Black Silk

by Retha Powers

  I returned to Starchild a couple of weeks later by myself. It was a relief to be alone. I started at the bar, got myself a drink, and found a wall to lean on by the dance floor. There was a constant stream of couples holding hands as they made their way into the center of the action. Occasionally a woman would make eye contact with me, and I’d realize the part of myself I considered odd or ugly was now my most electric asset. It was as if I’d found a home I’d been lost from my entire life. After a few drinks the novelty wore off a little or at least enough for me to dance. There was no one I was attracted to enough to leave my shadow, but it felt sexy just being in the midst of so many out-of-control, sweaty sisters.

  Starchild became my regular spot. I’d head there after work almost every Friday, making the acquaintance of one of the bartenders and a friendly enough sister who’d check my shoulder bag, but that was the extent to which I socialized when I was there—then enter Maya.

  She was the dirty fantasy in my head so suddenly real I thought someone had slipped some drug in my drink. Let me describe the moment: I was soaked with sweat, stomping my heels to an insane rhythm around two A.M. The DJ was deep inside the acid-house trance funk thing. I don’t know what it was, but it felt sublime. The ladies were bouncing, howling, grinding themselves into oblivion. The club was a big, sapphic orgy; then a set of such haunting eyes surfaced out of the fog, I did a double take, but there she was, studying me, something in her stare that signified sensitivity, kindness, compassion. Acting coy, but not too coy to tug me out of hiding into the heart of the action, Maya teased me up close with her perfect tits and tiny waist that swerved into hips she gyrated to maximum effect.

  “Can we go somewhere? I feel light-headed,” I gasped, really, truly dizzy.

  Without hesitating, she took my hand and walked me to a windowsill, where we sat arm in arm. Whenever she’d put her lips to my ear, the heat of her breath would send shivers through me; her voice had a breathless quality as if she were talking while coming.

  “God, you’re beautiful.”

  “No, you.”

  “No, you.”

  There was little we could think of to say. I couldn’t look her full in the face. It was all so much, her creamy gaze, the softness of her body next to mine. Then as suddenly as she appeared, she asked for my number and said she had to go.

  In the morning I woke up euphoric, fearing that my memory of the night before was just a good dream when the phone rang. I picked up on the first ring. It was Maya. Then the rush began again, the dizziness, accelerating heart, and wet panties. My voice was trapped in my chest, but I managed to make a date to meet her the next afternoon. She said she wanted to take me to a movie.

  Sitting in a dark theater beside Maya was an exercise in self-restraint. She was wearing a smooth sweater that clung to her tits. The girl emoted a feline charm that turned me on and up. I couldn’t concentrate on the screen in front of us. Nothing mattered but her. Crossing Times Square, she informed me that she had to rush home. Something to do with her eight-year-old. I couldn’t focus on what she was saying, she was too gorgeous. It was blinding.

  “Come home with me. Please or I’ll go crazy.”

  “Shhh,” she warned. “You don’t want a million guys sweating us.” As was now her habit, Maya tugged me like her naive puppy into an empty subway stairwell. There, I couldn’t take it anymore and pushed her into a wall and began kissing her, the smoky flavor of her tongue rushing like some high-powered medicine to my head, her lips tasting of Newports or spearmint gum or some exotic spice that seemed to ooze from her pores. I was so aroused, I was in pain.

  “Please,” I begged as she eased me away.

  I walked her to the downtown train platform in defeat. At least she agreed to meet me again.

  When we met the following Saturday she was wearing a pair of white leather pants and sling-back heels that seemed too dressy for the occasion; her hair was twisted into corkscrews that didn’t fit her face. She wavered between being distant and nervously silly. Loitering randomly through Greenwich Village, we did some window-shopping and had lunch. We wound up at my place in the early evening. Shy wasn’t around. It was perfect for my plans, but Maya didn’t seem to want me. I tried to undress her, but she laughed it off, keeping her seat in a chair that felt a million miles away from me and humming along with a song wafting from my stereo. All I could do was accept that I was with her. That’s how it was with Maya.

