Authors: Lori D. Johnson
And then he kissed me. Yeah, girl, he kissed me like there was no doubt in his mind that he could deliver on everything I’d been wanting and needing and then some. When he finally let up, he said, “So what do you say? Is the night over, or has it just begun?”
“Well, since you put it that way,” I said, still choosing to play it cool but waiting eagerly for just the right moment to heat things up.
And so without further ado, we went over to his place, where instead of heading straight for the bedroom, which I personally would have preferred, homeboy poured us some wine, dimmed the lights, and then surprised me by opting to play the CD of Jarreau classics I’d purchased after the concert, rather than something from his collection of R&B moldy oldies.
After a couple sips of the merlot, we slipped into the familiar comfort of our old slow-dance groove, except on this particular occasion there was only so much of the hip bone–to–hip bone, cheek-to-cheek either one of us could take. Somewhere in the middle of brother Al’s “Like a Lover” we ended up on the sofa necking, like two inexperienced
teens, easily distracted by the slightest noise, and still somewhat unsure about just how far the other was willing to go.
Carl’s kisses, like his hands, were soft, full, caressing, and prone to wander. He seemed thoroughly engaged, if not fully aroused by what we were doing, which only made all the more confusing what happened next.
We’d been at it for a couple of minutes, with homeboy’s fingers cruising the full terrain of my body. Now, while my right hand enjoyed a similar freedom, my left pretty much stayed where homeboy wanted it—in his lap, keeping company with the surprisingly larger than average endowment that he, unlike most similarly blessed brothers, had never once bothered to brag about.
And before I’m accused of any unnecessary roughness, let me just say that if I was putting a hurting on the man, it must have been one he liked, because every time I tried to move my hand away, he always pulled it right back.
But for some unknown reason, right while I was in the process of unzipping his fly, Carl jerked away from me, a move that nearly landed him butt-first on the floor, while simultaneously offering me a glimpse of what looked like sheer panic in his eyes.
“I—I’m sorry,” he said, on repositioning himself. “I’m just a little uncomfortable.”
I watched as he first slipped out of his shoes, then untucked his shirt. He was wrestling loose the cuffs on his sleeves when I decided to go ahead and put my dignity on the line.
“Here, let me help you with that,” I said, trying to play innocent as I leaned over and started undoing the buttons along the front of his shirt, making it a point to “accidentally” brush my nails against his chest as I worked my way down to his navel. Oh yeah, girl, as tense as he was, he grinned big-time and said, “That kind of gives you an unfair advantage, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. But that can easily be remedied,” I said as I proceeded to unfasten my own blouse with a direct frontal assault in mind. Really, sometimes a woman simply has to take matters into her own hands. The bra I had on hooked up in the front, and with one quick twist I’d unsnapped the clasp and unleashed the full fury of these high-riding, 42 double Ds.
Well, let it suffice to say, it was a move that aroused more than just his curiosity. He peeled back the lace cups and ran an appraising eye over my twin sisterfriends before subjecting them to a much more physically pleasurable type of scrutiny.
Girl, let me tell you—it was heaven all over again. My head was spinning, my blood was racing, and my body was practically screaming, “Yeah! Yeah! Git it! Git it!” when all of a sudden he stopped.
The brother stopped, girl! Got up, changed the music, replenished his wineglass, came back to the couch, and then started a conversation.
Hell, I durn near croaked. I mean, I’m sitting there, titties bared to the world, my every nerve in an uproar, and he’s quizzing me about my plans for the rest of the weekend. I’m thinking to myself, this man is either crazy, confused, or a latent homosexual. But since I had already come that far, I decided to play along. Okay? Maybe he just wanted to slow things up a bit before the real action began, right? Uh-uh.
I made the mistake of telling him that Nora and I were planning a trip to Water Valley to visit Mama ’nem. Honey, that just prompted him to launch into this long, mindless monologue about his own mama. And how wonderful she was. And how much he loved her. And how much he missed her. Which is all fine and dandy, but not at all the type of lip action I was particularly interested in at that moment.
He went on, and on, and on, and I listened until I felt my head about to explode. Finally, I just had to come right
out and ask him, “Carl, why in the hell are you sitting up here talking about your mama?”
