It was bad enough that Frankie had befriended Sylvester, though I’m sure once Sylvester realized she was my sister, he oiled her for everything she was worth, fishing for the slightest tidbit, a morsel here, a breadcrumb there, that would give him an upper hand over the one who got away. Well, sort of got away.
“Sorry, Junie. But Edgar just woke up and he’s got the most exclamatory morning hard-on.”
“Frankie!” But she had already hung up.
I don’t know what repulsed me more, the idea of my sexually gluttonous sibling getting her sugar walls glistened by my lover’s ex-boyfriend or the idea of her, caught up in a mixture of gratitude, lip-loosening Cuba Libres and the liberating island heat, sharing more than she needed.
Okay, okay. Full disclosure. Sylvester and I do have a bit of history. I met Sylvester when I ran track for USC and he was on the LSU-Shreveport team. We met during a national meet that pitted our respective teams against each other. The fact that we were the fastest on our teams created a special rivalry, admiration and kinship.
As the star of the host team, I gave Sylvester the grand tour of my beloved Los Angeles once I had kicked his ass on the track. He seemed a gracious enough loser and, just as graciously, accepted my hospitality—Disneyland, a Lakers game, Universal Studios.
I wasn’t surprised when, after a fierce workout at Bally’s in Hollywood, he asked me, “So where does ‘family’ hang out?” After all, I saw how he was checking out the shower room trade and how he was checking me out as I dutifully lotioned my naked body. The perusal was not mutual. I liked Sylvester well enough, but not well enough to, well, explore any possibilities beyond a polite friendship. Besides, although I was out, I wasn’t sexually active yet and Sylvester was in no way, shape or form going to be my first encounter.
Nevertheless, we hung out until it was time for him to return to Shreveport. I introduced him to the local watering holes of LA’s black gay male community of the day—The Catch One, The Study and The Horizon—affectionately known as the Whore Zone. He was impressed and wanted to show his gratitude for the tour and our friendship, and wanted to cap our farewell with a bottle of Cristal back at his room at the Bonaventure Hotel.
It sounded cool enough to me, although the thought of such a pricey champagne expenditure was a little rich for my student-stipend existence.
The last thing I remembered was the popping of the champagne cork.
It would be a long time before I realized that night marked the popping of more than a champagne cork.
The next morning I woke up in Sylvester’s bed with a pounding headache, cum stains crusted on my chest, a sore asshole and not a clue as to what had happened, although one would have to be totally clueless not to decipher the tea leaves strewn so blatantly about the room.
I don’t remember being drunk, but if I was, how could I remember what a drunken stupor would not allow me to remember? But I know me. I had never been a big drinker. I always did things in moderation—well, most things. I did go rather buck wild the first time I went down to the DR, before meeting Étie, before falling in love with him, which returned me to my sensibility and my sanity. And I’ve never been big on drugs.
Now don’t get me wrong. Over the years, I have certainly smoked more grass than Bill Clinton claimed he did and tooted about the same amount of coke Obama copped to. But drugs really weren’t my thing.
So what happened? How did I lose a chunk of time and my virginity to someone I had absolutely no sexual attraction to? Was I a closeted ho or just an automatic one?
I was too embarrassed to ask Sylvester what had happened though that Cheshire smile of satisfaction he sported spoke volumes.
Over the years, Sylvester and I kept in contact. We weren’t great friends, but we were friendly enough. We often found ourselves running into each other at various community political fundraisers, national pride celebrations and events like the National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum’s annual conferences.
His dubious claims of being Oprah’s distant cousin didn’t impress those in the community who were informed enough to know better, but it did lure many a young unconnected boy-toy hunk or a body-by-Fischer-brains-by-Mattel opportunist between his sheets, so I was told. And it would be years before I realized he had other tools at his disposal. Sylvester had been dealing drugs for years, as far back as his college days at LSU, which explained why he was able to foot the bill for an expensive bottle of Cristal in a suite at the Bonaventure Hotel where I lost my cherry to him.
