SEX ON PISMO BEACH by Tweet
Page 3
“Yes.”
“You have to come home. The worm died.”
Dao-Ming’s face turned white and she sank to sitting on the side of her bed, unable to close her mouth.
The worm died…it grew back together…and then it died.
Dao-Ming pressed the phone to her bosom, her eyes bursting with tears and her mind fueled with a new determination.
~*~
Everything in the garden was an ode to Papa Sinatra’s love for the iconic Jamaican-born singing legend Grace Jones.
Not only had Papa Sinatra named his resort Warm Leatherette in homage to his favorite song by the superstar, but the curvature of her face as a young fashion model in Paris looked out from every statue in the garden; the stone walls of the bell tower and from all the door knockers and flower pullets.
“He never knew Grace Jones,” Noble Sinatra had once told January, “But he was obsessed with her. There’s a secret behind why, but he never told me what it was. I think as a kid I must have seen the concert film ‘Demolition Man’ at least a hundred times.”
January, on the other hand, had idolized celebrities like Destiny’s Child, Tyra Banks, Halle Berry and Venus and Serena as a teenager. She had never heard of the singer Grace Jones when she’d first come to the resort as a stripper. She never learned the story behind her Italian first husband’s fixation on the superstar. But now she held court in her favorite of all the Leatherette ground properties—The Garden of Grace.
“It feels good to be a woman!” January rejoiced taking a microphone. Barefoot in a long tight Greek sandal gown with slits up the sides, she giggled cheerfully at the sight of women of all colors, sizes, shapes and ages diving into the Sister pond. Many of them were longtime visitors and had fond memories of January’s deceased twin sister. In fact, that was why they had accepted and adored January so immediately. And with the memory of her sister, January said, “It feels good to be powerful; to be beautiful—and let’s get it straight that all women, fat, skinny, black, red, white and otherwise—are beautiful goddesses. Yes, sisters, we are. But it feels good to be alive, and I just want to say…that I miss my sister, February. I wish she was here to see the magic, to see the love.”
The clans of night women clapped, and in the crowd, January caught sight of Lorna and the new go-go stripper, Debbie Dallas. Not only did January have the sex tape of her step-great granddaughter fucking her husband, but she knew all about Lorna and Debbie’s lesbian-style sex romp in the Cartier bed that Papa Sinatra had given her on their wedding night. She knew about Noble Sinatra’s hatred of her and his intentions to bring the California mafia down against her—and she knew how strongly Lorna spoke against Noble’s plans; always defending and praising January. Most hurtful of all, she knew of Buck’s great love for his true desire, the mysteriously enchanting Dao-Ming—and she knew about Dao-Ming’s hometown secrets in Portland, Oregon and about “the Chinese worm curse.” She knew that Dao-Ming’s heart belonged to Noble and that Buck didn’t stand a chance with either she or the sensuous Asian beauty.
Yes—Warm Leatherette was January’s domain, and like an all-seeing God, she knew everything.
By memory, the voice of her mother, May Day, crept into her mind with the haunting words that May Day had spoke during her visit to her daughter’s resort. “You need to turn this camera system off and let life surprise you more often.”
“I can’t turn off my cameras, Mama—I’m addicted to knowing.”
“You’re a peeping Tom, January!”
“Knowing everything gives me power, Mama—power that Papa Sinatra taught me to appreciate.”
“But it’s still wrong, January! The shit is wrong!”
Tears rolled down her cheeks, because now that her twin was dead—she knew that there was nobody in the world that she could trust. Few people seemed to realize just how intrinsic the connection between January and February had been. It was almost as though they were the two haves of a single person; only now part of that person was dead and gone, leaving the other to fend in the world alone.
One of the women in night’s lavender garden handed January a glass of champagne. January raised it against the moon glow proclaiming, “To the joy of being a woman! To the joy of Sister-Spacing! Thank you…for being my sisters!”
