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2012 was an odd year. Not for the fact that the Botswana weather was playing ma-dice with us, summer rains coming in winter and the cold nights sometimes making random and unwanted visits. It was also the year that I went nuts for a fruit, for lack of a better word. It was supposed to be “the year” for me, the year I redeemed all the failures my twenties had come with. It was like the entire duration of my twenties was designed to hit me with blow after blow of this thing called Life.

Anyway, for my 29th birthday (this was the year before, in 2011), I made a pact that the following year would be my rebirth. I even coined a new nickname for myself, Phetogo, because I thought the change that was coming was going to be for the better. Little did I know that it was all going to go north, to the highest peak, then south, to the deepest pit. Worse than my twenties, it was so bad I felt that my twenties had been summarized in just one year, and Lord was it brutal. 

The year came in bright and sunny, and I held on to the momentum of it being my year of change. Phetogo was coming for everything. My job at the university wasn’t fulfilling anymore—one could only titrate acids and bases for so long. I had stumbled into the lab assistant post just as I had stumbled through my twenties. I counted it as one of my failures; my mother, however, doted on her daughter working at a fancy university wearing a white lab coat. I suppose the white coat comforted her, made up for my never getting into med school like she had wanted.

Each visit home, she would have questions about the experiments the students carried out, listening attentively as I explained the few I could in Setswana. She would light up, and at the end of my very long narrative, she would ask when I would start making medicines. My mother, never having gone to school, milked all she could from everyone and everything around her. I had decided the year before that I would leave the post and go back to school for my master’s degree. I was being really courageous, taking leaps and leaving my timorous and non-evolving personality in the past. 

With going back to school came some revelations; a major one was that school never gets easy, but it’s more enjoyable when you are doing what you like. I enjoyed my first semester, and soon enough, I was working on my thesis. This involved days of tedious yet fun research, and I would reward myself with solo lunch dates and walks in the park. I led a life of solitude, and I couldn’t complain.

It was on one of my solo lunch dates after a walk in Megaka Park that I met Nectarine, and thereafter, my life went on a rollercoaster ride.

***

“Hey. Is this seat taken?” 

Those were the first words Nectarine ever said to me. I could have said yes, because I have always been one to enjoy my alone time. I enjoyed going to my favorite eatery and people-watching, but somehow, the wide-eyed woman in front of me piqued my interest. I nodded, and she quickly took the seat across from me. Her hair was in one of those haircuts that were the wave back then, the short and curly cut with bald sides and a bold dye job on top. It looked ridiculous on anyone over 21, and she looked well over 21, but somehow it suited her small frame. I regarded her from my side of the table, letting my chicken Alfredo get cold.

I don’t quite remember what we talked about that first day. I do remember laughing when she told me her name.

“Nectarine? Like the fruit?” I had shrieked, my voice more high-pitched than usual. 

She had seemed unfazed and not at all offended by my mockery, choosing instead to light a cigarette, tossing it between her fingers and looking straight at me with a smile. I think that’s what drew me in, the smile. 

“Yes, the fruit. My father used to call my mother Peaches when they were courting. I was a result of their flame. I had to be called Nectarine.”

She had said this, throwing her head back in laughter.

That day began a whirlwind romance that started off with exchanging numbers, a back-and-forth game of silly texts, a dinner date—and then, ultimately, we were a couple. It was good, and I thanked my lucky stars that 2012 had come with a new lover. I fought hard with myself to avoid trying to hold her hand in public; I missed my short time in the UK, where public displays of affection weren’t regarded as the result of witchcraft or a generational curse that grew worse with each generation. Nectarine, on the other hand, got off on raising eyebrows and getting old women to clutch at their pearls and stare mouth agape at us. She would hold my hand, place a carefully planned peck on my lips, and sometimes even let the kiss last longer than it should.

