Madzimoyo. I ask him his real name and he tells me. I test it on my tongue. He laughs and says that I have pronounced it in Swahili and not Ngoni, that it should roll off my tongue gently, not fall like a stone. I try again. He tells me that I am hopeless. He despises the cumbersomeness of what he calls his ‘native’ name but I love it and continue to massacre it.
DJ Madz. That is his stage name. He loves poetry slams and rap battles. He has a way with words but he is a poet who needs an 808 snare and a mic, not pen and paper. He tells me he wants to become a professional rapper, a hip-hop artist. I secretly hope that this is a passing ambition but I know that his love of words is not a flight of fancy. It is an incurable itch, and Madz wants immortality. This he will not find in hastily scribbled rhymes on scraps of torn notebook paper and so he is looking for a producer. He promises me that I will be the girl in his video.
Sinnerman. This is my name for him. Aubrey is the implausible name that his parents saddled him with at birth. I hate it and refuse to utter it. Sinnerman he likes, because I have made him listen to my Nina Simone just as he has made me listen to his Dead Prez. Also because when he whispers secret things and enters secret places, I become possessed and therefore he must be the devil.
One day he gives me the shirt off his back. It is black and faded with Tupac’s face emblazoned on the front and ‘All Eyez On Me’ on the back. I have remarked previously on how nice the t-shirt is and today Sinnerman takes it off and tells me I can have it. I protest half-heartedly but he says it would look better on me anyway. He instructs me to wear it every night with nothing underneath and to think of him when I do. I tell him that it would be hard to do with Tupac’s face on my bosom. I ask him what he would like in return. He slides my red thong down my hips. A few days later, I see it hanging in his shower to dry.
He wants to tattoo the map of Africa on his back. He wants every country drawn in and labelled. We fight about this. I accuse him of trying to reassure himself of his Africanness. I have often poked fun at him for embracing many African American sensibilities. He was raised in Atlanta, our shared confusion over identity brought us together. He wears sagging baggy jeans whose hems slouch over dirty Timberland boots. He speaks with a twang and calls me baby girl. I mock his musical collection that is an altar to gangsta rap, and poke fun at his dreams of rap glory and easy riches. I tell him that instead of busting rhymes about booty and bling to the upper strata of the New African society, he ought to use his talent to speak out against the social ills that affect the invisible voiceless. I tell him that in his keenness to copy others, he has forgotten who he is and is now attempting to atone for his sins, that he is seeking forgiveness from Mama Africa by searing her outline across his back.
Who are you to judge, he asks. Who died and made you the arbiter of all things African?
[...] the Painted Lady is a creature of considerable charm – who doesn’t like butterflies? – and a fine young man from a very impoverished nation took a liking to her. This fine young specimen was a man of many [...]