Javaughn was my first valentine. In 4th grade, he opted to spend an extra four quarters and a dime at the Dollar Tree on a basic valentine card for me. For those unaware of the magnitude of that purchase, that’s four Super Blow Pops and a Warhead in kid currency. That year my valentine box only fit the cute little class cards so Javaughn held on to my valentine as the rest of Mrs. Smith’s 4th grade class chirped around the classroom distributing their sweet goods.
“You are very beutiful and funny,” his handwriting scratched across the paper beneath the card’s generic greeting. I forgave his spelling transgression and thanked him as we walked home.
Since the day he moved to my neighborhood in 2000, I could always count on Javaughn to be there, making jokes with his thick, jolly Jamaican accent, and punctuating them with his hearty guttural laugh. On rainy days he would toss his jacket over his head and offer my sister and me his umbrella. On sunny days we would spend ten minutes (hours in “come-straight-home” time) talking about the stupid boys on the bus or Lauren Marshall who thought she was the boss of everyone.
He was a comfort in middle school. When the boys heckled us for having breasts and big noses, Javaughn would suck his teeth and, with a wave of his hand, reassure the girls. “Ahhh, don’t worry about him,” he’d say. “He doesn’t even have a girlfriend!”
Javaughn didn’t turn out to be a nice guy. You know the “nice guy” type: the ones that shower you with kindness and then send you an invoice citing all that you owe them in return. Javaughn was never like that. When I borrowed his umbrella, he didn’t charge me interest. He never billed me for the fruit snacks or jolly jokes or for standing up for me at the bus stop.
“We’re friends,” he would say and I loved how flat the word sounded in his laid-back Jamaican voice, like his words were always resting in a hammock. Cool, he was. And I miss him.
When I go to my old neighborhood and visit the Safeway before therapy, I still see Javaughn. He isn’t dead or anything. But somehow, to me, the idea of him is. The idea that a guy will be gentle and kind and trustworthy without reminding me how gentle and kind and trustworthy he is. The idea that my guy friend will expect to be just that– a friend– is sadly so very dead to me.
Two weeks ago I told someone that I didn’t want a relationship with him. He replied saying that that he would “accept [my] friendship and some of [my] time [(which I didn’t offer)] for now.” He punctuated this idiocy with a smirk emoji, as if what he’d said was charming or romantic or cute. Rather than stab him I ended the conversation and whatever hope he had of a friendship.
Times like this and people like him make me really miss Javaughn. I miss Javaughn in the sense that I miss security. I miss not needing to pick through a guy’s kindness to piece together a hidden agenda. I miss borrowing an umbrella from a guy and in the rain and owing him nothing but the safe return of his umbrella.
“Like his words were resting in a hammock.” Sigh. Love your writing. So many sentences in this that I just stopped and reread because of their magic. And the overall sentiment here is so real. Xoxo.
<3 Thank you, T.