Black Waters (Frank Ocean Love Story)

Chapter 二

Christopher’s View.

The lyrics to 'Thinkin' Bout You'…they tell my entire story. And the whole world knows that. But when they think of my story, they’re not thinking of that Career Advising Office. They’re not thinking of a cabin by a river or a beautiful girl with shortcut hair or the name Ajahni. They’re thinking of where we fast-forward a little to the part when I fall in love with a man.

The man that was my second love, not my first.

I haven’t told anyone about Ajahni. Sometimes I think I’m going crazy, and that she never even existed and that it was all a dream. But it couldn’t have been—she touched my heart in a way that no one ever had before.

“Hey Frank, we're ready to go - for the fifth time now.” Tyler said to me. I sighed and pushed out that smile, that trademark easy-going smile of mine. It was like my smile was my lucky charm—without it, people would know how worried and sad I was inside.

“Okay, I'm coming. Relax,” I said, getting out of the chair in the studio and grabbing my sweater. Tyler and I made our way out the door and into the bright sun of New Orleans. It was pretty quiet outside, since it was too early in the morning for anyone to be outside doing anything.

“Can I ask you a question?” Tyler asked. His voice was always deep and jovial, so I couldn’t really tell when he was serious.

“Hit me.” I ran a few steps to catch up with his fast paced walking. We needed to get back to our hide-out spot before someone spotted us.

“You know all them times when I be talking to you, and it takes like four or five times for me to call your name?”

“Yeah…” I said.

“Is it that you’re going deaf, or you think too much?” Tyler asked as we crossed the street onto Allegan Road. I laughed.

“I’m not going deaf—hopefully. I think I just find myself daydreaming a lot. Why, were you worried?” I teased him. He laughed, and winked at a girl who had just passed wearing the tightest, shortest red dress I’d ever seen.

Sometimes I envied those moments, when my guy friends could see a girl that they thought was pretty and make her blush. But since…Forrest…I’ve been more attracted to men than women. The only reason I say that I’m not fully gay, that I’m bisexual, is that if I ever see Ajahni again…

I’ve never stopped loving her.

“Man, New Orleans is full of bitches.” T said as we walked through a back-gate to take a shortcut through a baseball field. In the field, I felt the urge to cough—gravel was being kicked up into the air constantly.

“Maybe we can even find some bagels for you.” He continued. I never took offense when Tyler said things like that. After all, he was always joking around. And if anyone else made a joke about my sexuality, he would definitely defend me.

“Nah, I’m good.” I chuckled.  Maybe if it was different, if I hadn’t been aching to see Forrest at least one more time, I would start looking for another partner. But I can’t let myself to continue forgetting about him. I’ve already forgotten his real name, so I call him Forrest as in Forrest Gump. I have to continue trying to hold on to him in my heart until I find him.

I haven’t forgotten anything about Ajahni, though, I thought to myself. Then I shook the thought out of my head. The reason I don’t remember everything about Ajahni is not because I’m secretly straight or something; I remember everything about her because she was just a different type of person.

Soon we were out of the baseball field and standing directly in front of a narrow, two-story blue house with peeling paint. Tyler walked ahead of me, up the white stairs and to the front door.

He pounded on it a few times, and then the door swung open. It was this Earl. He was a little younger than Tyler and I, but we still kept him around because he had crazy talent.

“Did you buy the corn?” Tyler asked him. Earl nodded quickly and smiled.

“FOUR CRATES OF IT!” He yelled. Earl had his days when he just…yelled.

“Why exactly do we need four crates of corn?” I asked them as we walked into the house. This house was the official ‘lodge’, as Tyler liked to call it, of Odd Future. That was the label I was signed to. We were just a bunch of crazy, imaginative boys whose first talent was music.

When I walked into the house, each and every one of them was sitting around a table eating corn with butter. I laughed. This was the type of thing that helped me relax—the random antics of my friends. I loved them to death.

“Christopher.”

I turned around. No one still addressed me as Christopher, so who said that?

“Christopher, I loved you. Why did you leave me?”

I ran to where the voice was coming from. The guys didn’t seem to notice. It took me to the bedroom, which was empty. On the large, old bed was a yellow notepad and a pen. The windows were wide open and the curtains flew in the breeze.

Did we leave the windows open?

Or…I needed to lay off the weed. I kept hearing Ajahni, calling my name and telling me things. I sat down on the bed and put my head in my hands, with a sigh. My life needed to be fixed. I couldn’t keep living with this secret.

I picked up the pen and notepad, and did what the little voice in my head told me to do—I re-wrote those lyrics, and made them what they were supposed to be.

Not about an encounter with a man my age who I fell in love with, but about the precious time spent with a wonderful girl who I loved with all my heart. Who changed my life forever. 

Who I left.