by Raqiyah Mays
I typed: I’m here. Downstairs. Where u?
Two minutes later. No answer.
The heat boiled in my belly. Images of me thrashing him came to mind, as if he were a slave and I was giving him fifty lashes. This nigger knew I was coming. Where the fuck is he?
I rang his cell. No answer.
The rain fell harder. I coughed and squinted my eyes through the splashing. “Fuck!” I yelled, in a painfully hoarse voice. With my head tilted upward, I hoped the echoes would be heard in his fifth-floor apartment.
Five minutes later, as someone finally exited the building, I lunged for the door, pushing its heavy metal springs wide enough for me to slip inside before it slammed and locked behind me.
Heading to the elevator, I pounded the up button like a boxer bashing an opponent’s face. Radically pissed thoughts screamed through my mind.
Where is this man? Why isn’t he around? If he isn’t home, why not let me know he was leaving? What the fuck?
The elevator crept up to the first level, the door squeaked open, and I stepped on and pressed the button for the fifth floor. Apartment 5F was a place I’d become accustomed to visiting. The building’s elevators smelled like pee. Hallways rusty and dusty. The occasional brown rodent with wings crawling among corner crevices. Sean was only paying six hundred a month for a reason. I knocked on his door, hearing Lil’ Kim kill her verse on “It’s All About the Benjamins,” blasting from the speakers. Still no answer. I knocked again. Banging, kicking, but still there was no answer. Out of breath from overexertion, I began coughing uncontrollably, a dry cackle stripping my throat of moisture. Leaning up against the wall, I slid to the floor, staring at my cell phone, waiting for anything. Something. A word of where this man was. Tears blurred my eyes.
Suddenly, the door to his apartment opened and a girl walked out. She was tall and thin, like a model, resembling an Ethiopian, with swarthy features. Her hair was in a bun, wrapped with an African scarf. She wore black sweatpants, a hoodie, and construction boots like mine. Walking out, she carried a bowl filled with something powdery.
“Thanks, neighbor. Now I can finish making my cake,” she said, laughing. “You are so silly.”
“Well, I hope I get some when you’re finished, since”—he coughed a fake cough—“I am helping make it courtesy of that sugar there.”
“Yes, you can have some when I’m done,” she said, shaking the bowl and giggling. “I might be back to get some eggs. Ain’t goin’ nowhere in this weather.”
“You can come back whenever you want, chef girl.”
She laughed and turned to leave when she saw me. “Oh!” the bitch said, smiling. “Hey!”
“Hey,” I answered dryly, slowly standing. My overnight bag had a huge wet spot in the bottom. Sean poked his head out the door.
“Oh, hey.” He raised his eyebrows at his neighbor, smirked, and closed the door behind me. “I didn’t know you were still coming.”
“You didn’t hear me knocking at the door?”
“No.”
“Or buzzing downstairs.”
“Nah, that’s broke.”
“Since when?”
“Since the other day.”
“Since the other day when?”
“Since before you were mad at me and decided you didn’t want to talk anymore.”
I rolled my eyes and took off my coat. Opened the closet door, grabbed a hanger, hung it up, and turned the TV on, purposely not taking off my boots, tracking dirty, wet prints onto the floor.
“So which neighbor is that?” I sat down, resting my head on the couch, letting my feet slide across the wood.
“Oh, that’s Monica,” he said. “Um . . . you’re making black puddles in my place. Can you take those big-ass boots off, please?”
“Excuse you,” I said, looking up at him, before bending over to unlace my Timbs. “Anyway, as I was saying, she’s pretty.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, smiling. “She’s Ethiopian and Asian.”
“She’s making a cake for you?”
“Nah, for some dude she’s dating. He’s sick or something. But dude is gay as hell. I told her.”
“Well, at least she’s making something for the sick person in her life,” I said, blowing my nose. “I can’t get a can of soup.”
“What, is that a hint?”
