I woke up with a start, like I have in the past when I’ve dreamed about falling. And crazy as it sounds, I knew if I tried to go back to sleep without first making a genuine effort to clear the air between me and Carl, I was only going to have the same durn dream, or some variation thereof, all over again.
A couple hours had passed since I’d last dialed his number, but I didn’t really expect him to be any more receptive than he’d been when I’d called earlier to express my sentiments. And sure enough, after a couple of rings, his answering machine clicked on.
At the beep I said, “Pick up, Carl. I know you’re there. And I know you know it’s me.” When he didn’t respond I said, “Fine. Be that way. I was just calling to apologize …”
He picked up and said, “Go ’head. I’m listening.”
I told him that I hadn’t planned for things to turn out the way they had and that if I could do it all differently, I would. “You still mad?” I finally ventured to ask after about thirty seconds of waiting for him to say something.
He said, “Why? You got more salt you want to rub in my wounds?”
Rather than let him bait me into another battle, I went into my Iyanla Vanzant “save yourself” bit. I smacked myself on the forehead, sucked in a deep cleansing breath, blew it out slowly, then told him in a voice totally devoid of all spite and rancor, “You know, Carl, maybe it would be best to call the whole thing off and just forget about trying to be anything other than friends.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked, this time sounding more hurt than angry.
I took a moment before telling him point-blank, “I told you last week, and in no uncertain terms, exactly what it was I wanted.”
He was like, “So what’s changed? I still want that too.”
I said, “Yeah, but if the way you were acting tonight is any indication, Carl, that’s not all you want. How are you going to act when this game we’re playing is over?”
He jumped from my inquiry to one of his own. “You dumping me so you can get with him?”
I told him, “See, there you go acting like a jealous boyfriend again. Didn’t I already tell you there wasn’t anything between me and dude?”
He mumbled something about seeing Scoobie kiss me. “Sure,” I said. “On the cheek. And did you by any chance see me kiss him back? No, case closed.”
He wasn’t about to let me off that easy, though. He said, “Tell the truth, Faye.”
I said, “I am telling the truth, Carl.”
Homeboy kept on. He said, “He’s the one, isn’t he?”
I was like, “The one what?”
Then in a voice so serious I couldn’t laugh, even though I wanted to, Carl said, “You know, the one Nora told me about. The one who ran roughshod over your heart, forever ruining you for the rest of us.”
HIM
Yes, “roughshod.” Look, don’t hate me ’cause I’ve got a vocabulary and I’m not afraid to use it. Faye thought it funny too. I could feel her cheesing through the phone. But rather than give in to her urge to giggle, she said, “Is that what you think I am, ruined?”
“You’re not answering the question,” I said, sinking even deeper into my “I ain’t playing” voice. “Is he or isn’t he?”
See, by then I’d figured it out. Having gotten a good look at dude up close and personal, it had gradually dawned on me that he was the joker from the pictures Nora had shown me that night we’d sat around waiting on Faye.
Finally, ol’ girl went ahead and fessed up. She told me she’d known him about as long as she’d known Nora. “And yes,” she finally admitted, “he was the first guy I ever fell head over heels for. The first guy I ever made …”
Right there in midsentence she slammed on the brakes and changed gears. “Well, he was the guy I lost my innocence to. We had an off-and-on relationship for years. But like I told you, that’s all ancient history now. And that’s exactly how I’d like to leave it.”
I asked why she’d stopped short of saying he was the first she’d ever made love to.
“Because that’s not what it was,” she said. “We didn’t make love. And we certainly weren’t in love. Even though there was a time I thought differently, I know better now.”
Never one to step clear of an obvious challenge, I said, “Do you? What could you possibly know about love when from the looks of things you’ve spent half a lifetime running from it?”
Her response to that was, “Well, maybe one day we can sit down and you can tell me all about it—being you’re such an expert and all.”
Rather than go there, I laughed her off and asked, “So what exactly did you and Scrotty do today?”
She made a big deal about correcting my mispronunciation of dude’s name, like I was supposed to care. “Scoobie, Scrotty, hump buddy, boyfriend—what difference does it make?” I asked. “All I want to know is where you went with him that I couldn’t have taken you?”
Her story involved running into dude at church and him supposedly talking her into going to meet his fitness trainer. Quite naturally that led to a workout, after which he took her to get something to eat, and so on and so forth.
All in all, it sounded pretty lame to me, but it did provide me with an opportunity to clear my name. I told her even though I thought her timing pretty lousy, I didn’t see anything wrong with her striving to get toned. “But for the record,” I said, “I was not, I repeat, I was not making fun of your weight when you were over here earlier.”
Man, I might as well have been talking to myself. “If you say so,” she said. “But for future references, I’m well aware that I could stand to shed a few pounds. It’s not like I don’t own a mirror or a scale.”
And if that didn’t beat all, right in the midst of me trying to tell her that I thought she looked fine, she jumped in and said, “Let’s just drop it, okay? It’s late and I need to get off this phone so I can get ready for work tomorrow.”
