embracing joy through queerplatonic intimacy — kevanté ac cash
“my chosen family has taught me that this joy i longed to experience through them and communing, was buried deep in my soul, and i had to do the work to uncover it, to heal the wounds that layered on top of it, and like a hand waiting at the bottom of the well to be pulled up, salvaged.
”
last year caused many to turn inwards and face the chilling truth that remains constant - change. i am not exempt from this reckoning of sorts. so much has changed in my life in the last 13 months: i’ve moved flats twice, protested in solidarity with my Black and siblings of colour in the African diaspora for the Black Lives Matter and #EndSars movements, and unpacked so much of my childhood wounding that i have material to last me most of my writing career. i’ve completed a dissertation, sat on a panel of notable queer Bahamian writers and educators - some of whom i’ve looked up to since i was a teenager, and grieved (and i’m still grieving) one of the hardest deaths i’ve ever had to accept - my father.
i can remember the eight-months-ago night as if it were yesterday. my father went in for heart surgery. i went out for several walks in the park, wrote profusely, scrolled purposelessly on social media, then, made a call. we talked for nearly four hours, shan, a friend who lived in tampa, and i. i called her to distract myself. she did her very best. we ended the call a little close to 2am BST. thirty minutes later my brother called to break the news: “kevanté, daddy… daddy didn’t make it”. i was staying with frida and josie, friends i had made through a queer people of colour support group in manchester, at the time. i remember knocking on their bedroom door, frida running to catch me as i dropped to the echoey plywood floor in uncontrollable tears. i wailed and wailed and wailed. and love held me. josie, bracing my back, as we wept together. they had never met my father but they cried as if he was theirs too. later that week, erika, a friend who was living in london at the time, took a train up to manchester to spend the next seven days comforting and helping me to prepare for what would be the worst three weeks of my life.
shan, frida, josie and erika, members of my chosen family, showed up in radical love and compassion; and not just during the time of my father’s passing, but throughout all of last year. erika and shan, even years before that. through the learning, unlearning and breaking, i have found solace in queerplatonic intimacy i foster through my chosen family.
queerplatonic intimacy is a term i discovered through reading alex lantaffi and meg-john barker’s book life isn’t binary: on being both, beyond, and in-between. i am not contracted as a publicist for either one of these authors, but if you are a bi/pansexual and/or non-binary person, i would highly highly recommend this read. in fact, i would recommend this read to straight and/or cisgendered people as well (queer theory for global change, thank you very much!).
it was a hot quarantined day when i was rummaging through frida and josie’s bookshelves and... voilá! this book had my name scribbled alongside the corners of its pages. when i got to the chapter that discussed queerplatonic intimacy, i conducted a google deep-dive of my own, and discovered there was a whole community of queer people who fostered intimacy through platonic connections with other queer people. some of these people didn’t have partners, but instead, considered their friends as their platonic partners; while others did have partners, but their platonic connections were valued as equally important as their romantic one(s). in these cases, there was no hierarchy of connections. some of these people worked and lived with their queerplatonic partners; some did not, but depended greatly upon them.
queerplatonic intimacy or relationships is different from your regular friendship. these are people who carry similar queer-shaped wounds as you, usually from biological family both/and the outside world, whom you decide to build a connection that is based on radical self and community acceptance, emotional, and in some cases, financial support. i quickly resonated with this gesture since it didn’t take much for me to realise how much my connections with people like josie, frida, shan and erika meant to me as a queer Black Caribbean person living in a foreign country.
though the pandemic has stolen so much from so many, the event has caused me to lean on my chosen family. and through this, lean into joy - joy, unshakeable and full of Black glory. joy as resistance. Queer Black joy as resistance. my chosen family has taught me that this joy i longed to experience through them and communing, was buried deep in my soul, and i had to do the work to uncover it, to heal the wounds that layered on top of it, and like a hand waiting at the bottom of the well to be pulled up, salvaged. they have taught me that my joy had to be salvaged, and then, at all costs, and by any means necessary, protected. even if that protection comes at the cost of upsetting biological family.
as i continue to lean into this joy, get grounded, learn when to be still and when to move, my queerplatonic relationships are there, near and far, gently or firmly, whatever the situation may call for, pushing me through it. they hold me accountable to truth-telling, and having fun along the way of healing. they are joy unshakeable, and full of Black and Brown glory.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
kevanté ac cash is a nassau-bahamian poet, writer, storyteller and occasional visual artist, currently making work about the multifacetedness of Caribbeanness, Blackness and queerness. they are based in manchester, england. see more of their work here.