“I don’t give hints,” I said, throwing my left boot toward the front door. “You know what I mean. You’re a man of words, are you not?”
“Listen, Meena, you know I’m on deadline, I’m busy. But if you want me to make you something real quick, I will. What you want, soup?”
“No, I want you to do something for me without having to be asked.”
“Yo, did you come over here to beef with me?”
“No, I came over for some TLC, but stood out in the rain for thirty minutes. Then outside your door for another thirty.” I coughed, yanking off my right boot and throwing it toward the left. “You knew I was coming, but didn’t act like it. I feel like shit. I trek over here and—”
“I don’t know why you even came over here being sick.” He plopped down into his computer chair and started typing something. “I gotta finish this story. I got juice in the fridge, you can lie in my bed, watch TV or something. You look and sound sick, so you need to just calm down. You must be on your period or something.”
I stared at him for a long minute. Face turned up. Nose runny. Throat sore. I was so sick of his selfish ass. Not looking after me. Not taking care of me. Not giving to me. He typed on that damned laptop with the delicacy of a baby. But treated me like an old whore he’d slapped around with a pussy beater. I got up, stomped into my boots without tying them, and said, “I’m going home.”
“A’ight,” he answered, not even looking at me. “Peace.”
Asshole motherfucker.
Last thing I heard was the door slamming behind me. The sound of its bang was like a bullet to the head, killing my old consciousness, making way for the birth of a new one. The epiphany was clear: I was done.
Chapter 27
Ladies know the moment when we’re finished. No need to look back. No hard feelings. Easy like a flip of the switch. You move on. Just like that. Lauryn Hill got me through it all. Her new album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, blasted at the office and through my apartment, preaching wisdom reminders of self-love and healing. I continually pressed replay, listening to her single “Everything Is Everything” over and over, like a broken record. Strong empowerment beats banged uplifting emotional reminders of the path we’re all destined to walk and the change that comes with each season.
Meredith told me it takes half the time you’re with someone to get over them. And she was right. Eventually the pain faded. The pain of withdrawal and the rage of anger became easier with every week that passed by. The sluggish months of winter flipped by into the rebirth of spring. Then summer. Fall. Winter. And another birthday. Number twenty-seven. Same pink Post-it shit. Same e-mails, same memos, same parties, same meetings. After two years on staff, the excitement of Buzz became a bore. The only color came when Sean avoided me at industry events. I stared through him like he was a ghost, an unrecognizable peon. With the certainty a woman has when she’s fully fed up. Fuck him. He was gone. I was over it. Yet still unhappy. Still bored, single, and resentful, trudging to work late, watching the clock until I could leave. I hated my seven o’clock alarm. I hated the nagging tightness in my tummy. And I hated the monotony of my life. I was tired of waking up, sun shining through mahogany shutters, butterflies fluttering to the beautiful, breezy blessing of another day, robins chirping. And there I was, instead of thanking the Lord, moaning an atheistic, ritualistic tune of self-deprecation that ended with me pulling the covers over my head and screaming, “Fuck!”
To escape reality and find some sort of spirituality, I read a book Denise had given m
e for my recent birthday: The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, by Julia Cameron. With daily tasks like journaling, I slowly began to remember my creative self. My love of writing. My love of freedom. My realization that I hated being an assistant, answering phones, filing, organizing, keeping everyone and everything together but my own damn life. My messy-ass apartment. Papers galore. Dirty dishes. Baskets of unwashed laundry. Because I was always working, out partying, avoiding the loneliness of home even though I’d outgrown the job I had once loved. Three months later, by the end of the book’s twelve-week program, I celebrated Memorial Day by giving Buzz my two weeks’ notice.
“You’re quitting to write?” Denise’s face was sad yet bright, smiling. “I knew I wouldn’t keep you as an assistant for long. You’re too amazing.”
“Yeah, it’s time to get this book out of my head,” I said, standing tall, long legs shoulder-length apart, exuding Amazon-woman confidence. “I can do some freelancing on the side to add on to what I’ve saved. But I’m ready.”
