Full Frontal Fiction

by Jack Murnighan

  He a little shy at first, so I go, “Okay, you have dinner wit me, I’ll tell you this thing, then I’ll give you her number so’s you could make your own decision, aight?” So he’s like, “Tomorrow night at Tiny’s.” That’s a rib joint.

  So the next day I’m hanging with LaKeisha and we start talking about guys and whatnot, and she gets to the subject of Super Fly. Like how he ain’t called her in a week, and how upset this shit makes her and how much she liked him, and she ain’t never gonna find nobody to love her and take care of her. She’s a mess in a dress, a tragedy in burgundy. So I do the tough love routine, very calmly, like I was her mama. I go, “LaKeisha, he thinks you a woman, like with a pussy. Hello? He gonna be really disappointed to find that shit out, honey. Imagine you went home with a guy and found out he had equipment down there you wasn’t especting and had no interest in, like, he had a catcher’s mitt instead of a dick.” I was trying to make her laugh behind that comment, but instead the bitch lost it. I mean, really lost it. Got my new velour halter top all soaking wet with tears, honey. Going on about how she felt like he was definitely the one, love at first sight and that he’d assept her as she was even when he found out she had a ho-ho instead of a ring ding. I really doubted that, but at the same time, here’s my best girlfriend in my arms, bawling her eyes out over this man she had been on one—let’s count that again, one—date with. She’s not normally like that. Wait, yes she is.

  So that’s the dilemma I got on my hands. Right now I’m almost due to meet Super Fly for dinner, but I can’t go through with it. I picked up this letter again as a excuse to procrastinate. I’ll admit it. It’s like I want the brother, but if I go and make a play for him and she find out, she’d feel like stabbing me enough times to make me into some paper dollies. I’d be walking down the street and people be pointing at me like, “There go Save the Children.” But maybe I should go and give him her phone number. Maybe the bitch is right, that his mind is open enough, or he already figured her out or some shit. But maybe I should try to protect her from getting hurt so bad. I don’t know what to do. That’s where you come in, Darnell. I thought if we appeared on your upcoming show, “Your Lying Has Got to Stop!” we could all work this thing out with your guidance and the panel of experts. Maybe LaKeisha would find her dream lover and we could all still be friends and kiki together. But right now everything’s such a big mess and I’m concerned that my best friend might do something stupid and get hurt—oh shit, I’m starting to cry again.

  Please help us, Darnell. We watch your show every morning. We love you, love you, love you. Seriously.

  Sincerely,

  Tony Adamson

  (a.k.a. Almonetta Rosé)

  Dear Darnell:

  Thank you so much for giving me and LaKeisha the opportunity to appear on The Darnell Show. You have to admit that there was not a dull moment on the show. And please believe me, Darnell, if it was within my budget or LaKeisha’s to pay for all the damage, I would be enclosing a check with the $20,000 your lawyer asked for in his very nice letter. Hell, I’d give you a extra $20,000 ’cause you so handsome.

  But it really ain’t our fault, you know? First of all, we had to be up at six in order to get to the studio. Our friend Mazda Miata was doing a gig at this club the night before so we was out until like four. So naturally, when we got to your studio, we was totally out of it, ’cause two hours sleep is just not worth it, so we didn’t bother. You shouldn’t be doing no show at eight in the morning, ’cause that way your guests gotta get up real early to get there by like, seven, am I wrong? I’m surprised that any of them guests could put a sentence together, now that I know how early you be taping that shit.

  Plus you know you shouldn’ta had LaKeisha in the same room backstage with all them mens who’s just a buncha dogs. You know she was just her usual self behind that. I was like, we came here to stop this ’ho from doing this kinda thing and it’s exactly what she’s doing. That’s like saying, “I’ma take you to France to make you stop drinking wine,” or “I’ma take you to Thailand so you’ll stop having all that sex.” I’m not trying to say it was a dumb idea or nothing, but Darnell, what the hell were you thinking? She was carrying on like never before, dancing around the room even when it wasn’t no music. And I know I didn’t see that tight plastic jumpsuit and say it was okay to wear on the show. I just sat there and read my book and I was like, “Never again.”

  But out the corner of my eye, I was looking at Super Fly sittin’ in back of this whole group of brothers, just as nice as nice could be. Mmm-mmm. And still as fine as fine could be too. I felt so sorry for this poor man, about to have his whole world shattered in public, put to shame on national TV by the fact that he was dry humping a tranny in some club. He’d just gotten himself a skin fade with a oil sheen that looked très fierce, even though he still had that big bald spot. He had himself a beautiful gray suit on, and these little gold-frame glasses. You could tell he was brought up real well, ’cause them others, with them big sneakers and crinkly jogging pants and baggy shirts and gold teeth and shit—they was tackier than clowns at a funeral. Super Fly had himself a laptop computer, he was making up some laws or whatever lawyers do, just clicking away. Then he put it away and decided he wanted to talk to me. He was like, “Hi,” in that deep sexy voice. I got a sweet rush like I’d just gulped a mug full of Bailey’s. I was like, “H...Hi!” So he sit down next to me an go, “I like your dress.”