“Watch out for Sylvester,” Will Champion warned me when I realized Sylvester and I would both be on Will’s cruise to the Falklands. “He’ll drop a roofie on you in a minute.”
“A roofie?” I asked incredulously.
“The date-rape drug.”
“Get the fuck outta here!”
“Serious, Jesse. Just watch your back…literally.”
Could that have been what had happened to me? Had Sylvester Winfrey dropped a date-rape pill in my glass of Cristal? At first, it was simply hard to believe that he was capable of such notorious malfeasance. But Will had never been one for idle gossip and unfounded accusations. I wouldn’t even know how to approach Sylvester with such an outrageous accusation.
The thought of being date-raped is as unthinkable as it is possible and suddenly, after all those years, I finally allowed myself to wrap my mind around such a ridiculously insidious idea. I was not a ho! I had been date-raped by Sylvester Winfrey. And if he was capable of that, he was capable of anything.
Sylvester’s hearty appetite for the rudely salacious was well observed by not only Will Champion, but by many members of the black gay community. The brother had a nasty rep. He delighted in destroying couples, wrecking relationships and trampling on anything that even remotely suggested romance. He was hell-bent on proving love wrong.
Okay. Maybe melodrama and paranoia, as Frankie so keenly pointed out, had gotten the best or the worst of me. And being the hopeless romantic I always believed myself to be, maybe I needed to just calm the fuck down. I mean, if it’s true love that Étie and I shared, then no interloper, no matter how hell-bent on destruction, could prevail.
But still, when it came to Sylvester Winfrey, vigilance and caution were not to be dismissed.
* * * * *
Three days later Francesca and I flew back to Los Angeles together, she with Edgar on her mind, me filled with thoughts of Étienne. We both avoided any more Sylvester talk. We had said everything we needed to say about him and had both decided to keep our distance from him and keep him out of our business. We had come to a loving truce.
We also decided that the first thing we needed to do when we got back home was to get all the paperwork and documentation to Attorney Wells Caitlin.
We arrived in Los Angeles that evening at 6:35 p.m. I called Caitlin the moment we landed and the flight attendant announced it was okay for us to use our phones. Caitlin was still in his office and so we set up an appointment for two o’clock the next day.
I then called Étie. I hadn’t talked to him since our layover in Miami five hours earlier and it seemed like forever.
“Papi,” he said, a soothing smile resonant in his voice.
“Hi, baby,” I answered, my voice smiling too.
“You are home now?”
“Yeah. Back in LA.”
“I miss you already.”
“I miss you too.”
“Tell him I said hi!” Frankie chimed in next to me.
“Did you hear her?”
“I did. Tell her I say hi too.”
“Baby says hi too,” I told Frankie then put the phone back to my ear. “We’ll see the lawyer tomorrow, with the papers.”
“Oh good, baby. I so need be with you.”
“I need to be with you too. It’s going to happen, sweetheart. We’re going to make it happen.”
“I know you will,” he purred in that low, lust-filled voice of his. “I so hot for you. I jack off each day thinking about yo
u when you not here with me.”
“Oh baby, I do the same,” I responded in code, feeling my dick hardening beneath the buckle of my seat belt. I crossed my legs to hide my bulge from Sis.
“I need you fuck my ass good, Papi, like you always do.”
“I want that,” I mumbled in a near whisper.
“I want that big black pinga of yours, mi Papi.I want you make me weak with your lovemaking. I so love how you love me. I need your love always, mi Papi. I be aching for it, aching for your hot love always.”
“Me too, baby,” I moaned in halting secrecy, discreetly twisting and turning in my seat, trying to hide my ever-growing boner in quiet desperation.
“I have my hand in pants now,” he panted. “My dick so hard for you. I stick my two fingers in my ass, try and think it is you, but two fingers too small. I need you fuck me, baby, with your pinga grande.”
