by Tyree, Omar
D looked into her steady dark eyes and knew that she meant that shit. He told himself, This girl is crazy than a motherfucker. And I had her sleeping over here with me. Are none of these bitches to be trusted?
He asked her, “You had that on you all this time?”
Amber put the blade away in her left panty line and told him, “Now you know. I always have something on me. I may not always have it in the same place through.”
He said, “What about when you go through metal detectors?”
“If I know I’m going somewhere like that, then I’ll make plans for it.”
Suddenly, D had new respect and a certain fear for the girl. However, he didn’t know if he wanted to spend the night with a girl who carried hidden knives and weapons on her. All he could think about now was waking up in the middle of the night with a knife in his neck . . . or not waking up at all from a slit throat from ear to ear.
He smiled at her and said, “We still good, right?” He laughed it off, attempting to take it all lightly, but he couldn’t. This bitch got a knife on her.
Amber looked at him seriously. She said, “You spoke earlier about what would happen in prison, right? Well, if you don’t bother me, I won’t bother you. That’s all there is to it.”
D didn’t know what to say after that. He kept thinking of how she could have gone crazy and stabbed him for talking to her like a child. He often spoke to women disrespectfully that way. It all started with his mother, really. She was constantly antagonizing the boy and forcing him to verbally defend himself. Now he was verbally abusive on a regular basis with the majority of the women in his life.
See, that’s why I need a white girl to chill me out from all this shit right now, he convinced himself. Me and black women have too much to air out. And I always seem to choose the crazy ones, even when I think they’re not.
Back at Lauren Grandeis’ place on the lower end of Manhattan, Vincent Biddle had no such problems of craziness or antagonism with the celebrated, East Indian marketer. Their special understanding was nearly flawless, with no flare-ups or arguments of any kind. In fact, Lauren and Vincent were so in sync with each other that Lauren decided to ask him her pressing question, while they relaxed together on her comfortable sleigh bed.
“Vincent, are you gay?” she asked him point blank. Lauren felt she knew a big, intimate part of his life now, like a next-door neighbor, who could listen through the walls. But at the same time, she still felt thousands of miles away from him on certain things, as if he lived in California somewhere, so she knew there had to be much more to him.
Vincent maintained his poise and responded, “What do you think? Did you ever care?”
Lauren paused. She didn’t really care. She only cared that he treated her like royalty. Vincent had suspected as much, but he never held it against her. Lauren was so into herself, her work and her needs that she hadn’t asked much about his at all. She had taken much of his personal story for granted, as if he was only there to serve her.
“Well, you never really spoke of your personal life, so . . . I figured you would tell me what and when you wanted to,” she answered.
It wasn’t as if Vincent had been quick to volunteer information. Usually, people would bring up their personal affairs at some point in business and interpersonal relationships. It was only human. But Vincent had been more clandestine with his personal life than she had been.
She said, “I thought about it, especially since you never have tried to go all the way with me. But would a gay man touch a woman and please a woman they way you have with me? I’m not sure. So I was confused.”
Surely, Lauren knew plenty of gay men in her daily dealings on Broadway. But they were all out. And those men who were more private about their personal affairs were harder to suspect.
Vincent nodded and said, “I like women. Men have been more of a . . . habit.”
Lauren refocused on him while leaning on a naked elbow. She said, “So, you’re bi?”
“I don’t broadcast anything about my personal life,” he answered. “But with men, the culture’s a lot more aggressive. It’s just . . . an aggressive culture. And a lot of times, it’s all about domination.”
Vincent reflected back to how he had been sexually assaulted by older gay men as a child, as a teenager, and then as a young man. And he was very fortunate to have never had any socially transmitted diseases. But a habit had indeed been formed. He was used to having men in his life now. But women still brought out a different side of him; a more gentle and caring side. And he liked it.
He said, “I don’t feel the same anxiety to be with women intimately, so I’ve never pressed it. But the women I’ve been with obviously wanted it.”
Lauren grinned slightly, wondering about his performance. She had been curious about that for months now. How would Vincent perform on top, because his head game was wonderful. Yet, now she had more to consider.
“So, you don’t have like, one intimate friend?” she asked him, more specifically of men. She already knew that Vincent associated with hundreds of people in the publishing industry. But most of them were women. However, Vincent also knew people in the magazine and newspaper industries of New York. They were all editors of written and creative content, sharing new information and ideas.
