In graduate school, I took a Writing Sex class, during which we read a lot of books about white people having intercourse or contemplating their sexuality, and we looked at a lot of art of white bodies. And it was while looking at one of these pieces, a self-portrait of a woman masturbating, and listening to my classmate swear under her breath at the image, that I realized: There would be no images of black bodies in this curriculum.
And the class became its most interesting when I realized we would never look at a black body. Now sure, we read a couple narratives by queer people of color. But we didn’t look at any images of black people in sexual situations. I wasn’t represented in my class. I couldn’t relate to any of the materials. I developed a disdain for writing about sex and erotica. One night, I wrote this sentence: “The black body is so sexualized, it can’t even be taught.” So, like any rebellious creative-writing-slash-art student, I carved my own space. For my final project, I decided to create a hybrid piece in order to analyze my sex life and get to the root of why certain men choose to objectify me—a fat black woman—without even knowing me.
I began with a catalog. What had men—lovers, friends, acquaintances, strangers—said to me when they were thinking with their dicks instead of their brains? Why, or how, could a man look at me and believe it was appropriate to say exactly what they were thinking? What is it about my body that makes me devourable, if not desirable? So, I started writing down every outlandish thing a man had ever said to me in the heat of the moment, when flirting, or trying to get into my pants.
I said, “Curiosity killed the cat,” and he responded with: “I bet that pussy’s murdered people.”
I am doing dishes after a party and a man stands behind me and whispers, “I’ve never been with a big girl before.”
My friend tells me that sex with a dark-skinned girl is on his bucket list.
My lover thinks that I should have more sex, specifically with white men.
A man from Tinder messaged me every night at 2 a.m. that I should come over and put him to sleep with my mouth.
My reaction was always shock, slight annoyance, or amusement. Shock because why are you saying that to me? Annoyance because no, I don’t want to actually do anything with or for you. Amusement because oh, someone thinks I’m pretty, someone thinks I have sex appeal.
I never learned about sex and blackness together. Black sexuality is not a concept in education. Sex-ed posters are always of white bodies with average genitalia, palms supine. So, I learned about sex by reading everything and anything I could get my hands on. Biology and anatomy books, coming-of-age and adult fiction, books by therapists and psychologists—but I didn’t learn anything about black sexuality. It’s difficult for non-black people to tackle subjects of black sex because of the thin line between offensive and educational. We can blame slavery for that. The whole black people are sexually deviant beasts and will seduce white men and assault white women thing, when really, the opposite was occurring. But growing up, it was even more difficult for me to form a sexual identity when my mother wouldn’t talk about it, and one of my cousins called me Jezebel, and pornography starring black actors and actresses seemed to be filmed with a fetishistic and aggressive gaze. Black sexuality is complicated.
But these men were telling me these things and I relished the attention, so I engaged and indulged. I didn’t know any better. But I did know that I wanted to be wanted, necessary, desirable. I had the simple goal of being attractive and attracting a man. I was reckless. And at some point, my reckless indulgence morphed into submission, and my submission morphed into masochism, and these relationships were going nowhere, and I was receding further and further into myself, losing my body to the hands and mouths of men.
Eventually, my body was not my own.
Excerpt from Negesti Kaudo’s Ripe: Essays, used by permission of Mad Creek Books, an imprint of The Ohio State University Press.
Ripe: Essays is available from Amazon and Bookshop.