The Tragedy of Silence

Chapter 1

Growing up as a teenager, Tania Mannan always felt awkward in her own skin. She was never comfortable with the way she looked, always feeling like the better part of her parents’ genes were passed down to her older sister and not her. It didn’t help that she had boyish qualities and wore no makeup, ever. Sure, she had a few flings here and there, but nothing that was ever serious. She didn’t think she was considered attractive to the opposite sex. Granted, she didn’t do anything to change that, but it was still an issue that she dealt with everyday.

When she got to college, however, things changed. Suddenly Tania was being noticed. Maybe it was her hair: thick, black and curly, extending beyond her shoulders. Or her skin, a dark, glistening brown. Whatever it was, she no longer had the problems she had as a teenager when it came to attracting men. Perhaps she had simply grown into herself a bit more and exuded a sense of beauty and confidence from within, rather than what she typically saw everyday in the mirror.

At the tender age of 22, Tania fell in love with a 26 year old Chicagoan named Jamal who was tall, slender and very beautiful to look at. He was of Jamaican descent but born and raised in Chicago. He was the kind of guy whose presence one could feel as soon as he walked into a room. He was classy, well educated, intelligent, well groomed and immaculately dressed at all times, even when he wore jeans. By today’s standards one wouldn’t hesitate to label him a metrosexual.

Tania met Jamal in 1993 through a mutual friend, but didn’t really start noticing him until later. That could’ve been because she had just gotten out of a 2 year relationship with a college sweetheart that left her heartbroken, a tad bitter and, some would say, pissed off.

In the fall of 1994 when Tania was 21, she and Jamal hung out with some friends after which they went back to her place to continue the drinking festivities. She had no feelings towards him at that time, nor did she even think that anything sexual was in the cards for that evening. But in their drunken stupor they ended up messing around and the evening ended rather awkwardly after things got really hot and heavy and Tania wanted to go all the way but Jamal didn’t. So he apologized and made a couple of excuses before he left.

The next morning Jamal showed up at Tania’s house to apologize again, and invited her to attend a university open house with him. She declined. Not so much because she was upset with him or even because she was feeling a tad rejected, but more so because it just didn’t appeal to her to spend her Saturday morning at a university open house. Not to mention, she really just didn’t care to spend anymore time with him after what had happened the night before.

After that, Tania didn’t see him for about a year, as neither of them bothered to keep in touch.

She was at a friend’s house in June 1995, when Tania saw Jamal again, fresh from a trip to Europe during his summer break. She didn’t really feel anything by way of attraction, but was happy to see him nonetheless. In retrospect she knew that they were both determined not to talk about the encounter that happened a year ago, and in the years that followed they never did. Instead, she asked him about his trip and whether or not he fell in love in Paris to which he replied “No, but I did fall in love in London” and proceeded to talk about his European adventures. Tania found herself attracted to his storytelling and his use of expressions and enthusiasm about traveling. She admired the fact that he spent his summers traveling to places outside of the States. Not many people she knew at the time did that.

Soon after, she started seeing him more often. She’d see him at parties or get-togethers with mutual friends where Jamal was always the life of the party, and quite the drinker. His parties would end when he was either passed out, or the alcohol ran out. There were even times when a friend would pick Tania up to go out somewhere and Jamal would be in the back seat of the car passed out, waiting to be dropped home, all before nightfall! He was quite the party animal back then, and despite the fact that Tania was unimpressed with his drinking habits, he definitely made up for his constant drunkenness with his charming personality. And the more she saw Jamal, the more she found herself smitten by him.

Of course, along with his charming personality came all the women. Tania vividly recalls an incident when a bunch of them, including Jamal, went to a party at the “B Side”, a club that opened and closed in the summer of 1995. It was a popular venue during its short-lived existence, on the second floor of a Belmont Avenue store right by the L stop and across the street from Berlin. Tania was dancing with her friend and at one point looked over and saw Jamal, dancing with a drink in one hand and a Sampoerna clove cigarette in the other. There had to be at least four women all around him dancing and grabbing his shirt or any other part of his body they could get their hands on. He was obviously having a great time and enjoying the attention, but Tania couldn’t help but feel a tad bit jealous and remembered thinking to herself that she probably didn’t have a chance in hell with this guy.

