Seize the Day (20 page)

“Can I give you some pleasure?”

She said it in a way that made it clear she was talking about sex, something that had meant little to me. The doctors' news made me flaccid. The only times I thought about it was when I dreamed about it, which was not that often.

When I did, though, I would awake with an erection. Once or twice I handled it myself—jacked off—and my mind went somewhere else. But I did think about how lovely Kathy looked when she picked me up at the hospital. Looking at her across the table at dinner, I saw the sexiness in her that I loved when we were together. And there she was sitting on the bed beside me, looking and smelling enticing.

It wasn't just about her facial features or body. It was her smile, the way she used the back of her index finger to move her hair from covering her eyes, the way she pursed her lips when she intently listened—subtle things that drew me in. I did begin to think about sex with her, just about the time her husband's friend rolled up on us. The erection that was developing in my mind flat-lined.

Now, there she was in my hotel room asking if she could give me pleasure.
Damn right, you could give me pleasure.
But she was married. But I was dying. That was no excuse; it would be wrong. But it wouldn't matter because I'd be gone. I played that back-and-forth game in my head long enough for Kathy to wonder.

“What's wrong? You don't…”

“It's not that.” For some reason, I thought she was taking pity on me because I was dying. I also thought she felt obligated because I said I was going to give her some money.

“It's not that…Kathy. I don't want you to do anything that compromises you morally. You're a good girl. And you're married.”

“In name only. That's it. There's nothing there. Hasn't been for a long time.”

“And you don't have to do something to make me feel good because you know I'm sick. You don't have to do that.”

“I wouldn't do that, Calvin. How could you think that? I know it's been a while, but act like you know me.”

“And the money, it's yours—I don't want you to feel like you owe me something.” Mistake.

“If I didn't know better, you just called me a whore,” she said, standing up from the foot of the bed.

“You know I would never do that.”

“You just said, basically, that I would sleep with you because you said you were going to give me some money.”

“Yeah, but I didn't mean it as crazy as it sounds. I don't know, Kathy. I didn't mean to insult you. You know how I feel about you. I hope. But I'm not thinking right. My confidence, my…it's just always a lot going on in my mind.

“I'm overwhelmed with thoughts and fears and I just can't balance them all the right way sometimes. I'm sorry.”

She sat back on the bed, only this time thigh-to-thigh close to me. I looked over at Moses, who was looking at me like,
What you gonna do?

“Do you know, when I saw you when you picked me up and at dinner, it's the first time first time since the doctors told me I had cancer that I really thought about sex?”

“I'm glad to hear that. Calvin, I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do. I just feel like right now, at this moment, we need each other.”

She ain't never lied. I could feel an erection growing in my pants just from her words and the thought of sex with her. And her scent. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but it did make me feel manly. Most men tie manhood to sex, and how well and how often we get it. Yes, it was caveman thinking, but it was what it was. My manhood did not seem to be slipping from me, but sex slid way down the priority meter for me, to the point where it did not matter. I had more important things to think about.

Before I could say anything, Kathy jumped on me as if I were a horse—straddled me like a jockey would a mare. I held her by her waist and she leaned in for the most extended sensual kiss. It brought me right back to our time together—and out of my indifference.

So I started working off memory. I knew all her arousal points and I targeted them in a fit of desperate passion that was electric. I kissed her neck and down her shoulders. I pulled her tee over her head, exposing her breasts sitting up in a lace bra. Without hesitation, I grabbed them both firmly, but gently, too.

She threw her head back just as I recalled, and I pulled the straps down each arm, which allowed me to remove her breast out of the cups. I kissed them delicately, alternating between the two. She loved it when I took them in my mouth, squeezing them as I sucked on the nipples. Kathy began to make sounds, the kind that tell a story of passion.

“I have missed you, Mr. Jones,” she said breathlessly.

I could not respond with a mouthful of titties. I figured she would rather I do that than speak. After a few more minutes, the foreplay achieved its purpose—I was hard as a jackhammer and Kathy was dripping-through-her-clothes moist.

She maneuvered off my lap and around the bed to the nightstand, where she turned out the light. “Your dog doesn't need to see this,” she said, smiling.

I laughed. “You're right—don't want to traumatize him.”

From either side of the bed, we watched the silhouette of each other as we undressed. We were deliberate, sensual in how we moved, building the anticipation of what was to come.

We pulled back the covers together and, totally naked, entered the bed. My erection was so hard Kathy noticed when we embraced. “Damn. You got a log down there.”

“Ain't nothing changed.”

“I see—or rather, I feel.”

“But, listen,” I said, “don't we need a condom?”

“Yes. I have one in my purse.”

I was going to ask why, but at that point, I didn't care. Pussy makes a man mind get tunnel vision. All I could see was her tunnel.

“This might not last that long,” I warned Kathy. “I haven't had any in going on three months.”

“Sometimes, it's better to have none at all than to have something that does nothing for you. And that's been my situation for a long time.”

“We're talking too much about stuff that has nothing to do with the beauty of this moment,” I said. I had no idea where that sentence came from. I guess it was from the heart. Whatever the case, it worked because we stopped talking and began kissing, kissing like teenage kids in love for the first time in the backseat of their parents' Buick.

It was all so romantic. She was not another man's wife in that moment. She was
my
woman. I felt her love in the passion. I just hoped she felt mine, too.

