I had written a profile about Princess Babygirl months ago, after we curated an event for her called “Play Date.”
We went to the park. On the way there, I got catcalled by a man who tried to cheat on his girlfriend with me (entirely unprovoked, unwanted) a month or so later. We brought the leftovers of the cake back to him and while I went home to change, Safy went to Daily Paper with another friend of ours, one who is internet famous and vivacious, but she told me months later “got shy.”
Safy went on the roof, she told me, of Daily Paper, months later, and that it was perfect.
I met Safy for the first time on the internet. She was going to interview me for this piece she was working on. A TikTok DM. An email, a phone call. Then a google meet and we were gushing about how she deserved an event that wasn’t white centric, an event where she didn’t have to perform unless she wanted to, and so was birthed Play Date, an event we whipped up in a few weeks. Invite only, not for the sake of exclusivity but for the sake of intention.
Safy and I got a drink that evening at my favorite restaurant (from which I am now writing this). We had a bucket of pixie sticks that we carried around Manhattan. We went to a social club and met a Blonde man who was having a New York night of his own. And then Safy took an Uber to her brother’s (“You’re both biracial” she’d say to me again and again and I’d giggle each time) and I was left in my apartment that night (with a British Filmmaker) replying to her texts and thinking about our furtive night together talking about media, about her career, about the landscape she blew up in.
I tried to write a profile about her over and over, calling her late at night to get more pieces of the puzzle. But even though audio is a more real medium than text, than social media, it still isn’t real. And then, one morning while I was at the gym, I got a text from her inviting me to her sister’s wedding in Minnesota in October.
My first instinct was to say yes. Something about our conversation at the bar. Her vulnerability and assumption repeatedly that I was a good person. Something about her energy – earnest and kind and willing. She’d told me over the phone about legacy media, about her career, her interests, her family and the power of their culture, it’s purity since they were first generation immigrants.
I booked my flight to Minnesota while in Florida. Visiting a man I’d met on a boat three weeks before. I was in a travel phase.
I flew to Minnesota the morning of my 24th birthday. I had three days of crying and drinking and writing I ended it with the British filmmaker after he’d texted that he loved me. TEXTED! And we ended it. I took the call in her house two days after he’d sent that message and the day I finished the manuscript for my debut novel. I took the call from her sister’s bedroom (the one who was getting married).
Safy welcomed me with heart and gusto. Safy is kind and beautiful and whimsical. She’s the kind of woman that people like Charlie Kauffman wish they could be, and that’s why he keeps writing these female characters in his works.
Her father came into the guest bedroom. “You’re both gifted” he said, talking about me and her and our love of writing.
Safy’s biracial brother told me to load all of my luggage in the car before we went to Duluth, emphasizing that I didn’t really know how the evening would play out and would want my things with me for my flight, which was early the next morning.
Safy and I walked to Starbucks, seeming like miles across suburban Minneapolis, but soaking in the big sky, the lush fall landscape. We sat down together. Chatted about this night she had in New York. A friend, an afterparty, her observations.
I was dressed in a Dutta that she’d picked out for me. She was dressed in a dress, since her Mother had already taken all of the special Duttas to Duluth.
“We’ll change there” she told me.
Her brother (the biracial one) picked us up from the parking lot and we drove 3 hours to Duluth. I finished my novel on the way.
We arrived and came into a stunning venue, which she’d later tell me her sister picked because it reminded her of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. We went to the bridal suite.
I became a voyeur to this interesting moment where her Mother wanted her to wear a Dutta, but Safy wanted to wear the dress she already had one (and looked beautiful in). I was reminded of a section in an earlier draft of my novel where the little girl’s mother made her keep on guessing what the mother wanted her to wear to church instead of just telling her or picking it out for her, getting more tumultuous, more violent with each new outfit.
It hit me that this was a universal experience of girlhood. What Mother wants you to wear versus what you want to wear for yourself.
I met so much of her family. Heard all the tea about certain relatives.
Met one cousin who Safy called a “boy genius.” He had so much hope, so much faith, so much curiosity. Gave me faith in future generations.
“When does the ceremony start?” I asked.
Someone explained that this was a traditional Somali wedding. That the “ceremony” had technically already happened and this was more of a big party with food and dancing. I felt like a little bit of an outsider.
“Are you Somali?” one of her cousins asked me good-naturedly. I later learned that it was her brother and her brother’s girlfriend's first time around this much of their family as well. That I wasn’t alone in this net new experience.
They drove me home, with another relative who was going to take a shift driving. We talked about Somalia. About family. About Science Fiction. They dropped me off at the airport on their way back to Minneapolis. I took off the Dutta outside of the airport standing there in Safy’s sister’s sports bra and a trench coat.
I thought about how I left Safy. In Duluth, dancing to Promiscuous by Nelly Furtando, finally having let go and let her self shine through for the evening, representing something so pivotal within a family’s hopes and dreams and life in a new land.
Her Father kissed me on the head on my way out.
“Thank you” he’d said.
I got on the plane thinking about this interaction. How the past ten or more years of media have encouraged us to boil one another into media and opportunities and collabs and growth hacks. But seeing Safy in her home, in Minnesota made her real to me and me real to her and properly cemented a friendship.
I think I’m spending Thanksgiving with her brother and his girlfriend and Safy, or I just got a voice memo from her saying as much.
I think about this one philosopher a lot who says you should always treat people as an end and not a means. Safy is not code. She is not media. She is but she is not Princess Babygirl. She is human. She is human she is human. And now she is my friend.
Safy, if you’re reading this, I’ll see you on Thanksgiving.