“You okay, baby?” she asked, concern etched on her face.
I kept my hand over my dick underneath the table to hide the waning erection. I licked my lips and smiled a lying smile as I looked down at her. “I’m cool, baby.”
She studied me but finally smiled. She kissed my lips, and my spine stiffened. I started thinking stupid shit, like whether she could taste Demi’s lips on mine. I glanced at him as he walked away from the restroom. He didn’t look my way. He knew better. But she looked up. She saw him. Made eye contact. She stiffened, and for a moment, I thought she suspected something. Her eyes stayed on Demi until he passed the table. Her eyes held a look I didn’t readily recognize.
She rolled her eyes and then looked at me. “Men can be so disrespectful,” she said. “He sees me here with you, and his eyes are still locked on me. How freaking rude.”
She was so far off in her assessment that all I could do was smile. That began my six-month affair with Demitri. So began the demise of my relationship with Nicole. A year later, she and I were no more. Felt like history was repeating itself.
Mona
What in the hell was I doing? Why was I here? How did I end up being the other woman? Out of all the things and heartbreak I’d endured, how did I end up back at square one? For most of my thirty-two years of living, I had seemed always to run into the same kind of man. No matter what I did or how I did it, the same kind of man found me.
By the same kind of man, I meant brothers who were either fighting their sexuality or were on the down low. Some kind of way, a bisexual man always found his way into my life. I didn’t know why that was. Had no clue why the universe was sending that kind of man my way.
It had started when I was eight. My mother’s second husband had been a brother on the down low. My mother hadn’t found out until she got a knock on the door. I had opened it, thinking it was my stepfather. Out of all the men my mother had dated and married, Johnny was my favorite. While he and my mama had fought like cats and dogs, he was the one man who’d always been nice to me.
He was a teacher who worked with children who were deaf. So in his spare time, he’d taught me how to do ASL, American Sign Language. He had never forgot birthdays. Had never missed my school recitals and had always had a kind word for me. As far as I knew, we were the perfect Black American family. We made it to church every Sunday. Had dinner together every night. Johnny told me the best bedtime stories. He didn’t look at me the way my mother’s first husband had. He didn’t make me feel unsafe. He never accidentally walked in the bathroom while I was bathing, either.
However, my world shattered the day I opened that door to find a dark-skinned male there. His eyes were red, and he was a bit too skinny. His lips looked to be too pink for his dark skin and too big for his small, angular face. He had no hair on his head, and his five o’clock shadow made him look rugged. The baggy jeans and button-down shirt he wore seemed just to hang on him. I stared up at the man for a long while before he said anything.
His voice was light, like that of a woman, when he asked me if my mother was home. I nodded, then yelled for her. My mother, Amara, was a beautiful woman who, even after birthing a child, could show her stomach and wear shorts that cupped her ass and hugged her thighs. She stood five-ten. Her haircut was short like Halle Berry’s, and although she was thick, there was no fat on her body. Her burnt cinnamon skin was flawless. She was a woman who didn’t need makeup. Had never needed to wear it, not even a little bit. Her big breasts wiggled and swayed as she sashayed to the door with her signature seductive smile.
The man couldn’t stop looking at her. He was either enamored, like all men were when they saw my mother, or he was retarded was the thought that ran through my mind. Things kind of got blurry for me from there. I remembered him asking my mom if she knew my stepdad. He called Johnny by his full government name, which set my mother on alert.
She told me to go into the front room and close the door. I did go into the front room, but I didn’t close the door. Not all the way. I peeked through a crack and listened as the effeminate male told my mom that he hadn’t known that Johnny had a family. He told my mom that he and Johnny had been in a relationship for over a year. I’d never seen my mother attack anyone before that day.
As she smoked her cigarette, she picked up the wine bottle from the dining table and whacked the man across his head as she screamed and cried. She told the man he was a dirty, filthy liar who was going to burn in hell. I’d never forget the way that man wailed and stumbled backward. Blood poured down his face and got in his eyes and mouth. He threw his arm up to block the blow from the broken bottle my mom was leveling at him again. The deep gash that opened up on his arm led me to believe that my mama was going to kill that man.
Luckily, our neighbor heard the commotion. He came running to our home, thinking someone had attacked my mama. I’d never seen my mother look so demented and possessed. She scared me so badly, I closed the front-room door and balled myself up in a corner. I remember the flashing red and blue lights. After all was said and done, Mama told the police the man had tried to attack her. Told them she had feared for her life. They assured her that once he got out of the hospital, he’d be going to jail for a long time. Amara was good like that. She could sell sand to a desert.
Johnny came home later that evening. All hell broke loose again. I couldn’t see their faces, because Amara had made me go to my room. Only remembered my mother screaming like a banshee. Johnny and my mama fought all the time, but this time was different. It sounded as if World War III had broken out inside our home. Felt like an earthquake was shaking our foundation.
I’d never heard a man called faggot so many times in one day before in life. Before then, I’d had no idea what the F word was. The yells, screams, and curses that provided the soundtrack to that night still haunted me at times. When I woke up the next morning, Johnny and everything associated with him was gone. He was never mentioned or seen in our home again.
