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There’s a split second before the fear sets in, and it feels worse than fear itself: the anticipation, the cold tang of pre-catastrophe on the tongue, the heady notes of dread tickling the back of your throat that make you want to hurl or laugh or scream or dream of anything, anything, but this happening.
This is precisely how I feel – like a car crash is about to happen, like I am about to plummet into an abyss, like all my bones are about to break, like my heart is seized – in the moments just before my sweet, flawless-credit-score boyfriend proposes to me.
‘Date night’ hints at a bleakness, a mundanity, a compartmentalisation of a fun that’s supposed to be infused into a couple’s connection –
My girl Shanti is a beauty editor and make-up artist which means I’m a beneficiary of her many freebies (she dishes them out to our friendship group in rotation, like Baddie Claus).
He believes it’s the quality that really determines the suitability of a song. This is truly a well-produced song, and is in the top ten right now. That equates to the ‘best’ for him. It follows, then, that this man loves me. Simple maths.
He became obsessed with the ‘precision of the kitchen’, the exacting mathematics and science of stirring and slicing and adding things together to get a perfect result, whilst I stayed triggered by seeing a stressed-out perfectionist trying to maintain the legacy of a failing family restaurant.
Is she speaking of the bear?
The pasta’s a little chewy, but he’s done pretty well, and I don’t think the queasiness I’m feeling is from salmonella, but rather from the fact that he’s not supposed to ask me this tonight. Maybe not ever. I never pictured it. I’m not ready. We are not ready. I think my throat might be closing up. I make some attempt to clear it.
I nod, and swirl my hand in the general vicinity of my neck, indicating that something is stuck there, like food and not the words ‘this is way too soon, and I’m not entirely sure I trust you to pick out a ring on your own since the last piece of jewellery you got me was a heart-shaped pendant’. I don’t like heart-shaped jewellery.
Is it possible to develop an allergy to shellfish twenty-four hours after you shovelled M&S prawn cocktail mix into your mouth with half a bagel for dinner whilst trying not to spiral about your career? The bagel wasn’t even halved in the way you’d expect it to be – it was ferally torn vertically across the hole.
In another universe, my boyfriend asking me to marry him without the blessing of my best friend would have been unthinkable, but the apocalypse happened in that universe, mountains keeled over, candyfloss clouds started to rain acid, honeyed oceans churned into lava and suns sank into the skin of the sky.
It has been eighteen months of mutual cushy affection, and the second I saw him – or maybe the second second I saw him – at a party at which I was feeling an increasing amount of chaos within myself, I felt an immediate stabilising calm and stillness.
I smiled as I flicked my gaze up from the picture on his phone of unsmiling, beautiful women in front of wares of fresh produce who’d had their working day interrupted by someone who definitely didn’t pay them for their time.
It was my first capital E Event after my little podcast had been picked up by SoundSugar, the premium streaming service that had sunk a terrifying amount of money into me and what had been a post-break-up project.
I found I enjoyed the company. Otis and Stevie and Luther. Mariah and Babyface. Jill Scott, Bilal, D’Angelo and Lauryn. Beyoncé and Summer and Sza and Jhene and then newer R&B and soul artists, independently signed, on Soundcloud.
Artists started reaching out, enjoying my analysis of songs into which they’d poured their hearts, appreciating the recognition of their soul, how their art linked to heartbreak, relationships, situationships, love that felt too heavy to hold.
The podcast birthed a phoenix of an old confidence. And it turned out that the hellfire it had been through had only refined it, burned off the impurities that had snuck in during a truly horrendous break-up that felt like the first half of Lemonade without any of the artistry.
At this party full of influencers whose influence didn’t seem tied to any sort of commodity, but rather vague concepts like ‘positivity’ and industry bosses who double kissed and swore you were friends because they double tapped my photo, I saw that the confidence fitted – not because I fitted in, but because I knew who I was and knew that this wasn’t real. It was a virtual reality, and I would have to play this game to get paid, to get deals, build my position in this industry, because I had a career to grow and an identity to forge and more me to discover and one thing I knew is that none of
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It was becoming abundantly clear that I was at risk of physically harming this man.