He looked at me like I had just slapped him or something and said, “What?”
And I told him. I said, “I just find it rather unnerving, if not downright perverse, for you to be suckling at my breast one minute and talking about your mama the next.”
He frowned all up and said, “What’s with the funky attitude? You got something against mothers or something?”
That’s when I let him have it, girl. Read his ass, chapter and verse, straight from the Book of Black Women! Told him that was the problem with most Black men—they’re all hung up on their mamas. Think their mamas are the only durn women in the world worthy of being treated with any degree of decency. Every other woman they want to treat like a ’ho.”
After I’d finished my piece, Carl shook his head and said, “Just tell me this, why’d you have to pick tonight of all nights to change back into the bitch?”
Well, that did it for me. I grabbed my bag and said, “Maybe I just ought to leave.”
Without so much as blinking an eye, Carl stood up, re-hooked my bra, and said, “Yeah, maybe you just ought to.”
I’m not out to make excuses for myself. The truth is, I just got scared. And fear, like lust, will drive a man to do a lot of silly, stupid, and foolish things—especially if he’s predisposed to being all those things to some extent anyway.
But heaven forbid, man, should those two things—lust and fear—ever collide on any other joker like they did on
me, and at the most inopportune moment. There I was in full throttle, ready to whip the bad boy out and lay it on her, when I’ll be doggone if some of the conversation I’d had with my cousin Squirrel about Faye’s weekly trips up to the hospital didn’t replay itself in my head.
“Whatcha gon’ do, man,” I remember him saying to me at one point, “if come to find out ‘Big Red’ is hiding sumthin’ really horrible? Like, say, turns out she’s some bipolar, post-op transsexual who’s got an extreme case of herpes?”
If that wasn’t bad enough, I started hearing what my Uncle Westbrook had told me after I’d peeped him to the deal between me and Faye. He’d looked at me kinda funny and said, “I don’t know, Carl. Ol’ girl sounds like she plays a pretty tough hand. You step outta line and ain’t no telling what kinda hurting she’s liable to lay on you.”
Now, unlike my cousin Squirrel, my Uncle Westbrook’s got sixty-five-some years’ worth of wisdom under his belt. I figure if anybody, he ought to know a li’l sumthin’-sumthin’ about love and life and redbone gals whose game involves giving it up to a brother with seemingly no strings attached.
Man, with all those voices in my head, straight up wrecking my flow, wasn’t nuthin’ I could do but ease up off the gas and slam on the brakes. Faye was cool about it at first. She even gave me a few seconds to make the necessary adjustments before reaching over and literally giving me a hand. And it wasn’t long before we were both bare-chested, breathing hard, and working toward getting our groan on.
I’m serious, man, I was handling everything that needed handling. I was coming up on third and had my sights set on home when—blip, bam, boom—it hit me out of nowhere with all of the ferocity of a freight train—the overwhelming realization that over and beyond my blatantly doggish desire for a good hump, I really do like this woman. I do. And I want to please her. But what if I can’t? I mean, hell, when it comes to experience she’s probably been ’round the world and back. What if I don’t have what it takes to
get her where she wants to go? Sure, it sounds irrational. Other people’s fears generally do.
But being able to accompany a woman to the land of ooh-la-la? Well, that’s what you might call a sensitive area for me, a sensitivity that was born the day my wife, a woman I loved dearly, up and confessed that in all the years we’d been kicking it, I’d yet to take her there. I’m saying, man, all those times when I thought I’d really been up in there wearing it out—had her sweating, squirming, and singing a right nasty version of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You, Baby”—shoot, ol’ girl had been straight faking it!
And before you go writing me off as some sort of sexually retarded Neanderthal, let me just say that in Bet’s case, it wasn’t even about me. Of course, you couldn’t have told me that at the time. But come to find out, an orgasm wasn’t something Bet had ever experienced with me or anyone else for that matter.
Anyway, there I was on the couch, still fully aiming to do right by Faye and the two big, pretty titties she’d so graciously unveiled for me. I’d gotten her sufficiently hot and bothered and I could tell she was about ready for me to go on and make that next move. But instead of me focusing all of my attention on making that final push up on her, I’d become much more intent on pushing back all the fears and doubts I had swirling around in my subconscious.
