Sweet St. Louis

by Omar Tyree

  “How many?” she asked.

  “None. I haven’t done that since I first got out of high school. But you? I just took you right over there to her. So what am I telling you with that? In a sense, I already trust you, with a lot of things that I told you already. And with a lot of things that I’ve already done with you.

  “I never took another woman up to watch airplanes and shit,” he said. “Who would do that? Especially your first time out. But I thought that I could do that with you. So I did it. And it was nice.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Yes, it was.”

  “Don’t do that,” he told her, pulling his hand away.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I want to be more than just held and kissed tonight. And talked to.”

  Sharron stopped and stared out of the window, pissed off for some reason.

  A typical fucking guy! But what did I expect? What did I really expect?! she thought to herself.

  Then she nodded, defiantly. “Okay then. If that’s how you want it, then let’s do it then. Let’s just get it over with.”

  Ant stared at her. He was speechless.

  You try and tell a woman the truth, and what do they do, they fuckin’ get attitudes with you! Man, I knew this shit was dumb! I should have just stopped off and picked up a hooker somewhere. I got money on me.

  “What are you waitin’ for? Let’s go to your house. You want me, right?” Sharron pressed him.

  “And what’s so wrong with that?” he asked honestly. “You want me too. I mean, I assume that you do. Why else would you spend so much time with me?”

  “Because evidently I like your ass!” she yelled at him. “Didn’t you listen to the song last night? Or were you just faking it. And lying to me?”

  “Yeah, I listened to the song. And I liked it. But this is real life here. And if we ever expect to go further than where we are, we gon’ have to trust each other. In everything!”

  “Like sex, right?”

  “That’s a part of everything.”

  “Yeah, it sounds more like the only thing to me,” she told him.

  Ant got pissed off himself and said, “Look, the fact that I’m even sittin’ here tellin’ you this shit shows that I like you. I don’t even talk about sex with women. I just do the shit!”

  “You talked about sex with me, howling at the moon. You remember that, Mr. Lie Alot?” she asked him sarcastically. It seemed comical to her. All of that wasted effort on her part to end up with the same result. A panty chase.

  “I did a lot of things that I don’t usually do with you,” Ant told her.

  “And I’m actually supposed to believe that now? After you told me that you outright lie? So what are you gonna tell me next? That I’m special to you? That nobody makes you feel like I do? And you want to take it to the next level?”

  Sharron was having a good time with it. Why the hell not? There wasn’t anything else she could do to change things. Men were men. And they were mostly—since she couldn’t use the word “all”—terrible, in one way or another.

  Ant grinned at her sarcasm.

  “That ain’t even my style. That stuff sounds like a corny Babyface song.”

  “Well, I happen to like Babyface. And maybe we adjust don’t have enough in common.”

  “And we took all this time to find that out, hunh, that we don’t have anything in common?”

  “All what time? I’ve only known you since May. It’s not even July yet.”

  “And we already shared your birthday together, from sunup to sundown,” he countered.

  “That doesn’t mean we know each other all that well.”

  “Yeah, not like you know Celena.”

  “And not like you know Tone.”

  Ant shook his head and smiled again. He said, “I hear that’s why a lot of black men get with white women, because sisters always gotta argue their point with everything.”

  “Oh, so we’re just supposed to say, ‘Sure, honey, do whatever the hell you want, and I’ll still love you anyway.’ Well, to hell with that!” Sharron snapped at him.

  “Look, I’m just makin’ a point. I don’t go that way.”

  “Well, good for you, Anthony. Very, very good. Anthony Poole doesn’t date white women, he only dogs out the black ones. Well, hurray for us!”

  Obviously, Ant had gotten underneath Sharron’s skin as well. So what were they to do with each other?

  “It’s gettin’ late,” Ant said, watching his car clock reach quarter to eleven.

  “I don’t have a curfew,” Sharron told him. “And you can walk inside and tell Celena that I said that,” she added.

  “Are you saying that you’re coming with me then?” Ant wanted to make sure he knew what the plan was.

  “You still want me, right? Or at least for tonight,” she responded.

  He denied her assumption. “That’s not the case at all. You make it what you make it.”

  “So I have a say so? Really?” she asked him.

  “I mean, it’s not like I’m gon’ drop off the planet. That’s why I’m telling you that you have to trust me,” he told her.

  “Don’t you have to go to work tomorrow morning?” she asked.

  “Not until one. What about you?”

  “Twelve. So I have to leave home by eleven. Which means I have to be back here by no later than ten. Which means you have to be up to drive me back by nine. Which means I have to get to sleep by one o’clock tonight, so I can get my eight hours of rest. Which means that you have between now and one o’clock to get me to your house and do what you have to do. But first, I have to go back inside and get a few things to take with me.”

  Ant just broke out laughing. This girl is stone-cold crazy! And I like her for it, he thought.

  “You make it sound like we robots or something,” he commented.

  “Why should I put any emotions into it? You just want some, right? What does that have to do with my mind? You just want the body.”

  At that point, Ant decided the play the game her way by pulling out his wallet.

