed with them and wanted to be able to make me laugh like that, too, I guess.

They were at the center of my social life by college when I went home and were the people with whom I got together on weekends went out with to clubs, the park, to the movies, or at home. That night at the club, I felt very glamourous and confident as I wore this black dress and my hair in a long straight style, and sat at the table talking to him and others in our group. He and I were having a conversation as this woman was sitting in his lap, and it didn't bother me in the least. I liked her and was glad to see him, and the hug goodbye later on that night felt familiar but was a just a genuine hug of friendship and nothing else.

That night at 19 when we went to the movies to see "A Rage in Harlem," I found it ironic because we'd never actually gone to the movies on a date in high school. So it was nice to at least see how that felt with him. It didn't feel so good, though, when he said, simply, "You look . . . different." Wearing my hair in a bob and glasses made me look very different from how he had remembered me, I'm sure, and I no longer had the quality he loved, and always described as "long black hair." My friends Reginald and Chris and I had planned to go the very next night, an outing that the latter was coordinating, and when I told Reginald I would go that evening and would just go again with them the next night, he said that Chris would be very upset if he found out and I made him promise to keep it a secret. He joked with me all the next day that when we got to the movies, I'd say things like, this feels like dejavu and "Hmmmm, this looks familiar." It turned out that they were late as usual, so we didn't make it in time, and went out to eat. Chris never knew, and Reginald joked with me about how I'd gotten off the hook that time.

In hindsight, I feel that I should have accepted K as he was and enjoyed the moment and not felt so cheated because he wasn't in student leadership like me or friends of mine. Early in high school, my ideal boyfriend was a guy from his school and life actually brought one to me when I was 16, straight to my living room. I remember looking at those guys walking sometime in little groups in the mall wearing those unique jackets, which seemed to be the best in town, and that's what I wanted.

When I think of our ironic estrangement senior year when he'd tried to do everything to ensure that we stayed together, and how things came apart anyway that Debbie Gibson song always comes to mind (i.e. "I will never love again, the way I loved you; I will never cry again, like I did when I left you... Didn't know I was wrong. Never meant to hurt you now you're gone... And when we said goodbye, the look in your eyes, just left me beside myself without your heart; I will never love again, now that we're apart.") Here's a link to the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyiNML_VfWQ . Those high notes at the end would always get me. I honestly had to stop listening to that song senior year because it hurt so much to hear it and it seemed so true to my own life and circumstances. As a seventeen year old senior in high school, I literally went through the very kind of break-up chronicled in this heart-wrenching, chart-topping song, and well understood and identified with every word because of it. I truly felt all of the complex emotions that it describes line by line. Nevermind my poetry. Debbie Gibson really said it best for me back then. Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" was another popular song my senior year. To this day, I'm honored to have been his girlfriend, for how much he respected and valued me, and that what we had when we had it shows some of the greatest and rarest possibilities for teen relationships that I wish many more girls and boys would give themselves a chance to discover, instead of trying to grow up too fast. We had fun and lots to do, in spite of waiting six months for our first kiss. He was not "the One," but as I have looked back, I've understood that he was definitely not ordinary or the boy next door either. I wish the media represented guys like him more frequently than all the familiar stereotypes, for I'm sure that many more black teen boys are also as thoughtful, loving, respectful and caring as he was when I was his girlfriend, give sweet gifts, and write the kinds of heartfelt letters that he wrote me, including the one included in this essay. His picture in that lettered jacket and cap is one that I will always keep among my private and deepest treasures, as a memory of the beauty and happiness that we managed to capture, in spite of the pain in the end. I last saw him when I was 21.