  But as soon as he said that, he turnt his head and start looking at LaKeisha, trying to tell me how pretty he think she is. He can’t even see her for all the dogs sniffing around her li’l fire hydrant, and he trying to get me all worked up about that girl.

  Well, Almonetta wasn’t having it. I got so mad I almost told him everything right then and there. It was all I could do when he axed me at one point what was the topic we was gonna be discussing. My skin felt all flushed when I lied and told him, “It’s a show about, um, girls who party too much.” After that I couldn’t really say much. I put my nose back in my book.

  Darnell, I don’t like your li’l policy of not telling people who gonna be on the show what they gonna be talking about on the show until they get onstage, ’cause you never know how they gonna react. You put them in a embarrassing situation like that, who knows, one them gun-toting thugs could be a stone psycho motherfucker and take the whole audience out while you taping. I’m sure it would improve your ratings, honey, but please—think of the grief.

  And you shouldn’ta axed me to esplain what was going on. I thought you was gonna step to those brothers like, “Yo, LaKeisha’s a man, y’all.” Why couldn’t you do that? Instead, I had to take me a deep deep breath and break it to ’em gentle, like, “LaKeisha has been keeping a secret from y’all. It’s inportant for y’all to know that the person you just been doing all that nasty fly-girl dancing with is not no biological female.” I thought I’s being all rational and whatnot, but I think if they’da heard it from a guy like you, Darnell, they wouldn’ta taken it upon theyself to start tearing shit up, ripping chairs out the floor, knocking them potted plants over and breaking them framed pitchers on the walls. And no one was more shocked than me when them bodyguards started joining in. Where’d you find those brutal motherfuckers anyway? Did you thaw them out a million-year-old block of ice?

  And I think we all know that the final straw was brought on by Miss LaKeisha herself. All I was trying to do was speak the truth. She had no right to get all up in my face and start pointing. She did it on purpose too. She knows I hate it when people be sticking they fingers in my face. And how many times did I warn her? Four times, that’s right, Darnell. Once when she pulled my wig out of place. Another time when she said I was doing this because I was jealous. The third when she called me ugly. All that shit I let roll off my back. But when she ripped the straps off my dress—my eight-hundred-dollar dress— and my falsies popped out in front of the nation, it was like every embarrassing thing I’ve ever suffered from that bitch had all happe
ned at once. I just lost control, Darnell, I couldn’t help it. Suddenly her face was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen in my life and I had to beat the crap outta her.

  Anyways, Darnell, the reason I’m writing you back at all is so’s we could compare our losses. You have lost $20,000 worth of camera equipment, carpeting, Steuben vases, tacky paintings and the services of a perky li’l assistant who out for a few days ’cause of a broken arm and a concussion. If you ain’t had all that insured, you a fool.

  Almonetta Rosé, on the other hand, has lost her dignity, her pride, a pair of shoulder pads that was essential to her persona, any potential dates that mighta been watching, a dress worth more than three times her life savings, and the once-priceless friendship and love of her former best girlfriend, LaKeisha Lorraine, also known as Ronald Knight.

  My very handsome lawyer friend, who just happened to be present during the event that brought on your li’l lawsuit in the first place, told me over dinner last night that should you choose to prosecute, you should bear in mind that the only assets of the defendant is a dirty pile of women’s panties. And you don’t gotta sue me for that, Darnell. All you gotta do is axe.

  Sincerely,

  Tony Adamson

  (a.k.a. Almonetta Rosé)

  A Caring Rescue

  BY ANDRE DUBUS III

  OFFICER LESTER BURDON left his engine running and walked over to my window and I swung my leg off the seat and sat up. There were sweat stains under his arms, and his gold star hung away from his shirt. “I’m sorry about the coffee, Kathy, I got a call on a domestic. Did you wait long?”

  “Just an hour or two.”

  “I am sorry, I —”

  “I’m kidding. Forget it, I drove around.” I hoped I didn’t sound as happy as I felt seeing him now. “Still want coffee?”

  “Yes.” He had both hands on the door, looking right at me with a dark look—a wanting, I thought, definitely a wanting. I glanced down at my hands on the steering wheel.

  “You mind riding in a patrol car?”

  “Only if you’re not busting me.”

  He smiled and I parked the Bonneville behind the truck stop between two eighteen-wheelers. I walked to Lester’s cruiser and when I slid in and pulled the door shut he asked about my eviction, his face hard and soft at the same time. I told him about waking up in the house this morning, about the carpenters and the piece of roof in my yard. Lester started to shake his head and get that long-eyed look for me I didn’t want, so I told him again how my lawyer promised to have me back home by the weekend and now I had someone I could celebrate with. I felt a little too naked putting it that way, and Lester didn’t say anything back, just put his cruiser into gear and pulled out of the truck lot, heading west. I looked at the black radio set into the console, the green and orange scanner lights. There was a shotgun clipped under the dashboard, and I glanced over at Lester behind the wheel. He was shaking his head.

