Potential Energy
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You can’t spot a red flag while wearing rose-colored glasses.
This episode contains strong language and graphic imagery. Sensitive listeners, please be advised.
STORIES
“The Mission”: Garrett is infamous on campus for having problematic views on race. Lupita wants to school him into making better choices.
Original score by Sandra Lawson-Ndu and Olukemi Lijadu.
“Red Foxes”: Ansa is living in Washington, D.C. when she meets Henry on a dating app. It’s love at first sight … until a shaman gets involved.
Many thanks to Ansa Edim and Tashal Brown for joining us in the studio!
Transcript
MIND YOUR OWN TRANSCRIPT
EP 7: POTENTIAL ENERGY
Lupita: This episode contains strong language and graphic imagery. Sensitive listeners, please be advised.
[Mind Your Own theme song]
Lupita: I’m Lupita Nyong’o, and this is Mind Your Own.
I’ve been reflecting lately on potential. You wake up, it’s a beautiful morning, all the things have yet to happen, and therefore, all the good things just might come your way.
But the thing about potential is it eventually has to turn into action. You can’t just stay in that one perfect moment, balanced on the edge. Believing in all the good things won’t keep you from falling right off that edge.
And I know a little something about falling.
[intriguing music]
Garrett was infamous on campus. It’s a small-small liberal arts school, so everybody knows everybody. He was tall, about maybe 6’4″, super pale, super blonde. He was a believer that races should keep to themselves. He didn’t believe in races mixing. And everybody knew that Garrett felt this way.
We’re 3% people of color in that campus, so everybody is white and then just us. And I just thought it was ridiculous that someone actually believes that. I kind of, I guess, really, really deeply, subconsciously made it my mission to disprove his theory. [laughs]
And how I went about it was just like, just talking to him. We would have lunch together. I asked him about this idea that races shouldn’t mix, and he was very, very pragmatic about it. He just thought, “At the end of the day, it’s better to stick to your own because you understand your own. I have nothing against Black people. It’s just that I just feel like Black people understand Black people best, and white people understand white people best. So, that’s just how I feel.” And it’s like, “I’m not racist,” [laughs] as they often say.
I’m feeling like you don’t know what you’re talking about. And I argue with him. I had dated white people, and I’ve dated other people. Like, I don’t think that you have to match up perfectly, culturally in order to have love and understanding, and he would argue with me. You get to a point when you’re arguing, it is frustrating, and you just leave it, yeah, and we move on to another topic and stuff like that. The thing about it is that despite his position in things, he would always gravitate towards me.
I would be in the lunch hall, and before you knew it, Garrett was just there. He would deliberately say incendiary things, so that I would like react, and then we could like get into it. He’s definitely going for the broccoli, and he’s giving me a hard time about going for the chicken nuggets, because of course, he’s vegetarian, and he has this kind of like cheeky smile on his face. And then he starts to laugh, and then I start to laugh, and then I’m like – I dismiss him, and I go and I sit down. And of course, he comes to sit right next to me. And the banter, you know.
He asked me to be his girlfriend. And I said, “But I thought you said you don’t believe that races should mix.” Then I think he said something obnoxious like, “I don’t, but I like you,” or some bullshit. But I found myself attracted to him, and I think part of it is like, I like a project, [chuckles] but I just — he had potential to be a really decent person, I felt. He grew vulnerable with me. He took his shield off, and that was the side that I fell for.
At first, I was extremely embarrassed, and I wanted to keep our relationship a secret. I told him, “Let’s just keep this to ourselves. Nobody needs to know. Let’s just be easy with it.” You’d think that he would be the one to say that because he’s the one going against his rules, but it was me. [laughs]
Listen, I don’t remember how my friends found out. It was certainly not through me, but somehow word got around that Lupita and Garrett are dating. My friend asks me, “Lupita, why?” And I didn’t have a good answer except for, “I like him and he isn’t that bad,” was what I said. And my friends looked at me like I had like… they looked at me like I was on a diet of insects or something. It was just like, “What are you doing?”
I had a friend, an African-American friend of mine who I was in a play with. Let’s call him Nate. And while we were doing this play, his father died. And you can imagine he was devastated.