Nectarine loved her Brenda Fassie. She played Vuli Ndlela every Saturday morning without fail. The smell of scrambled eggs, her favorite way to have them, wafted through the whole house. She called Brenda her shaman because she had healed her heart through many things. Heartbreak, disappointment, illness, and all of life’s ailments. Brenda had been there through it all. One time, she recounted a story to me of how on a drive home after a hard day, she had been listening to her Brenda, and suddenly she felt like a divine intervention had happened. Like she had been hugged and she had arrived home in high spirits.

I remember how we used to disagree on politics. I’m not really into politics, but dating a woman whose father was a leader of the opposition party meant that every day at 7pm we were watching the news, and every Tuesday she would hold the remote captive as she watched the political analyst show Matlho a Phage. I disagreed with her to annoy her. I knew nothing about politics; I did not feel compelled to concern myself with issues of the rich and corrupt. 

It was magical; 2012 was indeed my rebirth. I was studying what I love, medical anthropology; dating the love of my life; and my mother was now coming to terms with my sexuality and no longer sneered to the point of near disgust whenever I came home with Nectarine. 

On one visit, she had brought out to the stoep a bowl of nectarines and had loudly placed the colourful bowl on the coffee table, muttering, “Take this, since nectarines are what you prefer now.” 

This had, of course, resulted in loud laughter from my beloved, who found my mother’s sourness humorous.

After a few visits, my mother had given up on trying to chase her away. She instead cooked my favorite meal, oxtail with dumplings, and had remarked how I looked “at peace.” 

I was indeed at peace. Nothing could bring me down from this happiness. Nectar, as I had started playfully calling her, was my moon and stars, which is why I never saw the end coming. We did everything together and were even set on challenging the government on the illegality of homosexuality and same-sex marriage with LEGABIBO. 

***

On one random visit home to my mother, I was enjoying a delicacy I had liked from my childhood—mama’s banana bread with a cup of milky rooibos tea.

“What’s wrong, mme?”

She turned to me, dropping the dish rag she had been wiping the table top with. I had already picked up that something was bothering her from the way she had been wiping and rubbing at one spot. I knew it was about Nectarine; she had been biting her tongue a lot when it came to her, choosing to nod whenever I excitedly talked about her, wearing a forlorn look on her face. 

“Ngwanaka, do you know what love is?”

The question came to me almost in a whisper. Had it not been for the wind and my watching her face, I wouldn’t have picked up what she said. I nervously giggled, buying myself time to figure out where the question was coming from and how best to answer it. 

“This Nectarine woman will be the thorn in your life. Roses are beautiful, but the thorns in them are always ready and able to prick and cut you. This Nectarine of yours will build you up and then drop you after leaving you in tears.” 

This conversation had ended with Mama walking out of the kitchen, leaving me confused and shaking my head at her riddles. Looking back at that conversation now, I know Mama had been on to something. 

The end of my bliss came “quick and fast,” like how the drivers at the bus rank advertise their taxis. 

“Come, madam, I will take you to University of Botswana quick and fast. Take a taxi instead of a combi. I will even offer you a discount if you want.” 

I guess all good things end, but sadly, the best of them end when you least expect. I do admit that towards the end of 2012, I was certain Nectarine would be in my life forever. Our two-house situation had long been solved, with us moving into her bigger apartment. We were basically like the Setswana saying, monwana le lenala, inseparable. 

I came home one day, and she told me that she wanted kids. The excitement on my face was quickly replaced with confusion when she told me she also wanted a “normal” life. That she was done “experimenting,” and it was now time for her to grow up and find a husband and have kids like her parents expected. 

“Come on, Nono, you can’t really tell me that you are serious about this? You want this forever?” she asked with a look of disgust. I wondered if I had walked into the wrong apartment or if I was dreaming. Surely, this was a prank. 

I never got the chance to answer this question about forever, because as soon as I was about to open my mouth, she took an already-packed overnight bag and told me she was spending the night at a friend’s place so as to give me time to pack my things. 

And just like that, my great year of change and rebirth and all things amazing was turning as sour as those cocktails Gigi’s serves. I had sat right where I was standing, on the floor by the door, and looked at our two personalities merged together in everything in the tiny open-plan. Her colourful sofas with my subtle and minimalistic cushions, my fresh flowers in a vase she had bought on a recent trip to Lusaka. Now I would go back to my colourless cocoon of a life. Filled with order and schedule unlike her carefree, on-the-spot approach to living. 