From afar, Bliss Carrington Crown watched the tall luscious chocolate beauty with the figure-eight body and thousand dollar hair weave most intently. Part of being a writer was being professionally observant, and there was no denying the pain and alienation that Bliss detected in January.
“So that’s my husband’s dream girl,” Bliss muttered with, for the first time, a tinge of jealousy. Though Bliss had thought she was headed for divorce and didn’t care about Adam loving another woman—actually setting sight on January riled her up a bit. With a sigh, Bliss said, “She can have him.”
But deep inside, she wasn’t so sure she meant it.
~*~
Adam held on as Miles, the family butler at the House of Crowns estate in Buckhead, connected him to his father.
The phone lifted and there was a coughing clearing of the throat, but no salutation.
“Hello father—you requested I call you right away.”
Speaking in a Southern baritone, Otis Crown rubbed it in. “Your mother’s chartered a private jet back to Georgia—I don’t have to tell you that she’s near stroke.”
“I haven’t done anything father.”
“Yes, you’ve done plenty, Adam. You keep resisting the legacy of our family name. Who is going to take over my post at the National Association of Colored Priorities once I’m dead and gone? Do you notice how them Kennedy boys live by the legacy they’ve created? Do you see how George and Jeb Bush kept their daddy’s dream alive? Do you see how Jesse Jackson Jr. has followed in his father’s footsteps? Jesse Jr. makes his father proud—but all you do for me is race cars and chase cavities.”
“We have a black President now, father—there’s no need for the NACP anymore.”
“Bullshit!” Otis Crown shouted, indignantly. “This nation was founded on racism and it will always be racist!”
“Well considering that my black mother can’t stand the idea of me marrying a black woman or having a grandchild who looks like the rest of us Crowns—you’re right about that, father. But I’m not a politician.”
“Well you need to become one! And you need to start listening to your mother more often. That dreadful low class February girl was not the kind of girl somebody gives a wedding ring to. But you’re so hell bent on putting a cavity in your mother’s pearly white teeth. You bring the lowest trash…”
“Don’t you…“ Adam got a lump in his throat and couldn’t get the words out. He slammed his cell phone shut—effectively hanging up in his father’s face. Tears watered his eyes, but they were from anger and rage—the desire to strangle his parents. Marrying Bliss hadn’t shut them up. His mother wanted the couple to produce a grandchild, something ‘pretty’ to sit on her lap whilst she held court at social teas.
“Damn them,” thought Adam as his lifted a miniature racing car that his father had given him as a boy from the fold in his suitcase. It was a sooped up spider-8 1965 racing Mustang replica that he carried everywhere, always remembering his father lovingly, but then again, February had died in a 1965 Mustang—a gift from Adam.
His phone cell started ringing, but he wouldn’t answer it. He couldn’t tolerate his father’s words. No matter what his family’s level of class dictated, February had never hurt anyone and she didn’t deserve to be lied on and disrespected just because she was the daughter of an inner city single black mother. Wasn’t it enough that sharks had mangled her beautiful face and body beyond recognition? Wasn’t it enough that she’d died an agonizing death while carrying his child—a child who possessed Crown family blood?
It kept ringing.
“I’m a man,” Adam bristled in the dark. “I’m nobody’s puppet.”
February
*Two days later.
San Diego, California
February Foster stumbled out of the surf holding the side of her head in pain. She wasn’t dead as the whole world believed—but she also didn’t have any memory of who she really was. Lately, however, the migraine headaches had started to bring bits and pieces back to her.
“Babe—what’s wrong?”
“It’s the pains in my head again!”
The crashing of the waves was suddenly killing her.
Her husband—a fat dumpy brother named Jerry—nervously began packing up their ice chest and rolling the beach towels. He didn’t like taking February out of the apartment because he feared that somebody from her past might recognize her. Four years earlier he’d been living with an older woman up in Pismo Beach and gotten into a heated argument when the woman said she was tired of taking care of him. Instead of knocking the shit out of her, Jerry had lit up a blunt and gone walking on the beach that night. The sky had been clear and purple; the waves of the coastline soothing. But washed ashore like some nubile young goddess with a deep gash across her forehead.
