One Night (22 page)

I jumped up from the bed, head spinning, and bumped into the food cart, knocked over my glass of wine, stubbed my toe, cursed, limped, picked the glass up, set it on the nightstand, wiped my wine-stained hands on my breasts, and started turning on lights and grabbing my things.

He said, “No. No. You had a lot to drink. More than me. I'll leave.”

It took a moment, but I sat on the bed, dizzy, embarrassed, my back halfway to him.

He turned the lights back off. Dark souls stood in silhouette.

Earth, Wind & Fire sang about writing a song of love. I sang along with each song, and he listened without interrupting me. I sang, and my lower back tingled as my curiosity took control.

I asked, “Your wife is white?”

“Does that matter? I have a rich background, but why should that matter? Is that the alpha and omega of your concerns? Can I not simply be seen as a human being married to another human being?”

“Is the bitch black or white?”

“Which works better for you? Which would make you feel more victorious or at ease?”

“Bet she's pretty, like a top-shelf Barbie doll.”

He touched me. I pulled away, shoulders tense, eyes wide, teeth clenched, hands in fists.

He said, “What was that?”

“Thought you were going to hit me.”

“What kind of relationships have you had?”

“Brief ones followed by briefer ones, and this will be the briefest of them all.”

“I'm serious.”

“With men who didn't wear expensive suits and didn't have wives waiting up for them all night.”

“Men have hit you?”

“Don't try to be nice to me.”

He said, “So we're like that now?”

“What do you think?”

He leaned in. Tried to kiss me. I leaned away. He followed. I moved across the bed. He chased me across the bed, grabbed my ankle, his grip firm, and pulled me back to him. Traced his fingers along my tattoos. I moved away. He pulled my ankle again. Sucked my toes. I stopped retreating. Stopped and gave in to that sensation. He kissed up my legs, over my butt, came closer to my belly, kissed my belly as he held my breasts. Sucked my right breast. Squeezed my left breast.

“Jesus. You touch me and a damn vibrator hums inside me. I'm sensitive, and you touch me, and it starts to wake up the monster I want to go to sleep. You touch me, and I want to come again.”

He said, “You want me back inside you.”

“I want you to leave and go back to your hell in Orange County.”

He brought his tongue back to my nipples, suckled again. “Calm down.”

I held his head as he continued to nurture my breast. “Don't you dare tell me to calm down. Don't think because we had sex that you're the God of me and now can tell me to calm down.”

“Let me eat you again. Let me taste you again.”

I pushed him away. “No. One swipe of your tongue, it would change into another swive. No more sex. No more cunnilingus. I'd go crazy and want you until I died. See? You've got me talking crazy as hell.”

I twitched, felt waves roll though my body, the effect from him sucking my breasts continuing despite my having pushed him away, and I cursed, cursed him, struggled to control myself. When it was done, not until then did I escape him, shaking. I felt as stable as Venezuela, felt weak at the knees.

I slapped him. Slapped him hard. It sounded like a gunshot, or the slap Mudbone had received from a big old collard green–eating bitch down in Tupelo, Mississippi. That slap hurt me from the tip of my fingers up my shoulders. I screamed with the shock from the pain. Orange County grunted like he had been stabbed, held his face as if he expected half of it to be slapped up against the wall.

Slaps like that start fistfights that end with someone in a body bag.

My voice trembled with anger and fear, and I snapped, “I said stop. I told you to stop. Stop doesn't mean finger-fuck me.
Stop, stop, stop
. Stop doesn't mean keep eating my goddamn pussy like you've lost your freakin' mind. Stop means to stop. Respect me. If you don't stop,
you don't freakin' respect me
.”

I jumped up and went to my clothes, took out the money he had given me, threw it at him.

“Money doesn't mean you own me. Because I let you swive me once doesn't mean you have the right to swive me twice. Who do you think you are? Take your goddamn money. Take your gift back.”

He stared at me, standing naked, hands in fists, chest rising and falling.

He whistled, then rose slowly, shaking his head like he was ready to rip my limbs from my body.

In the next second, I held my box cutter in my hand, the blade exposed.

Then I was afraid. Afraid because I had seen what he had done to that man at 7-Eleven.

Now I was at the wrong end of his anger.

I said, “Just let me go. Just let me get my things and go, and there will not be a problem.”

He stared at me, at my weapon, at my anger, at my vile expression, at the money on the carpet.

He said, “The honeymoon is over.”

“I hate that I slept with you.”

“Should've ended this at the parking lot after Denny's.”

“At the damn gas station
before
Denny's. Jesus. I let you fuck me.”

He said, “And I see it now. I see it. The bleakest of all blackness, mixed with the hardest of hard times and the deepest frustration. I see what has made you the bitch of all bitches, and you are a bitch.”

