Queer Love in Color by Jamal Jordan
Author:Jamal Jordan [Jordan, Jamal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Published: 2021-05-04T00:00:00+00:00
The couple rarely gets to spend time together during the workweek.
Amar and Thomas
Detroit, Michigan
Together since 2014
Amar was going through a ritual familiar to many gay men in the twenty-first centuryâpreparing to delete the dating app Grindr for the who-knows-how-manyth timeâwhen he received a message from Thomas. After chatting briefly, they exchanged numbers and began to text. (The progression of Grindr message to text message is a large milestone for some members of the community.) For better or worse, Grindr was Thomasâs only option for dating. Heâs narcoleptic and canât drive; this makes navigating Detroitâand having a social lifeânearly impossible.
After a few years of trial and error, it wasnât working out for him. At his witâs end, he decided to consult his âspiritual guides.â I laugh at this, but he quickly lets me know he isnât joking: âI really said, âYou know what? Iâm just gonna give this dating thing over to a higher power, and Iâm going to work on me to make sure Iâm ready for this amazing person thatâs going to show up in my life,â and sure enough, he did.â He gestured toward Thomas, with a satisfied smile, as if to emphasize how well his spiritual guides had worked.
Thomas, for his part, found Amar to be a ray of light in his otherwise gloomy love life. âIâd gotten to a place where I told myself I would be okay without love. I was putting myself out there, I was dating people. I fell for people, but I never knew what it was like to have those feelings reciprocated. But with Amar, they were,â Thomas says. âIt was fast. It was likeâ¦falling off a mountain.â
Their digital courtship progressed from Grindr to text messages to phone calls to FaceTime video chats. They would often end their conversations with a question: âWhatâs this thing weâre feeling?â After a few weeks of chatting, they were eager to meet in person; this presented the next hurdle. They lived about 65 miles apart: Thomas in Detroitâs suburbs and Amar in Flint, Michigan.
âWhen I told him I have narcolepsy and canât drive,â Thomas began, âhe said it wasââ
âNo sweat,â Amar finished. âWhat was an hour of driving versus what I would lose not being with him?â Amar eventually moved closer to Detroit for work, and their relationship has settled into something that feels like ânormal.â
The pair spent a lot of time reflecting on their younger selves and contextualizing their relationship in terms of personal growth. As a child, Thomas had struggled to conceptualize whether love would even be a possibility for him: âI just didnât have anything to look up to, to aspire to, to even see,â he says. âEven today, there are so few gay Black couples that I can look up to. I think it wouldâve been important for me, as a child, to see things that told me: You exist in this world. You donât have to hide yourself. You can be authentically 100 percent yourself and aspire to do what you want and find love and live your life unapologetically and unashamed.
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