Even with the bleeding gash and bloated features from nearly drowning, February’s shimmering cherry-brown beauty had been overpowering. Jerry fell head over heels on sight.
He’d carried February to the older woman’s Lexus and wrapped her in a blanket, then telephoned the older woman to say that he was driving down to San Diego and would be returning her car the next morning.
“Your name is Ashanti,” he’d told February that same night when she woke on his motel room and was obviously suffering memory loss. He had said, “You’re my wife, Ashanti. And uhm—we got married after we got out of high school. Yeah, yeah, that’s it. You always wanted to be married, because you’ve got this thing for house work. You like to cook and clean and uh…oh yeah, you love giving blowjobs—sixty dollars a pop. That was what made me marry you. Just a fetish you have.”
February hadn’t been much of a cook or sexually experienced, but Jerry quickly got them a studio apartment and paid one of his aunts to come to the apartment and teach February how to make all his favorite foods. To afford a bigger place—he started letting pals from the local basketball courts and local army bases drop by and have sex with February.
At first, she had cried and fought, but after Jerry held her down and told her how much she loved him; how much she wanted to prove her love by doing as he wished—she’d learned to just lay there and stare into the ceiling.
“It’s not about being a whore,” Jerry had told her. “It’s about you showing your man what you’ll do to make things easier for him. I mean, hell, it’s hard out here for a brother.”
Cooking, cleaning; earning Jerry’s money—February had lost herself in the role of “Ashanti.” Weeks turned into months and months turned into years. But then two weeks after Jerry had taken her to abort the pregnancy caused by one of the johns, she had experienced a breakthrough. One afternoon while scrubbing the kitchen floor, she heard a baby crying in the apartment.
She searched high and low for where the sound of it was coming from, but it wasn’t there, it was all in her head.
And that’s the day the headaches first started.
“What’s the problem with you?” Jerry demanded a few nights later when his boy “Q” had been on top of her and she’d violently bitten into the guy’s chest and face, drawing blood.
“Don’t you like Q anymore?”
February had become like a wild animal threatened. As Jerry and Q ran from her laughing, she attacked them with flinging, scratching hands and crazed eyes. “Nobody touches me but Adam! I belong to Adam…only to Adam!”
“Man you got her cooped up in here” Q advised. “You need to take her to the beach or something, let her brain get some oxygen.”
And that’s how they got on the beach that sunny day. But on the drive home, February had turned to stare at Jerry, cryptically. Her whole being was filled with animosity as she asked through a clenched mouth, “What you do with my baby?”
“What?”
“You heard me motherfucker!”
Jerry normally felt nothing about having to beat a woman’s ass, but he wasn’t used to February acting anything but pleasant and docile. She had been the most submissive female he had ever met his life. Never cursed, never raised her voice, never denied him sex or felt too tired to get up and fix him a sandwich.
Now she seemed to be just another angry ghetto chick.“Adam…CROWWWNNN…gave me….a baby!”
Something serious was very wrong, and at last, Jerry was realizing it. February’s eyes began twitching uncontrollably as though signals from her brain were crossing and misdirecting.
VOICES: “Do-it/kill him…do-it/kill him…do-it/kill him!”
February grabbed the passenger seat door handle and began to scream from the pain of the voices in her head. She bent her head backwards, refusing the urge to kill another human being—she would fling herself from the car before she would let herself do that—but luckily, she passed out.
~*~
Passing out, however, did not cure her of the voices.
While Jerry was gone during the day, she would listen to her Britney, Hillary and Miley Cyrus songs. One song in particular, “7 Things” really moved her to sing along with it. The lyric was something about hating a guy for seven things—the last of those things being the fact that he made her love him.