  “Does your lawyer know you’re sleeping in your car?”

  “She thinks I’m with friends. That’s what she wants to think anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there’s a limit to how much she wants to help, that’s all; she has her limits.”

  He drove onto the Cabrillo Highway and went quiet a minute.

  “There’s no one you can stay with, Kathy?”

  I shrugged, my face heating up. “You don’t meet a lot of people cleaning houses, I guess.”

  I felt his eyes on me. I squinted out at the bright ocean. I was tired and I wanted my sunglasses. We passed a few cars and I watched the drivers hold their heads still, glancing down at their speedometers and keeping their eyes on the road, only looking up once we’d pulled away.

  “You ever get used to that?” I said.

  “What?”

  I nodded out the window at the slowing traffic. “People you don’t know being scared of you.”

  “You really think they’re scared?”

  “Scared enough to mind their P’s and Q’s.”

  Lester turned off Cabrillo into the lot of a hot dog and ice cream shack on the beach. There were picnic tables on both sides of it and in back, and five or six teenage boys and girls sat at one near the order window. Their arms, legs and faces were tanned or sunburned. When they saw Lester get out of the car they looked away like he was the fourteenth cop they’d seen in the past ten minutes, and I liked being on the other end of that look. I could smell cooked hot dogs, the cigarette smoke of the teenagers, somebody’s tanning lotion. The girl working behind the window told Lester they didn’t have coffee so he said two Cokes would be fine, but then he looked over at me to check and I smiled at him.

  In the shadow behind the shack Les carried our drinks while I walked through the cigarette butts in the sand. We sat at a weathered picnic table, and way ahead of us the Pacific Ocean seemed to be pulling out into low tide, its waves coming in long and small before they finally broke. Out on the water was a blue-gray cloud bank, the kind that usually came in as a fog, and the sky around it was a haze. Lester sat next to me on the bench facing the beach and for a while we just looked out at the water. I drank from my Coke and turned to him enough to take in his profile, his deep-set brown eyes, the small nose and badly trimmed mustache. Again, there was this gentleness to him, this quiet.

  “How did you ever end up in that uniform, Lester?”

  “Les.” He glanced at me and smiled.

  “Les.” I was smiling too, but like a flirt, I thought. Like I wasn’t really interested in the answer to my question.

  “I was planning on being a teacher, actually.”

  “That’s what you look like. I mean, that’s what you seem like to me.” I wanted to light a cigarette, but didn’t want the taste in my mouth, not right now. “So then how come you’re a boy in blue?”

  He shook his head and looked down at the old tabletop, at a plank where someone had carved two breasts with X-shaped nipples. “My wife was pregnant. The academy was cheaper than graduate school, the guaranteed job afterward. That kind of thing.”

  “You like it?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  He smiled at me, but his eyes had gone soft and he suddenly seemed too tender so I looked straight ahead again, at the cloud bank that had moved closer in just the past few minutes, the haze around it too. The beach sand wasn’t as bright as before, and I caught the smell of seaweed. “Fog’s coming in,” I said. I could feel him still looking at me. I drank from my Coke until the ice slid to my teeth.

  “Kathy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’d like to ask you something personal, if I could.”

  “All right, get it over with.” I was kidding him again but I couldn’t look at him so I kept my eyes on the green water, on the haze it seemed to make.

  “Why is your husband not with you any longer?”

  I watched a low wave ride all the way into the beach, and just before it broke, I felt I was rooting for it, hoping it wouldn’t. “I wanted kids and he didn’t. I don’t know, I think if he really wanted me, he would have wanted them too, you know?”

  Lester put his hand over mine on the table. It was warm and heavy. “He’s a fool.”

  I looked down at his hand. “Have you been watching me, Officer Burdon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “It is?”

  “That you didn’t lie.”

  He took a breath. “I haven’t stopped thinking of you since the eviction, Kathy.” I looked at him now. His voice was quiet, but there was something like boldness in his eyes. Our knees were touching. He lowered his eyes, but then, as if he’d made himself do it, he looked back at me, his brown eyes not bold anymore. He reminded me of me. He squeezed my hand and I suddenly felt so close to him that kissing him didn’t even feel like a forward movement. His mustache was prickly and soft against my upper lip and I let my mouth open and I tasted his sweet Coke. I held his back and he held mine and the kiss w
ent on for a long time, it seemed, until we finally took a breath and pulled apart and the fog was floating in close to the beach and it was getting hard to see the water. I looked at him, at his small straight nose, his lower lip beneath his mustache, his shaved chin. When I got to his eyes that were taking me in so completely, my mouth felt funny so I focused on his gold star badge, his name etched on the tag beneath it, and I wanted to run my fingertips over the letters. The temperature had dropped and I had goose pimples on my arms and legs.