Growing up, I had a mad crush on Emmanuella "Manou" Jean-Pierre, the six-foot-tall, dark-skinned and tomboyish daughter of one of my father's friends. We used to play together, but Manou was a lot closer to my older sister Annabelle since they were the same age. I was a year younger than them, and in the world of females, that's a monumental difference. Chicks, man. They act as if twelve months difference is the end of the world.
Still, Manou and I were destined to be together. I could feel it in my bones. My name is Stephen Duchene and I got a story to share with you, dear reader. The story of how I found the lady I was destined to be with, when I least expected it. Basically, it's about how life caught up with me and forced me to make the decisions I'd been delaying for the longest time. Follow my life through these lines, please. Learn from my mistakes. Might help you on your own path, who knows?
I was born in the City of Quartier Morin, northern Haiti, and left the island with my parents and sister in the summer of 1999. For the next fourteen years we lived in the City of Miami, Florida. I graduated from Miami Dade Community College, then transferred to the University of Central Florida, where I earned a criminal justice degree. These days, at the age of 27, I'm a Law student at Florida State University. Tall, burly and dopey-smiling, that's me. A proud member of Miami's Haitian community. I live in Little Haiti, which was considered "the hood" for the longest time, until gentrification changed its demographics.
My neighborhood used to be mostly Black, with a few Mexicans and Chinese people, but now it's forty five percent White, with an assortment of minorities forming the remaining sixty percent. Actually, we're not minorities anymore since, collectively, we outnumber White folks in the area. It's a brand new day, ladies and gentlemen. I live in a nice two-bedroom apartment that I'm having trouble paying for since my ex-boyfriend Trevor Whitaker and I broke up for what might be the last time.
It's not easy being Haitian and bisexual, and I used to hate myself because of my sexual orientation. The day I met Trevor is the day I stopped hating myself. Six-foot-one, lean and athletic, with caramel-hued skin, curly Black hair and lime-green eyes, Trevor was simply beautiful. Born in the City of Hartford, Connecticut, to a Haitian immigrant mother and a White American father, he's got the unique good looks of a mixed brother. He was playing soccer for Bridgewater State University at the time we met. We hooked up, my first time with another man, and it's an experience that changed my life.
Trevor Whitaker is bisexual, like myself, and totally comfortable with who he is. The dude had the guts to share his secret with his family and close friends. Me? I was beyond closeted. Hell, I was behind the closet. As a six-foot-four, burly and somewhat chubby, dark-skinned brother with a masculine swagger, I cultivated my personal image to avoid even throwing a hint of who and what I truly was. I dated a lot of females at school, and I made sure my friends and family knew it. Along came Trevor, and my carefully ordered life turned upside down. Yup, I fell in love with that man.
Trevor Whitaker is the man who brought me out of my shell. He's the brother I introduced to my parents, Louis and Marielle Duchene, at our family home in South Miami, as my future partner. For three glorious years we were together. And then one day I came home to find Trevor getting busy with Jessica, a chubby middle-aged White woman who lived in our building. Yup, Trevor had Jessica face down and ass up on the bed we shared, and he was so into fucking her that he didn't notice that I'd come home. Shocked, I just stood there, frozen. Trevor and Jessica looked up, saw me and Trevor disentangled himself from her, and came to me with a plethora of excuses. I took off. Thus ended our relationship.
