I May Destroy You Is Sparking Nuanced Conversations About Black Male Sexual Assault

And it’s helping me process my own.
Kwame  in a scene from Season 1 Episode 4 of I May Destroy You.
Kwame (Paapa Essiedu) in a scene from I May Destroy You.HBO

 

Early on in the fourth episode of HBO’s I May Destroy You, Kwame (Paapa Essiedu), a gay Black man and best friend to the show’s protagonist, Arabella (Michaela Coel), scrolls through Grindr, settles on a message from a stranger, and slips away to meet him in a nearby restroom. Inside the stall, he drops to his knees and gives the man a blowjob. The act is over in a blink. Kwame stops at the sink to wash his hands and rinse his mouth before walking back out.

This all happens inside a grocery store. A visual punchline comes at the end, when we find out that the stranger Kwame had just blown is actually an on-duty cashier, who proceeds to ring up Kwame’s purchases without making so much as eye contact. The brief vignette does a lot to help establish Kwame’s character — self-assured and sexually adventurous, he’s a great representation of the millennial gay man. After coming of age in an era where apps like Grindr and Scruff have made anonymous sex shockingly easy to come by, why wouldn’t you opt to get your rocks off whenever and wherever you wanted? (Sure, a grocery store might not be my first choice, but it’s not like gay men haven’t capitalized on the inherent eroticism of produce anyway.)

I resonated with that scene. Not because I habitually hookup in grocery store bathroom stalls (I’ve never), but because I know how appealing casual sex can be. Like Kwame, I, too, have been known to scroll through apps like Grindr while in social situations, constantly on the hunt for the next willing partner. I’ve left parties immediately after being sent a stranger’s location; my closest friends regularly crack jokes about the Grindr notifications that get pushed to my lockscreen.

For such a prominent phenomenon, it’s surprisingly under-discussed in mainstream TV and film, especially outside explicitly “queer” programming like Looking or Eastsiders. While I May Destroy You is not “about” queer people, its understanding of queer sexuality feels revelatory — it’s unafraid to wrestle with the sexual habits of modern gay men in a way that doesn’t feel derogatory. That alone would have made the outstanding HBO series worthwhile. But I May Destroy You dares to take it a step further, by illustrating the potential dangers of this behavior.

Later that episode, Kwame arrives at the apartment of Malik, though he only knows him by the pseudonym “HornyMan808.” The pair waste no time getting to know each other, and it’s not long before Kwame is on his back, teasing Is that all you got for me? as Malik penetrates him.

The episode doesn’t show the entire encounter, but after fast-forwarding to its conclusion, Kwame, now dressed and ready to leave, looks satisfied. Stay, Malik urges him. But after Kwame playfully brushes him off and opens the door, Malik turns from sweet to aggressive. He slams the door, crushing Kwame’s fingernail, and then instructs him to lay back down on the bed. When Kwame objects, Malik pushes him onto it. In a flash, he has Kwame completely pinned down, holding his hands tightly underneath the frame as he forcefully humps him. Kwame squirms to free himself, jerking around while yelling out, “Get the fuck off of me!” to no avail. Eventually, he gives in and just lays there, virtually lifeless, staring out into the ether.

“What can I say? I’m a bad boy,” Malik menacingly taunts when he’s finished. And with tears streaming down his face, Kwame rushes outside. It’s a harrowing bit of expertly-acted trauma.

From left to right: Terry (Weruche Opia), Arabella (Michaela Coel), and Kwame (Paapa Essiedu) in a scene from I May Destroy YouHBO

Watching Kwame’s assault, I was immediately reminded of a similar experience I had years ago. I was barely 20 at the time and pretty newly out of the closet. I decided to meet with a stranger I only knew through an app, and like Kwame, had an entire sexual encounter that I’d safely classify as consensual. However, also like Kwame, there came a time when the dynamic promptly shifted. After we finished, I rolled over onto my stomach while the other guy stood up. I presumed that he was grabbing a towel to help us clean up, so I was surprised when I felt the weight of his body crush me shortly after. We never agreed to have penetrative sex, but suddenly, I could feel his erect penis planted firmly against my backside. He still wasn’t trying to enter me, but as I wiggled around, clearly trying to free myself from underneath him, I could feel him deliberately adjusting to counteract my attempts. I didn’t scream out, nor did I fight back as aggressively as I could have. But as he grinded on me, my body noticeably tensed. Like Kwame, I eventually just gave in, lying there, dissociating until it was over. And once it was, I promptly left his apartment. I felt filthy. I went home and sat in the shower for an hour.

I never once classified what happened to me as assault. Even with the mandatory seminar on sexual consent I had recently led for incoming freshmen, which stressed the importance of consent that was both affirmative and verbal, I didn’t entertain the possibility that my personal experience with a slightly uncomfortable sexual encounter could qualify as such.

