I Ain't Me No More (16 page)

“What you drinking on?” Lynn's gentleman friend asked. I looked up from the dance floor to see that he was talking to me and that a waitress was staring down my throat, waiting on my reply. “What you drinkin', little mama?” he repeated. “Lynn and I already ordered.”

“Ummm,” I said. I had to admit I was parched. A Coke would have done me just fine, but I was not about to look like lame by ordering a Coke. However, the only other drink I knew of was the wine coolers. “A Bartles and Jaymes wine cooler please,” I told the waitress. “Red, cherry, or whatever.” I didn't even know the flavor I'd been drinking earlier.

The waitress scribbled on her tablet and was about to walk away when Lynn stopped her. “Hold up. Bring her a fuzzy navel instead.” The waitress nodded and then walked off.

“Fuzzy navel?” I had a puzzled look on my face.

“Yeah, it's a drink. But it's a cutesy drink, so you'll like it.” Lynn sucked her teeth. “I'm not about to let you be babysitting wine coolers all night your first time out clubbin' it. You done had your taste of Bartles and Jaymes at the house party. You out in the club like a big girl now. It's time to graduate up a notch.”

I just shook my head, wondering if I should continue to put all my trust in Lynn. But once again, after the waitress brought back our drinks, Lynn proved to be right. The concoction of peach schnapps and orange juice with a hint of gin, a drink affectionately called a fuzzy navel, was delicious. I was drinking grown-up drinks, and I was feeling all grown up.

“Ooooh, that's my song,” Lynn said as she closed her eyes and snapped her fingers while grooving in her seat.

“Then what you sittin' here for?” her male friend said. “Let's go do something out there on the dance floor.”

“Let's do it, then,” Lynn said as she got up. “Helen, watch our drinks.”

I watched the drinks, all right. For the next hour it seemed I watched the drinks while Lynn got busy on the dance floor, dancing to song after song after song.

I sat in my chair, bobbing my head and grooving, hoping somebody would notice how enticed I was by the beat and would choose me to go out on the dance floor with them. I looked around, even made eye contact with a guy or two. Just when I thought I'd spoken to a dude clearly with my eyes, dang near begging him to come ask me to dance, I would be let down.

At first I thought maybe the guys were just too shy to ask a girl to dance, but then, five minutes later, I'd see them out on the dance floor with some hoochie, stroking her up and down while getting their groove on hard. I had lost several more pounds and had gone down a couple sizes in clothing, so I was looking pretty decent in my size fourteen black jeans and crisp white blouse. So why didn't any of the guys choose me? That was when it dawned on me that I didn't fit the scene. I didn't look like the type of chick who could really get out there on the dance floor and have fun.

I looked down at myself; then I looked around at most of the chicks in the club. The outfits some of those girls were wearing were scandalous. I mean, these chicks were all woman, and they were letting it be known with some of the skimpy outfits they were wearing. Boobs and butt cheeks were the name of the game. The guys were catcalling and checking for them.

There were girls who were dressed conservatively like Lynn and me, wearing a nice pair of jeans and a cute blouse. But those weren't the chicks getting all the attention. The more skin the women showed, the more attention the men showed. I made a mental note of that, because the next time I decided to venture out to the club, I was bound and determined to be one of those girls who got the attention.

“I can't believe you are actually out with me,” Synthia said. “I thought I'd never see the day Helen Lannden hit the club scene. But I guess the fact that now you ain't on lockdown no more makes all the difference.” Synthia couldn't help but tease me as she and I stood in Alexander's, sipping on our drinks.

“I'll drink to that,” I said as I raised my fuzzy navel to her rum and Coke. I didn't know how she and Lynn drank that hard stuff. It made me want to puke. There was nothing flavorful about rum, if you asked me.

“Dang, I don't know which one to ask to dance,” I heard a voice say behind Synthia and me.

When I turned around, there was this dude standing behind me. His eyes were traveling from me to Synthia and then back to me again. I could not believe this guy was even having a conflict after seeing Synthia. I mean, how hard was the choice? Synthia looked like the typical video girl. Due to her mixed heritage, she had that exotic look. That “good” jet-black hair raced down her back. Her size eight clothing fit her like a glove. She exuded beauty.

On top of that, Synthia stayed in the tanning salon, so she always had a perfect, glowing, golden complexion. And did I forget to mention her gorgeous dimples were the icing on the cake?

I, on the other hand, was aw'ight. I had dark skin, but thanks to Wesley Snipes and Denzel Washington, it wasn't such a bad thing anymore. But at the end of the day, it still wasn't light skin. I had shoulder-length hair that I wore in a nice roller set. Fourteen was an average size, but it wasn't skinny. So was this dude blind or something? But then again, this second time at the club, I had dressed for the occasion. Perhaps that had made all the difference.