My mandate tonight from both Nina – my agent – and Aminah – best friend and unofficial agent – had been to schmooze, to mingle and to say no to offers of coke, not to withstand microaggressions from Prince Leopold’s nepo great-grandbaby.
A successful night so far, considering, but I suddenly felt a gust of a cool intimate loneliness. I needed to leave.
However, Aminah’s parents were in town from Lagos and she and Kofi were having dinner with them, Shanti had a date with a guy she swore she would never see again and Chi-Chi was on some yoga retreat in Bali, which was almost the most Chioma thing to happen until she told us that she had got her yoga certification and was now running a class in the yoga retreat in Bali.
The library, in all iterations, had been a safe space for me for a lot of my life, as a kid with a sick parent, as an undergrad student with a sicko revenge-porn-obsessed quasi-ex and now as an adult, removing herself from the presence of a man with a dangly cross earring. As trite as it sounded, a library always presented itself as a haven from the chaos.
He had angular cheekbones, large slightly slanted eyes, a wide mouth and a forest-green beanie from which a few spirally dark coils spilled. He was wearing a gaping white T-shirt that slung like silk over his lithe body and several titanium rings on long fingers, which seemed like they could paint or sculpt (they couldn’t, but they could code). Black adinkra symbols – Greatness, Endurance, Something Africanly Affirming – climbed lazily up muscular forearms that looked as if they got their strength from hauling djembes to various spoken-word performances rather than going to the gym. His eyes
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One, that you had it handled – amazingly, can I just say – so my knight-in-shining-armour thing was kind of fucked, and, two, it was a really, really stupid idea and you are way too smart and too cool for that to work.
I work in data, so I should have really made space for the possibility that you would be way too cool for me.’
Well, actually, the thing is, I was supposed to pretend I just came here casually, but when I saw you I guess all I could think to say was “Hi, the babysitter just called”, because your presence eroded any braincells I have left from speaking to someone who describes their job as a Brand Vibe Regulator.’
I was wearing layers of thin gold chains of varying lengths that slung low on my neck. An ‘A’ for Aminah, a ‘K’ for me, a book pendant my baby sister had given me and a gold chilli-pepper pendant, gifted to me because a scotch bonnet wasn’t available, from someone who I still couldn’t think about without becoming both light-headed and heavy.
‘By “I like your fit”, I mean you’re very beautiful, but I thought just coming out and saying that might be coming on a little too strong.
(if I had to answer what my favourite colour is one more time I was gonna start saying ‘fathomless black, like the void this interaction should be thrown into’),
They were meaningless, and I found comfort in the meaninglessness because I didn’t have to try, because I didn’t have to open myself up to hurt, but by doing that wasn’t I just opening myself up to old patterns? Running away from emotions because I was scared of vulnerability when vulnerability was where the good stuff was, the sweet stuff; vulnerability had treated me so well until it hadn’t any more.
you wanna get a drink with me?’ ‘Depends. Will they have calories? I really can’t take any more of the Ozempic water they’re serving us.’ ‘Chock-full of them. I promise. Sugar levels gonna sky rocket.’
It was kind of funny how I was able to joke about us having a kid together within the first ten minutes of us meeting when now, a year or so on, the idea of us getting married is sending me into a conniption.
It’s odd how little Bakari and I discuss money despite the fact that he’s a tech founder who was on the Forbes list by twenty-five, and I always scan Ready To Eat avocados as unripe avocados at self-check-out because they’re 20p cheaper.
While my boyfriend was doing Well, I was doing Fine. Technically Fine. As fine as an overachieving eldest Nigerian daughter could be after quitting their job out of nowhere. I’m down to browsing graduate courses only once a day now rather than once every hour of every day.
Bakari isn’t the most romantic guy in the classic way (he once called holding hands down the street ‘a bit inefficient for our purposes. What is it for? You know I care about you, and it’s not great for optimised walking’), but, still, I didn’t think a proposal would involve him talking about how marriage might make the most financial sense like I’m in a Regency romance, and my family are struggling gentry with a crumbling manor, having to retrench.