[party music]
I went to him in his dorm, and the students on his floor were all blaring music and playing beer pong. Where I come from, the grieving are never left alone. I was surprised that people were not taking shifts here, you know? I was just not understanding how these people are continuing their beer pong game when one of their own is like in pain.
So, I went back to my dorm, I collected my things for the night, and I texted my boyfriend to say, “Hey, I’m going to hang out with Nate. His father died.” And he texts me back, he’s like, “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. Tell him I’m sorry.” And then in the morning, I get up, and I go back to my dorm room. Garrett meets me there and he’s like, “So, how is Nate?” And I said, “You know, he’s hanging in there, but yeah, he had a rough night.” He’s like, “What do you mean he had a rough night? Did you stay the night there?” And I said, “Yeah.” “Why?” And I was like, “Because his father died. I didn’t want to leave him alone like it’s at night.” And he was like, “You stayed the night? Did you sleep with him?” I was like, “Dude, he was grieving his father. What kind of thing are you asking me? Of course I didn’t.”
And at the time, I wouldn’t sleep with him because I was a virgin, and I was like, “No, I didn’t sleep with him. This is what we do. This is how I grew up. Like, you don’t leave the grieving alone.” And he goes, “This isn’t Kenya. This isn’t Africa. This is America, Lupita. Nobody does that. You’re a fucking whore.”
And I was like, “Wow. Wow.” So, in that moment, everything just totally fell in place. And I said to him, “You can leave and don’t you ever come back.” And he huffed and he puffed, and I let him go. [giggles]
He was basically prowling campuses looking for black women after dating me. And he went on record as saying something about their bigger asses, some sort of ridiculous jungle fever position.
I heard all these things that he had been saying, and it made me mad. And so, one of the first times I got drunk, I got so drunk that I was drunk the next morning, and I went to the cafeteria in my state, and I saw him. He was heading to the soda machine, and I got my tray. I was about to serve my food. Then I changed my mind. I put down my tray, I headed over to him at the soda machine, I tapped on his shoulder, and as he turned around, I cranked my hand and smacked him across the face for all the Black women in the world. And he was stunned, because that was probably a month, at least a month after we had broken up. And I read him his Miranda Rights. I told him, “You didn’t like Black women before me, and we don’t need you now.” [laughs]
I think about it often like, “Why did I date that? Why did I date him?”
Okay, stay tuned. We’ll have more for you after the break.
Lupita: You’re listening to Mind Your Own. Let’s get back to it.
The idea of finding The One, it’s thrilling. And the potential of having a love that will last the rest of your life and into the great beyond, hey, it’s in that first kiss, that first date.
Our next storyteller is very familiar with this kind of potential energy. We’re going to Washington, D.C to hear from Ansa Edim. I’ll let Ansa take it from here.
I hope you’re listening.
Ansa: The first time I told my parents I didn’t want kids, I just told them, “Nope, that sounds gross.” I kept telling them, I’ll want kids when it becomes completely risk-free to have children. It was my entire personality that I did not want children.
So, I am 30 years old, and I had been divorced for about a year and a half, and I’ve never dated in any casual way, so I have no idea how this works. One of the first dates I went on after my divorce, the man showed up to the date, and he looked me up and down, and he said, “Nope.” So, I changed all of my photos on my dating profiles to me in bikinis and me in a boudoir shoot to really flaunt myself and say, “Well, no one will ever show up again and say I didn’t know you were fat, because here I am, and I’m beautiful. So, if you swiped right on me, you liked what you saw and you can’t deny that.”
And then I met Henry.
For our first date, we went to a now defunct bar. I cocked my head up and looked up and thought, “Oh, he’s so handsome.” The fact that Henry’s eyes lit up when he saw me, he just looked like someone who really wanted to be there. Henry and I clicked, like we had known each other for a long time right at the beginning. We bonded over leftist politics, allyship, and Black Lives Matter, and a lot of things that we just had in common. He has heritage in Ukraine. We’ve got immigrant grandparents, I have immigrant parents, and we have a culture exchange that can happen. I can share my Nigerian heritage with him, and he can share his European heritage with me.
