by Saeeda Hafiz
I got dressed, washed my face, and went outside the front door. It was a hot, humid summer night, and he was there waiting for me with an Italian ice treat.
“I brought you this,” he said proudly, as if I had ordered it from him. He held up the lemon Italian ice and a small wooden spoon. He peeled back the top cover and dragged the small wooden spoon across the top and spooned some into my mouth.
“You are so hot. You better eat this before you melt it.” He paused. “Let’s walk to Flagstaff Hill and kiss underneath the stars and the midnight sky.”
All I could do was grin.
Romantic moments like that had happened all the time. I could never tell him no, and I made myself always available to him. This made me think that I was right; I could spend the rest of my life with this man. And because he was so giving to me, I thought he wanted to be with me, too.
Before our summer break ended, Ben, who was there taking summer college courses, sat me down in his dorm room and told me that he wanted to stay in contact during the regular school year. “You’ve been a great girl, and we’ve had a lot of fun. I value our connection.”
I could not believe my ears. He was securing a long-distance romance. We kissed passionately.
A few days later, I went to another ATO fraternity party, and as I approached that same brick wall where I’d met Ben, I saw him again. Only this time he was engaged in intimate conversation with another girl. I stood there feeling like I had run into that brick wall.
He noticed me standing there. He came over and whispered, “I explained last week that I wanted us to stay friends.” Then it hit me. He was breaking up with me—not setting up our relationship for a long-distance romance.
I ran away from him, called to my college roommate, Felicia, and cried my eyes out, mumbling, “What a fool I am!”
I had never really cried over anyone before. I didn’t understand how I hadn’t realized what was happening.
* * *
My walk home from my session with Gia started to slow down as I felt the synapses in my brain jumping back and forth, trying to figure out what happened that summer. I wondered how an event like that could possibly contribute to my having a cyst on my ovary. I was not 100 percent sure that Gia’s theory was true, but I decided to be more conscientious about how all of life’s situations—as in my relationships with men, friends, and family—could affect me.
Later that night I read more of The Self Healing Cookbook by Kristina Turner, and listened to Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life on tape. This was my first introduction to the concept of “toxic relationships.” I went back to old college journals and perused what had happened after Ben broke up with me. I thought, maybe my reproductive health could be linked to my relationship health. Reviewing my journals, I remembered the next Ben vignette.
It was three months after he had dumped me and I was back at Temple University in Philadelphia. I was watching Late Night with David Letterman. The phone rang.
“Sy? It’s Ben. You don’t know what I had to do to find you.”
“Ben?” Just the sound of his voice sucked me back in. We talked for an hour or so. I was reintoxicated. Just like an alcoholic who had been sober for four months and mistakenly drinks a spiked lemonade, only to find herself hooked again.
The next day, still high, I got on the elevator at the tenth floor of my dorm building on my way to class. A classmate got on at the ninth floor and greeted me by name, and a girl who was already on the elevator said, “You’re Saeeda? Some guy was looking for you last night. He called everyone’s phones on the entire floor, waking people up asking for you.” I was new to this dorm building and no one knew me yet.
I didn’t know how Ben had gotten my number, and I didn’t care because when I heard his voice I melted once again, just like I’d done that summer. I missed him.
Ben had stolen part of my dorm room phone number from my friend Chuck’s address book. Chuck knew how hurt I was after what had happened with Ben and he was protective of me. But one day Ben went into Chuck’s room when he wasn’t there and tore the page out, but he only got half my number.
Ben had come looking for me. I could be with this guy for the rest of my life.
* * *
A few weeks had passed since my appointment with Gia. I’d written in my journal the things I believed about relationships and had gotten in touch with my idealistic thoughts about romance.
I also went to my OB/GYN, and I did indeed have a cyst on my ovary, as Gia had predicted. I was not scared for some reason. The doctor suggested that we keep an eye on it before he would recommend surgery, but I also followed Gia’s holistic suggestions for dissolving fatty cysts, to eat fewer animal foods, eat more foods that help digest fats such as daikon radish, and do yoga hip openers to send more energy to my reproductive organs.
I actively followed the prescription, and the cyst dissolved naturally in just a few weeks. My cyst was dissolving, but how was I dealing with the metaphysical aspect of relationships? Ben came looking for me during the winter of 1985, and I was convinced that he loved me, too.
I was also convinced that some kind of block was keeping him from having me as his proper girlfriend. Was it because he was white and I was black? Was it because he was a trust fund baby and I was poor? Was it because I had a family background of addiction and domestic violence and he had a sophisticated, worldly family background?
I was confused. Then Ben introduced me to the movie, Same Time Next Year, in which a couple meets for an extramarital affair in the same hotel one weekend each year. Ben said maybe we were like that. I wasn’t convinced that was the case. He and I weren’t married to anyone, and I didn’t know why we couldn’t be together and get married. I followed this false hope on and off for quite a few years, and came to a haunting conclusion. Ben may have been better educated and richer than my dad, but he jerked me around just the same. I wasn’t sure why Ben couldn’t commit to me, and I wasn’t sure why my dad couldn’t spend time with me. Another eerie fact was that they shared the same birthday.