I was wearing as little as I could without being arrested for indecent exposure. I was bound and determined to get the attention this time that I had failed to get the last time I was at the club. And it appeared as though my plan was working well.

The little black miniskirt I had on just barely covered my butt cheeks. And I made sure it fell down my hips in such a way that the little strings of my thong showed. It was an idea I'd gotten from the late hip-hop princess Aaliyah, from one of her videos, only she had been wearing a long skirt. The little black tube top just barely stayed over my 36 Cs. I had purchased the black sandals with the three-inch heels that I was wearing three days ago, after which I had called Synthia and had told her that I wanted to hit the club this weekend.

She had agreed, of course, but had told me that she wouldn't believe it until she actually saw me up in the club. Well, now she could believe it. Because there I was, in the club, in the flesh . . . literally. And I was workin' them pumps like a pro.

“So you trying to get your groove on?” Synthia responded to the dude. She'd been hitting the clubs since before she was even old enough to get into them. Light skin and dimples could get you into places and provide you with opportunities that black and ugly couldn't. So she wasn't shy about conversing with anybody who stepped to her. I decided to let her do all the talking while I just took notes.

“Yeah, but I don't even know which one of you fine ladies I want to hit the floor with,” the dude said, still allowing his eyes to go back and forth from Synthia to me. But now he started licking his lips as well.

“Well, you look like a strong, growing boy.” Synthia gave him the once-over and then licked her lips. “So why is it you can't handle the both of us out there?” She nodded toward the dance floor.

“Oh, Miss Lady, you ain't said nothing but a thang.” He raised each of his hands to both Synthia and me in order to lead us onto the dance floor.

My heart was beating ninety miles per hour. I'd never, ever danced in front of a lot of people like this before. Dub and I had never even danced at the prom. It was mainly because we arrived late and I had an attitude. Baby D had gotten real sick the day of the prom, and I had had to tend to him and take him to the doctors. I'd been unable to go to my hair appointment and get my makeup done, like I had planned on doing with Synthia, so I had had to wing everything myself. I didn't feel the least bit pretty, to say the least, so I declined getting on that dance floor, where all eyes could see me.

Synthia sat her glass down on the square wood railing we had been standing against and took his hand.

I shot Synthia a look that asked, “What in the world have you gotten me into?”

“Come on,” the dude urged me. “You ain't scared, are you?”

“She's scared of how bad she 'bout to hurt you out there on that dance floor,” Synthia said, coming to my defense.

“Ooh, then you must be heaven-sent. Because I love pain,” he said, looking me dead in my eyes. “Now, put that drink down and let's go do the darn thang.”

I drank the last few swallows of my drink down straight, hoping it would give me the courage I needed, like it had done before. I sat the empty glass next to Synthia's and allowed dude to escort me to the dance floor with one hand, while Synthia hung on to his other hand.

Once I got out there on that dance floor, I felt like a star. At first, I barely moved, though, not knowing if I looked crazy or not. So I just wore a smile and slightly mimicked the dances Synthia and the other girls were doing. By the second song the alcohol had kicked in full blast, and I was popping and shaking and bending and grinding. Synthia and I were giving this guy a run for his money. We were doing to him what everybody in the club would call “freakin' him.” And it was all in fun, but I guess that was usually what sin started out being . . . all in fun.

Once other guys saw how I got down on the dance floor, I had a dance partner for every song the DJ played and a drink waiting on me when I got finished. Yep, I felt like a superstar, all right. It didn't even matter that the guys didn't see me, but instead saw all my body parts hanging out.

I loved all the attention, negative or not. I never wanted the feeling to end. And since the club was the only place I'd ever experienced this type of acceptance, I knew I had to make it my second home, and that was exactly what I did.

Between calling up Synthia, Lynn, and even Konnie on occasion, I had club partners for Thursday, which was the day of the week the clubs started jumping in Columbus, and I had partners for Friday and Saturday as well. I would dump Baby D off with whoever would keep him: Dub's mom, Nana, or whichever one of my girlfriends I wasn't going out with.

I was having a blast clubbin' it. The more I got used to the club scene, the more relaxed I became. I even upgraded my drinks to sloe gin fizzes and Long Island iced teas. Oh, it was on and poppin'.

At first, Nana was my main babysitter, but she started to travel out of town quite a bit to visit her sister, my aunt Martha, in Florida. After a while it got to the point where it didn't even matter whether I had a sitter or not for Baby D, who was now in first grade. Like I said before, he was a hard sleeper. I'd bathe him, feed him, then tuck him in for the night, and he never even knew Mommy had tiptoed out the door in the wee hours of the night, secretly and selfishly leaving him alone.

