In Search of Pretty Young Black Men

by Stanley Bennett Clay

  “Perfecto!” she declared.

  “Good,” he accepted.

  She then set aside the glass and began, with a new naughtiness, the rolling of the joint. Even without looking at him she could feel the warmth of his perfect smile against her neck.

  “Thank you for the drink at Serenity,” she finally said.

  “It was nothing. I only wish it were flowers.”

  “How very sweet.”

  “Would you like music?”

  “Right now?” she cooed. “That would be wonderful.”

  When he rose from the sofa she knew. She could tell by the movement as he stood that his generous gift was shielded freely behind white linen, not imprisoned, simply shielded, shielded like the smile of a Muslim East Indian daddy’s girl.

  As Maggie watched him stroll his bowlegged self across the living room, she felt new warmth that was either relief of tequila and gin locked in congenial intercourse or the flood of sweet memories of days gone by, days when Lamont was not as old and set and careful…if such a time ever existed.

  Sadness and desire sneaked in and began to conspire within her. She feared that the tongue-loosening liquor would have her mutter something from the heart where the disease of dignity had not yet spread. She would then truly prove to be another too-close-to-over-the-hill girl looking to be fed the lies of a child.

  She laughed silently, a tipsy, silent laugh, but did not lift her glazed eyes up off him.

  Bring on the lies! she thought to herself as she watched him ease his sweet bowlegged body down to the stereo, down to the altar where, gracefully, he adjusted his frame into a neat, nasty haunch.

  All madam could do was stare. And so she did, so hard that she was startled and distracted when the speakers let Luther into the room.

  “Oh my,” she purred ignominiously, just a tad too much ’tude in her tone, “from one so young I would have expected rap or something with lots of screaming guitars and lyrics with hidden satanic meanings.”

  He chuckled darkly as he rummaged through his enviable music library, his back still to her, and as the sheer linen pants hugged his thick calves and neatly signatured his hips, she wondered what he tasted like down there.

  It had been so many years since Lamont tasted like a schoolboy, when the taste of newly abandoned puberty lingered between his legs and his sweat was an aphrodisiac of sweet young male juices and when, like a mother Siamese, she licked his tight young body clean from nipple to toe, from salad bowl to dick slit.

  But then the sag set in. Really? Was it really the sag of soft flesh where once rock-hard pecs and biceps flexed at the very touch of her tongue that now caused her boredom and disinterest? No, it was Lamont.

  Yes it was.

  Lamont had become bored because Lamont had been spoiled. Yes, that was it. That had to be it.

  There was little else left, few unexplored mysteries for him. No new peaks for him in their private world of romance and erotic matrimony. And his disintegrated appreciation for her adventurous service had caused her, many years ago, to let it drift into a disinterest of her own.

  And now Maggie Lester-Allegro regretted the wasted years when reciprocation was considered an improper demand from a respectable black woman, even from a respectable black woman who treasured performing unrespectable activities on her husband. She had often wondered if part of her willingness to service Lamont on her knees, on her back, on her stomach like some yard dog bitch, was rooted in all those things she had been taught to believe by her mother regarding the proper place of a black woman under protective slavery to her husband, notions she thought she had abandoned years before disco.

  If only, so long ago, at the beginning…if only she had demanded reciprocation, equity, perhaps now she would have still commanded Lamont Lester-Allegro’s love, sexual desires, and attention.

  And if it hadn’t been for the child. If only.

  Instead she found herself up at the top of Mount Vernon Drive with a boy young enough to be her son who, even if he didn’t mean it, had his beautiful high-hoisted ass to her while Luther sang his regrets.

  Chapter Three

  “So there you are! Girl, how many of those have you had?”

  Maggie knew she recognized the voice but could not fathom its presence here, so high up in the hills, in the sunken living room; the white linen pants, Dorian, Luther, Lamont, black-as-midnight eyes. But it was all becoming clear to her. Almost clear.

  Hazily she looked around, a half-drunken effort to orient herself. Oh yes. Nuts ’n’ Bolts. Her favorite stool. Yes, yes. Another double margarita.

