I fell in love with a black gay man,
and I knew he was gay...
I didn't know he was black.

You see, there are people that teach you how to think for yourself
and there are people that teach you how to think like them, that was my problem.

Those people taught me how to think like them,
so I was going to highschool thinking that white men were better than black men.

Every time a black guy approached me, I made it clear from the beginning that I didn't want anything beyond friendship.

And that's how I met Reginald.

The first black man I fell in love with and I know that I'm saying now that he is black but even so, I couldn't see the blackness in him.

He was the white boy that people talked so much about,
he was the dream boy of any living girl,
but he was locked in a black body that those same people didn't understand.

The first time, I saw a black man, a man who wanted more than friendship with me but who wouldn't.
In the end, we became friends
and very good ones.

That issue of black men not being part of my heart had gone to hell when I started getting to know Reginald better.

I started to love him.

For the love but above all for how they had taught me to think, I started to see him as a white man,
of high rank, with a good family and a magnificent sense of humor.

But then, I found out that my beloved Reginal was gay.
Ironic, right?
The only black man I had ever fallen in love with and it turns out that he is gay.

Still, I couldn't keep myself away from him,
I started doing everything I could so that we were always together
hoping that he would start to feel something for me...

It didn't.

And I don't blame him,
how was I able to notice his passion towards men but not remember that he was a black man?
How  couldn’t I notice that I fell in love with a black man?

Then I realized that the same people who had put such an idea in my mind were black people, people who had decided to surrender against white people and insist on thinking like them.

But they decided that,
they inculcated me that.

The day Reginald died at the hands of my brother, I noticed his blackness again.

And no, it wasn't because I had lost the love I felt for him,
but because it was my brother who taught me to think like him...
who taught me to think like whites.

I lost the love of my life because of my black brother's decision to think in the same way white people do.

Maybe I was the one who should have died at the hands of Reginald's sister
because he saw ME as a white man too the night that we, thanks to a drunken stupor, decided to be one while we were consumed in mutual pleasure without taking into account the consequences.

How will I be able to explain the death of his father to my son who is coming?

Should I tell him that his father died because he was a black man or that his father died because I saw him as a white man?

Should I blame my parents for teaching my brother to think like a white man or should I blame myself for paying attention to him?

Now I don't know who I fell in love with...
And I really think I will never know.

The rhyme was easy
The meter was simple
All we needed was the title.

Whispered words in the night
Loops traced on restaurant napkins
A soft sound against my neck.

A burst of thought during lunch break
Scrolling through lines on a screen
Or the rasp of pages between dry fingers.

The title eluded us
A distant, provocative idea whose
Promise tasted sweeter than its journey,
But whose demand pulled at our stomachs
In an endless tug-of-war.

It was one a.m., he had garlic and
***** and toothpaste breath and I
Coughed and mumbled and
Shoved him away when he
Gasped and prodded my shoulder,
Excited feet making the bed shake.

Somewhere between my "*******"
And "goodnight, sweetheart" was the
Soft caress, the tickle on the back of my neck
That wormed its way into the
Corner of my brain
A white film that slowly seeped behind
My eyelids-
"Reginald"

Reginald
Reginald?
I sat up, I turned, I stared at him until
He opened one smoky eye and watched me
Watching him.

And then I laughed.
And laughed.

And that's why we named you Reginald.