Cal
Charlie J. Stephens Calpurnia was born on the island of Barbados, but moved to London as a teenager. She rubbed her skin every morning with African oil and lamented her cracked “island feet” even though she hadn’t lived on an island for 20 years or more. Her accent, that mix of Caribbean and British, made everyone swoon helplessly. I met her at a restaurant where we both worked. My friend Michaela said, “She’s got a thing for white people,” which I think was meant to dissuade, to cheapen, but all it did was let me know I had a chance. I was okay with being a type. A few weeks later, in the middle of the night by some rocks in Ohlone Park, she told me she had a crush on me, and it wasn’t long before I was spending nights. She played me old records of bands I’d never heard of--Kid Creole and the Coconuts and the Little River Band--and let me rub her fucked up feet sometimes, even though she was very self conscious about it. I took this as a good sign. She cooked us meals her grandmother had taught her. Rich fried things balanced out with light, flowery drinks made from sorrel. My favorite was saltfish and ackee, and I named the puppy I got around that time Ackee. That pup grew up on spicy leftovers and rough housing. I’d lie on Cal’s floor in her Old Oakland bungalow and try to keep Ackee’s sharp teeth from destroying the legs of Cal’s furniture. Once over coffee, Cal started explaining something about ebony and ivory, but I was distracted from her point by her sexy, motherfucking accent. Later I came to understand that Michaela had been right and wrong. It was the nearness, the mixing, that Cal craved. It was Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder played at some formative moment. If Cal had been white, she would have dated black people exclusively. Like her sauces and remoulades, she wanted all the ingredients to blend. Once she took me with her to San Francisco, to cook a meal involving delicate quail eggs for an old friend of hers who was dying. But aside from that foray, our relationship was not for public consumption. She was boyish and I was boyish, and while our skin colors worked with her ideal vision, our faggy aesthetic did not. I finally understood this when one cold night she had me wait, scared to death, on a dangerous downtown drug corner while she walked down the street to give a set of keys to a friend of hers who didn’t know about us. She didn’t want us to be seen together after hours. When we parted ways soon after this, I cried enough in her living room to thoroughly embarrass myself, but soon took to rubbing my own feet with oil in the evenings, while Ackee grew up and ate other couch legs, howling mournfully whenever I put on Stevie Wonder records. |
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About the Author:
Charlie J. Stephens is a queer fiction writer living in Northern California. Charlie has lived all over the U.S. as a bike messenger, wilderness guide, bookstore clerk, and seasonal shark diver (for educational purposes only). Charlie recently won second place in The Flexible Persona’s Short-Shorts Editor’s prize, and first place in The Forge Literary Magazine’s 2018 Flash Fiction Competition. Other written work has most recently appeared in Rappahannock Review, Not Your Mother’s Breast Milk, and Nothing Short of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story (Outpost19 Books). More at charliejstephenswriting.com.
Charlie J. Stephens is a queer fiction writer living in Northern California. Charlie has lived all over the U.S. as a bike messenger, wilderness guide, bookstore clerk, and seasonal shark diver (for educational purposes only). Charlie recently won second place in The Flexible Persona’s Short-Shorts Editor’s prize, and first place in The Forge Literary Magazine’s 2018 Flash Fiction Competition. Other written work has most recently appeared in Rappahannock Review, Not Your Mother’s Breast Milk, and Nothing Short of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story (Outpost19 Books). More at charliejstephenswriting.com.