Love the One You're With

  He sighed very heavily with a smile. “Yeah.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Lancelot,” he crooned. “And boy oh boy, did he like to do it a lot!”

  “A lot being …?”

  “Every day, sometimes twice a day.”

  “That is a lot. And how long did you two …”

  “We were both fifteen when we became … lovers. It lasted five years.”

  “You were high-school sweethearts.”

  “Yeah. And he had such a sweet heart—not to mention a sweet dick and a sweet ass.”

  “And you two would go buck wild in the truck?”

  “Uh-huh. Usually after he had football practice. He was a linebacker for Central State, and then with the Razorbacks at UA. I was a cheerleader at both schools. I’d cheer him on on the sports field—then cheer him on in the cornfield.”

  “How was it, going to a school like Central?” Embedded in my memory bank: that photo in my high-school history textbook of a bespectacled sister walking through a very hostile crowd of white youths, with one white girl shouting something at her.

  He knew what I was inquiring about; he considered it. “Let’s just say that the more things change …”

  I nodded. “Ah. And why did you two break up?”

  He heaved. “He said he saw how hard his father loved mine, and that he didn’t want to have that and lose it. But I think he really felt that if we continued, one of us would end up dying like his father.”

  “And what did his father die from?”

  “AIDS.”

  “Oh.”

  “My father is negative, and so are my mother and aunt Bette Jean. So, Uncle Blue contracted it from someone else. That’s probably another reason why my father was so devastated by his death. The betrayal …”

  “Have you spoken to Lance lately?”

  “I have. Just last week.”

  “Is he still in Little Rock?”

  “Yeah. Married to his other high-school sweetheart, who doesn’t know about him—so they say. He says he’s never been with a man since me, but … knowing how much he loved it … I can’t believe it. I just tell him … if he is, to be careful.”

  “And has your father found love again?”

  “He has. A brother just a few years younger than him. They’ve been together now for three years. They’re living in Phoenix.”

  “Did he divorce your mom?”

  “No.”

  “Is she still with your aunt Bette Jean?”

  “Yeah. They’re living together now.”

  “Well, they don’t have to be married anymore. I mean, the kids are all grown. And the secret is out.”

  “True. But they still love each other. Why get divorced?”

  “They’re not living as man and wife anymore.”

  “No, they aren’t. But that doesn’t mean they don’t feel like man and wife. All the property they own, the ties they have … it’d be better just to stay married. They took the ‘Till death do us part’ vow seriously. That’s the only way they plan to be divorced. And if Uncle Blue was still alive, Aunt Bette Jean wouldn’t have divorced him.”

  “Mmm … to think they all found each other and made this kind of … pact.”

  “It goes on more than people think. Especially in small big-city towns like mine.”

  “Did you ever find love again like you had with Lance?”

  “He was my first; you can never have love quite like that again. But … I think I’ve come close.” He peered at me. “And with others, dreamed that I could.”

  That made me tingle.

  He checked the lamb chops. He turned them over. “Those should take about fifteen more minutes. What do you say we make some music of our own?”

  He refilled our Kool-Aid jars. He shut off the stereo. We ventured over to his music station. He sat down at the keyboard.

  I noticed the stack of music sheets on the windowsill. “Did you study music in high school and college?”

  “Yeah.” He began to play Beethoven’s Ninth. “Did a few recitals. Even played for the mayor once.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. At his inauguration. I played for both the school chorus and choir.”

  “When did you start writing songs of your own?”

  “I was … twenty. Would you like to hear the very first Montee Simms composition?”

  “Sure.”

  The lyrics were … well, depressing:

  Sometimes I cry

  because I feel so all alone

  And sometimes I weep

  for I feel that I can’t go on

  And sometimes I wonder

  will you ever return

  And then I realize …

  There’ll be no more roses

  delivered to my door

  And you won’t ring my phone

  anymore

  And it’s all so unfair

  Sometimes I wish

  you were still there

  “So, whatcha think?” he asked when he was done.

  “You must’ve had the blues when you wrote that!”

  “Had the blues? I was the blues.”

  “Uh … Lance?”

  He nodded. “But I got over him. And I vowed to never write another song like that again. Once was enough!”

  And judging from the other selections he performed, he hadn’t. A bubble-gum-pop, up-tempo track, “I’m Not That Kind of Guy” does what very few (if any) songs do: extol the virtue of abstinence for males. I could see a New Kids on the Block clone taking it to number one, sending preteen girls into fits of frenzy.

  Then came “It’s a Miracle,” an inspirational tune. Its scope and the melismas sprinkled throughout make it a prime Whitney/Mariah or even Tramaine/Yolanda belter (he didn’t do a bad job himself).

  “This is the one I really want you to hear,” he admitted before going into song number three. It had a new jack vibe, very Jodeci-ish. But K-Ci couldn’t tear it up the way Montee did. Near the end, he even scatted.

  “Is it called ’Where Have You Been All My Life’?” I asked.

  He grinned. “That’s what it’s called.”

  “Who were you in love with when you wrote it?”

  “What makes you think I was in love when I wrote it?”

  “It has that feel.”