After a night of clubbin' on Thursdays, I could barely make it to work the next day, but I always managed to. I remembered one coworker overheard me talking with another coworker about my nights out on the town. Her nights out on the town consisted of evening church service. So whenever I spoke about how I spent my time versus how she spent hers, I always felt guilty. She recited scriptures, while I recited rap lyrics. But any shame I felt would quickly go down the drain the minute I stepped up into a club and was back in my element. I used to say, “Show me in the Bible where it says drinking and going out to the club is a sin.” And nobody ever could.

But deep inside, even though nobody could show me anywhere in the Bible where it said that drinking and the kind of dancing I was doing was a sin, I knew it wasn't glorifying God. It was the infant stages of sin. I had a feeling that sooner rather than later, if I didn't stop dancing to the devil's tune, I'd find myself so deep in the pit of hell that not even God could find me.

Lynn hipped me to this club called Ashley's, where an older, more laid-back crowd hung out. The most popular and most moneymaking night for Ashley's was none other than the day of rest and the day most Christians designated for the Lord. So now I even had a spot to hang out at on Sunday nights.

Just to try to balance my evil with good, I started going to church with Nana on Sundays. She had been going to this predominantly white nondenominational church for the past seven years. I'd tagged along with her on many occasions. The church service lasted only an hour, which was why I loved it. It didn't take up all of my Sunday, and I felt as though I was doing my spiritual deed. It didn't require much work, either, like looking up scriptures, writing down notes from the pastor's teachings, or turning to our neighbors to say this, that, or the other. As a matter of fact, we didn't even really reference the Bible. We just sat there and listened to the pastor, voted in by the church board, give us a moving message. We sang a couple of hymns, listened to the announcements that were read, heard the message, took up the collection, and that was that. My Christian duties were fulfilled in one hour.

It was funny how I'd go from saint to sinner in a matter of hours, because by ten o'clock Sunday night, Baby D was tucked in his bed, if he wasn't spending the night somewhere else, and I was on my way to pick up one of my girls so that we could hit the club.

On one particular Sunday night, Lynn couldn't get a sitter to watch my nephew, so I talked Synthia into going with me to the club. As soon as Synthia and I walked through the door, I could tell that Ashley's was much more lively than usual. It had a whole bunch of new faces I hadn't seen in the month I had been a regular. There was one face in particular that caught my eye. I couldn't help but notice him as he sat across from me at the bar, conversing with his boys.

What made this guy stand out from all the others was that he was smiling. All the other guys were pinned up, trying to look cool or hard-core. But this guy was smiling. He was smiling so much that I felt my jaw beginning to ache from smiling myself. It was like his smile was a magnet. It pulled with such force a smile from the face of anyone who was looking at him. I never remembered Dub making me smile. Ever.

“Yo, what's up, Dino, man?” I heard a guy say. He had just entered the club and had walked over to where this guy and his boys were.

“Nothin' too much,” the guy responded, still smiling as he gave the other guy a handshake.

A handshake,
I thought. A regular, old-fashioned handshake. No dap, no secret handshake with a snap or anything else. Just a regular ole handshake. So perhaps he was just a regular ole guy. I hoped he had a regular name, though, because Dino was the name the Flintstones had given their pet dinosaur.

I was sitting there, with my eyes all down this Dino dude's throat, a smile still plastered on my face, but then he busted me. His eyes were dead on me. I had been in such a trance, I didn't even have a clue how long he had been staring back at me.

“What's got you all in a zone?” Synthia asked me. It was her voice that finally made me tear my eyes away from Dino. Even when he busted me, I hadn't looked away.

“Oh, nothing,” I lied.

Synthia's eyes followed the trail mine had journeyed just seconds before she'd spoken to me. “Oh, I see. Dude in the button up, huh?”

I looked up, only to see Dino looking over at Synthia and me. First, he'd caught me staring, and now my best friend, so he knew something was up. Just as I expected, a few minutes later Dino made his way over to Synthia and me.

“Hey, smiley,” he said, looking dead at me.

“Hey,” I replied, my smile even wider now. I couldn't help it. The energy on this dude had just taken over me. “The name is Helen.”

“Well,
Helen,
I couldn't help but notice . . .”

I swear on everything, I just knew he was going to say that he couldn't help but notice me staring at him for the past ten minutes.

“Your smile,” he said, finishing his thought. “It's refreshing to finally run into a girl in this city who isn't sitting around with an attitude, looking like somebody owes her something or that the world is on her shoulders.”

I noticed that he said, “In this city,” as if this wasn't his hometown. I decided to fish for some clarity to my suspicions. “I've never seen you around. Are you from here?” I knew that was a corny line, but I didn't know what else to say. The only guy I'd ever been in a relationship with and had to communicate with in this fashion was Dub.

“Naw, I'm from the East Coast,” Dino replied to my inquiry.

His smile and the fact that he wasn't from this city were music to my ears. I didn't know why, but there was always something mysterious and exciting about meeting people who weren't from around the way.