  Her favorite watering hole. Yes. It had filled, without her noticing, with happy hour pilgrims downing discounted holy water. Come-ons, gossip, updates on Dionne and Johnny’s concert at the Greek, head and white women, Ethel and the mayor and their wild lesbian daughter, hummed with a rhythm throughout, punctuated with the occasional burst of laughter and dish-profiling.

  The room was so thick with bullshit and smoke rings that Maggie Lester-Allegro was only half sure of where she was. She knew it was some place familiar though. It felt and smelled like an old friend. And now she knew for sure that she was not in his living room anymore and he was not serenading her in stereo while she, with long, fumbling nails, rolled an eternal joint. No, she was not alone with the black gamma-gorgeous Fagin’s boy. Her mind, mellowed by time, tequila, and sentimental trickery, had merely filled its romantic void with a foolish vision of the past that had tried to impersonate the here and now, and almost succeeded.

  “Maggie? Are you all right?”

  That voice again. Oh yes. Of course, she thought. And then Elaine’s face came into focus.

  “I think I’ve had too much to drink,” Maggie finally managed to say.

  “I’ll say you have,” Elaine concurred as she lit a Kool filter king. “How many of those have you had?”

  “Two…maybe three.”

  “I would hate to have your head in the morning, girlfriend.”

  The grinning high-yellow Creole with the gap in the middle of his mouth who was sitting next to Maggie got up. Gallantly he gestured to Elaine. She accepted his stool as an offer that was his supreme privilege.

  Elaine was a beautiful fifty-year-old only because she believed in her beauty so thoroughly. No one could dispute the empress’ new clothes of tasteful, nonapologetic makeup that didn’t even attempt to hide what, on a less self-assured woman, would be considered a plain-Jane face of undistinguished features: small, squinty eyes and a skin tone that, on any other woman, would be called baby-shit brown.

  But Elaine Ramsey was truly a hot black lady, a real Miss Thing, and she thanked the grinning Creole with characteristic divatude, then turned her back to him with a snap and huddled with her best best friend.

  “You know it took me forever to get away from Regis? Not that I was in any great rush, I mean, you know. But I’ll tell you something. The man had me scratching the ceiling with my toenails. And I know, I know, I’m breaking all the rules of sistah survival—last thing in the world you do is blueprint all your best shit to your best girl—”

  “Your fantasies are safe with me.”

  “Of course they are. I mean, that’s what friends are for. I trust you. I just don’t trust him. Actually I don’t trust any of them, not as far as I can throw them. I use them though. I mean, that’s what they’re for—to use, not to trust. Trust? Paleeze! Cameron was the last man I trusted, God rest his soul, but Regis? He’s three legs and a tongue. That’s it. And if the tongue goes so do I. I mean, I can’t help it if I know what I know. I know men in general and Regis specifically. The moment I’m out of there he’ll be hauling up some other bored and lusty Nubian pretender to the throne. But, fuck it, okay? It’s all a game anyway, isn’t it? I mean, it’s them against us, right? And where is that little closet queen of a bartender?”

  Maggie may have been drunk but she could still tell that Elaine had snorted a line or three.

  “Be nice, Elaine.”

/>   “Nice was not the intent.”

  “You came on to him last week and he turned you down, and that’s what has you pissed.”

  “Honey, any man who doesn’t want this has got to be a closet queen.”

  “Sometimes I don’t think you like men very much.”

  “Oh girlfriend stop. I love men…in their place.

  “And where is their place, might I ask?”

  “Wherever I say it is.” She took a breath. “When did you become such a champion of the opposition?”

  “Opposition or opposite sex?”

  “Oh come on now, Miss Maggie, after all these years, don’t you know when I’m teasing?”

  “That’s some awfully bitter tease.”

  “Hmmm,” Elaine assessed, “I think one of us is drunk.”

  “I’m fine, thank you very much.”

  “So how’s Lamont?”