  Then one Sunday afternoon as Shytiq and four of his Jersey City buddies were drinking Knotty Head and arguing over the best way to prepare collard greens, she called.

  “Hi, it’s me. I guess I’m sad. I don’t know. I need to see you,” she stammered after I finally heard the phone ring over all the commotion. She wasn’t far away, she said. In half an hour she’d stop by. I went back to the kitchen to sit with Shy and his friends, sure I wouldn’t see her that day, but Maya showed up about an hour later, as social as she needed to be, helping dice some condiments for a meal the guys were surely now too drunk to make.

  After a while we went to my room and closed the door. A cool autumn chill was sneaking through the window at the same time that the first heat of the season was hissing from the radiator. Maya pulled off her sweater, watching me intently. I sat on my bed and pulled her to me.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” I said, expecting her to laugh at how serious I could be, but instead she buried her face in my neck, lightly biting me and moaning. Maya worked out religiously. She was strong, and when her teeth and tongue began to tickle me and I began to resist her, she sucked harder, holding my hands so I couldn’t move while I writhed deliriously beneath her. When I was fully whipped by the hickey she had so expertly placed on my neck, she wriggled out of her pants then panties, but before she unclasped her bra, her eyes filled up with tears and her lips got poutier than ususal.

  “I have stretch marks. After my son was born… this is how I look…” she apologized, her tongue darting in and out of my ear. It was hard to separate Maya’s tits from the rest of her. They were flat, yet full like two ripe mangoes, but bouncy like mangoes aren’t. So this was what all her hesitation was about!

  Taking one in my mouth and then the other, I told her, “You’re crazy.”

  “No, you,” she said.

  “No, you,” I said, wrestling Maya down beneath me, her cunt rising to my hunger like a tray.

  The Warm and Quiet Storm

  _________________

  by Andrew Oyefesobi

  I locked the front door, hoping to lock out the pouring rain with the day’s frustration. It was day three of my wife’s vacation with her girlfriend, so again, I was returning to an empty house, another microwave dinner, and another sleepless night.

  We promised one another we wouldn’t call. She deserved this vacation away from all the responsibilities waiting for her in Chicago, which included me. I didn’t deserve the loneliness I felt, but I wouldn’t have been able to contain myself if I had heard her voice. I would have begged her to return home to fill the empty house, fill my stomach starving for a home-cooked meal, and fill our bed with the other warm body I needed to sleep through the night.

  We were newlyweds of six months. We were sickeningly in love. We missed each other if one of us simply left the room. Our sex life was magical. That’s why we promised we wouldn’t call.

  I removed my cashmere trenchcoat, flipped on the jazz station, and sat at my computer. I wanted to check my e-mail to see if my best friend, Victor, had responded to my invitation to hit the racquetball court the following day. At that point, I needed anything that would take my mind off Delia.

  My electronic mailbox contained an apology from Victor for having to forgo our racquetball appointment in favor of an art opening at the college with his new armpiece, Nicolette, and a reminder from my supervisor about the deal-breaking lunch meeting with a client the next day.

  The sigh I released was worthy of a reaction to losing my treasured Thelonius Monk record, but it was really
a response to feeling thoroughly detached from any sense of fun or pleasure. I missed Delia like a desert rose misses rain.

  I went over to the bay window and gazed out onto the wet world. The rain was quiet, and since summer lurked around the corner, it was warm. The storm—its wetness, its warmth— made me think of Delia. Her presence always had a way of doing that, appearing in everyday things, keeping her with me when she wasn’t in arm’s reach. Then it hit me. She was thousands of miles away, and my satisfaction was with her.

  I dragged myself to the kitchen to stick a frozen meal-in-a-box in the microwave.

  “You’ve got mail.”

  The computerized voice startled me, since I’d convinced myself that I was completely alone in the world. I dashed over to my computer, hoping the new message was from Victor, saying Nicolette called off their date, or from my boss, saying the client canceled the lunch meeting. No luck… but the new message intrigued me even more.