He said, “Well . . . like you, I have a reputation for not being too accessible. And I like it that way. If I don’t feel like being bothered, I’m not. You know, I still have my work to do, and everyone knows that. That’s why I get along with you so well. I just understand where you’re coming from. You live for the work like I do.”
Lauren already understood that part of him. But what about his family and his regular group of friends? she thought.
Then again, they both interacted as if they lived on private islands. Lauren understood that she was very similar. She didn’t volunteer much of her personal world to people either.
“I guess we’re alike in a lot of ways then,” she told him. “Men have often asked me more of my personal questions after months of trying to get to know me. But you haven’t asked me anything.”
Vincent shrugged and said, “I don’t feel I need to. You’ve already showed me what you’re about, and I feel that I’ve shown you. I think people try to ply into your personal life just to compare themselves to you or find some type of weakness or a crutch to lean on and talk about you. You know, ‘Her family does this?’ Or ‘I heard he used to do that’. So I don’t give them that ammunition. I just live my life.”
Lauren listened to him and continued to smile delightfully. She agreed with everything he said. In her early twenties, her so-called friends and business associates in the New York entertainment world attempted everything they could to break her down, forcing her to feel safer in promoting others rather than pushing her own aspirations. Lauren wanted to be on Broadway herself, but she couldn’t take the bickering and backstabbing of competition that was involved. Vincent was absolutely right. So as an older woman, she had now learned to keep her personal life a mystery, and everything else about her.
She felt so connected to Vincent at that moment that she leaned over and kissed him on the lips and stared into his eyes. At that moment, she didn’t care that he was bisexual. She only cared that he could relate to her. With Vincent Biddle, she didn’t feel so alone in the world.
Vincent read the sentiment in her softened eyes and understood what it meant. No one wanted to feel alone, but issues of trust could force them all to choose loneliness over betrayal. So to find someone who would never betray you was indeed special.
“I love you,” Lauren told Vincent suddenly.
And he was . . . shocked by it. He didn’t expect it. Nor was it necessary. But she said it anyway. Then she rested her soft head against his shoulder blade.
“I was molested by my uncle as a girl. So I choose not to like aggressive men,” she told him. “They all remind me of him.”
Vincent took a deep breath and thought about his own viol
ations. How many people could you trust with such information? But with trust and time between them, he decided to make a revelation of his own.
He said, “I don’t speak for every gay man or gay woman, bisexuals or humans for that matter, but I feel that we all are pushed into things that we may not want to do. And then we learn how to push and pull ourselves. That’s just how it is. So, whenever we can find that small peace of mind without pressure, it feels good.
“That’s why I love you too,” he told her. “I love you for trusting me.”
Lauren breathed into his chest and smiled again. She said, “You don’t have to tell me that. I don’t want you to feel pressured or pushed or pulled into saying that you love me back. I just expressed what I felt at the moment. And I may not love you tomorrow,” she joked.
Vincent smiled and laughed with her. He said, “Women . . . they love you one day and they hate you the next. But men are more even. They could care less about you sometimes. They just want what they want . . . so you take it or leave it.”
Lauren leaned back up to look him in his eyes again. She said, “I will love you even like a man and his daughter. A man could never hate his little girl.”
Vincent thought about that and cringed. A father and daughter had to be the most volatile relationship in the world. But it also had to be the most trusting.
“That’s interesting,” he told her. “Out of all of the relationships that you could have named, a father and daughter is the most challenging.”
She nodded and agreed with him. “It is. And I trusted that my father would never molest me like my uncle did.”
Vincent had no more to say about that. He only wrapped his arms around her naked body in bed to comforted her like a human blanket.
But you are not my father, Lauren told herself as she felt his gentle arms around him. So I’m allowed to make love to you when I choose to . . . just not tonight, she told herself. Tonight I feel good just to talk to you.
Up at the top end of Manhattan in Harlem, Darlene and Antonio were able to talk and make love, and not necessarily in that order. They had done their lovemaking first, and they were both exhausted now and resting on their naked backs. And they were both trusting and young and free.
“That was awesome,” Darlene admitted with a grin. She said, “I guess it’s true that Spanish men are great lovers.”