“Do you want to leave your wife? Did you get married and realize you made a monumental mistake and now you have buyer's remorse? Do you see happy couples, couples happier than you, and that has made it worse? Did your soul shift in a new direction? Did her soul shift and now you're beneath her standards? Sex like this, in a room with a stranger—this is how you hide from problems, not how you cure problems. Nothing has changed for you, and nothing has changed for me. Same shit is still waiting for us.”

We stared. Most of the questions I had asked, I was really asking myself, diagnosing myself.

I said, “Face it. You haven't got a clue, have you?”

We stared.

“Same damn thing over and over. You did it with your wife. I did it with my boyfriend. We did it with each other. Started off with false assumptions, revealed some of who we were, some truth rose, some lies, then lust had you, lust had me, and we chased orgasm. And after orgasm comes ugliness. We have had an entire relationship in a matter of hours. The mayfly has been born; now it has to die.”

We stared. I had no smile, just the face that shut everything down.

I said, “You made me come. Let me tell you what that means. Let me tell you why that is horrible. It means I am responding to you, means that I am interested in having a relationship with you. If I didn't orgasm, it would have been a better sign, better for me. This is not good for me. So it would not be good for you. We have to stop. This would lead to more of this, and soon I'd want to feel you, or you'd forget a condom, or a condom would break, and then there would be an accidental baby.”

Eventually he shifted. His anger was strong, apparent. He wanted to peel my skin.

“We fornicate until it's too late to turn back. My belly is swelling, and I don't do abortions, so a few hundred bucks can't fix your new situation. Three seasons later, I'm asking for medical expenses, putting all our business in black and white and filing with the court. Gets real ugly. Your wife has to know now. You stand on one side of court and I'm on the other side holding a baby that has your unique dual-eye color and my attorney is telling the judge that I'm entitled to income from your side of the table. Poor bitches are snickering at you and giving me a high-five because in their naive eyes I have come up. They don't see a baby, or destroyed lives, or broken families; they only see dollar signs and imagine that I will now be in a boss crib wearing boss shoes while a woman who can barely speak English cleans my house, and to them, all the stressful crap I have to go through is worth getting a check at the end. You become the government that sends me a check once a month. I get your money without having to work to get your money. I don't have to pay taxes on child support. That's a gold digger's victory. Your wife will be on your side of the court, there to protect her financial interests. Having to send my kid away on weekends to a father who never wanted it from the start, not out of love, but to lower his child-support payments, because that is the law, because he has more money. Then your wife deciding that you should take my kid, and since you have the money and the power, you do it. We fight the way we used to have sex, same energy, different form, still passionate. You'll live in court. Or your wife decides to leave you and wants to take everything you have. Y'all go from sucking and sexing to cursing and fighting, and you wake up day after day wishing that we had never met each other. So let me save you. Take this for what it is, what it was—a good time, a moment in the sun, a few orgasms that will be forgotten—and please go home to your wife.”

A moment passed. Vanessa Williams and Sting were singing to Sister Moon.

He asked, “Done? Or should I wait for the sequel?”

“Was actually hoping you would interrupt me, not let me ramble like a fool.”

He headed toward the door, pulling on his suit coat, adjusting his tailored clothes so he would look proper, pausing, wanting to look back, but not surrendering to the urge, like an actor leaving the stage.

I said, “Wait.”

He turned and looked at me.

I threw him the base of my electric toothbrush.

I said, “A keepsake. Use it on the jealous wife. Might help her stop feeling distraught.”

He looked at it, looked like he was about to toss it back, but dropped it in his pocket.

He said, “I have a gift for you, too.”

“Okay.”

“There are more black men in prison or on probation than were slaves in 1850. That's what is in your blood. Not the blood of the kings and queens from Africa, but the blood of the bottom-feeders created by America. America took kings and queens and did its best to make them all bottom-feeders. Don't hate me. America hates you, and now you hate yourself. You buy into the hate that they feed you and feed that hate to your kids, teach them the same hate you have, and no one will ever rise up. You're smart. Do better. Do better than trying to be a criminal. I don't know the stats for black women, but the number incarcerated has to be high. Just keep that in mind, con woman. From inside a jail all you'll be able to do is have sex with a guard and have his baby as a way of trying to get some leverage.”

“What the hell do you know about being black? I mean, the real struggle of blackness?”

“I have been black every day of my life. This is what was assigned to me without permission.”

“I mean, two-black-parents black?”

“Does that make it any better for you? Does that make you feel better about yourself?”

“You think you know everything about everything. What, giving me stats made up by white folks as a way to convince me you're smarter? Richer? Yes. Smarter?
Never
. Don't you dare talk to me about being black. I am all the way black, and you are only halfway.”

“You're an idiot. You're a biased, low-class, influenced-by-the-bean-pie-pig-feet-and-forty-ounce idiot. This was beautiful. You have no idea how badly I wanted this entire night to be perfect for us. For most of the night, it was the best night of my life, was a fantastic journey, a hegira, one that I needed, to escape from an undesirable situation in my life. This has become
worse
than a marriage.”

