by Zane
I turned around, getting ready to try to fabricate a story, but she wasn’t even looking at me. She was flipping through the mail from that day, so I left well enough alone.
While I was putting away the groceries, I started wondering what would have happened between Jason and me if my mother hadn’t shown up right then. I wondered if he was experienced, and hoped like all hell he wasn’t. I wanted to be his first.
After I went to bed and made sure my mother was fast asleep, I masturbated for the first time. I didn’t know what to do exactly, and to this day, I’m not sure whether or not I actually came. All I know is thinking about Jason and feeling on myself at the same time made me feel damn good.
• • •
Well, I finally got my man, and Chandler got pushed to the curb. Jason told her the truth, that he and I were an item. She took it hard, but I didn’t care. That summer was the greatest one of my entire life. Jason and I spent almost every day together. We never did the nasty though. As it turned out, he was still a virgin and was not completely ready to do it, so we didn’t. We used to hold hands and hug and neck heavily. He wouldn’t let it go any farther, so I began to masturbate on a regular basis.
I assumed masturbating at such a young age was probably strange but had no idea there were underlying reasons for it. What I did not know then but realize all too well now is that my battle with sexual addiction had already begun.
chapter
five
Things were going great between Jason and me. Just think! My soulmate had been staring me in the face all those years without me even suspecting it.
I was still completely devastated over my father’s death—Lawd knows no one and nothing could ever take his place. Jason helped me through it, though. We spent every second we could spare together. After school, we did our homework together unless Jason had practice. If he did, I would sit in the bleachers and wait for him.
Chandler couldn’t stand me being there. As far as I was concerned, that was her personal problem. I’m surprised her eyes didn’t end up permanently crossed from rolling them back and forth in her head at me so damn much. A couple of times, she almost fell flat on her ass during cheerleading practice because she was so busy trying to diss me.
Meanwhile, Mohammed was still trying. I have to give it to the brotha. He didn’t give up on love easily. I tried to hook him up with Brina, but she wasn’t even having it. She’d developed this massive crush on Cordell. I used to beg Jason to sweat him about asking her out.
On occasion, we would all hang out together at the mall or the ice-skating rink in the Omni International Hotel. I hate the fact they closed the rink down some years ago. I would love for Jason and me to take the kids there and reminisce about the good old days.
Cordell and Brina did eventually hit it off, thank goodness—she was getting on my last nerve worrying about who else he might possibly like.
I hated it when Jason traveled to away games, because I didn’t have any way to tag along. I thought about pleading my way onto the cheerleading squad, even though I had no interest in it, just so I could be with him.
I wanted to take things further, but Jason was content with kissing and grinding with our clothes on. That night on the porch, I just knew he was experienced. He fooled my ass but good. Part of me was elated because that meant Chandler couldn’t throw having sex with him up in my face.
I was growing more and more frustrated. The more Jason refused my sexual advances, the more obsessed I became with getting him to go all the way. He would let the kissing get hot and heavy, and then just get up and leave me panting despondently on the couch.
I began to wonder if something was wrong with me. Most boys his age were all about trying to get some so they could brag about it to their friends—but not Jason. He wasn’t having any part of climbing up inside my sugary walls.
I was willing to deal with it, yearning coochie and all, until Brina called me up on the phone after 1 A.M. one Saturday night.
“Brina, why are you calling me so late?” I whispered into the handset, trying not to rouse my mother. “My mother will have a fit if she wakes up.”
“That’s what you have your own phone line for, doofus!”
She laughed, but I didn’t see a damn thing funny. “Brina, what is it? Is something wrong, Sis? Is it your mother?”
“No, she isn’t even here,” Brina replied sarcastically. “She’s probably sitting on a barstool somewhere rapping to one of those ugly-ass men she keeps bringing up in here.”
I didn’t know what to say about that one, so I changed the subject. “Well, what’s wrong, then?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Zoe,” she chuckled. “In fact, everything is just spantacular.”
I sat up and turned on the lamp on my nightstand. “Okay, now that I’m completely lost, care to enlighten me?”
