Yes... and...

Hey Asshole,

I hope this finds you well or whatever. Long time no see. Long time no anything actually and I love it for me. For full transparency, this letter is written to you but other folks are going to read it so… I’m going to call you R to keep you anonymous—R for Randy, Robert, Rafael or maybe for Repulsive? That would be very true to the way I feel about you. Putting that aside (for now) I know how paranoid you are and you probably believe that this letter alone is enough to set the world loose on you—because such is my power, right? You can already see them, pitchforks and torches in hand, chasing after you because R is so rare a letter in a name that it could only point to you. Isn’t it? See, I don’t miss that about you. If we continue on our little streak of honesty, I don’t miss anything about you.

Let’s be clear, I do not nurse any resentment from the period in my life where you made a guest appearance—at least, none towards you that I can think of. However, I am now a grown adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex and, in the past twenty plus years, I have also been around a lot of people—men, to be exact—who wanted things from me—and by “things” I mean my body and whatever pleasure they hoped to obtain from it by whatever means they deemed necessary. That means my eye has been trained and my level of consciousness has been raised from the depths where it resided when we first met; that is to say when I was barely twenty years old and you were about twice that. TLDR: I now know what predatory behavior looks like. At the time, I was much more naïve.

In just a few years, I had moved from my small island to a megalopolis in a foreign country, then to the metropolis where our paths crossed. I was depressed, rebuilding a life in this racist city that loves to advertise its culture and dreamlike qualities to foreigners but pushes out its Black folks. Still, I was in a very good university—top of my class, even. I was doing my best to make it work. Something was missing, though: validation. I had grown up with the idea that beauty could only reside outside of me and that love was something I would never know. I was struggling with the queerphobia in my own community and it’s within that context (and more) that I was exploring and attempting to define my sense of self.

The permission you gave me to exist as me in the full glory of my Caribbean, femme boy aesthetic was a dream fulfilled. Partying in nightclubs with my queer friends and taking a few trips… well, that was icing on what then looked like a not so bad cake. That was nasty work. You know it. Your daughter was around my age. I know you would have never allowed a man like you to be near her. Maybe it was different for me because… well, the man in question was you, wasn’t it? Or perhaps I mattered less because I was one of those gender disrupting weirdos. I’ll never know and it’s no longer that important anyway.

What I can say is that I do recognize the silver lining here. I am grateful for being seen—and I mean seen past my corporeal envelope right into my soul. Somehow, you managed to step outside of your selfishness and your desire for gratification to look into my essence and recognize that I was more than a queer boy playing dress-up on the weekends. Something in me needed to come out of the cage where I had locked it, hoping for peace (aka to escape violence). And THAT was the actual validation push I needed from someone at the time; someone to say “Yes, I see you. This is real. This is possible.”

It prompted me to start my medical transition and I never looked back. THIS is the actual peace I was aiming for and you, asshole, I mean R… you were the catalyst. It’s fuck you forever over here but also thank you so much for that.

Take care of yourself. Nah… who am I kidding? Fuck you,

Lily