And then a couple of days later, he called me, “Hello? It’s Henry. I had such a great time with you. I’d love to go out again,” which shocked me. As a fat Black woman, it wasn’t natural to me to expect men who I deemed handsome and tall, and those types of men, I never really imagined that they would want to be with me. Henry looked at me like I was a goddess.
One day, Henry asked if I was free on a Saturday night, and it was about four weeks after we had met, and I said, “I’m not free. My mother has a gala where she’s being honored for our state back in Nigeria.” And he said, “Oh, that’s great. Do I need to wear a suit?”
[lively music]
I go to pick up Henry at his house. We get in the car, and we drive up to where this party is, and I’m telling him all the things, “Shake with your right hand, stand when someone approaches you,” all of the things that he needs to do to be respectful of the people in the culture. “Don’t mention their outfits. Don’t say anything. Just nod and smile.”
When he meets my mother, she, of course, is decked out in this gold and red Nigerian Ankara dress. She’s got her headpiece on, and she says, “Oh, Henry, it was so nice to meet you. I’ve heard so much.” Everyone’s welcoming and kind.
At some point during the party, the spraying begins. And spraying is the act of tossing money or placing money on dancing people as a way to honor them or to fundraise. I went to go spray my mother. She was dancing. She was the honoree. I turn and I see Henry with money in his hand, and he’s smiling, and he’s tossing money at my mom, and I’m thinking, “He’s getting into it. This is wonderful.” We are driving home, and I’m thinking, “This went off without a hitch. This is great,” until he says, “Yeah, and I ended up spraying your mom. That was really fun. It was like being at a strip club.”
I didn’t like his joke. He said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I convinced myself that I need to focus on the good. We just had a good night. I talked myself out of making a big deal about it. It’s early on in the relationship and there’s room. There’s room for growth and forgiveness and learning.
[dreamy music]
So, Henry had been clear from the beginning that he wanted children. It was two months into the relationship, and we were hugging, waiting for the train. And at some point, he’d said, “We cannot continue dating unless you change your mind. I need to know right now, do you want children or not?” And I said, you know, maybe I am being too strict with this no children rule. And I told him, “I could be open to having children in the future with you.” He was satisfied with that answer. And he talks a lot about imagining what that child would look like.
When we walked down the street, on two occasions, I was yelled at by two different Black men on a street corner saying that I was a race traitor, that I was going to burn in hell, and that I was doing everything wrong. And every time that happened, Henry started to talk about, “Oh, don’t listen to them, because we are going to have the most beautiful children. They will be mixed, biracial, they’ll have light skin, they’ll probably have great hair.” And he would say, “I’m just looking at my future.” And I didn’t know why that was supposed to comfort me in this moment. So, I made excuses and said, “Oh, well, at least the kids will be cute.”
I mean I’m having a great time with Henry because he’s also adventurous. He’s also extroverted like I am. I like how involved he is in his community. He has a community.
So, we date for about a year and a half, and then Henry surprises me with a trip to upstate New York. We go for a walk, and we find a spot where we said I love you, and it’s very romantic. We get to this overlook, and he gets down one knee, and he pops out this ring, a beautiful ring, and he says, “Will you marry me?” And I just said, “Yes. Yes.” I was getting this fairytale love that was happening to me.
It seemed like a dream, but I was really starting to question whether that was enough.
All of those alarms were going off in my head that “shouldn’t I be happier?” Every time I said something, Henry kind of shut it down and reassured me that it’s totally normal to get anxious and to feel butterflies in your stomach. And I said, “This is more than butterflies. I’m really anxious.” I would get very nauseous, and I would start sweating so much that I’d have to take off all of my clothes. Henry was trying to reassure me that having cold feet is okay. People get cold feet before getting married all the time. I was convinced that I was wrong and Henry was right. I just kept saying, “This is fine. This is fine. I love him.”
We’ve been engaged now for maybe six months, and Henry asked his uncle to get ordained to marry us, because they’re very close. And his uncle said, “Come up to my cabin in the woods, so I can get to know Ansa for the weekend.” I tried to get out of it. I told Henry that I thought it was too fast for us to get married, and he said, “Just spend some time in this cabin with my family, with my aunt and uncle, and everything will be all right. We just need a weekend away.”
[car driving]
And so, I went with him, even though we argued the whole drive up there.