I deserved better. The real question was: Could I figure out how to do better?
* * *
During my time of healing, I had an important realization: I had let Ben drag me down emotionally. He had been my drug. Whenever I would have contact with him, whether by phone, visit, or letter, I had always lost a few days of myself, just like a dope fiend. I was trying to do better, but this was going to take lots of work.
Ben confused me, sending me loving letters from time to time that expressed his faith in my professional business acumen, our future, and me. Yet he was putting me into a shadow, a side romance—a romance that said you are only good enough to be with when I say so, and here are the terms: one weekend a year. Even though Ben was supportive and encouraging, I felt cheapened. Same Time Next Year wasn’t the kind of proposal I wanted. My dad did the same thing. I was living a shadow existence for both Ben and my dad. Didn’t they know that I should be celebrated in public as well as in private?
My passion for Ben was a major blind spot. I was trying to change lanes, but I could not see clearly.
* * *
Over the years, my cyst would naturally dissolve, periodically reappear, and then melt away again. I don’t know for sure if my relationship with Ben directly contributed to my reproductive health, but I did know that having a toxic addiction to romantic love was not adding to my healing.
In the same way that my siblings took drugs to make themselves feel better, being with Ben had made me feel better. He was a great antidote to the shame I had tightly bottled up inside myself. He temporarily released the constriction I felt from years of domestic violence. His validation filled the void my absent dad had left.
I had wanted a proper and healthy relationship with Ben. The intoxication wasn’t enough. Because he didn’t want the same, our relationship was toxic, but that didn’t stop Ben and me f
rom riding the highs and lows of our connection, even after I started my healing process. He kept appearing, leaving, and reappearing.
Often, I was able to recenter myself with my own home cooking and yoga practice. I had to do things that would move me to the center of health. I found myself spontaneously doing two sun salutes, eating brown rice, steaming veggies, simmering sea vegetables, and stewing beans, all with light seasonings, whenever I felt off-balance. This was my new definition of comfort food, and it helped to make my life simple and hearty.
I learned that when I over-committed myself I felt irritated and craved sugar. This knowledge didn’t always prevent me from bad choices, but it did help me deal with them. Sometimes I was able to see what was in my blind spot and avoid a crash. But oftentimes it would be the crash that would let me know something in my life needed changing. And it was usually during Savasana when the crash topic would be integrated into my life. I’d go to that space where I trusted life, the space where I could begin to solve my issues with an open heart.
I didn’t trust Ben or my dad, but I did trust life. Ever since I’d been at the ashram, my trust was reaffirmed every time I was in Savasana. It amazed me that doing something so simple and inactive gave me such a profound sense of peace. Life seemed to always give me a new opportunity to persevere, so I chose to stay the course. I didn’t want to contribute to the growth of a toxic relationship or a cyst. One thing I understood from my holistic health class: I might not be able to combat everything, but I could also practice healthier habits that could keep serious illnesses dormant. Not everything within my body needed to be expressed.
But the question remained, could I do better when it came to life and love?
* * *
Ben and I were never in the same city. For example, when I was living in Philadelphia, he was based in Pittsburgh. When I was in Pittsburgh, he was in Washington, D.C., and then California. Mentally, I moved on by entertaining other romantic interests.
One of them was Frederick, with whom I became friends in 1991. Frederick had graduated from an international MBA program and also worked for the bank. He was multilingual, speaking French, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. He did everything possible to make sure that the people on the other end of his friendships knew that he cared a great deal. He didn’t think my holistic health lifestyle was weird; he admired me for it and supported my efforts.
Most of the men I had gone out with since my holistic lifestyle change gave me the impression that they thought I was one big pain in the ass when it came to food. But here was someone who cleared the way for me to enjoy my dining experience even more.
For example, when we went to dinner he would call ahead and ask the maître d’ if the restaurant had brown rice, tofu, or vegetarian options. And he made sure they could accommodate my allergies to nuts.
When Frederick and I were just becoming friends, it still felt romantic. We worked for the same bank and went out to lunch regularly. He’d call me on the phone to meet him down in the lobby. Then we’d leave the building and he’d always walk next to me on the street side of the sidewalk like a gentleman, as if he were protecting me from mud splashing on me from a pothole on a rainy day.
“Ms. Hafiz,” he would call me, “your outfit is very becoming today,” looking at me while he opened the door to the restaurant. It was just lunch, but he would pull out my chair, ask me what I wanted to order, and proceed to tell the server what I wanted to eat, what I couldn’t have, and what I was allergic to. The way he took care made me feel like we were in a small bistro in Paris, even though I had never been to France. I felt sophisticated with him, as if we were a Harlem Renaissance couple living abroad.
Frederick wasn’t a tall man, but when he walked it was upright and with authority. He walked around in the world as if knew that he would reap the benefits of the hard work he had sown. His black olive skin glistened just like that of the men in my family, especially when the sun hit certain angles on his face.