You get the picture? Pretty much she was aiming to tell a brother to hurry up, shut up, and be gone already. What she didn’t know is that Keith Sweat don’t have nothing on me when it comes to begging. I said, “Faye, you know I still want to see you—even if it means I have to take a number and stand in line in order to do it. So come on, don’t have me laying over here wondering if you want me to go away, wait for you to wrap up your unfinished business with this brother, or what.”
“Are you through?” she asked in the pause I took to catch my breath.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Are we?”
I’d closed my eyes and was waiting for her to verbally nail my balls to the wall when she started laughing. When she finally stopped, she said, “Carl, I’ve just got two questions for you. Number one, what time does the concert start? And two, next time, instead of the spare, why not go for something a little less dramatic, something a little less injurious to your health—like, say, the jack or the jumper cables?”
Ha, ha. Let her make jokes. Ain’t no black off my back. Man, long as I get what I’m after, I don’t even care. Believe that!
PART TWO
HER
Finally, all systems were fired up and ready to go! For the rest of that week I was darn near beside myself with anticipation. The wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am I’d been wanting and needing for oh, so long was finally about to come to fruition. At least, that’s what I thought.
So not only did I agree to let homeboy treat me to dinner before the show, but like a trouper I played along with the sappy-sweet talk over the meal, and the hand-holding afterward, even though public displays of affection typically make me ill. Call it my way of compromising, if you will. And the truth is, it really wasn’t that bad.
The brother’s choice of restaurants—an upscale Italian eatery in the heart of downtown—went a long way in launching the evening on a high note. The food was absolutely wonderful, the service excellent, and Carl did quite a commendable job of playing up his boyish charm for all it was worth.
And the concert, girl, w
as pure heaven. The night was clear and cool with a slight breeze. The lights from the city’s bluffs were flickering across the water. Jarreau and his band were jazzing it up on stage, filling the air with nothing but good music. And of course Carl was there treating me to a steady flow of wine coolers and compliments, and an occasional hand across my thigh. Chile, let me tell you, by the time we got back home I was feeling real good.
Still, I didn’t want to seem too eager. Not yet, anyway. So after we got out of the car, I led him over to the front door of my condo, as if I was ready to turn in for the evening. “I had a good time tonight,” I told him.
He raised his eyebrows and said, “Had? The night’s not over yet. According to my copy of the rule book, the night’s not over until after the dance.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, real casual-like. “I thought it was after the kiss.”
He leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Well, what do you say tonight we break some of the old rules and make up a few new ones?”
And then he kissed me. Yeah, girl, he kissed me like there was no doubt in his mind that he could deliver on everything I’d been wanting and needing and then some. When he finally let up, he said, “So what do you say? Is the night over, or has it just begun?”
“Well, since you put it that way,” I said, still choosing to play it cool but waiting eagerly for just the right moment to heat things up.
And so without further ado, we went over to his place, where instead of heading straight for the bedroom, which I personally would have preferred, homeboy poured us some wine, dimmed the lights, and then surprised me by opting to play the CD of Jarreau classics I’d purchased after the concert, rather than something from his collection of R&B moldy oldies.
After a couple sips of the merlot, we slipped into the familiar comfort of our old slow-dance groove, except on this particular occasion there was only so much of the hip bone–to–hip bone, cheek-to-cheek either one of us could take. Somewhere in the middle of brother Al’s “Like a Lover” we ended up on the sofa necking, like two inexperienced teens, easily distracted by the slightest noise, and still somewhat unsure about just how far the other was willing to go.
Carl’s kisses, like his hands, were soft, full, caressing, and prone to wander. He seemed thoroughly engaged, if not fully aroused by what we were doing, which only made all the more confusing what happened next.
We’d been at it for a couple of minutes, with homeboy’s fingers cruising the full terrain of my body. Now, while my right hand enjoyed a similar freedom, my left pretty much stayed where homeboy wanted it—in his lap, keeping company with the surprisingly larger than average endowment that he, unlike most similarly blessed brothers, had never once bothered to brag about.
And before I’m accused of any unnecessary roughness, let me just say that if I was putting a hurting on the man, it must have been one he liked, because every time I tried to move my hand away, he always pulled it right back.
But for some unknown reason, right while I was in the process of unzipping his fly, Carl jerked away from me, a move that nearly landed him butt-first on the floor, while simultaneously offering me a glimpse of what looked like sheer panic in his eyes.
“I—I’m sorry,” he said, on repositioning himself. “I’m just a little uncomfortable.”
I watched as he first slipped out of his shoes, then untucked his shirt. He was wrestling loose the cuffs on his sleeves when I decided to go ahead and put my dignity on the line.
“Here, let me help you with that,” I said, trying to play innocent as I leaned over and started undoing the buttons along the front of his shirt, making it a point to “accidentally” brush my nails against his chest as I worked my way down to his navel. Oh yeah, girl, as tense as he was, he grinned big-time and said, “That kind of gives you an unfair advantage, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. But that can easily be remedied,” I said as I proceeded to unfasten my own blouse with a direct frontal assault in mind. Really, sometimes a woman simply has to take matters into her own hands. The bra I had on hooked up in the front, and with one quick twist I’d unsnapped the clasp and unleashed the full fury of these high-riding, 42 double Ds.
