“Hmm-hm.”
“Go bring the comb and the oil for Granny. And don’t forget the brush. You just might decide to misbehave.”
She stayed between his legs when he was through with her hair, and they sat together watching a rerun of The Muppet Show, which he thought was one of the most brilliant TV comedies in recent history, along with Roc, Seinfeld, and The Tracey Ullman Show.
“Hey, Sylvia, you used to watch Sesame Street?”
“Yeah.”
“I have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Cookie Monster. What’s his story? I mean Sesame Street is educational TV for kids, right? Is he supposed to be like a special ed monster? Everybody else is articulate. Even Elmo, and he’s only five or so. But grown-ass Cookie has a vocabulary of like nine words and his grammar is all screwed up. ‘Me want now cookie eat.’ What the hell is that? Really now, what is his story? I mean everyone pretty much knows that Ernie and Bert are a gay couple, but what’s up with Cookie?”
“I used to ask the same question,” she replied, laughing. “And one day a girl in my class solved the problem. Her name was Shaquina—I’ll never forget. Her claim to fame was that her parents used to be Panthers. Now according to her, Cookie was an African monster, that’s why he didn’t speak English very well. Cause if you checked it out he was the darkest one on the show. But in Africa, she claimed—and she said it all earnest and Cicely Tyson—Cookie was the biggest star on Sesame Street … bigger than Big Bird, who only went over in America cause he was a blonde.”
“Right on!”
“You know what else I used to wonder about?” she asked, enjoying the silliness.
“What?”
“Rastas. Now … there’s a religious basis for locks, right? So what happens when a dread starts to lose his hair? Does God overlook that, or does it count toward his time in hell?”
“Okay, people who look alike,” he said. “Yaphet Kotto and Koko Taylor.”
“Morgan Freeman and Jimi Hendrix.”
“Snoop Dog and Chuck Berry.”
“Denzel Washington and Al Green—”
“No way—”
“Yes, way. Look at the cover of Let’s Stay Together. Trim up that afro …”
He was not convinced.
“Okay, top five rub-up songs of all times.”
“What’s that?”
“A grind song,” he replied, patting her head.
“Of all time?” she asked, turning around and crossing her legs. “No eras or decades or anything? Okay … ‘Let’s Get It On,’ Marvin Gaye; ‘Reasons,’ Earth, Wind and Fire; ‘Me and Mrs. Jones,’ Billy Paul; ‘For the Love of You’, Isley Brothers; and ‘Close the Door,’ Teddy Pendergrass. Let’s hear yours.”
“ ‘Distant Lover,’ Marvin Gaye; ‘Don’t Ask My Neighbor,’ the Emotions; ‘Sweet Thing,’ Chaka Khan … and I haffe draw for some reggae now … Dennis Brown, ‘Your Love’s Got a Hold on Me,’ and Bob Marley’s ‘Sun Is Shining.’ ”
“I didn’t know we were including reggae,” she said. “Okay, lemme replace ‘For the Love of You’ with ‘Night Nurse’ by Gregory Isaacs.”
“You should’ve said this at Club Rio,” he replied, narrowing his eyes.
She blew him a kiss. “Everything … as you like to say … in the fullness of time.”
They stayed up after midnight, yapping away like bunk mates at a sleep-away camp, chatting about everything and nothing, erupting without obvious provocation into the raucous laugh of Caribbean peasants and market hucksters—a hand-clapping, leg-flailing, foot-stomping, head-rocking, back-jerking laugh that crouched in their bellies and vaulted through their lips in the form of roars, whines, wails, and rumbles that would have been a true source of embarrassment in different company.
And as the night went on, after they were sure they could really talk about anything without embarrassing either themselves or each other, they ordered a full-house pizza and progressed to higher degrees of outlandishness, rolling on the floor, bouncing off the furniture, banging on the walls, punching the air with their fists, and contorting their faces in visages reminiscent of New Guinean masks.