I thought back to an ex of mine who had been on the down low. I’d been about twenty-two at the time. Still writing stories in a notebook, hoping one day to be able to stay home and survive off my talent. Jermaine was living with me at the time. I should have known something was off. No straight black man I knew had a gay best friend. But, for some reason, I believed Jermaine when he said it. Believed him when he said he was so comfortable with his sexuality that being around gay males wasn’t an affront to his sexuality.
Imagine my surprise when I walked into Jermaine’s office and found him dicking down another man. I was crushed. Soul shattered into pieces. I was reliving my mama’s life. Amara’s demons were haunting me. It took me months to get over that betrayal. I was disillusioned. So much so that anytime I ran into a good-looking brother, I just automatically assumed he was gay.
However, over the years, I educated myself on sexuality and the fluidity of it. I stopped running from bisexual men and started to embrace them. My anger turned into understanding. It was hard being the underdog of the underdogs. There were many other encounters with bi men. Whether they were trying to come out of a closet or stay in one, they always seemed to find me.
Maxwell’s melodic voice crooned from my phone, interrupting my trip down memory lane. Elliot had responded to my text.
Ditto. Can’t tonight. Maybe tomorrow.
I almost tossed my phone across the room. Elliot had made me hate that damn word. Fucking ditto. I shook my head. If I had known he would renege on his promise to spend the night with me, I would have never booked the flight. I could have stayed home and worked on my book, which I was behind on.
I would have done anything else other than what I was currently doing. Sitting in a hotel room, a suite—a big-ass suite—by myself. But there I was, being a fool for love. A fool for Elliot. Two years in and I loved him more than any man I ever had. Stupid me. Over the years, I’d promised myself I’d never be stupid over a man like Amara had been.
What woman in her right mind will
ingly agreed to be the other woman? What woman? No. What kind of woman agreed to do that shit? Ugh! I was frustrated and annoyed. Couldn’t get Elliot off my mind. Couldn’t get the way his dick rocked me to sleep out of my head. His mouth on my womanhood left me dizzy. His kisses tended to render me useless. Everything about him weakened me. He had me under his spell. There was nothing I could do about it, either. Of course, I could just leave him alone, but I was too far in. Too far gone. I guessed I was more like that woman, Amara, than I cared to admit.
I could still smell Elliot in the room. His scent was uniquely his and lingered long after he went away. Reminded me of frankincense and sandalwood. At home, I had T-shirts with his scent on them. I stood and walked to the window in the living area. Normally, the sound of rain would calm me. Today it did nothing but remind me that at that moment I was miserable.
It was possible to miss a man so much that being in his presence for a few hours wasn’t enough. I looked at my cell again. Reread the text that Elliot had sent. I texted him again. Told him that he was wrong for backing out on me. Told him that I had no desire to be in Atlanta, in this hotel room, alone.
I was being bratty and possibly spoiled. But it had been months since I’d seen him. Texts and phone calls could do only so much. For months I’d been on tour. My book about a woman being in love with a bisexual man had blown up the market. Yeah, there were plenty of books about down-low brothers, but my book wasn’t about that.
My book was about a man who had the decency to be open and honest about his sexuality with the woman he loved. What happened next was eroticism with a touch of romance, love, and madness. Waking up to find myself atop the NYT’s best-seller list was humbling and mind numbing. At the moment, I had everything I wanted in life except for the man I loved. I mean, I had him. But I didn’t.
It was forty-five minutes later, and Elliot hadn’t texted me back. Sometimes I hated him. He made it so damn easy to forget all the flowers he’d sent me or the flights he’d taken to come see me. He’d wine and dine me. Love up on me. Touch up on me. Feel up on me. Elliot was like the man of my dreams, but he made it so easy for me to forget that shit. Forget the kisses, touches, and hugs.
Sometimes, when I needed him the most, he let me down.
My phone buzzed, jarring me from my thoughts. My nerves went haywire. The thought of Elliot calling excited me. Just that quickly, for a mere second, I stopped hating him. However, my excitement waned. It was my agent calling, not Elliot. While it was always good to hear from Maria, I was in a pissy mood.
I answered, trying to sound jovial, “Hello, Ms. M. How are you?”
“Mona Mae?” she sang into the phone, calling me by a nickname a fellow writer and friend had given me.
I smiled despite my mood. “Yes, it’s me.”
She laughed, her voice sweet and melodic. She had one of those voices that men looked forward to hearing after a long day. “How are you? I see you made it to Atlanta. You get your research started yet?” she asked.
“Not yet. Rain’s coming down hard. Pretty bad down this way,” I said.
“Oh, man. I’m sorry to hear that. Looks like you caught the right flight out, then.”
“Indeed,” I said.
We spoke for a few more minutes about the weather and different things going on in the industry before she sighed and got to the real reason she called me.
“Well, of course you know by now, your royalty check is late. It hasn’t gotten here yet,” she said.
I didn’t even react. I’d gotten used to the royalty checks, advances, and buyout payments being late.
“Any idea when it will be coming?” I asked.