Well, let it suffice to say, it was a move that aroused more than just his curiosity. He peeled back the lace cups and ran an appraising eye over my twin sisterfriends before subjecting them to a much more physically pleasurable type of scrutiny.
Girl, let me tell you—it was heaven all over again. My head was spinning, my blood was racing, and my body was practically screaming, “Yeah! Yeah! Git it! Git it!” when all of a sudden he stopped.
The brother stopped, girl! Got up, changed the music, replenished his wineglass, came back to the couch, and then started a conversation.
Hell, I durn near croaked. I mean, I’m sitting there, titties bared to the world, my every nerve in an uproar, and he’s quizzing me about my plans for the rest of the weekend. I’m thinking to myself, this man is either crazy, confused, or a latent homosexual. But since I had already come that far, I decided to play along. Okay? Maybe he just wanted to slow things up a bit before the real action began, right? Uh-uh.
I made the mistake of telling him that Nora and I were planning a trip to Water Valley to visit Mama ’nem. Honey, that just prompted him to launch into this long, mindless monologue about his own mama. And how wonderful she was. And how much he loved her. And how much he missed her. Which is all fine and dandy, but not at all the type of lip action I was particularly interested in at that moment.
He went on, and on, and on, and I listened until I felt my head about to explode. Finally, I just had to come right out and ask him, “Carl, why in the hell are you sitting up here talking about your mama?”
He looked at me like I had just slapped him or something and said, “What?”
And I told him. I said, “I just find it rather unnerving, if not downright perverse, for you to be suckling at my breast one minute and talking about your mama the next.”
He frowned all up and said, “What’s with the funky attitude? You got something against mothers or something?”
That’s when I let him have it, girl. Read his ass, chapter and verse, straight from the Book of Black Women! Told him that was the problem with most Black men—they’re all hung up on their mamas. Think their mamas are the only durn women in the world worthy of being treated with any degree of decency. Every other woman they want to treat like a ’ho.”
After I’d finished my piece, Carl shook his head and said, “Just tell me this, why’d you have to pick tonight of all nights to change back into the bitch?”
Well, that did it for me. I grabbed my bag and said, “Maybe I just ought to leave.”
Without so much as blinking an eye, Carl stood up, re-hooked my bra, and said, “Yeah, maybe you just ought to.”
HIM
I’m not out to make excuses for myself. The truth is, I just got scared. And fear, like lust, will drive a man to do a lot of silly, stupid, and foolish things—especially if he’s predisposed to being all those things to some extent anyway.
But heaven forbid, man, should those two things—lust and fear—ever collide on any other joker like they did on me, and at the most inopportune moment. There I was in full throttle, ready to whip the bad boy out and lay it on her, when I’ll be doggone if some of the conversation I’d had with my cousin Squirrel about Faye’s weekly trips up to the hospital didn’t replay itself in my head.
“Whatcha gon’ do, man,” I remember him saying to me at one point, “if come to find out ‘Big Red’ is hiding sumthin’ really horrible? Like, say, turns out she’s some bipolar, post-op transsexual who’s got an extreme case of herpes?”
If that wasn’t bad enough, I started hearing what my Uncle Westbrook had told me after I’d peeped him to the deal between me and Faye. He’d looked at me kinda funny and said, “I don’t know, Carl. Ol’ girl sounds like she plays a pretty tough hand. You step outta line and ain’t no telling what kinda hurting she’
s liable to lay on you.”
Now, unlike my cousin Squirrel, my Uncle Westbrook’s got sixty-five-some years’ worth of wisdom under his belt. I figure if anybody, he ought to know a li’l sumthin’-sumthin’ about love and life and redbone gals whose game involves giving it up to a brother with seemingly no strings attached.
Man, with all those voices in my head, straight up wrecking my flow, wasn’t nuthin’ I could do but ease up off the gas and slam on the brakes. Faye was cool about it at first. She even gave me a few seconds to make the necessary adjustments before reaching over and literally giving me a hand. And it wasn’t long before we were both bare-chested, breathing hard, and working toward getting our groan on.
I’m serious, man, I was handling everything that needed handling. I was coming up on third and had my sights set on home when—blip, bam, boom—it hit me out of nowhere with all of the ferocity of a freight train—the overwhelming realization that over and beyond my blatantly doggish desire for a good hump, I really do like this woman. I do. And I want to please her. But what if I can’t? I mean, hell, when it comes to experience she’s probably been ’round the world and back. What if I don’t have what it takes to get her where she wants to go? Sure, it sounds irrational. Other people’s fears generally do.
But being able to accompany a woman to the land of ooh-la-la? Well, that’s what you might call a sensitive area for me, a sensitivity that was born the day my wife, a woman I loved dearly, up and confessed that in all the years we’d been kicking it, I’d yet to take her there. I’m saying, man, all those times when I thought I’d really been up in there wearing it out—had her sweating, squirming, and singing a right nasty version of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You, Baby”—shoot, ol’ girl had been straight faking it!
After The Dance Page 9