I wish we had talked more at the beginning. I shouldn’t have blindly assumed she would want to spend the rest of her life with me. That the kids’ issue was something we should have discussed in detail. The ending was somehow my fault because I had built up sandcastles in my head. 

I remember on a stroll in the park one Saturday, we had seen a couple with two children walking, holding hands. Nectarine had looked at them with a look that I had not been able to decipher. That look might have been the warning sign I needed.

I did think of what she had said, that maybe at one point all this had to end. I mean, there was no manual to being the way we were. How were things supposed to be for us? I knew I wanted children. There were ways to do this without having to change myself. Was I setting myself up for disappointment? 

I never really knew what prompted her spur-of-the-moment decision. I did move out, finding a smaller place where I stayed holed in for the first few weeks, calling her non-stop till she changed her number. I sent emails of the options we had to have kids, and places we could relocate to so we could get married; all emails remained unanswered. 

She called three weeks after the end, on the 30^th of December, wanting to meet up, to tell me something. I had barely slept the night before, wondering if the devil that was 2012 was finally giving me back my love, sparing me heartbreak for its last two days. We met up in town and walked in silence. Something I valued in Nectarine: She knew comfortable silence. Sometimes, no words need to be said.

There is a lot I should have said, a lot I had rehearsed, and had I not been a coward, could have said—but the thing is, by the time we sat face to face in that small restaurant we walked into, with the flies hovering as if they were sent to listen in on our conversation, my courage had flown right out the window. 

I hate how I remember everything about that day: how she forgot to zip her fly, how we laughed nervously as she fixed it, and how she morbidly pointed out that I was always the one who noticed the smallest details. I remember how shady the restaurant was, the glasses dirty and smudged with fingerprints, and how I decided that this wasn’t the perfect place to consummate our long-standing love affair. That’s the word for it, right? “Consummate”?

The restaurant, ironically called Di Monate—I, for one, didn’t expect anything nice from it, as the name suggested—was hot and stuffy and reeked of hot used oil. The three fans hanging from the ceiling were doing nothing to the heat; they were, in fact, drawing in hot foul-smelling air from the kitchen.

Why had we walked into this particular restaurant? That’s something I don’t quite remember. I feel, though, that it was sort of an apt setting; we were broken down to the point of being stuffy and smudged and nothing like how we were those first few months.

I never really got to say much; I felt that a lot had been said during the silent walk. She had made up her mind. 

Had my courage not run with the wind, I would have said I hoped she would remember to zip her fly and to make sure she wore socks—I always told her how tacky and unfashionable shoes without socks were; they also make your feet smell. I would have told her that I understood her fear, that she didn’t know what would come next after “forever.” That I didn’t know either, but I knew what I wanted and I knew that I loved her. I wouldn’t give her the conventional setting of husband and wife and kids, but I would love her till the end of time.

Mostly, I would have told her that this wasn’t the end I had anticipated for us. I had hoped we would have worked our way through things and that we would have found common ground.

As she sat in that dim and smelly restaurant telling me she was sorry about how things unfolded and that she wished me happiness, I hoped she would at least leave her checked shirt, the one I always wore around the apartment. I know she would have said something about how I always held on to things and had trouble letting go and that this was unhealthy, but letting go of one’s identity and sense of self isn’t something that happens at the snap of a finger. 

And now, I am left with a gaping wound. Heartbreak like this one is unprecedented, and I don’t want to wallow in self-pity. I’m hurting. Eating is still something I have to remind myself to do. Everything tastes like wet cardboard, but in the midst of all this sadness, I am grateful for such a love. I know it will never be as sweet as it was with Nectarine, nor as life-changing.

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Lucy is a digital art piece created as a final project for a class on Cross-Disciplinary Feminist Theory. This piece was intended to depict an environment where Black womanhood can escape sexual and economic exploitation, and reclaim itself for body liberation and reproductive justice.