They switched the brand of humor at will with the intuition that the other would make the transition, like Cuban Americans switching from Spanish to English, or Pippen dishing off blindly to Jordan.
And in the middle of this, as they were both thinking how wonderful it was to be with someone whose interests ranged from Robeson to Robespierre, RuPaul to Romare Bearden, Sylvia looked at Fire, who was down on all fours to illustrate a story about crawling under the school fence to see what he billed as the greatest kung-fu movie ever, The Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin, and fell in love, with a snap, like that.
As soon as it happened, she knew that he knew what she was feeling, that he understood the capacity of the cloud that was seeping out of her mouth and floating over his head, ready to burst and shower him with trust and tenderness and patience and understanding. For he stopped his story and looked up at her, and she could feel him reading her mind, could feel his fingers slipping between the folds of her brain, stretching them apart to view the feelings she had hidden there.
She sat there on the couch and watched him watching her in silence, then reached forward, held him by the chin and pulled him toward her, leaning back, opening her thighs—into whose embrace he fell, his body trembling, like hers, with need and expectation. The lights were on, and the television. They both wanted silence and darkness, but neither was willing to move, to pull away from the other’s yielding flesh. They began to chafe against each other, finding crevices and surfaces to move over and under and in between, creating heat like hands being rubbed together over a feast.
Her ears, her nose, her chin, her brows—he studied them, using his tongue as a blind man would a finger, gliding over them slowly … pausing … retracing … then moving forward only when he was sure that he could sketch them in detail from memory. She kissed him as he licked her, dabbing his face as if he’d been in a fight and her lips were a pair of cotton balls soaked in healing oil. She nuzzled his chin, licked his throat, and nibbled his ears before kissing him, consuming his lips hungrily, trailing her fingers through the curls at the back of his head. His tongue searched the walls of her mouth for the soaked-in memories of other men, other kisses, which he tried to cleanse away with hot saliva.
She opened his shirt, peeled it away, and began to lick his shoulders, following trails of salt to his armpits and discovering a musty sharpness like the smell of cloves. Then she took his nipples in her mouth and traced extravagant flourishes on his skin. He stood up and removed his shirt, his eyes twinkling like slices of lime in ginger beer. He had the body of a laborer. Muscular. And hard. His muscles were like crocodile backs in muddy water.
“Tell me,” he said, kneeling in front of her and undoing her dress, beginning at the hem, “how do you want me to love you?”
She’d never been asked this before. Had always thought she’d want this. But now she didn’t know what to say. Self-pleasure had become such a part of her because of the failings of men.
“Do anything you want,” she said. “Explore me … teach me about myself.”
She let out a gurgle when his hands touched her thighs, gliding steadily toward her hips, shoving before them a thin wave of flesh, which broke over her pelvis. He withdrew his palms to her knees then struck out again, continuing to massage her as he spoke.
“When you touch yourself,” he began, “what do you imagine?”
She closed her eyes. “I’m a three-hundred-year-old mahogany table … and I’m being polished, and the slightest scratch would ruin my value.” She licked her fingers and stroked her belly.
“Okay,” he whispered in her navel, “my tongue is a length of silk.”
He began with her toes, each one, separately, then worked his way over her instep, around her ankles, over her shins and calves to her knees. He used his hands to wax her breasts as he trailed kisses
up her thighs, oiled them with kisses, all the way up to the dampness where they lost a bit of their firmness and became soft, almost chewable—there, in the crevice where the smell of sweat, piss, and feminine lotions combined to make a powerful aphrodisiac. Insinuating his hands beneath her, he took the offer of her upthrust hips and rolled her panties beneath her pelvis. Waiting for him was his supper—what looked like a wet mango with a narrow gash where it had smacked the ground after falling from the tree. Nectar was pooled around the nick. He licked it.
“I like the way you taste,” he said as she freed herself into nakedness.