I had enough foreplay—I was about to explode before anything really happened. I would not be able to take that embarrassment, so I stalled.

“Kathy, this is very special to me,” I said. I was buying time to regroup, but I was serious. “Being here with you like this, it feels like when we were together a long time ago. I wish the circumstances were different. But it still feels right.”

“I'm a married single woman, if that makes any sense,” Kathy said, falling back on a pillow. Looking at the ceiling, she added: “If I was here with someone else, maybe I'd feel guilty. With you, I feel absolutely no guilt.”

I had calmed down by then, and leaned in to kiss her again. We frolicked around for several seconds and somehow, amid all the groping and squeezing and kissing, we almost effortlessly rolled on that condom. I guess two horny and determined people working together accomplished a lot.

She lay on her back, her legs invitingly open, and I slid between them like that was where I was supposed to be. As I kissed her shoulder, she reached down and inserted my hardness, and I felt the warmth of her insides just as she squirmed and moaned.

I hadn't had sex in the close-to-three months since learning I had cancer—the longest stint of my life without it since I was twenty-one. I hadn't forgotten how to make love in general and to Kathy in particular. Our sex life was so dynamic that I would fly to San Francisco for a day and a half just to so we could satisfy our urges a few times and fly all the way back across country to D.C. We were animalistic…but still romantic.

All this time later, I knew how physical she liked it, and I gave it to her just like she wanted. She used to say, “Don't be delicate with me,” which was code for
bring it.

And so I brought it hard and deep. I held her legs in the air as I pumped manically. I turned her on her knees, grabbed her by her waist and pumped furiously. Neither the smacking sound nor her moans gave me pause. I kept on thrusting…until the pleasure point was reached and the sensation of passion burst out into the condom—and I collapsed on her back, breathlessly exhausted but totally fulfilled.

I kissed her back and shoulders and neck. When my weight seemed too much, I moved off of her and she snuggled onto my chest.

“You have a good dog,” she said. “Didn't hear a word out of Moses.”

“Moses knew I needed that,” I joked. “But, seriously, he seems to know how to behave himself, as if he understands.”

“That's what all dog lovers say,” Kathy said.

“You know I'm not a dog-lover,” I said. “But I do…I really like this dog. But it's only been a few hours.”

“You're only going to love the dog more as days go by,” Kathy said.

“I can tell,” I said. “What a day? The bus thing, finding Moses and now this…you. That's a good day.”

“How do you feel?” she asked.

I pondered the simple question for a minute.

“I feel like I'm dreaming. As much as I wanted this, I never would have expected it to become a reality.”

Kathy held me as I held her. I felt wetness on my chest. She cried. I was not sure if they were tears of joy or tears of sadness about my plight. And I didn't ask.

I
t wasn't that I didn't care enough to ask Kathy why she shed tears. It was that I didn't want the moment to be lost. Moments meant more to me because I was not sure how many more I had.

Denzel was in this movie with Gene Hackman.
Crimson Tide.
They were on a submarine, floating on top of the water before submerging deep into the sea on a mission. Gene Hackman admired the beautiful sunset with Denzel, who was seeing it for the first time. Denzel admired it, too—without saying a word.

Hackman's character praised him for not ruining the moment by talking through it. I remembered that as Kathy lay on my chest. I was not going to ruin a moment I had imagined for nearly twenty years with a question that would be answered at some point anyway.

So, I closed my eyes with the one woman I loved on my chest and soaked up that feeling. And that feeling lasted long enough for me to doze off into a deep sleep.

I could feel myself snoring, but could not do anything about it. I hadn't gotten as much sleep on the bus as I had planned and so much had happened along the ride. I dreamed dreams that were not about cancer or death.

I could only remember two of the dreams. One, I was playing golf with Walter. We were on some lavish course that was in the mountains and was crowded. It was my turn to tee off on No. 1 and I didn't have my golf clubs. I had left them at the clubhouse—something that could only happen in a dream.

I ran to find them, but they were not where I had left them. Then it was getting dark, meaning we would not get the round in. I finally found my clubs in the same place I had already looked. I jumped in a cart and caught up with Walter, who had already hit a nice drive down the middle.

It was my turn to swing when the marshal came over and started giving us the rules of the course. Even in my sleep, I could feel myself getting antsy and frustrated. I wanted to hit the ball. But I never did.

It started raining and we had to leave the course. There was frustration all over me as I woke up, moving Kathy slightly from me chest to my left side.

“What's wrong?”

I didn't answer. I just hugged her, and she relaxed and we lay there in silence. Before I fell asleep, I tried to figure what the dream meant. It was a feeble, desperate act of a man desperate to learn something about himself, through any means.

I thought about it and in all the dreams I had about golf, I seldom actually hit the ball. I wondered if that meant I had not taken my swings at life like I should have, that I had not done enough when I
thought
I had life under control.

I couldn't be sure, but my mindset was to ponder everything. Before I knew it, though, I was asleep again, this time dreaming about being able to fly.

It was so weird at first because my borderline fear of heights was apparent in my dream. But somehow, I was on the side of a mountain in D.C. (where there are no mountains, by the way) and I jumped off. Don't know why, but I believed I could fly.

Still, I felt so free and alive. It was so real. I could feel the breeze and my heart raced as I floated above Anacostia Park, across the river and over the Nationals' baseball stadium, over toward the Capitol. I woke up before I could get to the Washington Monument, and I was irritated that it was a dream.