“Damn, I love this song!” February shouted one afternoon while scrubbing the bathroom floor and singing along. Two weeks later—she ripped the CD out of the player and screamed, furiously, “I hate this fucking song—get out of my head—just stop it!”
Jerry came home from work and she casually mentioned that she might change her name to something more spiritual.
“Spiritual?”
“Yeah,” she gushed excitedly. “Like Miley Cyrus—that’s a good Christian name. It’s what an angel would be named.”
“You’re tripping, Ashanti.”
“No—I need the right name before I go back.”
“Go back where?”
“Papa’s garden,” February muttered in confusion while trying to grasp the memory of it. “Papa’s…Pismo Beach.”
Jerry just about had a stroke. Was her memory starting to come back, he wondered? He told himself fuck that. He grabbed her by the shoulders and said, “Now you listen to me and you listen good Ashanti—you’re not going anywhere.”
“But I don’t like that name!”
“That is your name—what do you mean you don’t like it?”
“No! It’s not an angel’s name. He said…he said that I’m an angel. I have an angel’s name.”
“Tell me who said it.”
February blinked at the floor, her brain struggling to remember. In exasperation, she answered, “He loves me. He’s my first love. And he’s given me my mustang.”
Enraged, Jerry began to unbuckle his belt. His fingers dug into the leather strap until they were fists. He was breathing heavy as he said, “So you admit it—you’ve been cheating on me for free. Not bringing me my money back and shit, right?”
Just before Jerry began whipping her with his belt, February looked up into his eyes. She said, “Do you hear the voices?”
VOICES: “Do-it/kill him…do-it/kill him…do-it/kill him!”
“Naw, bitch, I don’t hear no voices!”
But those were Jerry’s last words.
He looked like a fat little Winnie the Pooh bear sitting in the bathtub bobbing his head to the radio an hour later when February walked in and tossed the electrical appliance in with him.
POP! POP! POP! went the radio’s crackling surge of electrocution. Smoke rose from the water-rippling surface as the cooked smell of Jerry’s ass-rim, balls, bellybutton and nappy hair wafted throughout the apartment like foul bar-b-q.
“You made me love you,” sang February in her best imitation of singer Miley Cyrus’s husky
voice belting the lyric of the song “7 Things”. And then it came to February—Adam, that’s his name. His name was Adam Crown and he loves me and that’s why I’m carrying his child, that’s why he took my virginity. I’m pregnant she recited in a daze as she kept singing, “You made me love you.”
BOOK TWO
Her Neck, Her Back
SEX MOANS
Smooth, beautiful brown twin sets of feet were dancing on top of rose petals. The bodies were naked; the faces coy with laughter as the twins held on, their arms forming a circle of fascinating rhythm. Round and round they went, lost in the innocent beauty of their own magic unity—lost in the love that only sisters can generate.
“February…January,” Adam called in his sleep.
His wife rose up in the darkness beside him, her hand on his thumping bare chest and her mouth ajar in shock. This was supposed to be their last night at the Warm Leatherette spa—they were leaving for New York City the following afternoon—but Bliss Crown’s intuition told her that this was just the beginning and that they would never escape Warm Leatherette.
Cryptically, she thought about her final visit to the garden baths earlier that night. The way the wine entered women’s throats and seemed to disappear in mid-guzzle; the way the jazz music nodded and flickered in and out of the corners of the purple night chatter; and especially—she thought about the way January Knuckle-Joy’s brown eyed smile had dueled with her own blue eyed iciness. “Bitch,” Bliss had whispered to January from across the garden, and yet the mood had remained so esoteric and balmy.
The food on the golden platters had been shaped so tempestuously—giant shrimp carved into penises, oysters flayed and doused down the middle with blood red Creole Kola coffee so that they resembled hot vaginas. Caviar-coated bananas poking into puffs of vodka-drenched chocolate truffle; squid submerged in cherry stew and grape-garnished peeled lobster tails warmed and wet with a lustful house butter.