Antonio smiled back and said, “I’m not Spanish, I’m Puerto Rican and proud of it. I only speak Spanish. But you’re not English because you speak English, are you?”
“All right, I get your point,” Darlene huffed at him, still grinning. She said, “If European men hadn’t taken over the world, we would all speak our own languages.”
Tony looked at her and frowned. “Isn’t your father blanco.”
She said, “Yeah, and I joke about it all the time. I told him I would never marry a white man.”
Tony continued to be interested. He said, “Really? You told him that? What did he say?”
“He said, ‘You’ll come around. But as long as you choose a good guy, I’ll be happy to call him my son’.”
Antonio melted and liked the man already. He sighed and said, “I barely even know my dad. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to stay in Puerto Rico or America. But he chose Puerto Rico, actually. He shacked up with a young woman there and made a new family, and my mother stayed up here with us in New Jersey.”
Darlene reached over and rubbed his hairless chest to sympathize with him. She also wrapped her right leg across both of his.
“How did you all feel?”
Tony shrugged. “We all loved it in America. But I had my days of growing up when I threatened my mother that I wanted leave to go to live with my father in PR. But he never let me. He would only visit us in Jersey, but he would never let us fly down to PR to visit him.”
“Yeah, it would have been more expensive,” Darlene assumed.
Antonio shook it off and said, “Nah, he just didn’t want us around his new family. He had two more boys and one girl.”
“Have you ever spoken to them?”
Tony paused and thought about it. “I mean, what’s the point, if he doesn’t want us to meet them? I figured I could have been a big brother to them a long time ago. But I think my father still feels guilty about leaving us. So I’ve always learned to be protective of my own.
“I would never leave my own family like that,” he stated. “So I grew to resent my father for that. That was weak, especially for a PR man. You never leave la familia.”
Darlene didn’t have anything to add to that. She only wished that her family was larger. She even told him so. “I always wished that I had brothers and sisters. But my parents would never tell me why they didn’t have more kids. So I used to feel that I was adopted or something, especially since I was mixed.
“I mean, I could tell that I wasn’t as dark as my mother, and I wasn’t white like my father or the other kids at school. So I just felt weird a lot of times.”
Antonio asked, “And how did the black kids treat you?”
She paused before she answered. “It’s like, really complicated. Sometimes, they would like, invite me in as one of them, but not really, because they would always tease me so much. Like, ‘Oh, well, your father’s white, so you wouldn’t know about that’. Or they’d talk about my hair or my skin as if they were proud of it but jealous and spiteful at the same time. So it was really like, confusing.”
Antonio smiled and said, “You would have fit right in with us.”
“Yeah, but for Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Brazilians, you guys already understand a mixed culture. But black people . . . I mean, you really have to go through a lot of bullshit when you’re young before you can really understand how to deal with it all. So my mother had to keep sitting me down and having talks with me.”
“And how did you feel around white people?” he asked her.
She paused again. “I mean, it’s the same thing. They would, like, accept me, but not accept me. They would always make it so apparent that I was different from them. Like, ‘Oh, so you’re pretty, and your hair is so soft. What are you?’ I mean, they made it sound as if I was some kind of alien life form or something. And they always wanted to touch me like I was a pet or something. So I never felt comfortable with them either.”
Antonio chuckled at it.
Darlene snapped, “It’s not funny. And then when I got to high school, I became terrified of black male athletes, because they were always after me. It was like they had made a bet or something to see who could get me first.
“It was just weird,” she told him. “I even had two guys fighting over me in the lunchroom one time, and I didn’t like either one of them. They didn’t have my phone number or anything. One guy was mad at the other guy because I spoke to him. But he was in my Math class. Can you imagine that?”
Antonio laughed and said, “I have three sisters, remember? So that’s all normal for me.”
“Yeah, well, since I didn’t have any brothers or sisters to talk to about it, I didn’t know what to think. That’s why I’ve always dreamed about having a big family of my own,” she informed him. “Once I could find someone who understood what I wanted to do with my life as a writer.”
Antonio heard that and didn’t want to be presumptuous, so he held his tongue. I wonder if she would trust me enough for that? he asked himself. And I wonder how many kids she wants.
“How many kids?” he asked her curiously.