“Well, I know you’re friends with all of the editors at those other magazines,” she said, rolling her eyes, flipping through the Rolodex. “But I’ve got some agent friends to connect you with. You know Buzz has your back. So make us proud.”
That was inevitable. But this was about me.
My professional life was always on point. Writing assignments rolled in. The economy in 2000 boomed, magazines paid their dollar-per-word stories on time. And I regularly wrote fifteen-hundred- to three-thousand-word features monthly, added that to the checks I racked up from smaller-profile pieces for other publications, and afforded to consistently stay at least three months ahead of myself. Great for someone in her late twenties. I thought I was balling.
The problems were personal. Sleeping with men I didn’t like. Using them for sex. Their eyes were soft, googley in love. And mine were icy, stiff, and numb. I was emotionless. I’d fuck and ask them politely to leave. They’d pout as I couldn’t wait for them to get out. But when they were gone, I was lonely. Sad. Craving for more. Habitually staying busy in a state of emotional unavailability to avoid feeling the painful void of not having love from a man in my life.
“So you pull them close and push them away,” Meredith said, sitting on my couch, staring at me. We sipped our red wine with Jill Scott’s debut album Who Is Jill Scott? playing in the background. “You’re like a guy.”
“But I don’t get it. I want them around. Till they start calling or texting too much. Then I need them to go. And when they leave, I want them back,” I said shaking my head. “I got issues.”
“Yes, you do.”
I did a double take as Meredith began to crack up.
“Listen, it’s abandonment shit. Fear. Scared of being hurt. Even though you want them close. You get all weird, anxious, and act out when they do. It’s normal for someone like you. I mean, you didn’t have your father, your mother has her issues, all that distrust and emotional baggage was passed down to you. You’ve been hurt. But you can heal, Meena. All wounds heal. You need to just take a break to focus and fall in love with you.”
“What do you mean? No guys?”
“No men,” she said, with a blank stare.
“No sex?”
“Use a dildo. Give yourself some love.”
“Whoa . . .” I said. My words trailed off into a state of wondering what it might be like not to have sex for an extended period of time. Celibacy just didn’t seem normal. I didn’t understand women who hadn’t had sex in months or years. It was incomprehensible with all these fine men walking around. As ladies, we had our pick. It was easy to get dick in our lives. But without it, would I still be able to write? Would the lack of sex creatively block me? Would a battery operated dildo be enough?
After a few weeks of nervously contemplating Meredith’s challenge, I was ready with a plan. The first step involved taking a break from dating altogether.
Step #1: Turn on the man blinders. (Man blinder (n): an emotional wall that ignores the sight of and interest in men.) To enable this tactic, I had to deafen the sound of the boy beeper, an internal alarm mechanism that triggers when a male is near.
Beep. Beep.
That’s what I’d hear when I walked down the street and a handsome man floated by. The beeper would blare like a missile launcher. Like a submarine identifier. Beep. Beep. I’d feel my neck beginning its uncontrollable turn, like a magnet attracted, a positive charge meshing with the negative. Like Pavlov’s dog hearing the bell. When I saw a man, I had to look. Had to turn. Had to have it.
Beep. Beep.
I was conscious of this. With the man blinders on, I learned to slowly resist my heavy, hardheaded noggin turn. Each day it became easier to fight the natural tendency to glance toward testosterone. I was in another galaxy with this tactic, like Captain Kirk fighting Borg mind power. I spoke in staccato as I fought the need for sex and a man. “I. Can. Resist.”
After four weeks of this excruciating struggle, the beep became a chirp. In eight weeks, the chirp turned to a faint whisper, like a fire alarm battery that had died. The urge to gawk and slobber internally over dick was gone. I had trained myself to walk the disinterested posture—eyes forward, head up, back straight. Like a soldier focused on the mission at hand. Like an aggressive lesbian disinterested in men. My “man-dar,” as I liked to call it, had been trained to remain off. I craved respite from the physical, mental, and emotional yearning for a man. And I’d thought I’d finally gotten it.