I could feel the drip of jizzum from my throbbing boner inside my pants. The panting in my chest, the beating of my heart threatened to explode as sure as I feared my dick would explode with a flood of cum.
“I need my mouth and my ass to suck your big black pinga, baby. I try put fist up my ass so it feel like you. Oh God, Papi, I love you so much, I want you so much, I need you so much!”
What was I to do? I was panicked with desire as the seat-belt light clicked off and the chime signaled passengers to disembark.
“Baby, I gotta go,” I begged in a whisper.
“Oh Papi, I’m coming! I’m coming!” he cried in gushing ecstasy.
“Come on, Junie, let’s go,” Frankie fussed.
“Hand me my carry-on, Sis,” I half answered breathlessly, “in the overhead.”
“Now you know I can’t get that thing.”
“Ahhh!” Étie shrieked, “Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Papi, Ahhh!”
“Baby, I gotta go,” I pleaded again.
“Just hearing your voice make my sex be for real,” he said softly. The thought of him bathing in the afterglow of his ecstasy didn’t ease the dilemma of wanting him, holding him, sexing him in the right here and now. “I love you so much, Papi,” he said, overfilling my already overfilled heart with animal lust and unquenchable desire. My dick was about to burst out of my pants.
“I love you too, so much,” I moaned in a whisper as I clicked off my phone then started searching around my seat, buying some time for my dick to go down.
“What are you looking for?” Frankie, already standing, asked.
“I…I…I just wanna make sure I didn’t leave anything.” I began to panic as my dick stayed disobediently stiff. I had to take my mind off Étie, a near impossibility. Think of something else, anything else!
“Come on, Junie. We’re going to be the last ones off,” my sister kept nagging. “Even the flight attendants are leaving.”
“Something else, anything else,” I commanded myself. “Sylvester Winfrey, Sylvester Winfrey, Sylvester Winfrey, Sylvester Winfrey.”
My dick went soft immediately.
I was cool, calm and collected as Sis and I drove down La Brea Avenue. The Hollywood Sign glistened from the hills in the far distance ahead of us. I could feel her eyes on me. I glanced over at her. She had the strangest, sweetest smile on her face.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m just happy, Junie. I’m really happy for you.”
“Thanks, Sis.”
“And you know something?”
“What?”
“You really love that boy.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“The way you cussed me out, it had to be love.”
“I’m sorry about that, Frankie.”
“Don’t be. Don’t ever be sorry for defending the honor of someone you love.”
Chapter Twelve
The next day, Wells Caitlin went over the paperwork we had brought back from the Dominican Republic with a fine-tooth comb. He then retrieved the paperwork he had on file, including my sworn statement as a third-party witness to the relationship, and the all-important I-130 Petition for Alien Relatives form. He had already filled out the Alien Relatives form and offered it to Frankie for her verification and signature. He also had her complete and sign off on the marital consummation section, putting pen to paper to only a half lie, considering Frankie’s dick-grabbing assault. Yes, I did forgive her, but I would never forget what she had done.
Over the next two days, the Dominican documentation, including the marriage certificate, was translated from Spanish to English, triplicated, notarized and sent off by registered mail to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services along with the required fee. Caitlin speculated that we should hear something back within four weeks. It was the longest four weeks of my life, but just as Caitlin had predicted, the UCIS receipt notice arrived almost to the day. He then outlined the next step.
“We’ll have to wait for approval of the petition. Once it’s approved, which I’m sure it will be, based on the information submitted, it’ll be sent to the National Visa Center. Once it’s received by the NVC, all we need to do is wait for an immigration visa number to become available. Now that could take a while.”
“How long?” I asked impatiently.
“Hard to say,” Caitlin answered, addressing Frankie, “but we can file for a K-3 nonimmigrant visa, Mrs. Santos, which would allow your husband to come to the United States and wait here to complete the immigration process.”
“And what’s the procedure for that?” Frankie asked, picking up her cue.
