Confrontations with Our Wounds

Laverne Cox pulled the pin and launched her grenade into a community already wounded by the machinations of rejection—and she can't be expected to protect us from what hurts.

Püha Sebastian, Ado Vabbe (1930) via Tartu Art Museum

When I watched Laverne Cox’s coy and cloying storytime yesterday about her relationship with a MAGA-supporting NYPD police officer, I was flabbergasted—until I checked my own lipstick. We are each moving through a world booby-trapped with desire-quagmires, and I’m not sure I do a very good job at minding where I step. My feeling is that our reaction to what Laverne shared (to sell tickets to a show) says a lot about the ways we’ve come to expect Black people to behave. It’s linked to the shaming of Black people for not voting Democrat or for being cops or for working at Lockheed Martin: “you should know better.” In the deepest places within me, I am repulsed by the sentiment that Black people should know better, which is usually tutted at us (with comic irony) by white people. Not only does it rob Black people of the adventure of life, of the mistakes and apologies, of the lessons and earned wisdom, it also names white people as congenitally awful—and I’m so sure they don’t mean to be saying that about themselves. However, it is true: as a people generally treated as disposable, we would do well to treat ourselves with some self-regard; yet here we are, tussling and entangled with desires and decisions that call into question the certainty of the tacit cultural agreements we’re supposed to honour, nevermind what might be revealed about what we really think of ourselves. This is life in the modern world: we spend our lives as teenagers, contravening customs, breaking rules, ruffling feathers and figuring out who we are in the process. Laverne is entitled to the same teenage journey, and who she chooses to spend her time with is no concern of mine.

Yet, as I made my coffee this morning, I found myself bristling. Something about the situation had rubbed up against me.

Laverne would not ever entertain a relationship with a Black MAGA cop. I know this in the marrow of my bones. So, the situation begs a question that sticks a hot poker into an old and festering wound: of the Black men available to you, why this white man? Look at what standards white men do not have to meet to be worthy of the attention, affection and love of a woman as esteemed and respected as Laverne. Look at who he could be in this world without apology, and how she unfurled herself to him, how she expanded herself to include all of his anti-Blackness in the hopes they might find a way through this life together. Setting aside for a moment that these are two people whose identities are irresolvable in the modern world, when is such an earnest capaciousness and understanding extended to Black men? The litany of things Black men need to be before being worthy of a spaciousness given so graciously to mediocre white men will leave the best of us breathless. We see this happen in the gay community in the UK all the time. A Black man buffed and polished and trying his best is no match for a white man with the emotional intelligence of a snail. It’s brutal, and it’s impossible to reconcile—but we learn to stop chasing those who are looking for something Blackness cannot give them, and we reclaim our dignity. I do not aspire to the leniency shown to white men. I want more for myself, but I am asking that we look honestly at the ways we give the best of ourselves to anyone except those worthy of us.

Aside from that, it’s the dishonesty of it all. Whatever Laverne and The Cop thought was happening between them was a fairy tale they whipped up in the heady musk of the bedroom. The truth of that interaction cannot be avoided: that relationship was antebellum. Her teeth-licking and salivating about him was disturbing, and it reflects a consumptive appetite for the Other that Vincent Woodard writes about in The Delectable Negro. Their 20-year age gap in a culture obsessed with youth should not be a surprise, but it is disappointing. Couching it all in “communication across differences” is trite and intellectually dishonest. I want Laverne and any other Black person on earth to do what the fuck they want. The world is hard enough without attempting to meet the demands of purity politics, and I don’t need you to be a certain type of Black to be worthy of love, care and liveliness. Love who you want, chase whatever desires or augmentations you think will help you hold yourself more gently in the bathroom mirror. It’s all none of my business—until you drop the dead bird of your business in my lap and call it a bunch of roses. We are lied to every single day: on social media, on the news, by the charlatans in public office, by friends who don’t want to hurt our feelings. Art is one of the only places we can still expect any honesty. If you’re an artist, then tell the truth.

The fact of the matter is that in the world we live in, a dissonance of that magnitude is too obvious to be ignored or lied about. Their relationship is quite literally one of the longest-running racial tensions in history, and she knew talking about it would be provocative. She will know that it’s a fetish enjoyed across racial lines, which means it’s marketable to an audience that funders would find agreeable. In the end, the subterfuge is pointless because the resolution to this not-new love story is not interesting and never has been: “I learned that this person who is different to me is a human, and I shouldn’t treat them with disrespect or violence” is the lowest bar of low bars. Honesty, which might not receive the same funding or publicity, would make a far more compelling piece of art: What do white men do for you that Black men cannot? What are you hoping a white man’s desire will resolve within you? Is the love this white man gives you the final and missing ingredient in your pursuit of self-love? When did you learn that Blackness is not lovable, that you cannot be redeemed or sanctified or brought to life in Black love?

I mean, these are questions we need answers to, and they’re questions many of us can be asking ourselves. Desire is always political. People who deny that will lie about anything, and you should keep your distance. I’m interrogating my desires, talking to my closest friends about theirs and asking questions that I don’t always like to be honest with myself or others about: Why do I want that builder with the red face and the dragon tattoo on his leg to fuck me senseless? Why did I enjoy feeling like the Blue-Ribbon Negro at that sex party in Berlin? (I felt guilty, and I had a great time.) Why do I also know that the best, most vulnerable, most generous parts of me are reserved for Black men? Why do I treat Black men with a reverence that might actually be a Madonna Complex? Why am I most afraid of not measuring up to other Black men? How do these worries and arousals colour, if you will, who does and does not get access to the wild and tender within me?

I don’t necessarily know what to do with what I learn in this process other than commit to practising new decisions. I said to my best friend the other day that I am ready for adventure. At some point, the theories, the reading, the thinking-about have to interact with the world, with other humans. I have to kick the tyres of my desire, put an always-growing and refining political subject into the field. The only promise any of us can really make is that we’ll be honest with ourselves about how our choices about who to be intimate with (emotionally and otherwise) either affirm or negate our humanity. It’s private work that other people will see, and that puts a lot of pressure on two people who may have just found some relief in the cocooned comfort of each other’s arms.

I think we can all extend each other some grace. We’re not in this for perfection or purity. Toni Morrison told us that the grandeur of life is in the attempt, “in behaving as beautifully as we can under completely impossible circumstances.” We live in a world constructed upon distortions, designed to keep us from what brings us alive. I hoped that someone of Laverne’s experience would be more self-aware, but what demands can I really make of anyone else? Maybe she’ll return to the MAGA cop. Maybe they will be the love story that finally changes it all. Who knows. Desire is a kind of magic, and many of us are doing our level best at using it for some good. We will get there.