Dear Pastor

Dear Tati,

The sheer fact that I’m writing an inspirational letter about you that’ll be presented on a public forum is already pretty gross. You don’t have to tell me. It’s a complete reversal of all that our friendship stands for. We don’t do openly affectionate expressions. We barely do it in front of other people and that’s what makes us work. That isn’t to say we don’t share how grateful we are for each other. When we do so, it’s beautiful. Seeing how it’s been a while since the previous friend love fest, here we go. Love me now, hate me later.

How is it possible that we understood each other so quickly? We met my first year of undergrad at Howard University and while I was quite the ambiverted social butterfly, somehow you knew that I wasn’t connecting on a molecular level with many of the people and organizations I flocked to with ease. In fact, I wasn’t connecting. I was performing. Actor that I am, it’s exhausting to always show everybody the mask and not the Marquis. Your genuineness is brash and direct and filled with more love than I was prepared for 11 years ago but I am fueled by it now. It's that authenticity in you that I admire, just like a pastor should be, right? To be clear, reading audience, Tati isn't a pastor, she is adamantly against the notion, but stranger things have happened, right? To think, we solidified this big-sister, little-brother dynamic on a bus to New Orleans.

Three words: Alternative Spring Break. A literal day of driving from Washington, DC to blocks away from the French Quarter and we sat next to each other the entire time. Take this as a compliment when I say I don’t remember most of what we talked about. I just remember having a good time. I would’ve happily crawled out of my skin if I was seated next to someone I didn’t know, like or respect. I got just the opposite. I gained a sister during that trip. Someone who made sure I wasn’t going buck wild on Bourbon Street but didn’t discourage me from indulging in a ‘Hurricane’ at the age of 19. We grew from friends to family in those hours and days. I honestly don’t think I could’ve asked for more until you introduced me to Rev.

Rev. Robyn Franklin-Vaughn, the former Anglican/Episocal/Lutheran chaplain at Howard, affectionately known as Rev. I can’t say if it’s because we’re all earth signs or all undercover perfectionists but I feel that somehow she’s just as responsible for us becoming brother and sister than we are. The meeting ground for our kinship was under the auspice of ‘Religious Life’ at Howard with foundations in the Chapel Assistants. I can’t begin to thank you enough for expanding my mind beyond the walls of Rankin Chapel. In many ways, you and Rev hold the same emotional and spiritual space in my being, a space defined by breaking free of the chains that bind us as people of faith. Your tender pushing and consistent, gentle inquisitions about my queerness as Black, gay man and about queerness overall makes you one of the purest allies and people I’ve ever met. Comfort in questioning what we know began, truly began, for me during Rev’s Tuesday night bible study sessions. Sure, we’d read the bible but I read the room often. That’s why I was so quiet. I wasn’t always comfortable in my skin among my peers, my elders, but I love being there. Like the big sister you are, you believed and still fully believed in what my soul had to say, not what I was expected to perform. That’s one of the reasons you’ll be a life-affirming pastor one day because obviously becoming a pastor is your ultimate and most soul-defining aspiration. (Once again, don’t hate me.)

Without you, Tatiana Bien-Aime, my soul wouldn’t know what real rest looks like. Our kinship was solid during the days at the mecca, in controlled dorm environments and extracurricular activities and heavy class loads to push us through. The world beyond the mecca is not easy. It’s filled with so many dark things that will make the biggest or strongest or toughest of us run into a hole, beneath the sewer, never to return. Through you, though, I have come to understand varied expressions of what it means to love someone, to do love for someone. I admit that I’ve ignored the platonic love in pursuit of romance, ignorant to the fact that the former is what is truly going to sustain me. One of the many manifestations of your love rests in rest. It seems so simple but it’s not. We know, and now the world knows, that you have a social clock that requires significantly less hour and minute hands. You will sit in the house until the last minute, nearly dreading interacting with large social parties simply because you do not want to. I never, ever, thought I’d find joy in that practice in the days of undergrad. Oh how wrong I was.

As odd as it may seem, some of the fondest memories of our friendship over the years have been since we both graduated and I would come to your place in the greater Maryland area and literally TV or movies all day or even better we would just nap half of the day away. This was before the pandemic when most of the world’s social wires scrambled for better or worse. These moments hit during the thick of summer when the sun shines the brightest, scores of DC Black millennials pounding the potholes in search of a brunch with enough seats for a party of 10. I didn’t care about being among the friends I may or may not still perform for. I do, shut up, you don’t know me. I cared about and still care about the moments we share when we don’t say much, when we geek out over Harry Potter, when you encourage me to break into the world of voice acting, when I help clean your apartment out of joy rather than obligation.

Tatiana Bien-Aime, thank you for being an example of what God looks like in the physical world. I’ve come to learn in many ways that God will never be understood fully by our human brains but I do know for sure that God is love. Love that comforts, that questions, that feeds that part of our soul we’re too frail to reach. Love in itself cannot be fully understood but it can be felt. In my bones, I feel and hear and see the immense foundation of love and God in you and in the kinship we have forged. I admire your ability to see and feel beyond what the situation is saying. I credit that not to your DEGREES in English, Psychology and Social Work (be a boss!) but to who you are when no one’s watching. Yes, the ridiculously sarcastic human who reserves wellsprings of compassion for her students, clients, friends and especially family. The sister-friend who will do what she can to make sure her friends are well-fed, spiritually and physically, despite fighting through the dark places you don’t speak on as much as you experience them. Tati, you are a soul more ancient than most people I know. You are real, you are love, you are loved.

Thank you for always making me remove the mask. Thank you for being. Thank you for telling me of any grammar errors should you read this before or after verbally eviscerating me for not telling you about this letter before I show it to the world. Thank you Pastor.

Pew-Pew and Cool Cool,

Marquis