“We did it!” she screamed in my ear.
“Did what, dammit?”
“Cordell and I did the nasty! The wild thing! The hoochie-coochie!”
“Uh-uh, you’re lying!” I yelled out, no longer caring about waking my mother up. “Tell me you’re lying! Confess!”
“Sheit, I’m not lying,” she giggled. “We did it, and it was goooooooood!”
“You and Cordell had sex?” I was finding this shit hard to comprehend. Jason and I had been together for months and had never even gotten naked. Here this chica was calling me up braggin’ on dick, and they had only been dating a couple of weeks.
“Boy, did we!”
“I have to go, Brina!” I can’t describe my feelings, but I was hurt and didn’t feel like talking anymore.
“Zoe, wait! I want to tell you all the details! Blow by blow, or should I say lick by lick!”
That did it! “Brina, I’ll call you tomorrow! Later!”
With that, I hung up the phone. I knew I was wrong for that. There she was excited, wanting to share her first sexual experience with me, and I totally dissed her. I couldn’t help myself. I cried myself to sleep, light on and all, wondering why in the world Brina could get some loving and I couldn’t.
The next day I went outside and sat on the stoop sporting a pair of dark sunglasses, a black turtleneck, and black jeans like I was in mourning. I even had on black socks.
Jason came out his front door a few minutes later and headed across the street to join me. He was eating a Hostess Chocolate Cupcake and offered me half of it before he sat down.
“No, thanks,” I mumbled under my breath, not even wanting to acknowledge him.
He sat down on the stoop beside me, inquiring, “What’s wrong with you? You love chocolate cupcakes.”
“I’m not hungry right now, is all,” I replied, looking down at his feet and noticing he had a new pair of white Pumas.
“Aww, I get it now. It’s that time of the month, huh?”
I pulled my sunglasses down slightly so I could snarl at him and roll my eyes. “What do you care if it’s that time of the month? It’s not like we do anything!”
Jason cleared his throat and starting fidgeting. He polished off the rest of the cupcake and pretended to be enthralled in a squirrel climbing the oak tree in my front yard.
“You know about Cordell and Brina having sex last night, don’t you?” he asked, finally breaking the silence.
Damn, Brina was telling the truth! “Cordell told you?”
“Yeah, he called me early this morning to brag about it.”
“How dare him spread Brina’s business around like that?” I barked, automatically going into my protective mode. “Damn, he’s almost as bad as you.”
“Hold up now! Didn’t Brina call and tell you? You don’t seem too surprised about it.”
I tried to hold back a smile, realizing I was in essence calling the kettle black. “Maybe she did. What of it?”
“How can you be mad at Cordell for telling me when Brina told you? Hell, she probably called you the second he left her place to spill the beans. At least he waited until this morning to cal
l me.”
Wow, Jason read Brina’s ass like a book! I looped my arm around his. “Baby, when are we going to do it?”
He pulled his arm away from mine. “Zoe, I told you I’m not ready to go all the way. I want us to wait.”
“Wait how long? Till we’re fifty years old?”
I could tell he was pissed. He started huffing and biting his fingernails. “Don’t be ridiculous! Are you such a freak that you can’t wait until the time is right?”
“Freak?” I started to slap him but caught myself. I was trying to make a sincere effort to lay off the violence. “How can I be a freak if I don’t do anything freaky?”
“Well, maybe you should call Mohammed’s ass up!”
Oh no, he didn’t even go there! “Well, maybe I should. He’s a real man . He wants my body, unlike you,” I said, telling a bold-faced lie. Mohammed wouldn’t even give me the tongue, rather less the dick.
Jason stood up, probably just so he could look down his nose at me. “You don’t know what the hell I want, Zoe! You don’t know a damn thing about me!”
“And Chandler does, huh?”
“Chandler didn’t ever ride my back like you’re doing! That’s for sure!”
I was hyperventilating, trembling, and on the verge of an explosion. “Just get the hell out of my face, Jason!” He stood there and stood there and . . . stood there. “I thought I told you to get out of my face. Did I stutter?”