“So, how long you been living in Columbus?” I asked him.

“Not even a year,” he replied before Synthia cleared her throat to remind me that she was standing there.

“Oh, my bad,” I said. “Synthia, this is Dino, Dino, this is my best friend, Synthia.”

“Nice to meet you, Dino.” Synthia extended her hand, and when I looked up at her, she was smiling too. Like I said, there was just something about this guy.

“Same here.” He looked at my almost empty glass and Synthia's empty glass. “Can I buy you two ladies a drink?”

Another point for Team Dino. I hated it when a guy would just walk up to the girl he was trying to holler at and offer to buy only her a drink, leaving her girls feeling all left out. Although Dino had racked up quite a few points when he stood and walked over to me, I knew I had to start deducting them. Because once I was able to take my eyes away from Dino's smile, I discovered the one thing that I didn't think I'd be able to deal with: his weight.

Dino was a little on the chubby side. He wasn't ridiculously obese or anything, but he was pretty thick. Excess weight on a man had just always been a turnoff to me.

“Bartender, can you get these two ladies a glass of whatever it is they are drinking?” Dino told the bartender.

After we gave the bartender our drink order, Synthia, Dino, and I talked and laughed for about the next half hour. Even when Synthia's favorite song came on, she didn't walk off to go dance. That was how interesting it was to be around Dino.

“Look, I'ma go check on my boys over there for a minute.” Dino nodded toward the friends he had left to come over and chat it up with us. “I don't want them to think I've forgotten about them or anything.”

“I understand,” I replied.

“But, hey, do me this one favor,” he said as he reached over and picked up the pen the bartender had been using. He then grabbed a napkin, placed it in front of me, and laid the pen on it. “Have your number ready for me when I get back.” He winked and walked away.

“I love him for you,” Synthia said with this schoolgirlish purr once Dino was out of earshot. “He was soo sweet. I mean, he is everything Dub never was. Did you see how nice he was? Girl, you better jump on that.”

I smiled in agreement, but Synthia could see that something else was lingering in my mind.

“What? What's the matter? You afraid Dub got a couple goons in here watching you or something? I mean, I know you haven't given out your phone number or talked to a guy like that since Dub was locked up, but, girlfriend, move on.”

“I know,” I whined. “But, girl, don't try to play me and act like you didn't notice.”

Synthia looked back over at Dino to see what exactly it was she had missed. “What? Heck, he had all his teeth and both his eyes. What?”

“Girl, he's a big guy. I don't know about dating no big guy.”

Synthia looked over and examined Dino again. “Girl, he ain't that big. Besides, his smile is bigger. Ain't nobody gonna pay attention to his big stomach over his big smile.”

On that note both Synthia and I couldn't help but burst out laughing.

“See? You just made up my mind for me,” I said as I pushed the napkin and pen away without writing my phone number.

“Girl, I was just playing.” Synthia playfully hit me on the shoulder. “He is so nice. If you don't give him your phone number, I'm going to give it to him for you, and you'll just have to be mad at me later.”

This wasn't supposed to be how this “clubbin' it” thing worked out. I was simply supposed to be out living it up, doing all the things Dub had prevented me from doing. To see what I was missing, to have fun, not to get a boyfriend out of it. I could just look at Dino's fabric and tell he was boyfriend material. Besides, that thing that he had said attracted him to me, my smile, was fake. It was fake because it wasn't mine. It was his, something his smile had incited my own lips to do. What if this thing turned out to be serious and he discovered the real me? The unhappy me? The hurt me that was filled with anger, pain, and bitterness? But then again, what if he was just the antidote to eat away all those poisons?

“Well, here he comes,” Synthia said, nodding toward Dino, who had gotten off of his seat and was coming our way. “I'm going to the ladies' room, but if by the time I get back you haven't given him your phone number, I will.”

Just as Synthia picked up her purse and headed to the ladies' room, Dino approached me. The first thing he did was look down at the blank napkin. He looked at me, then at the blank napkin again. Next, he pulled the napkin and pen over to himself and began writing.

“Here's my number,” he said, handing the napkin to me. “I have no doubts about whether I want to give you mine. Hopefully, you'll have no doubts about using it.”

I looked down at the napkin, which had only his phone number on it. “You didn't write your name down.”

“Well, I figured since you introduced me to your girl before I even told you my name, you already knew it.” Once again, he winked. “But by the way, my name . . . .my real name . . . is Tarino Morton. I got the name Dino because when I introduced myself to the guys at work”—he nodded over at his friends—“one thought I said Dino and he started calling me that. So everybody else did as well. It's kind of stuck with me now.” He shrugged. “Nice to meet you, Helen.” He shook my hand and then walked away, this time leaving the club.

I couldn't help but smile. He'd busted me. He knew I'd paid enough attention to him that there was a slight chance I'd be calling the number that was in my hand.