Later on that night, still partying at the B Side, Tania walked around the club, Long Island Iced Tea in hand, looking for her friends. She passed by a room behind the dance floor that was lit with candles and furnished with couches, coffee tables and ashtrays. Before she even entered the room to check out the scene, she caught a glimpse of Jamal from the corner of her eye, sitting on one of the plush red couches, heavily kissing a tall, built, black woman with shoulder length braids. She couldn’t really see the woman all that well but didn’t recognize her as anyone she knew. So she thought it best to just keep walking and pretended not to notice them. Tania was certainly upset by the vision of him with another woman, but in all honesty it didn’t really surprise her.

After the party ended at around 2am, the group decided to call it a night and Tania offered to give her friend Miguel a ride home since they lived close to each other. Jamal, who usually traveled with Tyrone, asked her for a ride as well, since Tyrone had apparently gotten lucky that night and was nowhere to be found. Of course she agreed and they all got in the car and headed to the South Side.

During the ride home as Tania sped down Michigan Avenue, Jamal started talking about his adventures that night and said that he ran into his ex-girlfriend and tried to go home with her, but that she rejected the idea. He sounded a little disappointed over it, but said that in the end it was probably the best thing for both of them. Perhaps his ex was the girl he was kissing on the couch, Tania thought to herself. Or it could’ve been any one of those women grabbing at his shirt while he was dancing. Regardless, Tania took some consolation in the fact that at the end of the day he got dissed.

She dropped Miguel off first, since he lived on 26th Street and Jamal lived on 71st. Miguel offered to ride with her to Jamal’s so that she’d have company on the way back, but Tania told him she’d be fine. They waited until Miguel got inside the building and Tania circled around the parking lot to turn right on Michigan Avenue. Just as they got close to 31st street near Tania’s house, she asked Jamal which way he thought would be the quickest to get to his place. He turned to look at her and said, “The quickest way would probably just be for me to spend the night at your place. If you don’t mind, that is.”

Of course Tania didn’t mind, because after all, he was already the object of her fantasies at that point. Despite all the girls, and despite his drunkenness, and for crying out loud despite even the fact that he was just making out with his ex-girlfriend less than two hours earlier, she couldn’t help but get excited at the prospect of him spending the night with her. And so he did.

Perhaps she was just a consolation prize after having been dissed by the ex, but Jamal made love to Tania passionately that night and well into the morning. He was gentle and careful and soft with her. And despite the fact that he was probably drunk, he treated her gently and fell asleep holding her. Tania would never forget how she felt that night, conflicted between her disappointment over the incident with his ex and the sheer joy of lying there in his arms, all within a span of only a few hours.

Over the course of the next several weeks, it was pretty much a big ball of confusion between Jamal and Tania, at least from Tania’s perspective. They were fucking, but not really in a relationship. Yet at the same time they were monogamous with each other. Or at least Tania was. Years later Tania would never know if he had cheated on her, although he never really gave her reason to think he did. At any rate, they’d call each other to hook up, not in the booty call sense, but to really go out and spend time together. He let her use his car to help get her driver’s license once while he waited in the lounge doing a crossword puzzle the entire time. Sometimes he’d go over to her house and they’d have a drink before heading out to either go to the movies or just drive over to the lake and relax with a bottle of Malibu rum, orange juice and two plastic cups. He was great company, and Tania always had a lot of fun when she was with him. The chemistry they shared was explosive and unreal, and the sex just too good to describe.