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“Exploration of the Erotic is a pilgrimage into self & a reflection on queer Black sexuality, sensuality, romance, gender, joy, pleasure, attraction, rest, desire, motivation, absurdity, intimacy, vulnerability, and the lack thereof. This is an excerpt from the third episode of Exploration of the Erotic, highlighting a conversation between Pat Hussain, a cofounder of Southerners on New Ground (SONG), her wife Miss Cherry and myself. During SONG’s 2019 Gaycation membership convening, we had a chance to discuss their experiences of negotiating non monogamy, vulnerability and romance, long-distance love as an organizer, intimacy, arguments, boundaries, navigating desire & coming out as queer in the South throughout the course of their relationship spanning across 4 decades.”

Kori Davenport is an aromantic agender, Black lesbian, Afrosurrealist, multidisciplinary artist, sex worker & Black anarchist. As a cultural organizer, they use different forms of artwork as a tool to inspire, agitate and prod at the radical imaginations of those around them. Their work centers pleasure in all forms from kink, body neutrality and fat liberation, to envisioning and working towards a future/present without prisons & that normalizes liberatory sex education and the sex work industry. Taking the forms of brief essays, interviews, edited sound and photography with sights set on film and oil painting, their work seeks to reach, stir and serve those across spectrums of (trans)masculinity, womanhood, butchness, and genderlessness by providing intimate and often surreal expressions of self and the erotic. When they’re not erhm… conducting research for EotE, Koriandre is usually daydreaming, clicking furiously through Wikipedia links, and/or listening to Erykah Badu’s live performances on YouTube at half speed.

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Glynnis Reed has been working as a professional visual artist and art educator for nearly two decades. Born in Los Angeles, she currently divides her time between her homes in Southern New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where she attends Pennsylvania State University as a doctoral candidate in Art Education and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research interests include marginalized subjectivities around race, gender, and sexuality. Her artwork has moved from a search into the urban landscape to natural environments that become settings for figurative compositions and lyrical portraits. She composes narratives of love and loss, fulfillment and emptiness, and shadow and light through the mediums of photography, digital collage, drawing, and painting

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I am a boi who bleeds. This is a partial articulation. I am fire that bleeds. Earth that bleeds. I am a spitting split in the cosmos dripping myself onto myself from myself forever.

The words female and male are just that: Words. Concepts that were decided; roles that were formed based on observation then survival then ultimately by power. But they are not, nor have they ever been, rules. Let’s make this a matter of origin. As people like to do. This is a tale of life cycles after all. Before the stories, the societies, the mythologies, the rules, the binaries, there was nature.

I am a collection of consciousness in a constant state of knitting my fibers and fluids together as an ecstatic dance of existence! Everyone is womb all the time because we are creating ourselves in every moment.

Nature does not see itself as male and female. We projected our perceptions. Nature does not see gender, nature seeks balance and forms their shapes and life by that need alone. Some bodies give birth, some bodies spit acid, some bodies wear bright plumage, some bodies shed skin in slinking trails, some bodies have antlers, some bodies can change between being able to be pregnant and being able to impregnate depending on the environment. These are beings with functions that have adapted to suit their needs and desires to ultimately fit within their larger ecosystem. It is a call and response. A uterus is just an organ. An egg is just a vessel. The body that holds these is just a body and a being that decides one’s own role and identity.

I am moon and I move through myself as reflection of light. I refract in strangers’ eyes. They may not know but I know, even when my body floods the tides I am only myself in my own way, in my own time.

ALL bodies on earth – humanoid, animal, plant, fungus, etc. – are affected by collectively connected forces, like seasons, age, hormones and other chemical influences. To experience cycles is to experience life. These take many forms from emotional to environmental, and there are physical cycles like menstruation. For some trans and nonbinary people this particular cycle can be one of frustration and pain. One associated with a forced identity, one assigned at birth. This can be through societal training and sometimes even physical means through surgery and hormones given to intersex children without consent. It’s a cycle that can hold trauma. I am just one agender, black boi who bleeds. But if you want to, I would ask you to return to nature. This is a rebirth. A new cycle. Our origins are unlabeled and frankly, queer.