So, this cabin was very secluded. You really have to turn off of this gravel road to go up another gravel road until you see up a hill. And there’s no lighting, just this cabin, this little shack, really, a bungalow. We eat dinner, and we go to bed, and we wake up, and I can’t find Henry. I don’t know where he’s gone. So, I leave the bedroom to go talk to Henry’s aunt.
She’s somewhere in her late 70s, short white hair, a fleece sweater, comfortable looking pants, and her fingers are a little knobby. She’s got some arthritis that she’s dealing with. And she says, “Would you like to see my art studio?” Henry’s aunt and uncle are artists, and they make really cool art, portraits, sculptures. So, I’m excited to see this.
So, we’re in the studio, and I’m looking around, and I see a drum in the corner like a West African talking drum. I was a little confused to see a West African talking drum in this elderly white woman’s art studio, but I had heard she’s very spiritual, and so maybe that’s normal for her, but also because Henry was in a West African drum ensemble with white people who were dashikis, and so he had a drum as well. So, I ask her, “Oh, do you also play?” And she picks up the drum, and she says, “No, I’m a shaman. Have you ever been on a shamanic voyage?”
Lupita: Don’t go anywhere. More after this quick break.
You’re listening to Mind Your Own. Let’s jump back into that story.
Ansa: I was shocked, and I was confused, and I thought, “Oh, my God, she’s a shaman.” So, there’s a nearby rocking chair. Her hand is placed on my shoulder, and she’s sitting me down in this rocking chair, and she says, “Is there anything that you’re struggling with right now? Is there a decision that you’re struggling to make right now?” [drumming] I have a lot weighing on my mind. She’s beating this drum kind of slowly, rhythmically, and I close my eyes. It felt like an instant pull out of the room.
[drumming gets faster and louder, then suddenly stops]
[sound of the wind blowing through trees]
It felt like I blinked. And the wind hit me, and I was just standing outside suddenly, like I had been picked up and dropped outside. And I don’t know how I got there, but I look around. There’s a hill, like a small hill, and at the top of the hill, I see Henry. He’s waving, and he’s smiling. But between us is a fox. It’s red, its ears are pointy, it’s got black feet, and its body is facing Henry, but its head is turned back towards me. I feel as if it’s telling me, “Come with us. Follow me.”
There is a light shining on him, and it looks like a sunbeam coming through a break in the tree line in such a way that said he was my savior. I needed to walk toward the only familiar thing. I follow the fox toward Henry, and I’m crawling up this hill. [heavy footsteps] I’m walking. I’m trudging. It’s not a clean path, so I’m not walking very fast. Just as I reach Henry, there is another aggressive pull. And whoosh. I’m not in the woods anymore. I’m standing in what looks like a nursery, a baby’s room.
[music box melody]
And Henry is there. The whole room is white, white walls, white floors, a white crib. Henry has a baby blanket, a nappy, something like that, like a small towel over his shoulder that’s also white, and he’s holding on the other side of him, a baby. And this baby, I just have this feeling that this is my baby, that he’s holding our baby. I felt this sense of warm tingling, this is good.
Before I could reach out to them or say anything, I’m pulled back.
[music and sound effects in reverse]
But this isn’t the rush of before. It felt as if someone had a rope attached to me, and then the whole thing happened in reverse. We’re walking backwards down this hill, and the fox is walking backwards in front of me. And then I open my eyes, and I am back in the studio in this rocking chair with this drum beating inches from my face like this fast, high tempo, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
[eerie sounds]
I don’t know how long I’ve been gone. I can’t breathe. I don’t know what just happened to me. I’m hyperventilating. My chest was so tight, I’m crying. The aunt tries to calm me down by slowing the beat of the drum and slowing her previously aggressive rocking of the chair, and she just says, “You have a gift.” That’s all she says. And I don’t know what that means. I have no idea what’s going on. She doesn’t say anything else. She just says, “You have a gift.”
So, I’m spooked. I’m scared. It felt like I was in a horror movie, like I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Will anyone believe me when I tell them what happened?