I wasn’t broke. Had pretty nice-sized checking and savings accounts, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed having money come in late. However, that was the state of the book industry at the moment. At least I got paid. It might be late, but I got my money. Many publishing companies had gone belly up. Some authors weren’t getting paid at all.
Maria said, “I should know something by the end of the week. I’ll let you know by Friday.”
“Okay.”
“However, they do want the next book in forty-five days. Think you can do that?”
I looked over at my laptop. MS Word had been pulled up, but the page was blank. I hadn’t been able to type even the title page. But I wouldn’t tell her that.
“Yeah, I should be able to pull that off,” I said.
‘Well, how far have you gotten already?”
I lied, “About a hundred pages in.”
“And time away in Atlanta should help?”
I stood and moved over to the desk. I sat down and nodded, as if she could see me. “Yeah, I should be able to get out tomorrow and get what I need.”
I didn’t like lying to my agent, but no way was I going to tell her I had nothing written. No way would I admit to spending my first few hours in Atlanta getting fucked within an inch of my life. We were on a roll in the book industry during a time when authors were barely selling five copies on release day, let alone fifty thousand.
Ms. M and I spoke for a little while longer before she had to go tend to other authors on her roster. After our conversation, I moped around my hotel room. Typed one page to a story that just wasn’t coming to me. I checked e-mails. Responded to readers on Facebook and Twitter. By the time I looked up, it was two in the morning and I hadn’t accomplished a thing.
I was just about to crawl into bed when Elliot called.
“You up?” he asked. His voice was low, like he either was sneaking in the phone call or was half asleep.
“I answered the phone, didn’t I?”
“Mona . . .” He called my name like he was exhausted.
“I’m up, El.”
There was silence for a while. Then it sounded like I heard wind blowing in his background, along with someone speaking Spanish. A horn blared, and tires screeched.
I asked, “Where are you?”
“Outside my house.”
“Don’t you have work in the morning?”
“Yeah.”
“You should be asleep. The kids need you to be alert.”
He was quiet again.
“I don’t like it when we fight,” he said after a while.
“Neither do I. I don’t like to be lied to, either.”
“I didn’t lie to you.”
“You knew you couldn’t stay before you asked me to fly in.”
“I took off work. Lied to be with you so I could give you some time.”
“You had me expecting—”
“Stop,” he said, aggravation lacing his tone. “We’re not about to keep having the same conversation. It’s like a merry-go-round.”
“So why did you call?” I asked.
“I wanted to apologize. Needed to hear your voice.”
I got quiet. Anytime he admitted things like that, it shut down any argument I might have had.
“Where is . . . he?”
Yeah, I knew Elliot was bisexual. Yes, I knew he had a man at home. No, I did not care.
“His name is Demi.”
“I don’t care.”
“Mona, stop. Don’t do that.”
“Whatever.”
“I can hang up. We don’t have to fucking talk.”
Anytime Elliot cussed, he was highly pissed.
“Hang up then.”
“You’re so damn spoiled.”
“You’re selfish.”
“Is this what we’re going to do the whole time you’re here?”
“You treat me like a whore.”
“What?”
“I’m not your whore. You can’t just fuck me and leave.”
“I do not treat you like a whore, Mona.”
“You do. You treat me like your own personal cum Dumpster.”
“I do not.”
“You do.”
“We use condoms.”
“Your point?”
“In order to be a ‘cum whatever you just said,’ I
’d have to cum inside of you and not a condom. And we both know you won’t allow me to do that again.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Okay, so shut up with that.”
“Don’t tell me to shut up.”
“I wish you would. I really wish you would shut up.”
“Fuck you.”
“For you to be a best-selling author, your vocabulary is limited.”
“Screw off, Elliot.”
“Thank God for editors.”
“Don’t talk about my work.”
“I’m not. I’m talking about your lack of an extensive vocabulary.”
I got quiet. I wanted to cuss him. Wanted to fly off in a fit of verbal rage. But I didn’t. I knew if we continued on like this, one of us would end up hanging up on the other, and I didn’t want that.
“So where is he?” I asked.
“In the house. He’s asleep.”
“Did you fuck him?”
“Mona, stop.”
“Did you? Did you rush to him to do to him what you did to me?”
“I came outside to talk to you. I don’t like the way we parted. Let’s talk about that.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“I didn’t say it was. Will you chill with all the attitude please?”
I said nothing.
“I’ll come back to see you later on today,” he said.
“I plan to tour the city. Need to do a bit of research.”
“So you don’t want me to see you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re annoying the hell out of me. What do you want from me right now?” His voice was heavy, like it was a burden just for him to talk to me.
“I just want you to treat me like I’m more than just a side piece of ass.”
“I don’t—” he began, then stopped. “How, Mona? Didn’t you know I was with someone when we started messing around?”
“So that’s all we’re reduced to? Messing around?”
“I can’t give you any more of me or my time than I already am. I’ve missed birthdays and anniversaries for you. I’ve told lies and flown around the country for you. And the one damn time I can’t do what you ask, you give me your ass to kiss?”
Bi-Sensual Page 3