  “All right then, if it’s like that, then how much is this gonna cost me?”

  “Five hundred dollars.”

  “For a whole week?”

  “Hell no! Until one o’clock, like I said.”

  Ant did the math. “By the time I get you back to my place, we’re looking at less than two hours. That means I want your clothes off as soon as we hit the door.”

  “How ’bout I just ride over there naked?”

  How ‘bout we just screw in the car? Ant thought with a chuckle.

  “Oh, and I don’t do cars, so don’t even think it,” Sharron added, reading his devious grin.

  “I’ll be right back,” she told him, leaving the car to go back inside for her things.

  Ant sat there with half a smile on his face and wondered, Is she bullshitting me or what? She might have me sitting out here looking like a damn fool, and then get her girlfriend to come out and tell me that she can’t go. Or maybe they ’ll call the damn cops and say that a man is outside stalking her. I mean, how is she gonna go from being pissed off about me wanting to do her, and then agree to it? Because if that’s the case, I probably could have pressed her real hard before and got it.

  After a few long minutes of waiting out in his car, his car clock reached eleven, and Ant nodded his head, telling himself, Yeah, she got me good. She’s not coming back out here. I just played myself. That’s just what I get!

  He started up his engine to pull away. He was disappointed. Not only with the fact that he would have to start from scratch to find someone to sleep with, but also at the loss of Sharron’s very interesting company. However, right as he put his car in reverse and began to back out of his parking space, Sharron headed down her steps and over to the passenger side of his car with a big brown bag of things.

  “Sorry about that,” she told him as she hopped in. “I couldn’t find everything I was looking for.”

  Ant no
dded and smiled at her. Not only because he wouldn’t have to start all over and call someone to be with for the night, but because he would be spending more time with Sharron Francis from Memphis, Tennessee, who had quickly dug her way to his heart and didn’t even realize it.

  Confidence. How many people really have it when it comes to relationships? Are we all insecure about ourselves and how others perceive us as men and as women? How weak we are, or how strong. How attractive, or unattractive. How intelligent, or unintelligent. Or how hip we are to the ways of the world, as opposed to how others perceive us to be. How much do we care about all of those perceptions? How much do they affect our relationships? And how much do those perceptions sway the confidence that we think we have in ourselves, or that we think we have in our mates?

  I’m gonna hate myself in the morning. I know it! Sharron thought to herself as she rode in the passenger seat of Anthony’s car. And Celena‘s going to be right. She was right from day one. I should have never stopped and let Anthony knock me down at the skating rink that night.

  We all second-guess ourselves based on our own lack of confidence, and the perception from others that we could do better. And in those periods of confusion concerning who we are and what we really want out of life, we somehow lose our sense of direction and forget which way is up.

  “Why are you so quiet over there?” Anthony finally asked her. “Is it somewhere else you’d rather be?”

  Sharron thought about it and answered his question honestly. “No.”

  “So why do you seem so quiet now? You don’t want to do this?”

  Anthony was second-guessing himself as well. How badly did Sharron want to be with him? Was her attraction to him real, or just for play? Because sometimes women fell more in love with the dream of how a man could be instead of accepting who he was at that moment.

  “I do and I don’t,” she answered.

  “Would it be better if we waited another month, or another three months, or another ten months for that matter? Would it make you feel more … respected?” he asked.

  “Not necessarily respected, but more comfortable, like I said earlier,” she told him.

  “Why are you doing this then, if you don’t feel ‘comfortable’ about it?”

  She looked Anthony in his face and took in his relaxed mood. He was sure asking a lot of questions for someone so pressed about sex. One would get the impression that he was trying to talk her out of it.

  “Do you want to do this?” she asked him for the third time. “Because it sure doesn’t sound like you’re up to convincing me.”

  He hunched his shoulders. “You’re going to do what you want to do regardless.”

  She was appalled at his insinuation!

  “Oh no, don’t put this all on me. You wanted to have me over to your house. And you called me up with this on your mind, and not the other way around,” she snapped.

  “Yeah, but you have the power to make this happen or not,” he countered. And he was right. “Women always have the power,” he added.

  “I wouldn’t say always,” she commented. “Just like you told me never to say all.”

  “When don’t they?”

  “When they’re raped.”

  Anthony looked at her and frowned. “I’m not talking about rape incidents. I’m talking about consensual stuff.”

  “Some men rape a woman’s mind to make her think that it’s consensual when it’s really not.”

  “So are you saying that women are that helpless, that they can’t make their own decisions, and that men are always mind-controlling them? You think that’s what I’m doing with you?”

  Where are all of these questions coming from tonight? Sharron asked herself.

  “Why all the questions tonight?” she decided to ask him. “I thought I was supposed to be the one with all of the questions.”

  “To tell you the truth, I needed someone to talk to about things tonight. And at the same time, after I talked to you on the phone, I was feeling … a little bit horny,” he admitted with a smile.

  “Okay, so it’s my fault again, right? It’s always the woman’s fault.”

