by RM Johnson
“I love you too, Suga’,” Gill said, meaning every word of it.
“Good,” Asha said, feeling a little better, smearing the drying tears from her face. “You don’t know how much I needed to hear that.”
3
The rest of the dinner was a bust. As I tried to continue eating, I would look up and catch Faith just staring at me, giving that same suspicious look she had given me outside the restaurant after she saw me talking to Asha.
I leaned over to her, whispered in her ear, concern in my voice. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
“Why do you keep asking me that? Everything is fine.”
“Well, why do you keep looking at me like I just screwed the baby sitter?”
“What baby sister?”
“You know what I mean,” I said, becoming aggravated.
“Everything okay over there in lover’s land?” Karen said.
“Everything is fine. Why don’t you butt out and mind your own damn business,” I said.
“I just wanted to know what was up. See if Faith came to her senses and finally decided not to marry your tired ass.”
And I didn’t know what it was about that last remark, but I just snapped. I shot up out of my seat, bumping the table on my way up, knocking over some of the glasses that sat on top of it.
“You know, I’m so tired of you!” I said, loud enough for everyone in the restaurant to hear. “Why are you always coming at me like that? What have I ever done to you? All you ever have to say are bad things about me and Faith. And you’re supposed to be her best friend. When you insult me, you insult her too. You don’t think Faith wants to marry me, Karen?” I asked her. She didn’t respond, just looked at me like I was crazy. “Karen! Answer me. You don’t think she wants to get married to me?”
Karen hunched her shoulders, looking as if she never gave the question much thought, looking as though it really didn’t deserve any thought at that moment. “I don’t know.”
“Well, look at her. Faith is sitting right here, across the table from you. Ask her. That way you’ll know. That way everybody’ll know. Ask her.”
“Faith,” Karen said, and the way she said it, the tone she used sounded as though she was trying to wake something in Faith, snap her out of whatever trance Karen thought she was in.
“Faith, you really want to marry this man?” Karen said, a look of disgust on her face, like she just swallowed something horrible. How I hated her at that moment.
Faith looked her dead in the eyes. “Yes,” she said.
“But do you love him?”
Why the hell did she have to ask that? Would Faith have been here if she didn’t love me? I thought about this while I was waiting to hear the resounding yes coming from my fiancée. But it took a minute. Her eyes were still on Karen, and she looked up at me, as if deciding her answer. Then after turning back to Karen, she said, “Yes. I do love him.”
It lacked the emotion I had hoped to hear. It sounded more like a confession, actually, but I was relieved to hear it nonetheless. She was feeling a little weird about what went down tonight, I told myself. Nothing more.
Karen didn’t say anything for a long moment, just stared in Faith’s face, as if giving her a chance to take back what she’d just said just in case she’d made a mistake. But after that moment was over, Karen said, “Okay, fine. I’ll back off then. Faith, you my girl, and if this is what you want for yourself, then I guess I want it for you too.” Then Karen shocked me by standing up and extending her hand across the table toward me.
“Truce?”
I looked at that hand like it was a claw from some alien creature, like if I touched it, she would pass me some deadly disease, and I would gag, start foaming at the mouth and shaking and drop dead right there. But I took the leap, grabbed her hand, and shook it anyway. “Truce,” I said.
The trip to my place was a silent one. Faith sat in the passenger seat of my Passat, not saying a word, pushed up so far against the door you’d think I hadn’t washed in weeks.
Once we got to my place, I took the stairs first, climbing the first two flights. But when I looked behind me, she was still there at the bottom of the stairs, near the door to Asha’s apartment.
“Faith, what are you doing? You coming up?”
She looked up at me, her arms crossed over her chest. “I didn’t know if you were going to stop in and see how Asha was doing. That is what you told her you’d do, right?”
It was exactly as I thought. She was feeling jealous and that’s why she was behaving like a seven-year-old.
“Come up these stairs, woman,” I said, extending a hand down to her.
“You said you’d check on her. You even told her that you would take her home. That it didn’t matter that I was still in the restaurant cacklin’ like a hen with Karen. That I wouldn’t even know that you were gone.”
“I did not say that!” I protested.
“You said something like that,” Faith said, anger in her eyes. “And then you said you’d check on her, so that is what I think you should do.” And then Faith had enough damn nerve to turn toward Asha’s door and knock on it. She was only able to hit the door once, because I had hurried down the stairs, gotten behind her and grabbed her hand in mid-motion before she was able to knock a second time.
“We need to talk about this upstairs. Now go,” I said, making her go before me, so she wouldn’t try anything funny again. As I climbed the stairs, I looked back at Asha’s door, thankful that she probably hadn’t heard the knock, thankful that she hadn’t been dragged into any more of my situation.
When we walked into my apartment, Faith just stood by the door, not taking off her jacket, not setting down her purse. I closed the door and stood in front of her.
“So, you’re going to stand there all night? Gonna sleep there, are you? You’re like a cow now, or what?”
Obviously, she didn’t like my remarks. She clip-clopped across my hardwood floor, over to the area rug, and plopped down on my leather sofa. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest again, pressed her knees closely together, even tightened the belt of her leather jacket around her slim waist, as if she was trying to close off all pathways to her.