“So what are you saying, Zoe?” Hell, I had no clue what I was saying! How dare he ask me that? “Are you breaking up with me?”
That was when I made the stupidest move I’ve ever made in my entire life. I said, “Yes, I am.”
He walked away from me and left me sitting there, feeling dumb. The next day he got back with Chandler; the following week I got back with Mohammed out of retaliation, and the farce continued for two years.
I made feeble attempts to get Jason back, but he wasn’t even going for it. I even broke down, gave him a heartfelt apology and asked if we could at least be friends. He told me to go be friendly with Mohammed. I never did anything sexual with Mohammed. He was still frontin’ on the dick. I wasn’t too upset because I was in love with Jason Reynard, and there were no two bones about it. I just dated Mohammed to try to make Jason jealous.
Brina and some of the other girls discovered a hole in the wall of the locker room, and they used to peek through it to get dang-a-lang sightings. I couldn’t have cared less until one day Brina yelled out that she could see Jason’s ass. I knocked her on the floor like I was a linebacker for the Atlanta Falcons. I peeked through the hole and started salivating, praying he would turn around so I could see his other part . Our gym teacher, Ms. Price, interrupted me though and delivered a serious tongue-lashing when she discovered what I was up to. Now, fifty-eleven girls had been looking through that hole for weeks, and no one got caught. As soon as I take a glance, I get cold busted. Ain’t that a bitch?
chapter
six
Springtime rolled around, and it was time for the annual School Fair at Central. I was reluctant to go because Mohammed had been showing out and seemed more worried about talking my ears off about the Nation of Islam than taking my pants off. Like I said before, that was cool with me. It had gotten to the point where even being around him irritated the hell out of me. The Friday night before the fair, I called him up and succinctly told him all bets were off.
“Why don’t you want me to take you?” He sounded so pitiful when he realized I was on the brink of kicking his ass to the curb. “You asked me months ago to go with you to the fair at your school, and now you’re backing out at the last minute? I was supposed to be filling in for Brother Jabrail at the rally tomorrow afternoon, but I changed my schedule around and everything just so I could go hang out with you.”
The guilt trip was not even working. It became disturbingly clear to me that Mohammed had been nothing more than a big waste of time. I listened to him drone on and on and finally resorted to holding the phone away from my ear while I became pleasantly immersed in another thought. I was sitting on the living room sofa when some headlights suddenly blinded me through the curtains. I moved one of the sheer curtain panels to the side slightly and peeked outside to see if it was Momma getting off work early; I was anxious to tell her about the A I received on my calculus exam. It wasn’t Momma but I caught the taillights of Jason’s Camaro just as they turned off. When he got out of the car, he looked like an Adonis, a god even. He was sporting this Negro League baseball jacket and some Levis’ that were so tight, I wanted to reach out and spank that tight ass of his. It brought on a delightful set of ambiguous memories, including the glimpse I got of his butterball naked ass through the hole in the girls’ locker room. Things could’ve been so different if I hadn’t gone too far and dumped him that day. It had been almost two years, and he still gave me nothing but cynical remarks, dispassionate glares, and malevolent treatment.
“Zoe, are you there?” Damn, why couldn’t he just shut up and stop whining? I was busy daydreaming about a real man. “Zoe? Oh, so now you just gonna igg me and thangs? That’s cool!”
I watched Jason use his foot to nudge the car door shut because his arms were full of some Kroger bags he retrieved from the backseat. I knew I had about thirty seconds to hit the pavement, or he would be inside and out of my reach. My mother had mentioned that Jason’s parents were going out of town for the weekend and asked her to keep an eye on him, so I knew he was alone. It was time to make my move.
“Umm, Mohammed, I have to go.” I shifted through the repertoire of excuses I frequently used to get off the phone with him, trying to make sure the one I was about to blurt out hadn’t been abused. “My mother will be home in a few, and I need to clean up the kitchen before she gets here. Call me next week. Peace.”