He immersed his face, smearing his cheeks, loving the wetness, inhaling the aroma, peeling away the flesh, exposing the melting pulp to his fervid breath, eating as much for his delight as hers.
As she bucked and trembled, he reached for his condoms, his tongue as fluid as a stream of water.
“Do you want to be inside me?” she asked.
He shook his head, pulled back her legs and tickled the rim of her anus, throwing a vault in her back, causing her limbs to stiffen.
“I want you inside me,” she grunted. “But I want to taste you. Will you let me taste you. Fire? Please say you’ll let me taste you …”
She kissed his torso as it passed her face, then gnawed at the hardness behind his fly, at once excited and afraid of the idea of penetration. She wanted to please him. The excitement came from this—the sweetness of surrender.
She undid his zipper with her teeth as she’d learned from movies, then leaned back a bit to appreciate the size of his wood, a sight as arresting as a macanudo clamped in the jaws of a child. She flicked her tongue over the tip as if it were the wheel of a lighter, then rubbed the whole length against her face, over her neck, marveling at its smoothness.
Tightening her lips like a vulva, and maneuvering her jaws to cushion her teeth, she placed a hand on his buttocks and drew him into her mouth, anticipating the fullness of having him all inside her. But he was too big. So she lavished her attention on the head, a scoop of guava sorbet—sucking it, lapping at it, using it to cool the muscles of her tired tongue.
“Let’s do it now,” she said as she found herself remembering Syd, as she often did while making love. “I’m worried that I might get uptight.” He undressed completely and took her to bed. She opened her legs when her skin touched the sea green sheets, and she reached for him, her palms upturned, calling him home.
He cupped her head and stroked her side and began to love her up, his bottom undulating fluidly like a fist directing a pen across a page, the movement subtle, the pressure slight, a grand expression of thought and feeling, like a poem or an essay, or a preliminary sketch for a painting. But still her skin broke out in beads of fear. She began to stiffen beneath him and she asked if he could hold her for a while.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She explained her anxiety.
“Do you know those stories about heroes slaying dragons?” he asked. She shook her head. “They’re metaphors for beating fear. You can’t keep running, Sylvia. You have to meet it head on and destroy it. Tonight, sweet girl, if you want, we can fight this one together. Come … come here … lie on top of me.”
She obeyed, hugging him tightly.
“Now,” he said, “whenever you’re ready, fit yourself around me. There’s no hurry, darling girl … we have all night.”
They lay there for a while, hugging, kissing, fondling, teasing. Then she reached between her buttocks and held him, guiding him to her wetness, feeling the displacement as he steered his way inside her, setting her shores a bit wider.
“See, it’s not so bad,” he said, kissing her face. “It’s not so bad.”
She smiled nervously, wincing as she sat upright with her knees on either side of him, her hands pinning his wrists to the bed.
“Now you must ride to meet your dragon,” he told her. “Go out there and hunt him down. Close your eyes and listen to me.”
She began to bear down on him with more of her weight, her waist stretching and compressing like an accordion, and he began to thrust back, filling her up, cocking his hips and dubbing her up, winding her like a clock. She let his wrists go and grabbed his hair.
“The dragon is near, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You can see him across the plain. Snorting. You can see his wings and the sun on his scales.”
“Yes.”
“So ride toward him … ride hard.”
She dug her heels into the mattress, arched her back, and snapped her hips, pricking him with arrows of sweat. Her moans becoming screams, she drew his hair tighter, holding him on a short rein.
“You can see him now … you’re up against him now … you can’t turn back …”
“No … no … but I’m scared.”
“Don’t worry, I’m with you. If you fall off your horse I will catch you. But you must slay the dragon.”
“Oh, fuck, my belly is burning.”
“That’s the dragon’s breath. Come on, Sylvia, you’re right on top of him now. I can tell. Take my sword and stab him—plunge it in his heart. Gather all your feelings and deal one deathblow. Stab him. Ram him. Jook the fucker now!”
