The Urgent Life by Bozoma Saint John

Author:Bozoma Saint John [Saint John, Bozoma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

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For a long while, Peter’s comfort around Black folks made me just shake my head and smile. His life had been monochromatic before me, but he blended into my Black world seamlessly.

Not long after we got married, Peter and I went to a golf tournament hosted by Black Enterprise magazine. One of the events on the itinerary was a version of the Newlywed Game, where the host asked sometimes raunchy questions to see how well couples knew their partners. We wrote our answers on pieces of poster board, then displayed them at the same time to see if our answers matched.

Peter was the only white person among the three couples. We were ahead, with one question left to go.

“What,” the host asked, pausing dramatically for effect, “is your favorite part of your wife’s body?”

Oh man, I thought. I think we got this.

Peter loved my butt. He’d watch me admiringly as I walked across the room, give it a pat every chance he got, and always wanted me to put on the tightest jeans I could find. He and I scribbled furiously with our black markers.

“Peter and Boz,” the host bellowed. “What do you have to say?”

I wanted to win, but if Peter and I had both written the truth, I knew I was also going to be more than a little embarrassed.

I held up my board. “My butt,” I said a little sheepishly.

When Peter revealed his answer, he wasn’t so shy.

“The bootayyyyyyyy,” he said, dragging the word out with a huge grin on his face. The audience went wild. And we won.

I knew this sense of ease, on display on the nights we went to a Black club and during family dinners at my parents’ home, was due in part to his simply being a white man who felt intuitively that the world was his. There was no place that would deny him entry, no space where he couldn’t go. The idea that he might be excluded or mistreated never entered his consciousness, whereas it lurked on the edge of mine nearly every day.

But I felt Peter’s comfort also was a testament to how much he loved me. Of course he embraced Blackness, I thought, the culture that had shaped me. How could he not?

Outsiders, however, continued to ask questions.

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