“Since you already have a spousal petition on file, the K-3 visa application is pretty simple, even though certain circumstances can make Mr. Santos ineligible for it.”
“Like what?” I jumped in anxiously.
“Drug trafficking, having HIV/AIDS, practicing polygamy, advocating the overthrow of the Unites States government.”
“I don’t think we have to worry about any of that,” I responded confidently.
“Also submitting false statements and fraudulent documents, Mrs. Santos, which could not only end Mr. Santos’ chances of ever coming here, but could subject you to federal charges.”
Suddenly a chill shot up my spine. I thought about Frankie’s sworn affidavit that the relationship had been consummated. I thought about my signed statement as a third-party witness to their romantic relationship.
I thought about Sylvester Winfrey.
* * * * *
“You know, you really need to work on your poker face,” Frankie chided once we were outside Caitlin’s office.
“What?”
“You’re too old, too black and too gay to worry about every little thing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that since you’ve gone through everything you’ve gone through and gotten this far in life, you need to sit back and chill a bit. You’ve run the gauntlet, Junie. From here on in, it’s going to be a cakewalk.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You sat there in front of Caitlin stressed like a new widow with no inheritance.”
“I did not.”
“Yes you did. Thank God you don’t have to be there for the interview with the consular officers.”
“The consular officers?”
“Yeah, did you forget? I’ll have to go back down to Santo Domingo for an interview with officers from the US Embassy there. Étie and I, remember? They’ll put us in separate rooms and ask us all kinds of questions to make sure our stories jibe, including stories about our sexual intimacy.
“But you guys signed an affidavit about that.”
“Yeah, but they want to see us eye to eye talking about it. They want us to work up a sweat, see if we’re lying. Besides, it’s another way for Uncle Sam to get his rocks off.”
“Oh shit. That’s right.”
“Yep.”
“Oh shit.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how good Étie’s going to be at that.”
“Don’t underestimate your man, brother de
ar. He’ll be just fine. He’s smart and he’s cool. A lot cooler than you.”
“Yeah.”
“And besides, there’s one thing I can definitely attest to without any chance of contradiction.”
“What?”
“He is definitely packing.”
“Frankie,” I warned.
“Oh Christ, Junie. Allow a lascivious old diva a little levity.”
But I wasn’t much in levity mode. Not only was I still not completely over the idea of my sister grabbing my man’s pinga, I certainly was not ready to joke about it or make light of this very serious situation. One false move, one inconsistent statement, could blow everything.
“Okay, sorry, poor taste. But the reality is that they’re going to ask Étie and me some pretty personal shit. Caitlin made that clear from the get-go. So we might as well prepare ourselves for it. And believe me. Étie can handle it, even if you can’t.”
“I’m just not sure, Frankie.”
“Look, you don’t have to be sure. Étie and I have to be sure.”
“I just don’t know.”
“Do you want to get your man over here or not?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Well then, stop being such a fucking pussy.”
Frankie was right. That’s exactly what I was being. And to think I had the nerve to accuse Étie of that, of being a pussy when he had been nothing but brave, collected and unshakable throughout this entire ordeal.
Still, I must confess. Frankie had correctly clocked me. There was always going to be a certain nervousness, a certain uneasiness about this rock-strewn, muddied, potholed odyssey toward our goal of getting Étie here, at my side, in our home, in my arms, in America.
* * * * *
Étie and I spoke on the phone daily. I was able to get a nice deal with Vonage so that I could have unlimited international minutes to the Dominican Republic for one flat fee. The delicacy of the inevitable interview sessions he and Frankie would have to endure was, true to Frankie’s acute assessment, more emotionally challenging for me than for either one of them. I was like the father-to-be in the waiting room, attacked by indescribable anxiety, sweating in agony, in need of sedatives and painkillers to ease my mind’s spastic contractions, desperate for a psychological epidural while my spouse bravely endured the pain of real labor.
Aching For It Page 6