Over a decade ago, I was on the Q72 bus heading toward my grandma’s condo on Northern Boulevard near Pizza Sam’s when I got the news that my romantic pursuit had failed.
I was rolling through Jackson Heights, beneath the tracks that held the mighty 7 Line- the artery of Queens- above us. Jackson Heights is among the most diverse zip codes in the nation. Hispanic and Indian restaurants I frequented operated alongside each other. It was summer and the bus AC was anemic. The windows were open. Odors of turmeric and chicarrones wafted in. My haircut was low. My Timbs were battered. She mentioned on the phone she had a man. Months of talking and courting wasted. I remember raising my voice slightly.
Anger followed the majority of my dating experiences after I became single during college. Sometimes I got lucky, but only fleetingly; we could not sustain the heat. But more often than not it would end with a whimper. And my anger. That day, I distinctly remember being surrounded by the scents of Hispanic and Indian cuisine as I look at the latest text message on my phone. The train roared overhead as we were on Roosevelt Avenue. I proceeded to smolder in the crowded bus and made my disappointment all about me.
I look at my achievements and just knew I was exceptional. I worked two jobs. I was an honor student with a 4.0 GPA. I had my looks and my leanness. I had my basement studio apartment on the North Shore of Staten Island. In my mind, I have convinced myself to be kind and considerate, a cut above the average hood dude that the ladies I pursued encountered. I was deeply connected to the ancestors I spent my youth studying. I was their heir.
In particular, I remember a sticky summer week my brother and I spent in South Carolina with my father. We were visiting my auntie in Akron. Of course, we packed our Nintendo 64 with us; Star Fox 64 had just dropped and I was doing barrel rolls to avoid the target lock of Star Wolf. My dad insisted I spend the day, however, reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots.
He made sure that the intellectual life of my childhood was filled with the exploits of my forefathers. Malcolm. Martin. Stokely. Hampton. Newton. Douglass. Turner. Farmer. Wilkins. Robeson. L’Ouverture. My mind was populated with a Justice League of brave black men.
Harriet Tubman, however, was a trivia fact; Fannie Lou Hamer, a footnote; Ida B. Wells, non-existent. Not to mention the black men who did not fit the masculine schema dictated by a certain pedigree of black men. Men like James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin. It took me beyond my undergraduate years to see myself in them. But back on that bus, all I could hold was the uber-masculine strength of the Black Justice League. And that fueled my anger whenever something went wrong with my romantic life.
All that I loved about myself led me to the geometry of toxic masculinity. Dating and love, I felt, should be a logical mathematical proof, a line segment that ended with me—the happily ever after. But the hearts of others do not possess tautologies or enduring proofs. It is, when it comes to romance, a smashing of passions together. Sometimes it does not stick.
I think what pulled me from the brink was my writing. Since college, I have never throw away anything I have written. At the time, I had an online Xanga blog I maintained; a separate journal for my English class where I jotted down observations, notes, and outlines; other notebooks for my other classes which also contained random scribings—my basement apartment looked like the domicile of a mad scholar with no organizational skills. I would also go back and read all my previous work in hard times. So, after I got off the ferry at St. George and took the S76 home, I read for hours. My reading righted me. I was dismayed by my anger. I realized that none of it was my fault or the fault of the women I pursued. Afterward, I made a radical choice.
I stopped actively dating. Cold turkey. I wrote and wrote and eventually, after confronting my own mendacity, asked a woman out who would become my wife.
This is not the story of my ultimate victory. I have found that toxic masculinity becomes harder to resist as I age.
I make money now and have assumed roles of power and influence. My wife is feminist, and often calls me out when I get too bossy or behave in a way that betrays my instinct that only I wear the pants in the family; she often reminds me she did not marry me to nanny my worst impulses, but to make sure my best ones are passed down to our eventual children. Yet it is hard. I still feel the connection to my forefathers; the unconscious subordination of my foremothers; the impact such a deeply engrained mental and emotional pattern has on how I interact with women; and the shame of when I realized I have made a mistake.
Owning this aspect of my black personhood means relentless self-interrogation. I don’t think I’ll ever be done with combating toxic masculinity. I simply have to commit to spiritual dialysis to make sure I am behaving in a way that honors Tubman and Hamer.