  “I wasn’t in love. I … I wrote it a few days ago.”

  He’s even written a song about me. I was blushing big time—and so was he.

  He ended the gushing. “Did you ever watch Name That Tune?”

  “I never missed it. That was my favorite game show.”

  “Me, too. Would you like to play?”

  “Sure. Do you have the game, or episodes of it on tape?”

  “Nah. All we need are these keys.” He tapped out a melody. “I’ll play, you guess.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  The catch, though, was that I wouldn’t receive any verbal clues. I did get to decide how many notes I’d receive. I always chose four—fewer would surely stump me but any more than that wouldn’t allow me the chance to really show him how deep my ocean of musical knowledge was.

  The first two were simple: “Higher Ground” and “Ain’t No Way.”

  The next four were a bit more challenging—“Guess Who I Saw Today?,” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “I Try,” and “Stuff Like That” (of course, he would sneak an Ashford & Simpson tune in there)—but I guessed them.

  Seven wasn’t a lucky number. I got my usual four notes. Nothing.

  Then he doubled that number of notes; nothing.

  Then he tripled them; still nothing.

  I recognized the music but couldn’t place the lyrics. So he played an entire verse.

  When I realized what it was, I harmonized the chorus with him: “I hope and pray that I will, but to-day I am still just a bill!”

  And we laughed so hard we were in tears.

  “That was the first song I ever learned how to play,” he revealed.

 
; “Really? For most people it’s ‘Chopsticks’ or ‘Happy Birthday.’”

  “After I saw that Schoolhouse Rock episode … it just stuck in my head. And I’d sit at the piano, trying to figure out the keys. After a week, I got it. I would sing it every day. It drove my family crazy.”

  “It’d drive me crazy, too.”

  “My mother started beggin’ me to start playin’ hymns again. I knew she’d had enough then. Hymns always rubbed her the wrong way.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “She … isn’t a religious person. She and my dad rejected the traditions of their families. Hers Baptist, his Catholic.”

  “So they didn’t bring you up to believe in God?”

  “Of course. They just told me to create that relationship outside of structured conventions. Don’t look for God in a church or a book some say He wrote; locate Him inside your heart. So we didn’t go to church and we never listened to gospel or spiritual music around the house—until I started buying records by the Winans and Walter Hawkins.”

  “She must’ve thought you were being converted.”

  “Brainwashed was the word she used. More than anybody, I loved to imitate Sam, and some of his best work was with the Soul Stirrers. I didn’t even know he fronted a gospel group. But I didn’t sing them when she was around. They brought back … bad memories for her.”

  “I’m sure she would’ve really flipped if you walked up in the house quoting Scripture.”

  “More like lapsed into a coma. The only Bible allowed in our house was Jet. You know if Black folks don’t read about it—whatever it is—in there, it ain’t true.”

  We cracked up.

  “But she and my dad … they were told God hated them. And things haven’t changed much since then. Folks still say that, but others try to temper their disdain for who you are with ‘God loves you, even though He is mad about what you do.’ Yeah, right. If God is mad at you for being gay, does that mean He’s half-mad at me for being bisexual? That don’t make no sense, and persecuting folks because of who they are and how they love don’t either.”

  “Is there a particular hymn you enjoyed singing?”

  He went right into “He Looked Beyond My Fault.” I joined him when he repeated the main verse a second time and we “battled” on the chorus, each trading licks and runs.

  He surrendered when I hit a Minnie Riperton octave. “Now, see, we could really have some church up in here. But it’s time to eat.”

  After washing up, I returned to find a card table draped with a blue velvet cloth, situated in the center of the room. He was placing an ocean-blue vase filled with lilies and daisies between two thin lighted white candles. Two places were set, one beside the other. A bottle of red wine was opened. The room light was off; the ceiling fan above the futon lit (it had a variety of colored bulbs in its five sockets, creating a rainbowlike glow).

  He stood by one of the pulled-out chairs. “Please sit.” I did.

  He made our plates (the way smoke escaped from them, you’d think it was coming from a chimney). He sat them down.

  He filled our glasses. He settled in his chair.

  He clutched my left hand. He bowed his head; I followed suit.

  “To the Most Honorable, Glorious, and Gracious of All. We bow our heads at this moment, giving thanks for this meal, this time”—he squeezed my hand—“this fellowship, this life. Ah-men.”

  “Amen.”

  He tapped the remote on the table and the stereo began to play all five of Anita Baker’s CDs. The first song: “Caught Up in the Rapture.”

  Dinner was … well, one of the best … no, the fourth-best meal I’ve ever had (the other three having been prepared by my grandmother, mother, and aunt Ruth, in that order). The meat just crumbled (it didn’t fall) off the bone, the broccoli cream soup was stupendous, the succotash was even better than mine (I bet Pooquie and Junior would even give it a higher mark), and the corn bread actually tasted like bread dipped in corn batter. I couldn’t conversate while eating this meal—any questions or statements he made were all answered with mumbles of uh-huh, I agree, yes, and no.

