Small Joys

by Elvin James Mensah

His enthusiasm for his own life made mine feel better by association.

The longer he fixed his brown eyes on mine, the more I felt like crying.

This must’ve been the first time I realized how much I liked his smile, how much I liked his cavernous dimples and how his eyes squinted, how the wider the smile got the more his cheeks puffed into ping-pong-sized balls.

When I went out with him, it was mostly about the hugs. Oh, he gives great ones, Harles. He’s like a big bear. You sort of just sink into him like a pillow.”

At twenty-one, self-assurance hadn’t come at all.

It sounded like an incomplete thought, but it was the whole thing; he was manifesting something.

I chose The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and skipped the scholastic introduction track.

But I felt so strangely excited about giving the handkerchief to Muddy that the elation itself became a distraction. He was so enthusiastic about everything that I couldn’t wait to be ensnared in the warmth of his gratitude.

We wiped the mud off the floors while he played a new Oasis album from his stereo. It was called Don’t Believe the Truth, and as he moved the cloth back and forth he said: “This album’s just all right, but it’s miles better than their last one. That was total bobbins.”

“I think I only know ‘Wonderwall,’

“I can guarantee you though, pal, that you know a lot more than bloody ‘Wonderwall.’ And if you don’t, you certainly will by the time I’m done with you.”

“No mate of mine only knows ‘Wonderwall.’ ”

“Ocean Drive” by Lighthouse Family

love as much as he did, if there was anything for which I’d endure any judgment. What in my life had been worth defending so avidly? It became important to me that he wouldn’t think I was one of those people that thought him a joke.

how good I felt being beside him,

There was something pleasurable about looking at him: at his large, rough hands on the wheel;

In secondary school, I’d become suspicious of the kindnesses of straight men. In those younger, less lonely years, I’d hung out with a small group of girls, which meant that other boys found me fascinating. They’d mostly assumed I was fucking all of them or that I could set it up so that they could.

But familial heartbreak really was different, I’d realized. It was nothing like I imagined the romantic kind was, where it was the vulnerability that did you in, that made you susceptible to emotional terrorism. You didn’t have to be vulnerable for familial pain to ruin you; its power to do so transcended walls you’d built, or the emotional distance you’d put forth because you’d begun to suspect that sometimes love wasn’t all that unconditional.

And the only person that could help you was standing there, considering your life, assessing if it was a life worth saving.

But over the last two years, I’d begun the process of piecing myself together, making myself make sense for no one else but me.

Hard Core by Lil’ Kim.

I found this in one of them secondhand places in town for dirt cheap yesterday—fifty pence. Thought she looked quite fit on the cover, so I thought why not. And you did say you were really into them female whatsits, didn’t you? You heard this?”

I was thrilled that our conversation the other week hadn’t simply been small talk, that he’d followed through.

“the first one’s just a bloke havin’ a wank in a cinema or something, isn’t it? And then after that—well, she don’t half love going on about cock, don’t she?”

“If you can’t get past all the sex stuff, then from a production standpoint, it’s just a very excellent album.”

His hopeful look made me feel light,

I just loved how self-consciousness didn’t seem to take root in him.

He loved life and life seemed to love him. What was that like? I thought. To have life on your side, to be able to accomplish anything, however trivial, and consider nothing, to know nothing of apprehension, of unease, or at least to never allow yourself to fall into their depths?

I was thinking about how he had just called me beautiful and wondering how much sarcasm or comedy he’d packed into the adjective. I bit the insides of my cheeks to stop myself from smiling.

Once I realized what was happening, I felt like an open wound, helplessly susceptible to these incoming infections.

“I think if you’re going to listen to any more rap, you should let me pick your next thing.”

hour. I couldn’t stop smiling at Muddy’s eagerness; it felt as if I were being flooded with so much bright, iridescent color, watching him get excited at every

I wondered how such an ordinary activity could inspire this much joy in him, a thought that also made me wonder how someone seemingly as ordinary as he could inspire so much joy in me.

Life seemed to take on a certain shape when I was in his company: all smooth edges and equal sides.

I felt so flawlessly good. Life could still feel wonderful, I thought, even if it really wasn’t.

But you don’t expect that you’ll be called beautiful. I’d never been able to place my blackness, and who I’d been as a black teenager and as a black man. But he seemed to be able to. He’d say complimentary things about me until I could see his erection curving up against the fly of his jeans. I’d started using his erections as a measurement of self-worth.

Eventually, the verbal admiration had morphed into foreplay and then into sex.

My blackness seemed to mean something to him, in a way it never had to me; he understood something about it, and it probably wasn’t anything Lauryn Hill was talking about on Miseducation.

I appreciated his concern, how much he cared, but I’d never asked to be coddled. Still, it was hard not to feel as if I was cheating myself somehow, sabotaging something.

Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite

Missy Elliott

Somehow, it felt cruel to tell her the reason was me.

Muddy, who is supposed to wanna fuck me into one of them comas where you wake up speaking another fucking language.”

We decided to put on Erykah Badu’s Live album next, and by the time she was reciting the final track, “Tyrone,” using my head as a microphone, she was finished with my cornrows.

“He Wasn’t Man Enough” by Toni Braxton.

I gently patted her back and apologized, pretending to be sympathetic. But I really was. Often, I felt comforted by how shallow her problems seemed. Arrogantly, I suppose I always had this idea that Chelsea’s issues were quite lightweight in comparison to my own. Being involved in her life this way offered something of a reprieve from things. Her world felt like tranquil waters; life’s darker facets were merely diluted when they fell into her depths; her story was an upward trajectory, and I always imagined that things like sadness and anxiety and depression were like seasons for her, that she passed through unscathed. It was consoling to be associated with this kind of privilege.

I had this fear that if these parts of my life were to infiltrate our friendship in any bigger capacity than they already had, they may not simply dilute her tranquility, but instead darken and overwhelm it completely.

as tantalizing as that sounds, Muddy—”

“Maybe not when you were little.”

He rubbed my back very gently, the motion lasting longer than I’d expected.