Dry Season, May 1969 - Joromi
I was spinning records at my usual Friday night fête, riding high on the success of my latest party series. Joromi Enoch, yuh on fire man! I thought, dancing and smiling at the scene before me. The living room of my family’s French colonial-style house had been transformed into a makeshift dance club, with about fifty people packed between the pushed-back furniture. Sweat gleamed on dancing bodies as my latest mix of funk, soul and calypso filled the space. At nineteen, I’d made a name for myself as the DJ who could read a crowd and who knew exactly when to drop the beat. Girls would come to watch me work the decks, and I won’t lie — I enjoyed the attention. But tonight would be different.
Tonight would change everything.
The front door swung open, letting in a blast of warm night air. It carried the sweet scent of frangipani from our front yard. Every conversation came to a jarring stop like a needle yanked off a spinning record. No armor could defend me from what happened next.
Her.
She sashayed into the fête, swinging those hips seductively, then pausing in the doorway where the yellow porch light caught her silhouette. Her massive Afro, a halo of dark, untamed power, seemed to catch and trap the dim light of the room. The ceiling fan spun lazily overhead, stirring the air thick with music and cigarette smoke but she stood perfectly still, like she owned the moment.
My mind raced to categorize her and could not find any classification that would do her justice. Even the way she held her cowrie-beaded clutch — casual but commanding—made it clear she belonged anywhere she chose to be. A barely-there red minidress clung to her curves, skimming her shoulders, teasing the small swell of her breasts, and stopping just shy of scandal. It hugged her in a way that broke every rule— and made my nineteen-year-old self glad it did.
She stood in the doorway, scanning the crowded room like she was taking inventory. Her eyes moved methodically from the cluster of guys near the makeshift bar in the corner, past the couples swaying to the music in the center, to the girls perched on the arms of our old sofa. I recognized the look — she was checking the scene, deciding if this party was worth her time, as we all did back then. But there was something different about how she did it—no hesitation, no self-consciousness, only pure confidence.
Something intense ignited within me. It burned through the hidden guardrails of my mind. It hit like a rogue wave, leaving me stripped and exposed, raw in a way that was equal parts thrill and terror. My chest tightened, warmth spreading fast, and I felt like I’d been caught without armor— bare, vulnerable in the amber glow of the room.
I was confused because I was feeling things that were altogether new—besides the familiar rush of raw attraction I’d felt with other girls, there was something deeper. I wanted to explore every inch of her body, immerse myself in her thoughts, and be the only one to occupy her spirit.
What? What the hell is this?
As she completed her survey of the room, a hint of a smile touched her face. I was frozen, watching her.
The record on my turntable was ending, the bass line fading, but I couldn’t move to change it.
Her eyes.
Eyes are paired sensory organs that detect light and enable vision. My brain, scrambling, latched onto Biology—my favorite subject. Reliable, logical, familiar. But at this moment, the clinical definition wasn’t enough. Not even close.
Dark as night, smoldering with something molten beneath the surface. Her gaze seemed to glow through the haze of party lights and cigarette smoke. Lost in watching her, I’d forgotten about the record spinning on my turntable. The music cut off abruptly — the telltale scratch of silence made every head in a party turn toward the DJ.
“Eh eh! Like de man get stick!” Fitz shouted from near the bar, his laugh slashing through the silence. “De girl got you good, boy!”
Heat rushed to my face as titters bubbled through the crowd. My hands fumbled for the next record—James Brown’s “Say It Loud”— and I dropped the needle with less than my usual flourish. The familiar groove filled the room, and people gradually turned back to their dancing, though I could still feel some amused glances thrown my way.
Only then did I dare to look up again.
She was moving through the crowd, navigating between dancing bodies with deliberate grace. Unlike the others who’d returned to their revelry, her eyes hadn’t left me. Each step was measured, unhurried, like she had all night to close the distance between us.
I held my cup with dregs of Fernandes Black Label Rum tighter.
My throat went dry. My pulse flipped and twisted. But I couldn’t look away—didn’t want to look away— as she drew closer, each step making the rest of the party fade further into background noise.
That was it.
She assessed me. Measured me. Like I was one more thing in the room, something to conquer or dismiss.
Me? I wasn’t used to being scrutinized, not like this. At six-foot-one, with shoulders broad from swimming and arms toned from hauling speakers and crates of records, I was usually checked out, not sized up. My close-cropped hair set off high cheekbones I’d inherited from my mother, and hours under the Trinidad sun had polished my skin to a rich copper tone. Girls said I was gorgeous. They’d whisper this to each other and then giggle like I wasn’t supposed to hear.