  “You was the one talking that ‘come and get me’ stuff,” he reminded her.

  “And you were the one who wanted to have me over in the first place,” she countered.

  “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you, and then I started feeling horny in the process,” he reiterated.

  Sharron stopped and thought about that. Was her mind and conversation turning him on to sex?

  “So, in other words, I guess that I should be flattered. Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Because I don’t feel flattered. Plenty of men are turned on by women sexually for all kinds of reasons. And I want to be more than just a turn-on inside of your pants”

  He laughed and said, “You are. You just can’t see it yet.”

  “When will I see it?”

  “I guess when we celebrate my birthday,” he told her.

  Good answer. It projected longevity. Just like she had projected on him. Anthony’s projection, however, was a lot more unstable. February 8, 2000, was more than eight months away. Anthony had never been in a steady relationship with a woman past five months. They just never lasted that long. Fortunately, she never asked him about it. Sharron, on the other hand, had dated Sean Love for three full years before even graduating from high school. Her stamina was proven.

  “You sure you wouldn’t be bored with me by then?” she asked Anthony with a smile.

  He didn’t answer that immediately. How could he?

  “I mean, you have to wait and see for something like that. You might get bored with me” he looked her in the eyes and answered.

  “I doubt that,” she responded.

  “A lot of people doubt things,” he countered. “Then they happen.”

  She nodded. He had a good point.

  “Okay, you’re right. Maybe I will get bored with you. Have you had that happen before?”

  “Yeah, plenty of times,” he admitted. They get bored with not being around me as much as they want, he thought to himself. Shawntè got bored in three weeks.

  Men could rarely express their every thought to a woman. And despite how much women claimed to express to their men, they rarely addressed every thought on their minds either. What kind of impolite world would we have if everyone did? Who knows the scattered, insecure, selfish, disrespectful, hasty thoughts that run through our minds? And who would really want to hear them all? Better yet, what would someone do with that kind of knowledge of us? Men knew, far more than women, it seemed, that knowledge of the conscious mind was indeed power. And they were not willing to give that much power away.

  “How did that make you feel when they got bored with you? Were you heartbroken?” Sharron asked. She was thinking again about Sean Love. He sure seemed heartbroken. She felt sorry for him. But she still did not want to be with him.

  Anthony hunched his shoulders. “Not really. You just move on.”

  But sometimes you don’t want to move on, Sharron thought. She was tired of moving on.

  “But don’t you get tired of that? Just going from one person to the next?” she asked him.

  Anthony nodded. He did feel tired. But not three years ago when he was in his prime.

  “I guess you do get a little worn out from it, yeah. It seems like, the older you get, and the more you mature, the more it starts to get to you. But then, when you try to stop, that shit seems almost impossible.” Anthony had been trying to stop his own bed hopping for months, and the months had added up to nearly a year.

  “It’s just a … dick thing, hunh?” Sharron asked him with a smirk.

  He smiled back to her. “Yeah. It really is.”

  And what is his dick going to do to his mind after he gets me, she thought. That’s when the lack of confidence sets in. The insecurity. The fear of loving a black man and the effects of his idolized penis.

  “Is there such a thing as a woman’s thing?” she
asked him, just for the hell of it.

  He answered, “Yeah. Love, and a menstrual cycle.”

  She smiled even wider. “Love is a woman’s thing? So you’re telling me that men are not capable of love. Do you love your boy Tone? Do you love your mother?” she quickly asked him.

  He grinned and said, “Of course I do. But I don’t dwell on it. It’s a given.”

  “Women dwell on love?” She knew better than that. Of course they did! A lot more than men. Men dwelled more on success. Not that women didn’t care about where they stood in life, they just didn’t dwell on it. Success, for many women, was a given. They would simply work hard until they met their goals. Whereas many men seemed to have too many goals and not a smidgen of the work habit that they needed to get there.

  Anthony answered, “Yeah. Just listen to the songs that women sing.”

  “Is something wrong with that? Don’t you want love?” Sharron asked him.

  What a question that was. Of course he wanted love! As badly as she wanted it. He was just very picky about where that love came from, and where he wanted to give it back. That was a man’s dilemma. If I can only love one, then who in the world will that one be? His insecurity was in picking one woman to love out of a hundred. That made a male decision a hell of a lot more crucial than that of a woman, picking one man out of maybe two or three. Because women, on the average, were a lot more selective about who they went out with.

  Her question slipped his mind as they pulled up to the parking spot outside his apartment.

  “Well, this is where I live,” he told her. It was eleven-thirty.

  Sharron looked out at the clean, brick-front two-story building and was pleased with it. Even the block that he lived on was peaceful, yet lively enough to never feel alone.

  She grabbed her brown bag and climbed out of his car to follow him up to his place on the second floor. She was impressed with the inside as well, a fully furnished and clean apartment.

  “So where is your maid?” she joked. She just knew that Anthony couldn’t be so clean himself. Or maybe he had organized everything specifically for her visit there that night. Then again, his car was always clean. But that was his pride and joy. Could his apartment be an extension of that?