"Come Out of the Wilderness" is a story from James Baldwin's Going to Meet the Man (1965). It is to be confused with Lou Reed's song "I'm Waiting for the Man" (1967) -- "the Man" in Reed's case being his Harlem drug dealer; "the Man" in Baldwin's case being a woman's addiction to what many confuse for love.
"Come Out of the Wilderness" centres Ruth, a Southern-born-and-raised NYC Black woman doing well at a "sufficiently progressive" life insurance company. Ruth is in an addictive relationship with a white painter named Paul, whom she feels something for, but of whom "she wishes she was never touched by his whiteness." Baldwin goes on at some length about "touch" -- how "it would never release her," how "it had power over her not because she was free but because she was guilty." And this too:
"To enforce his power over her [Paul] had only to keep her guilt awake. This did not demand malice on his part, it scarcely demanded perception -- it only demanded that he have, as, in fact, he overwhelmingly did have, an instinct for his own convenience [aka privilege]. His touch, which should have raised her, lifted her roughly only to throw her down hard; whenever he touched her, she became blacker and dirtier than ever; the loneliest place under heaven was in Paul's arms."
