Andrew Reginald Hairston: Sweet Potato Pie

The motivating aroma of the sweet potato pie wafts from the oven as the rays of Saturday morning sunlight hit your lover’s face. You actually baked this one the night prior, but the 225-degree setting allows the smell to permeate the room just the same. You smile at the sweet potato pie and the euphoria of last night’s love making.

Unlike this recent love affair, the consistency of a good sweet potato pie spans across the decades. You recall your mother and aunts preparing them for various holiday celebrations in Louisiana and Mississippi. You began yourself experimenting with a recipe as a teenager. You grin once more as you bring these memories into focus, and then you lean over and kiss him.

You hesitate for a moment – should you stay and soak up more of his glorious scent or begin stirring around your apartment? Given that you can almost taste the cinnamon in the air, you decide to get up and pull the decadent dessert out of the oven.

As you retrieve the contrasting sweet from its warming place – equal parts crunchy and creamy – you quickly wish to be back in your comfortable position with him. You cut slices and serve them in bed. The guilty pleasure from childhood exclusively emerged from the taste – now it is all tied up in the contentment and arousal of your lover.

After laying around for at least another hour, you get up to make another round of pies for an upcoming potluck dinner. You envision your mother in your shoes, and it has particular significance in this moment. Having gone public with your bisexuality the month prior — and blocking your parents and sister at the same time — the memories would have to suffice in the place of contemporary conversations.

You assemble the necessary ingredients: sweet potatoes, sugar (white & brown), eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, butter, and evaporated milk. You drop the sweet potatoes into a pot of water and turn the heat up to the highest setting. He seductively stares at you and asks for another slice of the pie you warmed up. You place it on a small saucer and deliver it with a strategic kiss placed on his neck.

He draws you back in as only a lover found at a wedding can do. You eventually get back up as the bubbling water in the large pot indicates that the sweet potatoes are ready to be peeled. You retrieve a can opener from the drawer by the sink and open the cans of dense, syrupy milk. You look at the other ingredients and find yourself once more back in your childhood.

Would your mother use two sticks of butter or three in this number of sweet potatoes? Four eggs or six? As with every other aspect of life, she moves gracefully around the kitchen in your memory. She is a patient and meticulous cook, and her demeanor conveys it all. It occurs to you that you’ll just know what to do when you arrive at that part of the process.

Just as this intrinsic knowledge settles in, you realize that you were aware of your bisexuality when you were that young. Without naming it, in between bites of sweet potato pies all those decades ago, you fantasized about your limitless capacity for love in the various settings of your life. You knew it wouldn’t necessarily be well received in a broad sense, but you were fundamentally proud of it then. Was the guilty pleasure fueled by this deep secret, the enjoyment of a sweet treat by a husky boy, or both?

Your lover has drifted off to sleep at this point, so you have time to complete the necessary assembly. You shift from a smaller spoon to a larger one to beat the batter into its smooth, final form. You use a fork to place small holes in the bottom of the pre-made pie shell, and you’re nearly ready to complete the task.

You stare at the contents of the big bowl, and you recall that you can’t tell your mother about this experience. Your mind returns to Labor Day, when you actually sent the five-paragraph text, read the harsh responses of your parents and sister, and then blocked them.

The sweet potato mixture fills four pie shells, and you put them in their rightful places on two oven racks. You climb back into bed with your lover and find yourself in the perfect contours of him.
***
Years later, the memory of it all comes flooding back at unexpected moments. Your lover is no longer in the picture; the drug-fueled excitement that brought him into your life swept him out of it. Your parents and sister didn’t stay blocked much longer after that pie-baking marathon, but explicit mentions of your bisexuality are still infrequent. Your sobriety makes you sometimes wonder if you’ll ever achieve the high that you reached with this unforgettable lover, and then you consider that the balance – free of exhilarating peaks and crushing valleys – is the point in this phase of your life.

You sit with your relationship with it all – joy, disappointment, hunger, and satisfaction – and realize the comfort of a slice of sweet potato pie encapsulates all of it. The buttery filling allows you to find peace in the paradox. The notes of cinnamon transport you to the happy memories of your childhood and the pleasing self-determination of your adulthood. The taste of vanilla sparks your creativity, paving the way for even more cooking and limitless love in your life.

A sweet potato pie appears to function well as a guilty pleasure. It draws you back to those moments of skepticism, but the slice of pie reinforces the idea that you made it through periods of self-doubt because you decided to lean on your community. A sweet potato pie, across time, created the understanding that the beauty & pain of life can exist together – and they can be complements as you navigate the fullness of this journey.

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Andrew Reginald Hairston is a Black civil rights attorney, writer, socialist, prison abolitionist, proud bisexual man, and doting uncle who divides his time almost equally between Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. He loves, fights for, and writes about Black people. He publishes roughly monthly on Substack at andrewrhairston.substack.com, and his older work can be found at andrewrhairston.com.

Essay copyright 2024 Andrew Reginald Hairston

Source of Top Photo: The Food Charlatan