This went on for a few months and by September Tania was ready to talk about it. She called him up and asked if she could stop by his place to chat with him. He seemed a bit nervous, but agreed. She got to his place and met his mom who had a sweet sounding voice and was a seemingly gentle and pleasant person. He invited her into his room where she sat on his futon for a while as he spun some records for her, and then the phone rang. It was Art and he was wondering if Jamal wanted to come by to listen to some new records he bought. Jamal told him that Tania was there visiting but Art enthusiastically invited her to come along as well. So Tania drove to Art’s house, and after a brief stint there drove Jamal back home, fully realizing that they didn’t even get a chance to talk. As soon as she pulled into his driveway he said “So, I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk, but we can talk now if you want to”. And so they did, right there in her car. She basically told him that she was developing strong feelings for him and that she liked him a lot and hoped that they could build upon their relationship. He became a bit fidgety at that point, playing with a blank cassette and its wrapper and said he felt the same way and that the feelings were mutual. Tania was relieved, to say the least and glad that she got a chance to get it off her chest. He leaned over and gave her the nicest, softest kiss and said he’d call her later.

Tania drove back home that night feeling pretty damn good about the conversation they had. She felt like she had finally expressed her feelings and that there would be no confusion about the status of what she would now call their relationship. She smiled the whole way back, up the elevator and into her apartment to tell her roommate Julia all about it, but as soon as she walked through the door, the phone rang. Julia answered it and handed the phone to Tania. "It's Jamal" she said. Of course Tania was elated.

“Hello?” she said.
“Hey…. it’s me”
“I know. Didn’t I just see you ten minutes ago?”
“Yeah.. (laughs) I just wanted to say that I’m glad you came by to talk to me tonight”
“Yeah, me too (smiling)!”
“So listen, I was just thinking, you know.. about what you said..”
“Yeah..?”
“Well, I figure that if there’s no script, then there’s nothing to flip, you know what I mean?”

Tania didn’t know exactly what he meant at the time, but said yes anyway because she figured that he was basically trying to say that they should just go with the flow and not try to follow some sort of pattern to build their relationship. And she was absolutely fine with that. Jamal was like that though, a bit cryptic, always using phrases that weren’t quite relevant but somehow applied very naturally to a situation he was trying to describe. And truth be told, Tania loved that about him.

There was very little confusion from that point on. Tania and Jamal were in full swing. They’d see each other often, and do things together all the time. They’d make plans to do things that were not ordinary, like drive out 30 miles to see a drive-in movie because Tania had never been to one before. Or go shopping for hard to find imported cds by Prince. One time they went to Navy Pier to ride the ferris wheel and while waiting in line to get on they noticed that the attendants were putting different groups of people into the same car. Tania mentioned to Jamal that she didn’t want to be stuck on the ride with a bunch of strangers, and he agreed. The next thing she knew he walked up to the attendant, slipped him some money and came back smiling. And so they managed to get a car all to themselves!

Tania never forgot the sexual tension she felt in that car way up high on the ferris wheel overlooking Lake Michigan in all its glory. The tension was so overwhelming that it left them both speechless the entire time, aside from the random comments about how gorgeous the view was. She wanted to kiss him and make love to him right there, high up in the sky, but instead she asked him what he said to the attendant to get them their our own private car. “Oh, I just told him that I was going to propose to you when we got to the top, so make sure you put one of your rings on your ring finger and come out with a huge smile!” he said. They both laughed, but Tania could feel herself burning up with desire inside at the sheer thought of what it would feel like if what he said were true. But of course it wasn’t.

They never ended up having sex on the ferris wheel that day. Tania had never been one to make the first move, really. She was too shy of a person to be so bold. But in retrospect she could punch herself for being so shy. After that day Tania realized how unapproachable she can be at times. Her shyness was often mistaken for disinterest and to this day it continues to throw people off.

On the ride home Jamal drove like a mad man. Tania wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or not, but she didn’t say anything to him about it even though there were times when she truly feared an accident. And he just chatted away as if his driving wasn’t even an issue. It was during that ride home that he said something to her which she never forgot; he said “You’re so cute I wish I could put you in my pocket and take you home with me”. It was undoubtedly a compliment, and endearing at the time. But several months later, she heard him say that very same phrase to a close friend of hers.