erotic’s echo internal dialogues on self-salvation
or, How to Love Your Dead Boyfriend
by matt ford & friends
Introduction:
On the erotic as theory
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Only now, I fnd more and more women-identifed women brave enough to risk sharing the erotic's electrical charge without having to look away, and without distorting the enormously powerful and creative nature of that exchange. Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama. For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and self-affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society.
—Audre Lorde, Uses of the EroticShe comes in the daytime. Denver.
She’s still with me, my Denver.
I’m tired. So tired. I have to rest a while.
Oh, I don’t have no plans. No plans at all.
And count my feet?
She left me. She was my best thing.
Me? Me?
Sethe, Beloved by Toni Morrison
On Monday, August 17, 2020, I took my last photo of you, at Black’s Beach, our only beach day together in California. We hiked — and indeed, hiked — down the dirt hill with your sandals in one hand, your speaker, ever present, in the other, and your blue picnic chair strapped over your left shoulder. You marched before me with your black-and-white-bathed back to the camera, in the colors of a fractal existence, dangling in the duality between here and elsewhere.
On Friday, December 4, 2020, xxx you exhaled for the fnal time. x
Te Universe had forewarned me: I would x lie on my couch and awaken to a x call from Sarah around 6 a.m. I would x pick up and ask, “Is it what I think it is?”x
Yes. “When did it happen?” Tis morning. x When it happened, I allowed myself x one great, full-bellied scream before sniffling that I needed to hold i it together for the both of us x —a declaration x as empty as x your bones. x
My therapist and I developed a mental “toolkit” to help me navigate acutely anxietyinducing situations—regretting our separation, blaming myself for your death. I call this tool the “train exercise”:
1. See yourself standing on the L platform in Chicago. You are waiting for the Red Line to take you downtown.
2. Te Blue Line approaches. You know that the Blue Line will take you out of the way to your destination. You are running a tad late so you consider taking the Blue Line anyway.
3. Do not get on the Blue Line.
4. You take the Blue Line anyway. After one stop, you see that you haven’t gone too far and you can transfer to the Red Line at the next stop.
5. You get off the Blue Line at the next stop.
6. You wait on the platform for the Red Line. You might send an email, check your notifcations, or admire someone’s outft to pass time.
7. You board the Red Line when it approaches and get off at the correct stop, reaching your destination safely and right on time despite your detours.
Te Absence of Her Lover Makes Her Who She Is (for cynthia)
“Te sky behaved like a showgirl.”
She say dis den dat den she kiss me on my forehead right above the bicycle scar.
Now, my body hosts your ghost:
A tiny crescent-shaped scar on my right ankle. Your stage name, in G-Unit cursive, on the left side of my abdomen, where you would anchor me lest this ravenous world snatch me away.
Consider touch the closest thing we have to manifesting the divine. Flesh as terrain. As in: in the beginning there was matter so supple it melted the mind’s body.
I wave my hand at the sound of a sanctifed run or make the stank-face as I bust a move in the navy blue mirror you painted, like a ghetto superstar.
Peppermint lipstick favor on a slight moon mouth.
what the body remembers.
—Akilah Oliver, Te She Said Dialogues: Flesh Memory
what i remember.
You are the one that lives in me, my dear.*
A Guardian Angel to many. You beam to and fro, between Chicago and elsewhere, to see your mother, Granny Smith, Sarah, and Paris—now my mothers and sisters. Mostly, I trust that you, a Sagittarius, embark on endless escapades, dancing from star to moon, planet to dimension.
*Janet Jackson, “I Get Lonely”, Te Velvet RopeAbove my kitchen cupboards, I’ve arranged an altar for you. Hanging in the center is a wooden cross hand-painted with giraffes, alligators, trees, and stars. Matching mementos sit on either side of the cross: from the left, a triad of our photographs, a wooden block painting of the Chicago fag and skyline in Trans Pride colors I made the summer we moved in together, a Pridethemed candle, and vines in a gold pot; from the right, another triad, your boombox (“Te only thing I have from my father”), a rainbow-labeled candle, and another gold pot of vines. Trimmed with lighted Christmas garland, I leave the lights on so you know you’re always welcome home.
• • •
From your throne, you protect me from leeches seeking a feast in my light. One, following a séance with you, my father, and my uncle, said they don’t think you like them. Another said he caught your eye in a photo and promised, “I won’t hurt Matthew,” to which you simply replied, “Okay.”