Sure, they came to my parties for the vibe but also to watch me work the decks. Once, a girl told me I had a way of moving that made the music look visible — rolling my shoulders to the rhythm and letting the beat flow through my body as my hands worked the vinyl.
“The way yuh close my eyes and sway when yuh know a perfect mix was coming, yuh fingers would dance across the records, and then yuh does smile before dropping the beat we waiting for… Lawd fadda! Is like watching brown sugar melt into the rhythm.”
Yes, I knew what I was working with and wasn’t shy about it. Maybe that’s why I carried myself the way I did. Shoulders back, chin up, like I was untouchable. Overconfident? Maybe. But it came easy when you had a mom like mine.
She treated me like her prince—too well, if you asked my father. “You can’t raise a man like this and and expect him to function in normal society,” he’d grumble, pacing the kitchen in his work boots. He said it all the time, shaking his head like I’d already failed some invisible test of manhood.
My father was always on me about how I lived—too many girls, too little focus. “You can’t juggle women like you juggling records,” he’d say, his disappointment thick in every word. He wanted me to settle down, to find one woman I could build a future with.
“Pick sense from nonsense, boy,” he’d bark. “You need somebody who’ll stand by you—not these girls you spinning ‘round like they on a turntable.”
To him, my life wasn’t serious enough. And love? Love wasn’t stormy or passionate—it was practical. Stable. Rooted in responsibility. “Stop playing games,” he’d tell me. “Find a woman you can bring home. One who’ll build with you, not just want to party through life.”
And a conventional job was what he wanted for me most of all. Something with a steady paycheck and a title that would convey craft and success. Not a DJ, not a party-thrower. Not whatever this life I was carving out for myself was supposed to be.
But right then, standing there and gripping the record jacket like it was the only thing tethering me to the ground, I wasn’t thinking about him or his lectures. I wasn’t thinking about a so-called regular job or a set path.
I was thinking about this woman who strutted into my world. I felt like her long examination of me peeled away all the bravado I wore like a second skin.
Then she smiled.
She really smiled this time—not big, not flashy. The parting of her lush lips, revealing a peek of white teeth, sent electricity racing down my spine, settling low and dangerously in my body.
And then, before I could look away, she stepped onto the raised platform we’d built in the corner. The click of her heels brought her closer until she was near enough for me to catch the scent of the flowering clover perfume on her skin and see the subtle flutter of her pulse at her throat.
I was glad the turntables were between us because I realized two things then.
She was exactly my height in those heels, her eyes level with mine, making it impossible to escape her honey-dark gaze. And my body, when it came to her, had ideas of its own—wild, reckless ideas. I released the cup and the record jacket and grabbed the edge of the turntable stand until I could feel the metal edge pressing into my palms.
Lord help me, I thought, This woman will be trouble.
I had no idea just how right I was.
* * *
Our relationship blazed through the summer of ’69. She was…something else. Having finished secondary school just a few weeks prior, she moved through life like every day was Carnival Monday—free and easy, no concerns about tomorrow. While her friends were all rushing to the University of the West Indies, teacher’s training or nursing school, she’d laugh and say, “Why everybody in such a hurry to get old?”
I admit I was similar to her in this way. It had been two years since I graduated from high school, but a steady job had eluded me. My parties were my only source of income since my father cut me off to teach me a lesson in adulthood.
We spent afternoons hunting for new records in Port of Spain, her fingers trailing over album covers while she danced between the aisles, singing whatever caught her ear. The shop owner would watch her warily as she pulled record after record, but she’d flash that killer smile and say, “Nah man, life too sweet to be so serious!” Before long, he’d be letting her play whatever she wanted.
We’d escape to my parents’ gallery in the evenings, listening to the transistor radio while my mother cooked inside. Sometimes, we walked ‘round the Savannah as the sun set, our borrowed radio keeping us company. She’d talk about everything and nothing.
“Yuh doh fine de clouds looking like breadfruit?”…
“Ah feel ah go lime in England one day…”
or “Maybe ah go work in meh uncle’s rum shop.”
“But girl, what you planning to do?” I’d ask, my father’s voice echoing in my head about the importance of direction, of purpose.
She’d throw back her head and laugh, her massive Afro catching the dying sunlight. “Doux-doux, my plan is to be happy,” she’d say, twirling to the radio music. “Everything go sort itself out, oui. Why yuh so worried ‘bout tomorrow when today sweet like sugarcane?”
