I risked a glance up at him as I continued to scarf down my food. The look on his face could only be described as one of absolute disgust. There was something else there though. Pity? Sympathy? Sorrow? It was the look you gave to a crippled homeless person when he pissed himself. I just wasn’t sure if it was for me or for his ancestors. I suspected it was a little of both. If I hadn’t felt wretched and disgusting before, that look had solved that. I lowered my head back to my bowl, trying not to choke on my food as I began to sob again.
Knowing that I could end it at any time made it worse. All I had to do was say that horrible word and he’d immediately unchain me and set me free. Of course Kenyatta, being the type of man he is, made the safe word something as reprehensible as the treatment I was now being subjected to. To go free, all I would have to do is yell “Nigger.” Not just say it. He didn’t want me to whisper it apologetically. He’d made that clear. I had to yell it at the top of my lungs. He knew I’d never do that. That would only multiply my “whitey guilt” as Kenyatta called it. So instead I endured.
I hated Kenyatta standing above me with that look of pity and disgust twisting his features as I shoveled the mushy gruel into my face, kneeling on my hands and knees like an animal. I felt like some loathsome repugnant thing and I wondered if he still loved me after seeing me like this. I was afraid to ask, though I knew he would have answered me. I was afraid to hear the reply. Sometimes, on the days when the beatings were the most severe, he’d break character for a while and whisper to me that he still loved me and that he was proud of me for going through this for him. He’d hold me close to him as I wept and bled and swab my wounds with vinegar and alcohol before putting me back in my box. Both my love and my commitment renewed for a while, I’d lie in my box dreaming of being with him when this was all over. I’d imagine lying in bed with him, nestled against his powerful body, my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat and the soothing sound of his deep melodic voice as he stroked my hair and kissed my face.
Kenyatta was the only man I’d ever felt safe with. He was the only man who’d ever bought me nice things and taken me to nice places, the only man who’d ever told me I was beautiful, and showed me the difference between making love and fucking. I imagined him saying I love you again as we made love, love without pain. I imagined what it would be like to be his bride. On those nights, the heat and the darkness and the hard claustrophobic confines of my box, even the weight of the iron chains around my neck ankles and wrists, became more tolerable. Everything was tolerable if it meant he would love me.
I finished my food and Kenyatta removed my plate and walked me upstairs. I almost fell as I struggled with the weight of the chains. I had gone with him to purchase them. We’d bought them on a trip to San Francisco from a fetish store on Folsom Street that had a custom welder on staff. Kenyatta had shown them pictures of iron shackles recovered from the Henrietta Marie, the oldest slave ship ever discovered. By the end of the weekend the shackles were complete. We laughed about what the baggage handlers at the airport would think when our luggage went through the X-ray machine. I laughed now despite myself. Kenyatta looked back at me with concern on his face, checking to make certain I hadn’t gone insane. That made me laugh harder.
He brought me into the kitchen. I was on my knees crawling by this point from the weight of the iron chains. That was how Kenyatta preferred me anyway. He kicked a bucket and a brush over to me and ordered me to scrub the floor while he stood over me with his flail. I went to work dutifully. I was grateful just to be in the sunlight. I knew Kenyatta would be raping me soon. Watching me scrub the floor naked on my hands and knees always turned him on, plus I knew he’d have to be going to work soon and this would be his last opportunity. My neck muscles throbbed beneath the weight of my shackles. I couldn’t have lifted my head no matter how much I wanted to. I wanted to see my beautiful master’s face. I finished scrubbing the kitchen floor and Kenyatta brought the flail down across my backside ordering me into the hallway to scrub the porcelain tile. I had barely begun scrubbing when I felt Kenyatta’s breath on the back of my neck, his chest against my back, the top of his thighs against the backs of mine. I let out a sigh as the weight of his body crushed down on top of me.
II
I was molested by a cousin as a child. I don’t say that to explain why I’m with Kenyatta. I don’t hate all white men for the degeneracy of one. I say it to explain all the fucked up choices I made before meeting him.
It’s true that I hate my father. Not because he was a drunken asshole who beat my mother (though he was), but because all he did to my cousin was kick his ass. That solved everything in his mind. No police were called. I never went to counseling. My parents never even spoke to me about it. They never told me that what happened wasn’t my fault. They swept it under the rug, turned it into a dirty secret, and advised me to do the same. I never could. I still wake up screaming with his taste in my mouth. My parents never told me that what happened didn’t make me a bad person. So it did.
I started sleeping around, got pregnant, lost the baby, started doing drugs, got kicked out of the house, started using more drugs, moved to Las Vegas, got a job and started attending UNLV, met a lot of men and slept with most of them, got off drugs, began drinking more. Somehow, through all the drinking and partying, I managed to squeak my way through college. I got a B.A. in English with a guaranteed student loan that has been in default for five or six years, got my teaching credentials and started teaching English at a middle school in Green Valley. I continued drinking and partying and sleeping with the wrong men, barely managing to drag my tired ass out of bed each morning to teach spelling and grammar and literature to kids who didn’t want to hear anything poetic unless it was accompanied by a drumbeat and included the words “bitch” and “ho” interspersed at regular intervals. Then I met Kenyatta. None of the rest of that shit matters. This is where the story begins.
From the moment I met him I didn’t think I was good enough for him, which is weird considering that I come from a family that thinks the polite word for African Americans is “coloreds,” and they don’t use the polite word much. Kenyatta was so different from everyone else I’d ever met. There was something so regal about him, something princely. His eyes were wise and strong, cruel at times, but even that was sexy. His voice was deep, Lou Rawls/Barry White type basso profundo. Sultry, smooth, and sensuous, yet still forceful and commanding. I hate telling you that he was surprisingly articulate. I know that sounds like some kind of off-handed racial insult. As if I’m implying that most black men are not. The ones I’d fucked in the past definitely weren’t, neither were the rednecks, junkies, and trailer trash. I didn’t come from a world of articulate people. It had taken four years of college to correct my own trailer park drawl. So that was the first thing that impressed me about him. His voice, his words, his eyes. Those were the things that made me think I could love him. His body was what made me want to fuck him.
We’d met at a nightclub six years before when he was still married. I was walking upstairs to the bar and he was walking downstairs. He was wearing this tight black nylon shirt that hugged his chest and biceps in a way that would have made most men look effeminate but looked sexy as hell on him. Muscles seemed to be bulging from everywhere. My girlfriend and I looked up at him, smiling from ear to ear because he was fucking huge and gorgeous and he was looking at us. We passed on the stairs and his eyes bored into mine. He wasn’t smiling, just staring, staring in a way that made his intentions absolutely clear. There was such raw sexuality in that stare that it made the temperature in the room jump and the moisture on my body increase, especially between my thighs. I felt like I should have said something, but no words would come, so I just stared back, smiling nervously and perspiring.