I took some deep breaths and told myself to calm down, because I wasn’t even sure that I had experienced anything. Just very casually, Henry walks into the studio and says, “There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” I acted as if nothing had just happened. I stay calm. I don’t tell Henry what I saw. I don’t tell his aunt what I saw. I just take a deep breath and walk out of the studio with Henry.
And we get to dinner and I’m asked to set the table. So, I’m putting the plates down, and I look at the plates, and they have red foxes on them.
So, I see the fox, and I look up, and Henry’s aunt is already looking at me, and her eyes have locked with mine, and she winks. [chiming] I didn’t tell anyone what I saw in that vision. “Okay, this powerful witch is trying to tell me something. What am I supposed to be learning here? What’s the lesson?” I couldn’t deny what I had seen. I couldn’t deny that that future looked peaceful. And if that was a vision of what could be in store for me, I was willing to see it through. It was all quite positive and sunny. There was a halo over his head, right? He’s holding a baby.
It helped me make the decision. I’m going to marry this man.
So, we’re back home. We live in Washington DC. And during this time, we live very close to the Capitol. And in the middle of the day, we see that the Capitol building has been breached by protesters. And I’m so scared because they brought nooses and crosses to burn. And I remember as a kid learning about racism before I realized that they were racist against me. But I remember learning about the KKK. The thing I had nightmares about for months was someone burning a cross on our front lawn. I was so afraid. I’m from Northern Virginia, and I went to a school named after a Confederate general, you know, the Confederate general.
From my front porch, I have a beautiful view of the Capitol. I just sat there just thinking, “They are destroying this building right now. I cannot believe this is happening.” And as I was sitting there, Henry stands up and he goes on this rant, and he says, “Who would have thought they would have done this?” And I said, “They’ve been planning this for a long time. They were going to do this.” And he said, “Yeah, but they’re not all racist.” He described them as likely weekend warriors who just had time to burn. I don’t know how to respond because I don’t want to argue about racism right now. I want to be comforted. I want to be reminded that the world is okay. And it all hits me. [drumming]
This man is not talking to me. He’s talking at me, and I started to recognize that it’s not just that I don’t like Henry. It’s that I don’t like how Henry treats me and I don’t like that Henry invalidates me and I don’t like that Henry says he loves my Blackness.
I just looked at him and I just thought, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t see me as a fully formed human being. And I tell him all of this and he says, “You know what? I don’t feel like talking about racism right now anyway,” and he goes to bed.
And it hit me that I’m not going to do this anymore. This is dumb. Life is way too short. The spell was broken.
So, I’m deeply depressed because I have called off a wedding. I’m doubting myself because did I throw away a good thing? Was it that bad? I googled what foxes mean in storytelling. And what I found was that foxes and storytelling and dreams tend to represent something that you know you should stay away from. They represent intuition. And it all hit me that the vision that I had during whatever this episode was, was to tell me to trust my instinct.
The next time I saw fox was on the plate of a date that I was on, the second date, actually. We sat down at the restaurant and my plate had an owl on it and his plate had a red fox on it. And I told him, “Uh, this isn’t going to work out for us.” [laughs]
[engrossing music]
Lupita: Ansa’s story obviously brings up a lot for me. I mean, it reminds me of the sunken place. The sunken place exists. Like in Kenya, I remember there was a time when there was something called Nairobi Eye going around, where if you looked at someone who had Nairobi Eye, you would be instantly hypnotized and they could take full advantage of you. Yeah, it was very, very scary. I spent a lot of time looking at my shoes to avoid eye contact with strangers.
The other thing I’m thinking when I hear about what Ansa went through is that we were both in relationships with people exhibiting so many red flags. And we explained them away. We found the excuse. We found the context as to why their behavior was acceptable.
What’s frustrating about red flags is that everybody else seems to see them. Except you.
If you recall, I ended my story about my college boyfriend, Mr. Garrett, with a very confounding question: why? I mean, why did I date him?
I want to talk to someone who saw those flags. [laughs] Put her on the spot.
Let’s phone a friend.
[ringing]
Lupita: Tashal Brown, it’s so good to have you on this podcast with me. How are you?
Tashal: I’m doing well. I’m so looking forward to chatting with you.
Lupita: Oh, yeah, we met in college, and we’ve been friends ever since.
Tashal: Yep, it’s been a long journey.