  I was glued to the screen as I read:

  Hey, Sugar. I miss you dearly. I know we said we wouldn’t call, but I would go insane if I couldn’t communicate with you in some way for the length of my trip. I can’t say much, because I slipped away from the group to drop you this message, and Sonya and Karen would kill me if they caught me.Essence magazine organized a really great event for book lovers called Passion in the Pages. Anyway, just thought I’d let you know that I was enjoying myself, but every night I climb into that unfamiliar hotel bed, and I turn and you’re not there… my goodness, all I can say is my body is calling for you. The passion in the pages of these books has nothing on the passion we share. I can’t write much more, otherwise I’ll be on the next plane out of here and into your arms to pick up where we left off. I’ll be home tomorrow, so save a place for me in your dreams. Aching without you, hugs ’n’ kisses, Delia.

  My mouth hung open. I was lost in her written words, wishing she was in my ear whispering them in that honeyed voice I fell in love with. I was so distracted I didn’t hear the firecrackerlike pops alerting me that my Lean Cuisine was burning in the microwave.

  Delia had done it. She had violated our no-communication stipulation. There was no way she would escape my mind that night. I needed my precious lover with me. I needed my new wife to make me feel that old feeling. Outside, the rain came down harder, feeling my pain as well.

  I walked upstairs to our bedroom, stripping my corporate costume along the way. I dropped my silk tie on the stairs, my starched shirt at the bedroom door, my pressed slacks at the foot of the bed. I flopped onto the king-size waterbed, but my journey from the computer to the comforter didn’t relieve a drop of my frustration.

  The rain didn’t wash away Delia’s warm words, which I could hear echoing quietly in my ears. I was dying to pick up where we had left off, too. Alas, my queen was missing from the king-size bed we shared. There was an empty space where she used to rest, an empty pillow where she used to dream.

  I approached her vanity, looking for her perfume. The one she loved so much. The one I loved so much because it reminded me of the contours of her coffee-colored skin. Realizing she had packed it with her on her trip, I pouted like a child who’s lost his toy.

  Suddenly a single streak of lightning split the sky and zapped a flash of light into our dark bedroom. I saw the reflection of silver wrapping paper on my oak chest. I had purchased a six-month-anniversary gift. I was going to surprise Delia with a new bottle of the precious fragrance when she returned from St. Lucia.

  It washer present, but I needed her near me. Selfishly, I figured this could be her gift tome—a way to make up for leaving me in the rain while she romped in the fun and sun of Jamaica. With guilt running through me, I ripped open the perfect packaging and sprayed the scent all over our bed. I inhaled the perfume and became intoxicated.

  I climbed under the comforter and let my dreams bring her to me. I held myself like I thought she would if she had been there. I massaged the part of my body that longed to connect with her body. Working it with gentle friction, I prayed my imagination would make my efforts feel like the real thing. Her real thing. Her rain.

  I let visions of her pleasuring me fill the moments between missing her and liking the feeling. I let the tranquil sound of the storm playing outside stand in for her sweet sounds of lovemaking. I handled my pulsing love limb until I psychically reconnected with her supreme love grip.

  Her mist coated my root with the affection it needed to grow and expand, and rise and resist. Drenching my dreams with desire, lubricating my loins with lust, her rain rose like a typhoon. With the force a turbulent system passing through a balmy night, she bathed me in passion like an adult baptism.

  She took me into the wetness of her garden, raining pure satisfaction on my desert rose. My palms felt her saturating the soil of my soul, flooding the fertile ground of my fantasies. The overwhelming sensual sensations—the perfume, the rain, the warmth—rolled like thunder.

  I rode the waves of our waterbed as the storm raged.

  With the mental rhapsody and physical gratification swirling with the intensity of a hurricane, I bloomed with ecstasy, releasing hot nectar on her side of our private flowerbed.

  Dripping wet with sweat, I lay exhausted on the soaked satin sheets, dreaming I was sinking into the soft earth beneath me. Eventually my excitement subsided with the rain. I slept the night away in the calm after the storm.