I am the deep nutrition. Nothing I am can be scraped away or lost. People ask, “Do you make bodies?” and I say, “Oh yes, everyday, look at me!” My mouth opens in red and I sing exaltations to my form.

Can we allow ourselves a moment to shed society from all our organs, skin, breath, nails, hair, thoughts, bones? What if male and female can be just words – to throw away or reimagine?

The blood becomes our blood, our story, one function of ourselves that we can choose what to do with and has no say over how we identify. How do you want to fit in the ecosystem? If we can imagine our bodies maybe just for a moment without any archaic societal organization, then isn’t all that’s left just our love for it? Just a joy of existence? Just a form with every and any possibility? Can we decide who we are from this raw place? Whoever you are, however you live and identify and adapt your form, we invite you to see yourself and make your decisions from the place of origin, from nature.

I am an infinite release of swirling experience, fracturing like kaleidoscopes into every direction realizing wherever I look I see myself and we are beautiful. We are forever.

In this installment of “A Sip with Tomme”, we sit down with Dr. Imani Woody from Mary’s House for Older Adults located in DC. Marys House for older adults vision is to create affordable, independent, and communal housing for LGBTQ- SGL (same gender loving) older adults that will eliminate the intense social isolation experienced because of aging as well as the discrimination and intolerance based on ones sexual orientation.

Dr. Woody states that Black liberation for older adults would mean that “the quality of life would be great,” where folks have housing, experience joy, have community, and are included and seen in all parts of society.

Hear more from Dr. Woody by clicking here.

Many of us are pillars in our community through how we show up for each other. We build relationships, make spaces, and just exist in ways that inspire people to be their authentic selves. To uplift the many folks that pour into the LGBTQIA+ community, we asked you all to take a moment and nominate a changemaker within your space—and folks delivered. Here is a little bit of gratitude.

Don Abram, the founder of Pride in the Pews, is a queer public theologian and social innovator operating at the intersection of race, religion, and social change. 

Don’s shared passion for the Black Church and the LGBTQIA+ community prompted him to start Pride in the Pews. Don grew up in a hand-clapping, toe-tapping Black church on the Southside of Chicago. Every Sunday, at 11:00am, he was in the pews expecting a soul-stirring sermon. At the age of 14, he was called into ministry and moved from the pews to the pulpit—a paradigm-shifting transition. With his new role, he adopted theological positions that mirrored the teachings of his home church. After years of preaching orthodoxy, everything came to a halt when Don realized that he embodied one of the very things that he preached against: queerness.

As a student at Harvard Divinity School, Don was presented with an opportunity to critically engage scripture with a focus on marginalized communities. With rigorous theological training and a heart for justice, Don deconstructed homophobic and transphobic theologies from the perspective of Black liberation theology. As Don’s theological commitments evolved, his love for the Black Church never ceased. In fact, his commitment to ensuring that the Black Church pursued a ministry that centered the needs and voices of marginalized communities grew stronger. 

Frustrated with the lack of theological nuance and the silence of the Black Church on  LGBTQIA+ rights, Don launched Pride in the Pews, a grassroots nationwide nonprofit that bridges the gap between the Black Church and the LGBTQIA+ community through storytelling, political education, and civic engagement. By equipping churches with culturally responsive tools to create more affirming sacred spaces and to advocate for LGBTQIA+ nondiscrimination, Pride in the Pews seeks to create a nationwide network of Black faith leaders advancing nondiscrimination. 

Since its launch, prominent news outlets including the Chicago Tribune, ABC7 Chicago, Christian Science Monitor, and Religion News Service have featured the ongoing work and impact of Pride in the Pews. Don remains deeply committed to creating community for LGBTQIA+ Christians and to equipping the church for progressive 21st-century ministry.

As an unapologetic queer son of the Black Church, Don sees his work as being deeply rooted in the tradition of Black liberation theologies—a tradition that calls us all to usher in a world curated with radical compassion, justice, and equity, especially for those on the margins of society. Follow Pride in the Pews on IG here!