“But, Zoe, what about tomorrow?”
Click. Enough of all that. I jumped up off the worn and tattered sofa and quickly adjusted the dolman sleeves of the white blouse I had on with some black velveteen leggings and black leather platform shoes. I made a beeline for the front door, pausing half a second to smile in the mirror and make sure none of the meatloaf from dinner was stuck in my front teeth.
I was determined to make a classic statement of subtlety and poise, pretending like I just happened to be stepping outside for some fresh air or something. Once I saw Jason’s key hitting the lock and the lights go on in his foyer when he hit the switch on the wall, I quickly discarded that option.
“Jason, hold up just a minute!” I heard my voice and realized I was screaming, panicking even, so I toned it down a bit and then reiterated, “Hang on a second.”
Even from across the street, I could see his eyes crinkle-at the sides. He was probably under the automatic assumption I only wanted to say something sarcastic to him. To be honest, I had no idea what I was going to say, but I knew I needed Jason. I wanted Jason. I had to have Jason, or I might as well have slit my wrists with a plastic knife from KFC or taken an overdose of Ex-Lax or something.
“Zoe, what do you want?” He tossed the bags down on the tile floor in the entryway.
“Why do you think I want something?” I replied, moving tentatively toward him. “Maybe I just wanted to say hey.”
He gave me a sanguine smile, and I was a bit relieved. Normally, he would just snarl at me. “Well, hey.”
I was at his doorway by then, and I immediately got lost in his eyes, wondering how in the hell the little nucca I used to scrape in the street with grew up to be so damn fine.
“Anything else?” he asked, beginning to press on the backside of the door like he was on alert to slam it in my face if my evil twin raised her ugly head. He knew I wanted him though. I could tell. He was just basking in the glory of knowing he had control over my conflicted heart.
I hesitated and bit on my bottom lip, contemplating what to say next. He blushed and leaned against the doorframe, and it dawned on me how tall he was. I had three-inch platforms on my five-foo
t, six-inch frame, and he looked like the Jolly Green Giant standing in front of me. “How tall are you?”
He grinned and let out a slight chuckle. “Is that what you came over here to ask me at this time of night? How tall I am?”
“No, but I was just wondering. I didn’t realize you were so gigantic.”
He rolled his eyes, but I could tell my interest in his height was flattering to him. “If you must know, gurl, I’m about six-five.”
“Six-five? Damn!” For some reason, I had to look at his feet. I glanced down, and he had on the biggest-ass pair of Nikes I’d ever seen. Brina and the other gurls used to always talk about how a boy’s feet were directly related to penis size. I had never bought into that, since penis size was never a fascination for me—that is, until the day I prayed like all hell Jason would turn around in the gym shower. On my way back up to look at his face again, I made a pit stop at the crotch of his jeans. My eyes ballooned when I spotted it behind the denim fabric. Not only was it big, much bigger than it had been a couple years before when we used to grind up against each other, but he either had a coconut in his pocket or he was damn sure happy to see me.
“Well, look, I’m about to go cook me some hot dogs. Aight?” I must’ve made him feel uneasy because he turned on me, and his grin changed to a pout. I wondered if he knew I was peeping his dang-a-lang.
“Okay, cool.” I started to turn around when a lightbulb went off in my head. “You mind if I grab one of your hot dogs, Jason? Momma’s working late again, and I’m starved.” I rubbed my belly to drive the point home. “We don’t have a thing in the fridge, and I don’t have a car like you, so I can’t go to Kroger or grab some fast food.”
I was lying my ass off, knowing good and damn well that less than an hour earlier I had munched down on the mouthwatering meatloaf and mashed potatoes with gravy Momma fixed before she left for work.
Jason glared at me, like he was registering the thought of actually letting me in the house when his parents weren’t home. “Aight, come on in,” he said, stepping aside. He must’ve wondered if I would go psycho on his ass and stab him with a butcher knife, because he emphatically added, “But as soon as we eat, you need to bounce, because I have a lot to do before the fair tomorrow.”