  The next day weak sunlight peaked through the transparent curtains over our picture window. It announced itself, as it always did after a rain shower, coming to replenish the love that makes the earth’s flowers blossom. The dew on the windowpane was Mother Nature’s quaint reminder of the pleasure the night had created.

  Delia arrived while I was still acquainting myself with the sun and the new day.

  She was still beautiful. Her radiance provided the extra light the room needed.

  “Sugar, I’m glad to see you,” she beamed, dropping her travel case. “But I didn’t expect this kind of homecoming. I was welcomed home by the computer left on, jazz blaring from the stereo system, a burned mess in the microwave, clothes strewn about the house, and urgent phone messages from your boss saying you missed the lunch meeting your job depended on.”

  “Get over here, baby,” I replied, grabbing her and pulling her onto our bed. “Happy anniversary, sweetheart.” I kissed her passionately and handed her an opened bottle of perfume.

  “Well, I’m a little upset that you got started without me,” she said, slipping out of her clothes. “But let’s finish together.”

  She joined me under the sheets. The sun suddenly disappeared, leaving us alone in our intimacy… until a quiet Chicago rain joined us in the moment.

  Sausage Boy

  _________________

  by Robin Coste Lewis

  She tells her that her fingers feel like sausages. They’ve only known each other for five days and already they’re fucking. They are having an affair. It is both horrible and delicious. Everything is a secret, a whisper.

  The younger woman is wettest when she has her two stubby fingers worming loverly into the older woman’s caverns. It is the perfect drama. It gives the sausage-fingered girl exactly what she needs: an older woman with breasts forever warm to have and sidle next to all for herself. And what the older woman needs right now, more than anything else, is a large round mind to put her words into. So she concedes and lets Sausage Fingers call her “Mama,” just as long as they can talk the whole way through.

  Sausage Fingers pretends the older woman’s breast is a plank of wood and her own mouth a course sheet of sandpaper. “Mama,” the girl says, smothering the older woman’s nipple with her tongue. Mother. Mamere. Mamon. Sweet Pussy.

  The older woman, Mrs. Sweet Pussy, loves all of these names, but she wants them to be worse than all that. She wants to hear words no one would ever imagine calling her in any other position. Words like:bitch, my bitch, my sweet little whore, cunt, rotting cunt, don’t move, don’t you fucking move. She
wants to come slower, harder, faster, in no time. She wants to be turned over, tied down, beaten like a ferret, spanked with a stingray. She wants to try to come while tied to a chair, in a straitjacket, in a room, by herself, using only words. Mamon is just the first little dirty letter. Mother is the beginning of her alphabet.

  They fuck in the car driving along the turnpike. Their fingers are hungry blue crabs burrowing into each other’s panties. They fuck upright in the library between the stacks with half-eaten apples green and sour and browning in their hands. Sausage Finger’s breath smells like sweet corn tortillas. Mrs. Sweet Pussy’s skin like slowly warmed milk.

  They’ve only known each other for one week and already have invented their own private language.

  “Mother,” Sausage Fingers says. “M is for Mother.” Sausage Fingers puts Mrs. Sweet Pussy across her lap and demands, “Repeat after me.” Mrs. Sweet Pussy arches her back into the air and waits for Sausage Finger’s next command.

  Sausage Finger’s other hand is beneath Mrs. Sweet Pussy’s mound, diving like a sandpiper’s fluted beak for a runaway crab. Mrs. Sweet Pussy opens her legs without Sausage Finger’s permission. The sausage-fingered girl slaps her hand down into Mrs. Sweet Pussy’s ass and whispers, “F is for French Angelfish.”

  She traces her fingers from Sweet Pussy’s crotch, up toward her anus, but teases and stops just when her Sweet Pussy starts to sigh.

  Mrs. Sweet Pussy is a rare yellow sea horse hiding in a thick bed of grass. She camouflages herself, wrapping her tail around her single flowing blade, changing her color to fit the occasion. If the night is blue, her skin jets teal. When it is raining, she is gray and speckled. She flickers her dorsal fin and anchors herself to the nearest sponge