I walked over to her, stopped three or four steps from her, and just looked down at her. How beautiful she was. Even angry, pissed the hell off at me, she was one of the most beautiful girls in the universe. Her straight, chin-length black hair was windswept all over her head, sticking up like cockatoo feathers, but she was still beautiful. Her normally almond-shaped eyes were narrowed into slits, her mouth puckered into a tight little prune, but she still meant the world to me.
We’d been together only nine months, but I knew very early on that this was the woman I wanted to be with for the rest of my life. It could’ve been because until her, I hadn’t been with anyone, hadn’t really shared my life with anyone since Asha four years prior. I was lonely, very lonely, hating having to go out there on the circuit, prance through clubs, recite practiced come-on lines to women, hoping I’d find the one to fill the void in my life. But it wasn’t as though I didn’t try. There were nights when I became desperate, sitting around my apartment on Friday and Saturday nights, feeling as though no one cared about me, as if no one even knew that I was alive. I asked myself at those times, if I ceased to exist, would anyone even miss me?
I would think of Asha, go downstairs, knock on her door, my spirits immediately lifting when I heard her footsteps coming toward the door.
“Wanna rent a movie or something?” I’d say, praying that she’d be game. But when she came back with, “Naw, I got to get up early tomorrow,” or “I’m going out with my girls,” I would smile, as though it was no big deal, and head sadly back up to my apartment.
I would stand in front of my mirror, some fifteen minutes later, wearing the clothes that, for some reason, I never thought looked just right on me, the clothes that people wore to clubs; shiny silk shirts, baggy linen pants, loafers, crap like that.
>
I knew what the scene would be before I even got there, before I even left my apartment. But I told myself, either that, or sit around here and feel sorry for myself.
I would park my car, and as I walked toward whatever club I had chosen to go to, I would try and convince myself that I would be aggressive that night, that I would find an attractive woman, someone I got the feeling I could develop something with, and I would step right up and talk to her, persuade her into giving me her phone number, possibly going out on a date some time.
But when I would enter those densely packed, dimly lit rooms, music so loud that you not only heard it, but felt it move through your body, I would just lose whatever fragile confidence I had built up. The places were filled with men standing around, holding drinks coolly in their hands, their sights set on the women they intended to take home for the night. How phony they were, I would think. And the women, standing in their little circles, trying so hard to appear ladylike, as though they had absolutely no interest in the men that surrounded them. They’d act as though they didn’t spend hours in their closets and in front of their mirrors preparing themselves, asking each other, “How do I look? Are my boobs sticking out of this dress too much? Do I look like a ho in this skirt?”
It was all a joke, the posing, the postulating. I would walk through that club, and I would feel the eyes heavy on me. It felt like every pair in the room, male or female. And I would hear in my head what those men were thinking, at least what I thought they were thinking. Oh, this brotha’ thinks he’s the shit with his hazel eyes, wavy hair, and expensive clothes. He thinks he’s gonna come in here and pull every woman out of this club, take them home and leave me with nothing. But I thought nothing like that, thought the farthest thing from that, because I knew I had no chance, had been convincing myself of it from the first step I took into the place.
Although women, from the ugliest to the most beautiful, were staring directly into my eyes at one point or another, I could rarely find what it took to approach them. It was as if they had a sixth sense, would somehow know that I was damn near desperate, and immediately be turned off by me. The times that I had been rejected in the past never really left my memory, and I felt destined to bomb regardless of what I did.
Once I did walk up to a short, shapely, brownish woman with a fit-ted dress that revealed a body that was tight, but soft in the right places. She was surrounded by a number of people, had just finished speaking to one of them, but now was just standing alone, bopping her head to the music.
“Excuse me,” I said, almost yelling because the music was so loud.
She turned around, looked at me a moment, waiting for me to say something else, then finally said, “Yeah?”
“I just … I just saw you over here and thought I’d come talk to you.” I said these words, not leaning in to her, but from where I stood a few feet away, and at a normal volume, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to hear them clearly. I was fearful that if she did, she would find something wrong with them, with my delivery, and reject me.
“I didn’t hear you,” she said, cupping a hand to her ear.
I leaned in this time, and said, “I just said, how are you doing?”
“Oh, good,” she said, nodding her head, taking a sip from a glass that had nothing but melted ice in it.
I had nothing else to say. My hands were stuck in my pockets, and I was fishing around in them, as if there I would find the words to interest this woman in me. But there was nothing, and I knew that just that fast she had already lost interest, if she had had any to begin with, because her eyes were wandering about the club.
But I told myself I wouldn’t let this go that easily. I mustered up the courage and made another approach, stepping up closer. I tapped her on the shoulder, and was prepared to speak, when another man, a huge smile on his face, tapped her on the other shoulder. She turned to him, and it was obvious that she knew him, for she smiled widely as well, then jumped into his arms.
