Stephanie Mills
If you’ve never heard “A House is Not a Home” (wait, do you know Hall & Oates’ “I Can’t Go for That”?) then you’ve certainly never heard “I Have Learned to Respect the Power of Love.” And if you’ve never heard this song, which, I guarantee you, you haven’t, then what do we have to talk about?
I can’t tell if I’m making you whiter than you really are. I can’t tell if you’re just trying to be down: noting other interracial couples, name-dropping ex-Black-girlfriends, correcting me on my orishas (Oshun is the river orisha. Oya is the ocean orisha).
What am I even doing here, in this open source, open mind field? Holding hands with you, getting stared at on the train, smiling at your white friends, my face straining, thinking, When can I go back to my life?
Some of us seem eager to settle down, don’t we? We are ready for our life partner to appear, keys to the sedan in hand. We are pushy, impatient, trying to shove a person into a spouse-shaped box. We are perfectionists who expect the very same. We are too hard on ourselves. We love ourselves too much to be alone. We love ourselves too much not to try. Anything, once.