The (African) King and I

I lost count of the gleams in Charles’ eyes, as he scientifically noted the TRUE sexual orientation and objective of each passerby on Sunset Boulevard while licking actual and imaginary salsa from the corners of his lips. Charles watches and comments on people like an expert bird watcher wherever he goes, often forgetting himself, and forgetting to use his inside voice for his observations, or at least a language his subjects do not understand.

“Did you see that?” he whispered, in and uncharacteristically demure voice.

“Another closest queen that doesn’t know it yet?”

“Mija, he was checking you out!”

“Really? I never pick up on those things.”

“You miss a lot, mija. You know why?”

“No,”

“Because you’re always looking down. Look up! Smile!” his fingertips meringued between his ears, chin, and chest to signal a forthcoming profound comment.

“Look. I’m going to tell you something that took me forty four years to learn: When someone looks you in the eyes, you have an 80% - 90% guarantee they’re interested. The way you can find out, is to hold their gaze. Now maybe, they’re shy like you too, and they’ll drop their eyes, which also means you caught them. To find out for sure, throw them a bone and smile. In your case, since you’re a girl, he should come after you if he’s a man, and he’s interested.”

We both smiled.

“You know where I learned this?”

“No,” I said.

“At Superior, the ghetto Mexican grocery store near my house. It may look like Pisa-Central from the outside, but believe me, I score constantly there, because I look them in the eyes. And that is a metaphor for the world.”

Like eager brokers in the heat of the real estate boom, Mis Gran Hermanas impatiently await the day they can stage me and put me back on the market. Lately they have been using a “no pressure, we don’t really care, whenever you’re ready, honey” approach, but if you ply one of them with a cocktail or two, she will look you dead in the eyes and tell you point blank they’re ready to be tias (aunts) again, and a they’d really like to add some little blonde ones to their collection.

They already abound with a plethora of biological and non-biological sobrinos (nieces and nephews), but apparently can never have enough excuses to visit Disneyland. They revere women, especially mothers; one of them cannot even abide the recounting of a mom joke in his presence. While they run amuck themselves on the internet, in clubs, and apparently, in neighborhood Mexican grocery stores, they hold extremely conservative, old fashioned views when it comes to male/female relationships. They turn into Log Cabin Republicans with a flick of their imaginary wands the minute they smell any hint of any woman not getting her propers.

Not surprisingly, they DO NOT approve of my long term, and now long distance relationship, with Khaled Kadhouri, the love of my life, the African King, who so happens to be a non-English speaking Muslim from Algeria. This relationship makes no sense to them, (or apparently anyone else), it irritates them, they want it to go away and in the meantime keep a thick layer of barrier cream between it and them. They see no redeeming qualities, no upside potential.

I admit to Charles that I am not the girl I was five years ago, when I first met the African King, and many of the things that made me feel at home with him then, I now recognize as dysfunctional patterns that I should run like hell from, familiar as they may be. However, I do love the African King, despite the fact he often does and says things that make me too angry to speak to him for hours, days, or weeks.

Before I continue, I should clarify a few things about the African King. People often imagine him as Black or Arab, not as a tall, white man with eyes that alternate between green and hazel. The African King is a Kabylie Berber, a type of white person native to North Africa for tens of thousands of years, flip-flopping between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam over the centuries. When not holed up in mountain enclaves, head-butting the opposition of world Soccer championships, or instigating revolutions, Kabylie Berbers have been known to sack and pillage surrounding areas, first as the Phoenicians, later as the Barbary pirates. Physically beautiful, athletic, and extremely dramatic, they typically conduct themselves in neurotic Brooklyn Jew fashion, a la Woody Allen and Larry David. Imagine the most dramatic Black man, most dramatic Latino man, and the most neurotic Jewish man you have ever met in your life and swirl them altogether, add an arch-conservative Muslim ideas and you will begin to imagine the African King. At last I found someone equally extreme and hard headed as myself. I loved him so much I gave up pork for a time, the ultimate sacrifice and symbol of devotion coming from a Virginia/North Carolina girl such as myself.

Mis Gran Hermanas disapprovingly note that he has not made his way to this hemisphere, nor run across the Mexican border, nor squeezed through a hole in it, as some of them were man enough to do for love and freedom. They have no sympathy, patience, or tolerance for his inability to be here with me, and interpret his non-presence as a direct insult. To quote Boriqua, as she flips open her imaginary fan, “When a man loves you,” as she wafts it and herself through the surrounding air, “he will climb mountains, and cross oceans to be with you,” and then snaps it shut for emphasis. The African King’s lack of mountain climbing and ocean crossing leaves them underwhelmed, unimpressed, and unforgiving.

I realized recently, that mostly I love the African King out of habit, out of respect for the intense things we have experienced together, and to some extent from a sense of guilt and obligation. I learned earlier in life that I could not stay with a man for whom I had no passion, with no way of increasing, not decreasing, the love and bond between us over time. I do share those things with the African King. We converse in my second language and his fifth, we come from different places in the world, whose conventions weigh us down, yet meet on some inexplicable psychic wavelength.

Like Santa Claus, the African King seems to know when I am sleeping, when I am awake, or whether I am sick or well, even when we’re separated by thousands of miles. Although he has brought considerable pain into my life, he seems to want the best for me in his own way, which he likely assumes is better than he could ever give me. He once dreamt that I was dying, and people were gathering around me, and somehow he got me to say the phrase from the Koran (in Arabic) that Muslims say as their last breath. He constantly worries about the possibility of my death, perhaps rightfully, and tries to do things to prevent it or at least make sure I do not end up in a place where a hot collar will be affixed to my neck for eternity.

I have learned many things, both strange and profound from this relationship.

I told Charles I could not imagine myself calling the African King and telling him it’s over. I could only imagine him saying or doing something that made me so angry that I would stop talking to him again, and something else would happen in the months before I forgave him again. I assured him, that even if I did call the African King, and told him it was over, it would not be. My heart would twitch like a dead snake until sundown, and probably much longer than that.

I told Charles that I wished to be fully present in any relationship I entered, and not bring a half life or ghost of another one with me. I now understood the unfairness of that to me and the other person when that happens. Charles agreed with me whole-heartedly.

“On the other hand,” I said, “maybe at this age, it’s normal to carry torches. Women my age, and men within ten years of it, have had a heart break or two. Maybe we don’t have time to recover from them and start fresh. Maybe we just have to accept one another, ghosts and all. Though, I will say that most people I know who got into a successful relationship, did take a detox period in between.”

“Maybe that’s what you’re doing now, Mija.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I tend to stay in relationships for years after I should end them, and try to use that time as my detox period. I reckon I’m chicken shit, and make other people suffer for it. This is more than chicken shit, there’s love there too, along with sadness and disappointment.”

“You’ll know when it’s time, Mija,” Charles said gently, “trust me, you’ll know.”