I turned, lowered my head, stuck my hands back into my pockets, and walked away, telling myself it wasn’t meant to be. It was never meant to be, because I hated this, everything about it. The rest of the night, as with most nights, I would spend against the wall, watching as other people enjoyed themselves, watching as the women I told myself I should’ve been approaching were approached by other men, men that had more confidence than me. Better men.
It wasn’t as though I never got approached. There are, because of their painful appearance, always a legion of women who, since a very young age, have come to realize that they must approach men if they ever wished to have one. So every now and then, I would feel a presence at my side, or see a shadow out the corner of my eye, and I would turn my head to find a little troll with blue hair, or a round, smiling woman, barbecue sauce smeared on her cheeks, as she ate complimentary buffet chicken wings beside me.
They would ask me to dance, or try to strike up conversation, and although I was the farthest thing from interested, I would turn them away as pleasantly as I could. I would tell them no I didn’t want to dance, or yes I was married, or on one occasion, to one particularly insistent woman with two gold front teeth, I said that yes, indeed I was gay, and proud, and my man played for the Chicago Bears.
“I don’t mind. You want to get together anyway?” she said, smiling so brightly that I had to squint.
“I don’t think he’d like that,” I said, then slowly backed away from her.
One night, a few months before I met Faith, I was out, and the night had gone as it always did, dragging toward an end, and I thought about why I’d come out in the first place and what waited for me when I returned home. I didn’t want to go back to that empty, lonely feeling. Suddenly, I felt a tug on my sleeve. When I turned around, there was a woman in front of me, only tolerable to look at, but her body was nothing short of amazing.
“Excuse me fo’ just thayin’ this, but you fine ath hell,” she said to me.
Ghetto, and a super duper lisp that would not be ignored, I thought. Nothing that I would ever extend myself to try for, but it was something, a warm body at least. I swallowed hard and forced myself to say, “You’re not bad yourself.”
That night, I sat on the edge of my bed as this woman, if she was that, for I didn’t know how old she was, and didn’t care to ask, began to undress me. Her name was Trina, or Trisha, or maybe even Trixi. She unbuttoned my shirt, opened it up, and her eyes ballooned like she had finally gotten that Christmas present she always wanted.
“Man, you buffed. You tho hard,” she said, smoothing a rough, calloused hand over my pecs. What did she do, sand decks with her bare hands for a living?
“You work out, don’t you?” she asked, and now she was actually digging her fingers into my abdominal muscles, like each one of them were tiny individual drawers she could pull out. “I bet you tho scrong.”
“Yeah. I work out every day.”
“You fine,” she said, kissing me on my left nipple. “I don’t believe you ain’t got no woman, Jaython.”
I couldn’t believe I actually told her my real name, and that I was single. But then again, I could’ve told her anything, because I was depressed, desperate to feel some sort of affection.
She started to kiss me more, suckling my nipple, then the other while she unbuckled my belt, undid the button down there. And then she was kissing lower and lower, licking my abs, trying to reach down into my boxers and grab me, but she was having a hard time with my zipper. As she tugged, I started to come to my senses, started to ask myself what would I accomplish by letting her do what I knew she was about to do? And I knew I would be accomplishing nothing.
And just then, she was successful in lowering my zipper. She pulled down the front of my boxers, pulled me out, and was about to take me into her mouth when I said, “Hold it.”
“Hunh?” she said, looking up like I was stopping her from taking a bite of the dinner it took her so much time and effort to prepare.
“I think I nee
d to take you home.”
It was three months before I even thought about going out after that. I had accepted the idea that I would forever be alone. Understanding that, I prepared to begin by going to the movies by myself.
The theater was practically empty, only a few people seated in the chairs as the lights began to dim in the huge room. I quickly sat down, looked around, and noticed the back of a woman’s head. There was no way I could know for sure, but something told me that she was attractive. And since I told myself that much, since I was already conjuring up my dream princess, I might as well have her be smart, compassionate, intelligent, and have a great body as well. What the hell. She looked up once, turned her head, and I caught a glimpse of the side of her face. What I saw was angelic, and I was hoping that she wasn’t looking for the man that she was supposed to be meeting there.
The lights lowered all the way, the film started, and it didn’t make one bit of difference to me, for my eyes were focused on the back of this woman’s head, this woman who would save me from all the loneliness I’d been feeling. That was, if I could somehow find the confidence to even approach her.
When the film was over, if someone were to ask me what it was about, I couldn’t have told them anything more than what I had seen on the television commercial that interested me in the first place. For that entire two hours, I was staring at her, letting my imagination con-jure up a world where she and I were together, where we were in love. Love, I thought. Was there really any meaning to that word? Up to this point, I wasn’t sure. But now I told myself she would be the one who would prove to me that there was meaning in it.
So when the credits started to roll, I felt myself becoming anxious, felt the pits of my arms and the palms of my hands becoming moist with perspiration, anticipating what this woman really looked like. More important, if she looked like I knew she would, would I have the guts to walk up to her?
I sat up in my chair, my eyes focused on her, telling myself to relax, not to look so much like a damn pervert. But when she finally turned around, she was so beautiful that I knew I had no choice but to say something. I felt myself standing up as she approached, watching her as if in a daze as she passed my seat.