I never talked to anyone about it, either. It’s scary how adept my brain was at compartmentalizing what happened. Years later, reflecting back on an experience I had rather successfully buried in the upper reaches of my subconscious, I can possibly identify my response at the time as an extension of my internalized shame — as a newly out gay man, I wasn’t even comfortable talking to others about the good sex I was having. But enlightened by the knowledge I’ve accrued in the years since, I can’t help but also see it as a deliberate attempt to make sure I never felt victimized. Even now, months after first being forced to revisit this long-repressed memory, I struggle to sit with the idea that I was the “victim of assault.” I keep trying to replay every act, wondering if I was really as powerless as I felt. Did I fight back hard enough to get him off me? I wonder while staring at my admittedly large build in the mirror. If I never screamed out like Kwame did, is it possible he just didn’t know how uncomfortable I felt?

But the manner in which this trauma immediately came barreling back to the forefront of my brain leads me to believe that this experience had a much larger impact on me than I ever considered. As I watched Malik lock Kwame’s arms into place, I was overcome with the same sensation I had all those years ago, feeling weighed down by the pressure of a man I didn’t give permission to be there. I honed in on Kwame’s pained facial expression and couldn’t help but wonder if mine looked similar. I may not have yelled as spiritedly as Kwame had, but the audible torment that reverberated through his pleas certainly felt oddly familiar.

And the similarities didn’t stop there. Like Kwame and Malik, both my assailant and I were Black men. Incidents like this can certainly happen to anyone, but it can’t be ignored that we, as Black men, are predisposed to suppressing any feelings of victimization. It’s part of a long, well-documented legacy. Centuries after Black men were routinely emasculated by their white enslavers, the unhealthy pressure to feel secure in our manhood still persists.

Essiedu reflected on this during a conversation I had with the actor last month. “It’s trivialized, invalidated, and made to seem like something that Black men should just be able to get over,” he explained about his character’s reluctance to process the true nature of what he experienced. “It’s wrapped around this idea of Black masculinity, stoicism, and strength. It’s interesting. It’s like we’re emotionally stunting ourselves, you know what I mean? We’re not allowed to adopt that position of victimhood in a society that racializes us like that.”

I May Destroy You does a remarkable job depicting what that pressure looks like as it illustrates the aftermath of Kwame’s assault and his inability to properly make sense of it. Three weeks after the encounter, after watching Arabella report her own assault to the police, Kwame finally opts to report his too. But where Arabella’s experience was (perhaps unrealistically) painted as comforting and supportive, Kwame’s proves how futile these situations can sometimes be, too. At the station, he recounts his experience to a Black officer, who struggles to understand the mechanics of casual gay sex. “So when you went to his address, you didn’t say, Hello, my name is…?” he asks when Kwame tries to explain that nobody uses their real name on hookup apps. Unsurprisingly, Kwame eventually gives up. Later on, after suffering a mild panic attack from being locked in a room with a stranger at his friend’s birthday party, he finally faces the fact that he needs to do something drastic to deal with his trauma. So he decides to sleep with a woman.

“He’s still in a position of trying to process his own assault, his own trauma, and so far, it’s not so good,” Essiedu recounts to me about this decision. “At this point, Kwame feels really left behind and he feels at sea. I feel like he’s behaving erratically. He’s trying to hold onto something that might have a sense of certainty in terms of him being able to move forward. He’s like, you know what? Maybe sexuality is a spectrum, and I can do this thing. I can take control.

That Kwame’s response to sexual trauma was to sleep with a woman (a homophobic white woman who unapologetically fetishizes Black men, at that) is an admittedly jarring plot development. But in a way, that’s the point. One can’t regulate how they respond to life-altering events like assault, and seeking out control makes sense for someone who feels powerless. They can question their entire understanding of the spectrum of sexuality, as Kwame did. Or they can completely bury it, allowing it to fester in their subconscious for years, perhaps revealing itself in smaller ways, such as an inexplicable issue with trusting others and a tendency to forgo true intimacy, as was the case with me.

Either way, the fact remains that no show before I May Destroy You has forced me to confront my own experiences this bluntly. Luckily, it has done so through a character whose own journey comes to an uplifting conclusion. As the season progressed, Kwame’s character gradually evolved — in ways both large and small. Without spoiling the plot, the Kwame we see in the series’ terrific season finale stands in stark contrast to the frazzled ball of nerves we’ve watched run from his problems all throughout the middle of the season. It’s an inspiring rejection of the idea that our past traumas will inevitably become our undoing, instead positing that facing them head-on can actually help us gain a better, truer understanding of our own desires.

Maybe it’s time I stopped running.

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