  “Fine,” Maggie answered, her voice pitching high with too much defense. Oh of course she had seen him before he left for the office earlier that morning and the previous night had even shared the same bed with him. She did not sleep, but rather lay calmly awake, absently monitoring his routine growls, snores, pauses, twists, turns, and farts. But could she really know him? She pouted within—heaved that is—knowing that her acquaintance with Lamont Lester-Allegro had dissolved ages ago. “He…he’s fine.”

  “Liar.”

  “What?”

  “Oh come off the rooftop, Miss Maggie Allegro,” Elaine impatiently tisked. “I’ll ask you again. How are things between you and Lamont?”

  “That’s not what you asked before.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Oh. Then that’s what I meant to ask.”

  “No. What you’re trying to do is get me to cosign your vengeful ways.”

  “Oh no, now, let’s just wait, Miss Thing. You have enough vengeful ways of your own to worry about, thank you very much. And another thing. Just because you sit up and play the dowager from Ebony magazine, don’t tell me you don’t get a little itch and ‘stank’ between them legs, girl.”

  “My itch and ‘stank’ salute you.”

  “Of course they do. They know mamma truth when they hear it.”

  The bartender arrived not a moment too soon. Elaine was starving to flirt again so she eyed him up and down with a stare that ate right through his Dockers.

  “And whose little boy are you?” she cooed.

  “I’m all yours, Mrs. Ramsey.” His smile was deferential.

  “Good!” Elaine declared. “I want you wrapped. I’ll take you home.”

  And now he laughed, a small laugh of equal respect, “The usual, Mrs. Ramsey?”

  “Why are you so mean to me?”

  “Oh come on, Mrs. Ramsey, you’re way out of my class. I’m still struggling.”

  “And I’m a struggler’s best friend.”

  “Mrs. Lester-Allegro? Another for you?” he said, turning to Maggie without losing his smile.

  “No thank you.”

  “The things I could do for you,” Elaine purred. “I could make you a fortune.”

  And with a knowing naïveté and a right proper nod, he excused himself and hightailed it back to his station.

  “You have no shame,” the drunk declared.

  “I have no pimples either.” Elaine checked out the bartender for the details she had already committed to memory: the baby-face smile and the baby’s-breath goatee, the long white-collared neck, the thick Adam’s apple that caused his bowtie to dance when he spoke in that naughty-boy baritone, the big ears and size twelves, the print of his dick, long, cut, and thick, down his left inner thigh, the ass built for tonguing. She caught her breath, shook her head, and took a handful of salted nuts from the dish on the bar and popped them into her mouth, one by one.

  “Look at him,” she continued with a sweet sigh of regret. “Such a fragile little thing, with his pretty young black self. I could use three of him.” Elaine then pursed her blood-crimson lips and checked out her face in her Bergdorf compact. With a cocktail napkin she daintily dabbed off the speckles of salt. “You know there’s only one way to treat pretty young black men.”

  “How?” Maggie asked, never but always amazed by anything Elaine Ramsey did or said.

  “Well. Always treat them well.” Elaine loved how she looked in her mirror. “But always let them know who runs the show. That’s why I like the young ones. No matter how they dress, no matter how sophisticated the shit they invariably talk, no matter how good they fuck, they’re all just looking to suck their mamma’s tit. They coo and they purr and they hiss. They even get a little snotty. But underneath it all they make you feel wanted. They make you feel loved. And even more than that, they make you feel needed. And all you do is kick back and say, ‘Its gonna be all right, baby. Mamma’s gonna make it so.’ That’s right. Always let them know who runs the show.”

  And Elaine Ramsey found herself still staring in the tiny mirror of her compact, occasionally looking up over it at the boy trade in the bowtie smiling back for a tip. Maggie, eyes bloodshot and nostalgic, marveled at her good girlfriend’s brazen technique.

  With a piss-elegant lilt and the tiniest of laughs, Elaine dismissed the entire incident and admonition as silly ramblings brought on by that something in the air that made Serenity Serenity and divas divine.

  Maggie spoke up suddenly to no one in particular. “I can’t believe I’m actually out here drinking like a fish, feeling like a tramp, and thinking things that shouldn’t be thought.”