She eased up and bore down with all her strength and the room turned white and began to spin, and her body was free from weight.
The doorbell chimed, as she floated toward his chest.
“Oh, no,” he said, “the pizza man is here.”
“Shit, what lousy timing.”
“Well, he’s not that bad. He could have come a few seconds earlier.”
“Forget him. I’m feeling too sweet to get up. Plus I want to hear you call my name when you tremble inside me.”
“I know, sweetness, but he’s probably some guy from Mexico who supports a whole family from tips. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“You’re right,” she said. She sliced her tongue between his thigh and his aching balls, which had not had release in over four months now.
The doorbell chimed again.
“Go,” he said. “Hurry. Don’t let the man wait like that.”
“Okay, Father Teresa,” she said with a smile. “I will now go and do God’s work.”
She threw on a T-shirt and went to get the door. He went to the kitchen for some water.
“Not too much of that,” she said, giggling. “Unless you’re prepared to work through cramps.”
He waved her away. She was still making funny faces when she pressed the buzzer to release the outer door. He headed for the bathroom to urinate, picking up his clothes along the way.
He stood over the toilet and removed the condom, which was fitting him loosely now, flapping about like the wing of a wounded bird. He held it up to the light to check for ruptures, filled it at the sink, checked again, then began to lose the rest of his erection as he considered the larger meaning of this sack—that there used to be a time when making love was about affirming life instead of defying death. He thought about his father. Wondered if he used them. They didn’t discuss that sort of thing. Private lives.
He dropped the condom in the toilet. Fuck, he thought, I don’t have another one. He hadn’t thought that sex would happen this soon. Now he’d have to go to the store. He could ask her—but no, he could not. Whatever she had was for her and the man—that is, if they used them. They’d better. This is fucked up.
And will she tell him about this? he wondered, as he pulled on his trousers. The urine had not come. And if so, what will it mean for them? What has it meant for her? What does it mean to me, all that has happened in these last few hours? Oh fuck! Phil! I forgot to take him his dinner. I didn’t even call. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
Would she understand, he wondered, noting the second toothbrush in the holder, if he told her that he was no longer in the mood? Would she take it personally, as some sort of affront to her womanhood, if he said that things had happened too quickly, and that he needed some time to think about what this means, and what,
ideally, he would like it to mean?
This is a dangerous space for me, he said to himself. Again he was in love with a woman who was involved with another man.
He looked at his face in the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet. Are you in love? You, with that whitish glaze on your cheeks. Are you in love?
I am.
How do you know this?
The smell of molasses. It’s everywhere.
There has to be more than that.
Lemme put it to you this way, I know that I’m in love with her because I know deep down in my heart that if she asked me to be her man right now I’d tell her yes.
Why?
Because I believe we’ve connected for a reason … I can give her a lot of what she needs …
Her voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
“Who is it?” she asked, inquiring by rote. Who else could it be but the pizza man?
“Lewis.”
Fire sat down on the toilet and held his head in his hands, prepared to lie for her if the man came inside and found him. But what could he say? How would he explain being shirtless in her apartment at—what time was it? He’d taken his watch off. He always did while making love as a rebellion against the idea that sex had objective dimensions.
“Oh … what are you doing here?” he heard her say. Her voice was poised between guilt and anger. “Why didn’t you call?”
“I was in the neighborhood … sort of … having some drinks … I think I might have had one too many. So I was wondering if I could stay the night.”
His voice was timid but taut, as if the meekness was taking effort.
Fire finished dressing quickly, but without panic. The man didn’t scare him. But if the man needed a bed, it wouldn’t be right to cause the man to be denied. A drunk driver is a danger to himself and others. And in any event … he just needed to go … to get away from this mix-up and bangarang.
“Who were you having drinks with?” She sounded genuinely curious.
“Why can’t you just open the door?” Lewis snapped.
“I didn’t know we were still speaking to each other. I still haven’t gotten over yesterday, y’know.”
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