Decadence

by Monique Miller

  I sat near Chris that day, a little boy who was only three months older than me, a little boy who I shared my toy with that I’d had in my pocket that day. We’ve known one another for over twenty years. Had one another’s backs when no one else had ours.

  And now this. Now I was feeling something I shouldn’t be feeling. I couldn’t believe my own nerve.

  I got up and went to the bathroom. Ran the hot water for a shower. Ready to immerse myself under heat and moisture. Let it wash away these feelings I couldn’t shake. Clear my head. Clear all the excess of the last few hours from my flesh.

  I wish I could be the old me again. The me from years ago. The me who only wanted to be with one man. The me who wanted a family, wanted to be a mother, wanted to be a good wife, wanted nothing more than to come home from work and be loved and give it in return. I avoided my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t want to look at the version of me I’d see in it right now.

  The hot water was welcome, felt great on my skin. I let the steam obliterate the walls I was surrounded by so that all I saw was a mist, like the kind that surrounds you in a dream.

  I didn’t hear the door open, didn’t know anybody else had come into the bathroom until the shower curtain was being pulled aside. I hesitated to turn and see who it was, but I felt them, knew who it was before I could bother to look.

  I felt him close in on me, start to touch me. I hated myself that I wanted him to touch me. I hated myself because I didn’t even want to bat his hand away.

  We said nothing to one another, just looked at one another through the haze of steam from the hot water. I didn’t want to say anything to him. I wasn’t sure of what I wanted in the first place. Really, honestly, there wasn’t anything to say at all.

  He grabbed the shampoo from the top shelf in the corner of the shower wall. Got a good bit of the gel in his hands. Started massaging that through my hair and onto my scalp. His heavy masculine hands felt good working the lather through my hair and on my skin. He made sure he had all of it rinsed, and then he repeated the process. Got the loofah, got it nice and sudsy, washed me from head to toe. Got the towel and did the same to me. Washed me as he’d done before. Washed me in silence. Washed me with sorrow in his eyes for more than I knew he’d been letting on. He wasn’t telling me everything. No one, no matter how well or how long you knew them, no one told you everything.

  He washed himself. I stayed and watched as he did. I stayed and remembered who we used to be and who we’d become.

  Our parents had struggled. Our grandparents had done the same. The people before us had done their best to make sure that we’d be the best, that we’d have it easier than they did.

  Now look at us. I didn’t even know how to define us.

  Chris had been one of the few non-black kids that lived in our neighborhood growing up. His mother’s parents had grown up in around our way and that was where she’d ended up. Then she’d gotten out. Left. Married. Gotten pregnant with Chris. Only two years after he’d been born she’d shown up on her parents’ doorsteps again with a toddler in her arms and bruises all over her face and other body parts that no one could see. Suburbia only looked better, gleamed shinier and brighter from the outside. Domestic violence lived on that side of town as well. Just as many crack heads lived behind those big pretty houses as they did in the hood. It was just that the people who lived in suburbia knew how to cover up their badness, their meanness, their mistakes and their failures better than those in the hoods, the ghettos, those that crossed the other side of the invisible line that separated those two worlds. I found that out myself years later. Chris’s mother and father let her back in as she started waitressing at a diner at night and took classes during the day. She’d been determined to have a better life with her husband and child the first time around, but the second time around she’d been determined to cultivate a better future for herself, set an example for her son, teach him to build his life from the ground up and take care of himself and not to expect it from anyone else. That was what she’d done and that was what she’d passed on to him.

  But shit happens. Other people come into your life and swap one thing for another. They change your outlook, the caliber of your dreams, reshape your nightmares. Chris had tried to be the best, I’d seen it for myself, but he’d gotten sidetracked, as I’d gotten sidetracked. We all got sidetracked from time to time.

  I think of my parents. Two people who fought like cats and dogs. Two people who should’ve gotten a divorce, but were determined to stay together because they didn’t want a divorce. Two people that didn’t understand that sometimes it was better to let some things go, instead of holding onto something that you shouldn’t strain the life out of. Love and hate and lived in that union. Love and hate lived side by side at times. Love and hate produced babies and made homes. There was sometimes more love and hate under one roof than there seemed to be in the whole world.

  I still remember the days when Popsicles were twenty-five cents a piece from the corner store and people froze Kool-Aid in their freezers and sold them to the neighborhood kids. Nobody was worried about getting sued. People just wanted to make a dollar bill out of the few pennies rattling around in their pockets. I remembered clotheslines in backyards, an old sewing machine in the corner of our kitchen, noise and laughter and old furniture that needed replacing and TV sets with no remotes and antennas with aluminum foil wrapped around their base. There’d been days with no air conditioners and nights with box fans in the windows that let in cool air and mosquitoes. During those days I dreamt of something better. I hadn’t a clue that those would be the days I’d miss. I had no idea of how laughter could transform and evolve into something else altogether. I had no idea of how much my world could change and drag me along for a ride that felt so unfamiliar I woke up on some days wondering who I was.