We’re in a transitionary space, and I feel like there is an opportunity for evolution in our relationship.’
What new age language is this? It’s like business speak 101.
Recently, he’s started wearing an everyday uniform: a sleek slate kaftan shirt and navy chinos, because apparently it says ‘reliable, confident. It’s the colour of a man who knows who he is. Unashamedly Black, and serious’. Those were the things I liked about him – confident, reliable, knows who he is – but now I’m wondering if all his choices are made with an eye to writing a self-help book called The Diary of a Disrupter: 93 Laws of Power to Guide the Art of Climbing the STEM of Success.
Aminah is nice enough to him, but early in our relationship she once compared him to lemon-and-herb chicken from Nando’s.
I love me enough to cover any gaps: the fact that he doesn’t get it when I need silence at a certain part of a song to let melody and lyric sink in to my bones, that he talks through it loudly and quietly, that he thinks I am too sentimental sometimes, that he hasn’t listened to one episode of my podcast (but plugs it always), that sometimes I tuck my sarcasm in, my humour, because I know he won’t totally catch it, and that if he did he might not know what to do with it. I’ve known a love that had overflowed out of me and them, and it had nearly toppled me over. I’d barely been able to contain
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Bakari looks up a restaurant with the highest rating, and takes me there. It doesn’t matter what it is and he won’t consult me about what I’m in the mood for – he just books it because it’s the best and he says I deserve the best. We go on trips that are the result of him googling ‘top ten quiet, romantic destinations’ rather than places he’s dreamed of visiting. He is serious, and I am less so. I get him out of his head, and he is calm enough to allow me to stay in mine. We make sense.
My stomach turns with lobster linguini and doubt and App Launch wine and why didn’t he know I was joking when I said ‘Is little Solange OK?’ the first time we met and why does he have Adrinka symbols up his arm, but eats pounded yam with a fork and knife and has not one piece of African art up in this £3,000 pcm flat, and why does he let one of his business partners, a white American guy, call him ‘Barry’ for short because he says he reminds him of Barack Obama, whatever that means?
‘Look, Oynx is developing a program that tracks Black music audiences, studying listening habits for gig organisers and streaming platforms, and you’re perfect to head the research division. Who knows that stuff more than you?
‘I’m flattered that you would want me for that, but . . . I have leads—’ ‘What leads, Kiki? Grad-school applications?’
Rude.
‘Or are you going to go back to publishing?’ my boyfriend continues, the word ‘publishing’ sounding as if it might as well be ‘plantation’.
You know that Bakari’s joking when he says, ‘I’m joking, by the way.’ He tells, never shows. Now, his brow raises.
I wasn’t supposed to quit the pod. It was two months ago, at a meeting discussing contract renewal with SoundSugar execs and my agent Nina in an office with yoga balls, a foosball table and a kombucha fridge. Sat in a meeting room christened the ‘Thought Womb’ (everything was a pastel pink) and in baffling transatlantic accents by way of Berkshire by way of Clapham, executives gushed about The Heartbeat, how they were so excited about its diverse power and how well the live shows went.
He reminded me of one of those Ken-doll-handsome topless models that used to stand outside American lifestyle stores in suburban malls in the noughties, stores fashioned in an old colonial beach-house style, aggressively selling a lie, well-scented husks that sold dysmorphia and fake-college hoodies, Harvard and hunger.
I pitched the idea that had been percolating in my mind: sourcing reclusive artists, the one-hit wonders who loved artistry more than the machinery of the music industry, the ones who retreated from the beast of fame rather than the magic of creation, of weaving something from nothing.
Their faces were smiling, but forcibly vacant, trying to figure out the best way to say no without seeming racist – and not for the first time I wondered what my place here was.
They will either appease your ideas out of guilt – one exec carefully referred to me as a ‘woman of melenated global majority background’ (I am automatically suspicious of people who can’t just say Black) – or they will fear your ideas, want to control them, tamper with and tame them.