“You made me realize something just now.”

“Which is?”

“You know why people are honest with strangers on planes?”

“Enlighten me. You're the smartest one in the room, so please, enlighten me.”

“Because that stranger can't judge them. People can take off their masks for a while. They can relax, breathe, reveal who they really are. That's what a one-night stand is. Sex with someone who can't criticize you, and if they do, you don't give a damn because you're too busy judging them as well. We've dropped pretenses. You took your mask off. I took mine off. We undressed. We experienced each other. We unloaded orgasms. We took away the pressure that we walk around with every day.”

“And we talked. The big thing was that we talked.”

“We did talk. You said things to me about your wife that I know you will never tell her, and I have told you things I'd never say to any man I've dated, and not to the chicken and waffles guy I'm seeing now. We know each other in ways our deceived lovers never will. We've peeped behind each other's masks. So all that bull you said, dude, I don't give two poots. You're already in your prison. Criticize me. Judge me. Judgment is cancer, and when you judge people, walls go up. My wall is touching the sky right now.”

“I know you. I know you better than you know yourself.”

“You know my sense of humor, what my kisses are like, how my breath smells, how kissing turns me on, how I react when a man sucks my ear, when a man sucks my neck, how I love to take my time and get in the mood, and when I am in the mood you know how I swive, how I fellate, how I laugh, how Susan tastes, how I can make it vanish, how I climax, how I lose control, and how I tend to get so loud they want to throw me out of a hotel room; you know how I do all of those things tonight, and a few other men already know the same, but in reality you have no idea who the hell I am. You don't know my go-to karaoke song or my biggest fear in life or if I had to moonlight a job what I would choose or my daily mantra or which song I wish I had written or my childhood nickname or the craziest rumor I've ever heard about myself or what I want to do before I die. You don't know how I feel about life and the inevitably of death. You don't know how I feel about funerals, if I attend or avoid. Understand? You've never even heard me burp or fart or smelled what it's like after I take a good dump. You've never woken up next to me when I've been cramping all night, or seen me with morning crust in my eye, or heard me snore, or saw too much hair growing in my nostril, or saw me with the flu. We're not past the point in a relationship where I would leave to drive an hour to get home or sneak away and drive to the closest mall to use the toilet because I wouldn't want you to know I needed to have a damn bowel movement. I'd want you to think of me as being perfect. We're not at the taking-a-dump phase. You know nothing true or profound about me. Sure, you know the sexual part of me that I keep hidden away from the world. You know a finite subset of me, you know a secret that's not worth keeping, a secret that I can admit to or deny, the same secret a few others know, but you do not know me, not the real me, not the whole me.”

“I had a one-night stand once, long time ago, in my early twenties. I treated her badly, screwed her like she was one of those plastic dolls with a hole, finished, and tossed her like she was a used rag.”

“What are you saying?”

“College days. Nice girl. I used to feel bad about that. Now I don't regret that one bit.”

“You're an idiot. You're a dumb, sexist idiot in a nice suit.”

“I'm not the first married guy you've been with.”

“Why are you so insecure? You're too rich to be insecure.”

“Because . . . I am a human being, and because I am hurt and insecure and I need to feel special.”

“See, in one sentence I know who you are. I know your weakness.”

“I'm not afraid to be weak. That is what makes me strong.”

“You're weak.”

“A man admits he's not perfect, doesn't know the answers, that he's afraid, and he's weak.”

“You're weak.”

“Am I the first? Am I the first married man you've been with? Or did you lie?”

“Would that make you feel better, or jealous? Would it confirm how you see me?”

“Am I the first?”

“No, you're not. I've been with a married man. But you will be the last.”

As soon as I told him that lie, I wanted to recant it. The married man I had been with had been my husband. A technicality. I had been left with a beautiful daughter, the only thing that made that horrible relationship worth the ticket, and then that had been snatched away in the blink of an eye.

The man from Orange County, I remembered how he had made me feel in the parking lot at Denny's. How he had made me feel had made all the other things possible.

He had touched my goddamn hair. That was how this had started.

With his hand, his curiosity, his energy had infiltrated my hair.

He said, “About five this morning, she had gone to the gym, was gone when I came home from my trip. She had rushed out and left her iPad sitting on the kitchen counter. I was making tea, about to start my day, and the alerts were blowing up. About ten in a minute. I thought it might be an emergency, some reason I'd need to contact her at the gym and pull her out of Zumba. I looked because it was buzzing over and over. Each notification was an explicit message from him. Certain things are so appalling. Certain things are triggers. Certain things hurt. That was the anger that started my day.”

“You've had a very interesting day.”

“This has been both the best day and the worst day of my life.”

“Your wounded hand and that bruise on your eye.”

He admitted, “There was a confrontation.”

“He kicked your ass.”

He asked, “How does a man's life end up like this? This damn convoluted.”

“Shit happens. It's part of living. Shit happens to you, to me, to everybody. Shit happens.”