Lupita: [laughs] Okay. I want to know how you found out that there was something going on between me and Garrett, because I was also extremely shy about it and maybe slightly embarrassed.
Tashal: I could have sworn I saw you two around each other. I didn’t think much of it because in my mind, I’m like, “There’s no way. There’s just no way.” It’s not a match that I thought could be possible.
Lupita: [laughs]
Tashal: I was developing a racial awareness and consciousness that was making me Blacker than Black, by that point. I was like, I didn’t have much room for anyone who was holding certain problematic racial perspectives.
Lupita: I didn’t go looking for Garrett. I wasn’t like seeking him out, if that makes sense.
Tashal: Hm. Okay.
Lupita: I feel like I’m in court.
Tashal: I guess, I can see that.
Lupita: Do you remember what I said to you? What did I say? How did I justify it?
Tashal: Your view of him held so much possibility that it seemed like you were willing to explore. But on my end, it made me wary that he was perceiving you as some type of object, or trophy, or some type of like experiment, if that makes sense. And I didn’t like that.
Lupita: Mm-hmm, that’s fair, that’s fair. Did you ever feel like I should have known better?
Tashal: Um… Initially, yes, because I already was skeptical about him. Knowing that I was skeptical and other people were, I didn’t understand why you weren’t. But at the end of the day, I guess in some ways, it could be understandable, like, your curiosity or your intrigue towards him, because we were all kind of learning and growing, especially around racial consciousness in a predominantly white space. In some ways, there was grace there, in my mind, for you to be able to learn. I mean, I think to myself, like, I wasn’t making the best decisions in terms of relationships.
Lupita: Yeah.
Tashal: Many of us weren’t.
Lupita: Yeah. Coming to the US, I did not have the vocabulary for all things racism, and I certainly didn’t know – because it was new to me, it wasn’t as burdensome. With ignorance comes patience, perhaps, you know?
Tashal: Hmm.
Lupita: Well, I appreciate the grace you granted me, Tashal. I’ve always judged myself very harshly for that period in my life. It’s a stain on my record, so to hear that you who witnessed it granted me some grace at that time, even if we never talked about it. It’s really – it’s a soothing thing to hear all these years later.
[lively music]
Lupita: I’m so glad my good friend, Tashal, came onto this show and remembered so much. Thank you, Tashal.
I also want to thank Ansa for sharing her story today. Ansa Edim is a storyteller and writer who can be found on stage or online. She is writing a book about her experiences in dating app hell, and also writes a newsletter. For all things Ansa, check out our show notes.
Thanks for listening. It’s been really good to have you, and I enjoyed going with you to the woods. We stumbled across a red fox. It came closer. Closer still. Started talking and said, “Get. Out.”
We’ll see you the next time you Mind Your Own.
Until then, here’s a song from the continent: Haibo by Kiddo CSA.
[Haibo by Kiddo CSA]
Lupita: Mind Your Own is hosted and produced by me, Lupita Nyong’o. This is a production of Snap Studios at KQED, with sales and distribution by Lemonada Media.
The executive producers are Glynn Washington and Mark Ristich. Our managing editor is Regina Bediako. Our director of production is Marisa Dodge.
Original music in my story, “The Mission,” was by Sandra Lawson-Ndu and Olukemi Lijadu. The story “Red Foxes” was produced by Priscilla Alabi. Original music by Clay Xavier. Additional music from Ehiorobo.
Our Mind Your Own producers are David Exumé and Priscilla Alabi. Our story scouts are Ashley Okwuosa, Fiona Nyong’o, Jessica Kariisa, and Lesedi Oluko Moche. Our editors are Nancy Lopez and Anna Sussman. Our story consultant is John Fecile. Engineering by Miles Lassi. Our music supervisor is Sandra Lawson-Ndu, also known as Sandu Ndu. She also created the Mind Your Own theme song with Peachcurls, featuring vocals from Ehiorobo.
Graphic design by Jemimah Ekeh. Original artwork by Mateus Sithole.
Special thanks to Allan Coye, Jake Kleinberg, Samara Still, Sarah Yoo, Warner Music Group, and Afripods.
Make sure to follow Mind Your Own and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Now go out, get together, and mind your own… red flags.
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