Deviant Notes of A Native Son. . . In Love
Written by Rev. Brenton Miles Brock, M.Div.
Adjunct Lecturer | English Department
Residential Minister | LXR Hall
Georgetown University
Our love story unfolds in turns—a series of shifts, changes, and revolutions that have shaped the landscape of our partnership. Three years ago, on a rooftop in Washington, D.C., beneath the glow of city lights, I asked him to join me in a committed relationship. The moment was intimate, the air thick with the quiet anticipation of a new beginning. Since then, we have built a life together, one marked by shared meals, whispered dreams, and the silent understanding that love is both a choice and a practice.
Tonight, as we prepare to celebrate this milestone, I feel a familiar nervous energy—a sense of wonder at what we have built and a quiet question: What more can I give, when I have given my all? The number three holds weight beyond its numerical value. In the Bible, it represents divine completeness, a trinity of wisdom, strength, and unity. Ecclesiastes 4:12 reminds us, “A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” Perhaps, in its turning, our love has woven itself into something enduring, something that does not fray easily under pressure.
This anniversary is not just a marker of time passed but a map of where we have been—physically, emotionally, intellectually. It offers me the chance to stand before the mirror of transparency and reflect on the growth love has demanded of me. To love another is to be transformed, to exercise the emotional equity that stretches and strengthens the heart’s capacity. This is not simply a celebration of Valentine’s Day, the multi-billion-dollar spectacle of romance, but rather a commemoration of a love that has demanded courage, resilience, and radical honesty.
Who, I wonder, taught the course on Black male same-gender love? Which university offers a syllabus on loving Black men with intention, devotion, and revolutionary tenderness? The answer, I suspect, is written in our lived experience. We are both students and scholars, shaping our own curriculum through the practice of being together. Love has been our text, our theory, our praxis. It has demanded a pedagogy of patience and a methodology of mutual care.
We made this love from scratch. And in doing so, we have scratched each other—left marks, etched lines into each other’s souls. But scratches are not wounds; they are inscriptions. They are the necessary imprints of a love that is not passive but active, a love that refuses to be ornamental. This desk-and-mirror combo, this vanity of reflection, is where I commemorate the anniversaries of our love. I laugh at the word “vers,” not in its sexual implications, but in the way it captures our dynamic—always in motion, always composing new verses in the song of us.
Perhaps the greatest lesson of these three years is that we have moved beyond positioning ourselves versus each other. Instead, we are verses—lines in a poem that does not seek to dominate, but to harmonize. The Latin root “vers-” means to turn, and our love has turned through trials and triumphs, reshaping itself with every revolution. Verse, version, convert, diverse—these words remind me that love is not static; it is a continuous act of becoming.
So tonight, I turn to him once again, ready for whatever the next verse may bring. Ready to love, not as I was three years ago, but as the person I have become through loving him. The anniversary, the turning of another year, is not just a reminder of where we have been, but a promise of where we are going. And I know, with certainty, that we will keep turning—toward each other, toward love, toward the infinite possibilities that lie ahead. Author Notes:
“Deviant Notes of A Native Son, In Love” is a layered and intertextual phrase that invokes multiple literary and cultural references while suggesting a personal and political meditation on love, identity, and belonging. Here’s how I interpret it:
1. “Deviant Notes” – The word deviant suggests a departure from the norm, whether in terms of sexuality, race, or ideology. It also indicates a radical refusal to conform to dominant linearity and linear narratives, a radical reimagining of identity, or a reclaiming of what has been historically marginalized. “Notes” suggests a collection of thoughts, reflections, or observations—perhaps even a manifesto of sorts. I am experimenting with scattered thoughts, emotions, and ruptures, because of the deviant manner in which these passages showed up as notes.
2. “Of A Native Son” – This unmistakably references James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son (1955), a foundational text in Black literary and cultural criticism. Baldwin’s Native Son reference was itself a dialogue with Richard Wright’s novel Native Son (1940), but where Wright’s Bigger Thomas is trapped by systemic oppression, Baldwin’s essays articulate a more nuanced engagement with Black identity, queerness, and exile. By including “deviant” in the title, my phrase signals an extension or revision or reversion of Baldwin’s concerns, centering non-normative Black experiences, especially those related to gender and sexuality.
3. “In Love” – This phrase introduces a tenderness that complicates the political weight of the previous words. Love here could refer to romantic, platonic, or even self-love—an affirmation of intimacy and connection despite or because of deviation from normative structures. It might also recall Baldwin’s belief in love as a form of resistance, as well as his critique of America’s failure to truly love its American Black citizens.
Possible Meanings:
My piece and titular phrase serves as the title for a personal or political meditation on being a Black queer person navigating love, loss, and identity in a world that often pathologized or erases those experiences. It suggests a radical intervention—notes that resist dominant narratives, written from the perspective of someone who, like Baldwin, understands both exile and belonging.