Every day, something has tried to kill me and has failed (Lucille Clifton, “won’t you celebrate with me”).
New Year’s Eve 01/23/23
On the day before Lunar New Year, I officially became a student at the local Kung Fu Academy. Committed to a life of discipline. Later that night, I bought two days’ worth of dinner, took out the trash, washed the dishes, and stowed away the clothes that accumulated on my bedroom couch. Before going to bed, I turned on the lighted garland lining your kitchen cupboard altar. Lately, I haven’t been turning it on, the light company having announced price hikes. In this economy?
Te bastards. But I missed your light, and I wanted to make an explicit invitation for you to enter my new year, and a new me, with me. Happy new year, my love, to the moon and back.
All love, always, Your earthling
I received a piece of mail with your name on it the other day, an invitation to a Vassar event.
“Mr. Matthew Ford & Mr. Cory Smith”
I almost threw it away, barely out of the mailroom, but stopped in my tracks, wondering how your name arrived there in the frst place. I remembered:
When the talk of longevity between us grew serious, I’d added you to my alumni profle as a registered life partner/spouse for my fve-year reunion (which I skipped because you’re not here and my friends were too busy to attend). For now, we’d get joint bank accounts, exchange rings, and move across the country together. You wanted to move to LA after our stint in San Diego, visit the Grammy Museum and attend local open mics, as you did in Chicago. You maintained that you didn’t dream of being a big music star. You would be content with working while teaching choir (which you did just two months before you passed) and having a band on the side. But if you got to tour the world with your band you might reconsider.
I maintain that I do not dream of labor. I do have dreams of letting my light shine as brightly as it can in this iteration of life, teaching on the side of my various projects, not working but “doing the work.”
I almost took your shiny shoes and my green suit from our last quartet show together to LA with me this weekend as good luck on getting into a Grammy party at the last minute. Maybe I should have. Instead, a producer friend and I watched in his Koreatown apartment and manifested music industry work in LA. Next year, I’ll make your dreams come true.
We look like pigs, our stomachs protruding like my arm stretched outward taking the photo in selfe mode [in those fractal colors again], having stuffed ourselves with every delight imaginable. To celebrate our frst anniversary, three days after Valentine’s Day, I said I simply wanted to indulge: go to the movies (“Te Photograph”), get incredibly high, and go to Olive Garden to eat as much of my culinary Holy Trinity —carbs, cheese, and wine—as we possibly could. And to do it all with the person I love most. And that we did. We got wasted on food, on love, on each other, our thermal shirts and necklaces raised up, mine revealing the tip of my “10-4” tummy tat just outside the frame, yours revealing your nipples, round and raised. My smile is wide, my eyes closed, your Chester Cheetah grin and narrow eyes gazing into the lens. We were ridiculously happy, gluttonous of our love.
Work, in progress…
Uh. Uh uh. Uh uh uh uh. Nothing's gonna stop us. We can't be stopped. Uh uh. Uh uh. You must remember. You can’t be stopped. You have to stay strong, my sista. My sister, you can’t be stopped. You must remember. Blood of kings and queens. Stand tall, my brotha. No, you can’t be stopped. Uh uh. Uh. Don’t ever let nobody tell you you ain’t strong enough.
Uh uh. Uh. You must remember. Blood of kings and queens. Sister, stand strong. You can’t be stopped, my sista. You must. You can’t be stopped. Stand tall, my brotha. No no no no no, no no nah naw no. Uh uh. Uh. Uh uh uh. Uh.
ZAMI. A Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers. Ma-Liz.
DeLois, Louise Biscoe, Aunt Anni Linda, and Genevieve; MawLisa, thunder, sky, sun, the great mother of us all; and Afrekete, her youngest daughter, the mischievous linguist, trickster, best-beloved, whom we must all become.
I am a child of God. I am a child of the House of Achievement.
Rev. Ford, Madear, Aunt Liz, Dad, Granddaddy, Uncle Mike, Uncle Will.
Who have gone before me in light and now guide me through dark.
My personal, ancestral, celestial magicians. My indestructible umbilical cord to the divine, to Spirit. To my erotic.
It was not a story to pass on.
It was not a story to pass on.
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It was not a story to pass on.
It was not a story to pass on.
Tis is not a story to pass on.
Unknown in Beloved by Toni Morrison