  He soaked the dishes (I offered to help but he refused; after a feast like that, I’d do his dishes for a month) and we retired to the futon with slices of his Death by Chocolate cake. I’ve had it before in restaurants, but this actually tasted … deadly. Mouthwatering wouldn’t even begin to describe it …

  I was ready to pass out, but he had other ideas. He didn’t bother to place the dessert dishes in the sink; he put them on top of the video/book crate.

  “Mitch?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can I massage your feet?”

  “Huh?”

  “Can I massage your feet?”

  “Why do you want to do that?”

  “It’s somethin’ I love to do, remember? Like father … we’ve always had this thing for pretty feet.”

  “You’ve never seen my feet; how would you know if they’re pretty?”

  “Because, I can tell.”

  “How?”

  “You ask a lot of questions, don’tcha?”

  “Well … no one has ever asked if they could do that before.”

  “No one knew how.” He reached down. “May I?”

  I nodded yes.

  He had me sit up diagonally so my feet were hanging off the futon. He took off my right boot. He hesitated with the sock—I guess he was preparing himself. He pulled it off slowly, prolonging the unveiling. And when he saw the foot … the eyes bugged, the tongue rolled out, and he let out a joyous sigh.

  He cupped it with his left hand and analyzed it for a hot sixty seconds. He glanced up. “I’m never wrong.” His fingers walked across each piggy, from the smallest to the largest. “And, I’m a sucker for manicured toes.”

  As he rubbed and ribbed, kneaded and knuckled, I gave up my life story (between the many mmms and aahs). While the love affair with my gymnastics coach in high school was discussed in juicy detail, the love of my life wasn’t (he didn’t ask; I didn’t offer).

  I did disclose the reason we ran into each other in Manhattan last week.

  “I know who I’m gonna be hittin’ up for demo money,” he ribbed.

  “I haven’t gotten paid yet.”

  “You will soon.” He eyed me with concern. “That experience … that musta been hard to deal with.”

  “It was.”

  “You’ve probably heard it before, but you did do the right thing. The real question now is when are you going to return.”

  “When am I going to return? To what?”

  “To what you were placed on this earth to do.”

  “What makes you think I’m not doing that now?”

  “Because, you don’t talk about teaching—or singing, which, by the way, you also do very well—with the same passion you do writing.”

  I became a little defensive. “Teaching is something I always wanted to do.”

  “Wanting to do something and being called to do something are two very different things.”

  Yes, they are … “But I haven’t stopped writing.”

  “No, you haven’t, but it isn’t the same just freelancing. You don’t receive the same kind of reward like you do working on a publication whose mission you believe in. Hell, you’ll soon have a little seed money—you could start your own magazine.”

  Damn. Now how did he … “You know … that’s always been my ultimate goal.”

  “Well, nothing says you can’t do it.”

  No, it doesn’t.

  When he finished fondling my feet, he pulled off his blue, cranberry-dye-lined sweater (leaving on a crisp white undershirt that fit his frame nicely) and his shoes but not his gray thermal socks (“Trust me, I don’t have pretty feet”). I sat up on the sofa with my legs crossed as he lay across them, his back leaning on a pillow up against the armrest of the futon. I rested my hands on his chest, occasionally tapping or patting it. It was as if we had gotten into this position a million times before (w
ell, I had—with Pooquie).

  “How long have you known you’re bisexual?”

  His eyebrows rose. “How long have you known you weren’t?”

  “Uh … since I was six.”

  “Ditto. Having those feelings for both sexes … I thought everybody felt like that. I still do.”

  “You think we’re all born bisexual?”

  “I don’t know if we’re born anything. But I do feel that given how sexual human beings are, it’s silly to think one has to be either gay or straight.”

  Hmm … “Are you talking about identity, behavior, or both?”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “I think so. You may be oriented toward one sex, but because of societal pressure feel you have to be with the other. Just because a gay man sleeps with a woman and a lesbian sleeps with a man doesn’t mean who they are on the inside changes.”

  “Ah. But the fact that they can sleep with a person of the opposite sex … that tells me that even if they aren’t bisexual on the inside, they are on the outside. If one is oriented toward one thing, that doesn’t mean they can only express themselves sexually in one way. Sexual identity may be fixed, but sexual expression isn’t.”

  “And you like to express yourself sexually with both sexes …”

  “Sexually, emotionally, spiritually. Hay, I like chicks and dicks—and sometimes chicks with dicks.”

  “Chicks with dicks?”

  “Yeah. Some brothers are more chicky than the females.” He chuckled.

  “Do you normally refer to women as chicks?” He’d said it a few other times earlier in the day.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “It just seems a bit … old-fashioned.”

  “I’m an old-fashioned kinda guy.”

  “Old-fashioned as in sexist.”

  “What’s so sexist about calling women chicks?”

  “The term isn’t exactly endearing.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “I don’t use it to slight women. If I wanna insult a woman, I’d use—”

  I put my left thumb to his lips. “Don’t say it.”

  He puckered up; it made my fingers warm. “Why not say it? I heard your friends use it a hundred times last week. If there’s any word that shouldn’t be used as a term of endearment, it’s that one.”

  I’ve never used it in that manner, but … “Point well taken.”