  Now we were grownups. We’d wished to be grownups when we still had time to be kids, carefree and without a worry in the world. We were where we’d wanted to be, where we thought we’d wanted to be. Always used to sing that same song about When I grow up, not knowing what it really meant.

  We were playing with thousands, millions of dollars like we used to play with Monopoly money. We went to court, went to work, we tried our best to take care of what we’d created in our lives, the responsibilities that shaped our existence. We were playing with all that money when not so long ago our parents had struggled to keep their electricity on and the water running. There used to be days when they wondered how they were going to put food on the table. Now we spent that same amount of money they’d been struggling to make for the month in a day sometimes.

  Things had changed. The world was different.

  We had our own version of fun now, one I couldn’t have imagined if I’d tried.

  Chris and I dried one another off in silence. It wasn’t comfortable or uncomfortable, but we were two people who’d known one another for what seemed like forever. Had loved one another forever and we had a familiarity that couldn’t be denied no matter what else lay between us unsaid. Sometimes the silences we shared were just silences, no more or less.

  His face was a mask of concentration, his hands busy with the towel drying my hair as I faced him. Noticed his flesh and blood late night/early morning wood pointing directly at me. A tool that could do a lot of damage, but seemed tame at the moment. Then again, a lot of things seemed tame the moment before they struck.

  That part of his anatomy grazed me more than once and it felt like I was feeling it for the first time every single time it touched me. Sent electricity up and down my spine.

  He hadn’t fucked me. Hadn’t loved me. Hadn’t done certain things he’d always done to me. I couldn’t shake my unease on the matter. Couldn’t shake certain thoughts from running through my head.

  The door creaked open just as we finished up and our eyes met the eyes of another, of a girl who was running in on our territory. A few hours ago I felt as if I could’ve fallen in love with her. Right now, I hated h
er. Love and hate took up residence in the mind and it was hard to exchange the two, one for another. Sometimes you just had to let them cohabitate.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked timidly. It must’ve been the looks on our faces when she’d walked in that had made her ask that question.

  “Everything's fine.” Chris answers for us. Nothing is being given away in his voice. I can't read him, therefore I know the stranger before us with the beautiful doe shaped brown eyes can't possibly know what he's thinking either.

  Candice has the sheet wrapped around her, hiding all that we've already seen and experienced. After the orgasms we all try to cover up something, find our little hiding places once the insatiable thirst that comes from seeking maximum pleasure wears off.

  “I just wanted to take a quick shower,” she says and looks down at Chris's hardness that is pointed towards me. It's hard for her to look away from it, I can tell, but she manages.

  “You're good,” I tell her. I also point her in the direction of an brand new unused toothbrush under the sink. Everything else I'm sure she'll manage to find without any problems.

  She looks so young without any makeup on her face. After she and Chris's last sex session a little over an hour ago she came into the bathroom, washed her face quickly, stayed in the bathroom for about five minutes before she went back into the room and collapsed on the bed again. Right now, she looks like a cute young girl with a cum and sweat stained black satin sheet wrapped around her. It looks wrong. I feel guilt. But all Chris and I do is move out of her way and let her have her few minutes of privacy.

  We go back into the bedroom and lay down on the soiled bed, remains of our lust splattered here and there as we lay on it all.

  The sheets can be washed, replaced if need be. We'll take another shower. We do our thing, clean up, and then later do it all over again. It's the cycle we're in. I'm almost afraid that I'll somehow get used to it. That I won't feel the strange pangs of guilt afterward.

  Chris and I lie next to one another, not speaking, even though there's so much I want to say to him, and there is so much to ask. We're close and yet there's a chasm between us.

  I touch him, feel the warmth of his chest, the beat of his heart. He takes my hand and kisses it. We're still us, but I want to ask him what is happening to us. What is this road we're going down. But there's still the silence that lays between us. Silence and stillness and secrets.

  Candice comes back into the room. I hadn't even heard when she shut the shower off, when the water stopped running.

  She lays next to Chris. Close. Too close. I don't like the way I'm feeling. Territorial. Jealousy. This is strange. This guilt and this jealousy feels wrong.

  She kisses him.

  I half expected her to come out of the shower looking and behaving sheepishly, wondering when we were going to take her back to the club to retrieve her car or maybe call a taxi for her. Instead, she looks as if she's feeling at home...right there with Chris.

  I don't like it. And I don't like the fact that I don't like it.

  They kiss, their tongues mingle and it looks sensual and romantic, like they've kissed that way so many times they're both used to it. I'm not used to feeling like the odd woman out in our own games. I feel like an intruder, and I can't figure out how to crash the party. Their party. I don't know what to think or how to feel anymore.

  Chris's hard on is still there, hasn't gone down, and he hasn't acknowledged it. For the first time that I can remember, he was hard and I hadn't immediately offered assistance. Hadn't even wanted to. It hadn't felt right.

  His pole jumps. That one eyed monster of his seeked a home in a female cave. I know him, know that part of him better than I know any man's. Even Scott.