All was good for eight months. Until my dry, celibate period had my clitoris throbbing and reaching toward any handsome man who gave me the eye. Then I ran into Carl Murphy.
I remembered him from high school as the socially awkward nerd sitting alone with a comic book at lunch. He ran one season of track before moving out of town when his dad died. Flash-forward to the present; he was a six-foot, two-hundred-pound chocolate candy bar. But he was coated in that same syrup of insecure, annoying, high school nervousness I remembered as he tried to continually find ways to compliment me.
“So what do I need to do to be like you?” He said this while following me out of Penn Station, after a chance meeting on the train.
“I don’t know,” I said, not looking at him, instead pointing at the MTA machine, trying to buy a MetroCard so I could go home and smoke my weed. “Just do the work.”
“Well,” his voice shook while he simultaneously smiled in awe. “Are you a day writer or night writer?”
“I’m a writer. A writer writes,” I snapped, impatiently checking my watch, staring down the empty train track. “Although I find myself working mostly at night.”
“How long do you stay up?”
“Man, you ask a lot of questions.”
“Does that bother you?”
“I don’t know, are you CIA or something?”
“Maybe.”
We looked at each other and laughed.
Something about him raised a familiar feeling. Something about his insecurity screamed for him to be taken advantage of. Hands locked above the head, me on top holding him down, injecting his penis into me with long, slow strokes and short, quick thrusts of my always juicy, rough-riding pussy. Licking his face. Kissing his body. Climbing up to straddle his mouth. I could turn him out easy and not call again for months. Till I wanted some more. If I wanted some more.
As we sat on the C train, I salivated over the muscles protruding from the sleeves of his fitted black T-shirt. I could see a book poking from his bag. Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson. He was smart. Conscious. Just what I liked. And his big feet meant . . .
“Meena Butler,” he said, staring me up and down. Catching my daydream gaze.
“I believe that’s my name.”
“Oh!” he said, laughing. “Still sarcastic. And you look the same as high school. Do you age?”
�
�Eh, I guess. What’s up? You studying to be a black revolutionary?” I pointed to the book in his bag.
“I’m actually in a master’s program at NYU. African American studies.” He nodded at the book sticking out of my purse. “You trying to find yourself?”
“I mean . . . I guess.” I laughed uncomfortably, shoving Iyanla Vanzant’s In the Meantime deeper into my bag. “Shut up. So what are you up to? Where are you headed?”
The question was leading. I only wanted to know whether he was traveling my way so I could invite him over, have a drink, smoke a blunt, and maybe get him to lick me.
“Oh, nowhere. I’m just gonna ride the train and read a bit.”
My face turned from seduction to confusion.
“Yeah,” he said, slouching in his seat. “I can’t focus at home because my girl and I are having some issues, arguing all the time. So I come on the train and just read.”
“What’s up with that?” I asked. Half wanting to know, half not hearing his response because as he began I phased out. Turned down the volume. His mouth moved in my silence, explaining every detail of his issues with his girlfriend. She says he’s too busy. He’s trying to get his degree. Blah, blah, blah, another emotionally unavailable man, stuck in the past, complaining about his ex or some girl breaking his heart.
“Your number still the same?”
I didn’t answer. Caught in my thoughts about talking to another wrong man, yet again.
“Meena . . .”
“Huh? What?” I said, jumping out of my daze. “Yeah . . .”
“So you have the same number. From when I ran into you last time. That was like, what, two years ago?”
“Oh, yeah. Same number. Not changing.”
“Okay, I’ll call you.”
And he did. We spoke once. But after another debrief of his girlfriend issues, the rest of his calls I let go to voice mail. Eventually they went away. That and my overactive libido. And thank God. You attract what you are. I was aggravated by the reality and my attraction to him; it all reminded me of one thing: there was more work to do.