Sometimes, the deep country dialect caught me off guard when she spoke—so different from my carefully cultivated Port of Spain accent and the “proper” English my father insisted we use at home. Her “yuh” instead of “you,” her “dat” instead of “that” revealed she wasn’t from our middle-class world of French colonial houses and Catholic secondary school education. But there was something magnetic about how freely she spoke, how she let the honest sing-song lilt of Trinidad flow through her words without shame or pretense.
The first time we made love was under the stars in Carenage, on a massive blanket I’d borrowed from home. We were both virgins, fumbling and nervous but pressing on. The waves crashed against the shore, masking our whispered discoveries of each other. Afterward, she told me stories her grandmother used to tell her about the stars, mixing up the constellations but making up better stories until I was laughing too hard to correct her.
She started coming to all my Friday night fêtes after that. I’d catch glimpses of her while I worked the decks—dancing with abandon, pulling my prim friends into her orbit until even they forgot themselves.
“Come nah! Wine down low!” she’d call out, teaching them moves that would have their parents crossing themselves if they saw.
As usual, my father’s words would reverberate in my head, That one too young, too thoughtless. No kind of woman to build a life with. But I’d watch her move, the way she made everyone around her come alive, and something in my chest would lighten.
After one particularly successful party, she didn’t go home. We ended up in my bedroom, on that same blanket—freshly washed by my mother—on the floor because the bed would have made too much noise. Her kisses tasted like rum and freedom, and I found myself wanting to lose myself in both.
But it was the third time that changed everything.
We were at her place—a tiny one-room spot she used to escape her parents’ rules about “proper young ladies.” It sat at the edge of her brother’s yard, right up against a sagging wooden fence. The walls were painted a fading turquoise, peeling in places, and the room smelled of the vanilla oil she loved, mixing with the lingering scent of the fried plantains she’d made us earlier.
A dusty, old single fan whirred lazily in the corner, fighting against the heat that pressed in through the open window. The calls of the island’s frogs and distant calypso from a neighbor’s radio drifted in with the night air. Her bed was small, pushed against the wall, covered in mismatched sheets that smelled of cocoa butter and her favorite jasmine perfume—a graduation gift she wore too liberally.
I had to close my eyes against the sensory overload. But I couldn’t keep them closed—I needed to see her, to watch the way the single bulb cast shadows across her skin, making her look like something from a dream I wasn’t sure I wanted to wake from.
The intensity between us was familiar now, but something was different. Her fingers traced my back like she was writing secrets on my skin, her lips brushing my neck with a tenderness that made my heart stutter. When she whispered, “Stay with me nah?” it wasn’t with her usual playful tone—there was something deeper there that made me feel wanted by her in a way I hadn’t been prepared for.
I turned over to stop her from marking my body any further. My arm floated away from her, and I nestled the back of my head in the palms of my hands.
Then, when she rolled over to lay half her body on mine, the word “love” floated through my mind, and panic followed closely behind. My father’s warnings screamed on loop: Boy, you need a woman who knows where she is going in life. This one is still playing child games. It’s time to stop making sport and get smart.
I could not speak—dared not speak.
Instead, I stared at the cracked ceiling, listening to the fan’s uneven rhythm, feeling her breath steady against my chest.
This isn’t supposed to be real! She isn’t supposed to matter this much.
When she finally fell asleep, I made my decision. I had to end it. She was too young and unformed—treating life like one long fête, with no thought for tomorrow. I should get someone more… settled. Someone with a plan. Someone my father would approve of.
So I started pulling away, spending less time with her, using my parents as an excuse for why she could not visit me, and finding reasons to avoid meeting up with her. Worse, when I was not spinning records at the parties I threw, I would dance with other girls or hang out outside with my boys.
She didn’t take it quietly—nothing about her was ever quiet. I still remember her standing up to me in my parents’ yard, voice rising as she demanded answers.
“WHY YUH DOING DIS? You ain’t nothing but ah coward, yuh hear?!” she shouted, tears streaming down her face. Yuh runnin’ from me—we have somethin’ dat actually matter—jus’ because yuh father tell yuh so? Like yuh ‘fraid to live!”
“Girl, I don’t know what you talkin’ about. We were just having fun. You read too much into it.”
Whap!
The slap across my face stung but did not hurt as much as the truth in her words.
I watched her storm off and cut her from my life. Cold.
This is for the best. This is what a man should do.