  He sits up and says that he'll be right back. I'm not sure if he's talking to just one or both of us. He goes to the bathroom, I heard a drawer opening, and he comes back with a tube of lube. Candice has her back to him, doesn't see what he's holding, doesn't know what he's planning.

  But I do. I'm watching his every move.

  He stands over by Candice. She turns to him. His stance says that he is the ruler, he is back in Sir Christopher mode, he is the dominant.

  But when he speaks, his tone is much softer than that of his alter ego's.

  “Candice,” he addresses our little plaything that seems to be more than a plaything to him. I feel uneasy about all of this. “All fours. Now.”

  She obeys, but shifts into the position lazily, without urgency, but she's still game. I can tell. Still, she should've been punished for her nonchalant attitude. Only I'm not in a punishing mood; I'm don't want to be in character, only want to be lost in my own thoughts and want Chris there with me.

  He drops the lube on the bed beside her knees, holds his erection in his hand, guides that pole to her opening and eases in. They both moan. They both have on their pleasure faces. I'm the third wheel. I'm the third wheel as he eases in and out of her slow and sensuously.

  I'm the third wheel until he refers to me and says, “Leila, get a condom for me.”

  I oblige. Grudgingly so. But he doesn't know it. He's not paying me any attention.

  I hand him the condom. He opens it and takes out the rubber as he continues to penetrate her. Continues to ease that hardened python in and out of the little twenty-one year old who's joined us in bed.

  Then he eases out of her altogether. Unrolls that rubber over his length. Goes back inside her kitty, but this time he starts to play with that other hole. He spits, makes sure that glob of saliva hits his target, sinks into Candice's backdoor, makes sure her asshole swallows his spit. He pushes his thumb inside of her. Plays with that hole, then starts lubricating it with the over the counter warming KY Jelly. She doesn't look as if she's opposed to what he's doing, looks like she's so deep in ecstasy she doesn't care what he does, just doesn't want him to stop what he's doing right now.

  He takes all ten inches out of her kitty and guides it up to where a mound of spit and saliva have accumulated. He takes all of his ten inches and moves inside that other hole that he had to supply the lubrication for. He takes all of his ten inches and stretches that virgin backdoor until it's nonexistent, gone, only a cave for him to rest that aroused part of him that aims to break through and destroy.

  He goes slow at first. Her moans get louder, but she looks to be enjoying it. He picks up his pace, starts going faster, grabs onto her hips, plunges in deeper. Before she starts trying to get away, crawl away, trying to find an escape hatch from that madness that's threatening to tear her apart I move in. Those faces she's making of agony and bliss living in that one moment I take my position. Suck what needs to be sucked on her, lick what needs to be licked, rub and play with all that will quell her pain. Chris disappears and again, only she exists in my world. I only want the best for her. I only want her to cum. I want her to cum all over my fingers, I want those juices to rain down on me, I want to feel those walls moving around my fingers once she reaches her climax.

  I happen to look up at Chris as Candice screams, as he rocks her body. He's hellbent on destruction. Not so long ago he'd been looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing on the planet, like he would protect her from all harm. Now I see him for what he is. I see the male part of him that lives in all men. I see why they have the equipment between their legs that they have. They need it to carry out their mission. They need it to validate their quest. They need it for their own personal sources of destruction. Christopher's face tells the tale that no man needs to speak with his own words. Little boys want to blow up things, want to set things on fire, want to break and destroy the things most little girls think are pretty. Grown men aren't much different from their younger counterparts in that respect. The more beautiful the girl they find themselves in bed with, the deeper they want to plunge, the harder they want to pound, the more they want to hear them scream.

  I watch them, observe them, watch their pleasure, their frustration and their pain. I hold onto Candice as C
hris holds onto her. I pleasure Candice as Chris fucks his way to his own pleasure.

  She cums first. She explodes first. She cums screaming.

  Chris is pushed over the edge by her screams. Pushed and he falls. He falls and he cums.

  He cums screaming as well.

  ***

  It's nearly four in the morning and I'm in the kitchen drinking a cappuccino. The tub was filling up in the bathroom when I left the two of them in there. Candice was on a heap on the bed as Chris was tooling around in the bathroom.

  I'm in my robe that's silk and looks more like a kimono. I feel clean and tired. More than a little restless. Unsatisfied.

  I go back into the room after a while. I hear splashing coming from the bathroom. I peer in without making a sound.

  Chris is washing her the way he's washed me before as they talk to one another in hushed voices, as they smile and laugh together, with one another. And then I see something I shouldn't. I see something I wish I hadn't. I see them kiss. It's the kiss of lovers. It's a kiss where they close their eyes and touch and look like they want to melt into one another.

  I tell myself that it's nothing. I tell myself that they just met and they won't see one another again and this is just the heat of the moment, she's beautiful, and she represents freedom he probably forgot a long time ago. I tell myself all of this as I see him falling for a stranger and the truth is written all over his face.

  ***

  I'm in the kitchen again when he comes to me. Finds me. Finds me hiding. We still don't say anything to one another.