Frederick knew about macrobiotics; he knew people who were following a macrobiotic diet to heal from cancer, and others who just wanted to have a better quality of life. He told me he could live a macrobiotic life during the week, but on weekends he would have to eat some junk food. Then, out of nowhere, he said, “Yeah, if I married you, I could see the family eating this way.” He paused and chuckled and then continued, “But I would have to sneak the kids out for their quarterly McDonald’s hamburger and remind them, “Don’t tell Mom we were here.”
I laughed, thinking, “Did he just refer to us as having kids?” And then I heard myself say, “You’re not taking our kids to McDonald’s,” giving him a fake mad face.
I had never met anyone like Frederick, so I had never fantasized about having a partner like him. Who knew such a man existed, and that he could be black?
When my friends started dating their first boyfriends, I had felt a bit left out, marginalized. I was that girl at teenage parties eagerly waiting for a boy to ask her to dance. In my neighborhood black culture, it wasn’t acceptable for girls to dance together in a group or alone on the dance floor. So I would just stand there, popping my fingers and swaying back and forth and staring, as if in a daydream, at the boys and girls dancing close in a seductive way. Dance partners bounced, rocked, and bobbed and weaved harmoniously to the R&B sounds of Parliament Funkadelic, or Kurtis Blow!
Then, when the slow jams of Luther Vandross, Teena Marie, and Prince came on, each boy would grab a girl and they would grind on each other. I rarely had this kind of closeness. I wasn’t ugly, but I was thin and not as pretty or confident as my other friends.
I remembered thinking, Black boys just don’t like me. I’m not what they want. I’m awkward, and I don’t make sense to them for some reason.
Then the day came when I opened myself up to dating boys outside my race.
I was fifteen years old. I went out with friends to an under-21 dance club, mixed with black and white kids. Not a neighborhood party. Thomas Dolby’s “Blinded Me with Science” came on. I watched girls go to the dance floor. They danced in groups, with boys, and alone. I danced near my friends, then I danced alone. Then this really good-looking white guy came up to me and started dancing very close to my body and in my face. He whispered soft things in my ear while the synthesized bridge of the song melodically snaked into the air like a cobra being coaxed out of a basket by a flute charmer. His voice coiled around my spine. “This must be what my black girlfriends are experiencing at the neighborhood dance parties,” I thought. “Well, maybe it will be white boys that find me desirable?”
At fifteen years old I thought that only white boys would be my option, but when Frederick came along, I saw that there was a wide variety of men out there for me.
One night Frederick asked me to come to his house for dinner. He was cooking. He had learned how to cook Brazilian food while living in Rio during graduate school, and he wanted to make me some Brazilian dishes that would fit my dietary preferences.
When I arrived, he opened the door and said, “Stunning.” We hugged. Frederick’s eyes told me that my multicolored turtleneck sweater dress accentuated my yoga shape, and that my fuchsia tights were a nice touch. I felt comfortably elegant. “Stunning,” he repeated. I thanked him. I was flattered but also felt a bit embarrassed. I didn’t consider myself to be someone who had fashion know-how. My fashion goal was to not embarrass myself. So I preferred the uniform approach. I’d essentially buy whatever the mannequins were wearing in the store window.
Frederick’s apartment smelled delicious. “Tonight, Ms. Hafiz, we have Sesame Seed Brown Rice, Creamy Black Beans, and Braised Collard Greens. Don’t expect Southern-style greens. These are different. I made an apple crisp for dessert.”
Samba music played low in the background while we talked and ate.
He asked me if I did the samba. I laughed. It felt wonderful to be asked that question.
J
ust before dessert, he turned up the music, grabbed my hand, and led me to his open-space living room area. He had a white carpet so our shoes were already off. His place was simple and elegant, and the rooms spoke softly of his travels.
“Hold here.” I put my hand on his shoulder. I felt awkward. I had never danced like this before. He told me to move my hips. I tried, but I’m sure that I looked silly. He told me to relax, so I took some deep yogic breaths to calm me down.
“You got it!” He cheered.
Frederick went into the kitchen to bring out the homemade, no sugar added, naturally sweet dessert to the living room. He put the bowls on the table and we sat. I curled and uncurled my toes. I hoped he didn’t hear them cracking. Over dessert we covered many topics, being careful not to spill any dessert on his expensive cream-colored sofa.
“You probably want to know why I have never attempted to kiss you,” he blurted out.
I wasn’t in any rush to be physical with him. I assumed the pace was Frederick’s dramatic way of showing me that he cared. He did everything with intention. But I said the safe thing, “No. Not really. I thought we were just friends…right?”
“Well…we are friends, but…we do a lot of date-like things. In fact, every time we go out, it feels like a date.”
“True. It does.”
“Well, I’m bisexual, but I haven’t been with a girl in a long time.” He paused. “I guess.” He paused again, and this was the first time I heard him not be so sure of himself. “I mean…that I’m gay.”
We both exhaled, deeply. We stared at the floor.
“Well, I thought you were a bit more stylish than most men at the bank, but I just told myself that it was because you are well-traveled. I thought you might be gay, but I also told myself, we’re just close friends, so being romantic isn’t an option anyway.”