  “Well like I always say,” Elaine said, “if you’re in denial, stay home.”

  The bartender arrived just as Elaine was snapping her fingers like a queen and all Maggie could do was think about Dorian Moore. Elaine was busying herself with her drink and her flirting and the awkward stares from the grinning Creole. Maggie smiled secretly. The vision of Dorian Moore danced in her head. Elaine deserved a bonus for that one.

  Except for his occasional appearances in her liquor daydreams and her Valium nights, she had not seen Dorian since that one solitary afternoon. And now time begged her to see him again and thank him properly for the memory.

  But now, deep into her margarita stupor, she wondered if her growing dependency on good girlfriend advice, frothy booze in an hourglass glass, and respectable drugs was her way of never letting go of the aberration. Fantasy was all she had left of him in her life. That fantasy would have to fill the void, the vacant space that was her life. Perhaps that fantasy was really all she needed on the side: her fix, her fancy, her avocation.

  Even Elaine could not understand—would never understand—that that one day, almost a year ago, was sufficient to quench a thirst and that Maggie’s clear and present drinking and hanging out at the bar was not an act of desperation—no, not really—but a ritual of religious proportion where mere mortal sex was not needed but not ignored.

  The fantasy was as good as the act. She had convinced herself of that. For only in the fantasy could the negligent husband be that serious pretty young black man hot for a not-bad-for-forty-something diva in need.

  “How’s that joint coming?” he asked in a voice as mellow as the music oozing from the speakers. And it was at that moment that she knew joint rolling was a gift she had been obviously denied.

  He was staring at her and smiling. Sheepishly she held up the rumpled tissue cupping crumbled bits of grass. Her eyes begged for alms and he did oblige. To her rescue he came. Slowly. Gently. And her heart, instead of racing, succumbed to the kindness of it all. And her surrender produced tiny beads of sweat on her forehead and neck that gently ignited the fragrance of her perfume, bringing her full womanliness into a new scented being.

  “I’m afraid I’m not very good at this,” she apologized, more than aware of how closely he sat next to her, giving her a slight case of the willies that felt like good lip-smackin’ masturbation.

  He then lifted the half-rolled joint out of her hand and she
could feel that his hand—his long musicianlike fingers—were as baby-soft as hers.

  He licked the rim of the paper with a thick darting tongue that sparkled with lazy independence and dexterity. Then he sealed the tip of the newly formed cigarette with a most generous French kiss. His soft full lips parted like clean, loose fore-skin and drew the whole of the susceptible joint between them, and then it was oozed back out. He then held it before him and smiled ever so coolly, pleased with his handiwork.

  He looked at her with bedroom eyes of his own, and she felt a tingle, a sudden one, another one, as she pulled herself out of the daze she had fallen comfortably into while watching the ritual of his creation.

  She saw the baby-soft fingers holding the joint and floating toward her. Obediently, she pursed her lips, drugged already on his young cool and urging easiness.

  The taste of him on the moist joint was fresh and promising. She swallowed hard and waited for fire.

  It was a lovely little gold case, a tiny gold vasette that he positioned at the end of the joint which dangled from her begging mouth. The tiny flash of fire crackled, then danced ever so slightly and calmed her naughty heebie-jeebies.

  With a God-sent soothing and a longing, she sucked in the smoke, allowing it to daze her brain and warm her body, to pick up where the liquor left off.

  She was floating.

  She handed him the joint and as she did their eyes met again. His black-as-midnight eyes were unwavering in their friendly stare, even as he took a deep drag and held the smoke trapped inside for an interminable length of time, and then when finally he allowed the smoke to escape and it billowed before his beautiful face and his beautiful eyes, the beautiful eyes stood playfully defiant. The fixed friendly stare was there for good.

  They passed the joint back and forth, back and forth, forth and back, until it was gone. And then they sat in silence.

  Maggie knew she was high because when he leaned his head back against the sofa and tapped his finger lightly on the cushion to the rhythm of Luther’s song, he looked just like her husband, Lamont, and she wanted to cry.