Well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what happens when a joker can’t keep his mind on what his ace is supposed to be doing. Uh-uh, after a certain point junior just says to hell with it, drops the proud salute, and marches south with all deliberate speed. I don’t know ’bout you, man, but in my book, the only thing worse than not being able to get the bad boy up at all is having the son-of-a-gun bail out on you in the heated throes of passion.
See, what Faye wrongly assumed was me tripping was actually me trying to spare myself some embarrassment
and buy myself some time to get myself together. And besides not wanting the girl to bear witness to my partner’s all-too swift shrinkage and untimely descent, I also didn’t want her thinking I wasn’t totally into her or that I didn’t want her, ’cause on the strength, man, I was and I did.
In the end, though, balking didn’t get me anywhere but back on chick’s bad side again. And afterward, wasn’t nuthin’ left to do but own up, face the fire, and be a man about the whole lousy situation.
I’d come home, changed my clothes, and crawled into bed. About thirty minutes had passed since the nasty episode with Carl and I’d pretty much resigned myself to another sexless night. But it was cool. I had a nice tall stack of Arabesques to keep me company. I was laying up, flipping through the pages of one, and working on my fourth or fifth cigarette when he called.
Even though I didn’t bother to reach for the phone, it wasn’t like I was actually trying to avoid him. It’s just that Nora and I have separate phone lines. And to keep from disturbing each other in the evenings, we have our answering machines programmed to pick up after the first ring. Plus, having already exerted myself on Carl’s behalf that evening, I was perfectly content to just lie there and listen while brotherman said what he had to say.
“Faye, it’s me, Carl. Look, you’ve got every right to be upset. The only thing I can say is, I got a little nervous and started worrying about whether or not I was gonna be able to—you know—please you. But it’s all good now. Really, it is. And if you wanna come back over I’d be only too happy to try and make it up to you.
“Come on, Faye, just give me another chance. Please? Okay, tell you what. Just think about it. I’ll leave my door unlocked and if you decide to come back I’ll be here waiting. All right? So if somebody should happen to come in here and knock me in my head, it’s gonna be on you. And I’m sure that’s not something you’d want, or is it? Well, I don’t know what else to say. Come back over if you want. Okay? Bye.”
Girl, I’m telling you, this is one brother who’s got begging down to a sho’ ’nuff natural science. But as bad as I still wanted me some, wasn’t like I was about to jump up and run right back over there. Hell, even a woman as brazenly hot-blooded as myself has to maintain some sense of pride and decorum, right? So I made him sweat another full hour before trudging back that way with my lips fixed to tell him I wasn’t ’bout to take no more junk.
Honey, please. I pushed open the door only to find the brother all laid out in a corner of the couch, head thrown back, mouth hanging open, and snoring like somebody who’d worked hard all day out in the fields. Believe me, endeared as I was by the sight of him sitting there waiting on me with the phone clutched tight in his lap, it was all I could do not to walk over and dash some of our leftover wine in his face.
And his place—all I can say is, you should have seen it. I guess he called himself setting the mood or something. But instead of him worrying about getting bopped upside the head, he should have given more thought to laying up there and falling asleep without first extinguishing the half dozen or more candles he’d lit. I’m not playing, girl, between his “dead to the world” behind and Sapphire, that spastic cat of his, the whole durn complex could have gone up in a freaking four-alarm blaze.
I blew out the candles, turned off the TV, and was about to shake Carl awake when I got a better idea. I tipped into his bedroom and changed into the slinky nighttime attire
I’d brought along in my bag, before slipping between the sheets of that big pretty bed and giving Carl a buzz. Yeah, you heard me right. I had my cell phone with me and his number finally committed to memory, so I rung the brother up.
After his groggy “Hello?” I jumped straight to the point and said, “Apology accepted.”
He was like, “Does that mean you’re coming back over?”
I waited a few seconds before telling him, “Why don’t you go to bed and maybe we can discuss it in the morning.”
He woke all the way up behind that and said, “In the morning?! Come on, Faye, don’t do me like this.”