Unashamed (23 page)

Our sexual relationship faded after that conversation and instantly we became platonic.

Within the week, Charlene asked for my company. We too had become friends, but I’m sure she still had hope of another sexual experience, minus the drunken fall we took out of the shower and the hangover that followed.

She drove me to a gas station with a donut shop built within the service area. We sat at a back corner table with our pastries and coffee to chat. She asked what was going on with Mandy, how I came to Georgia, how Doug and Patty became part of my life, and how I handled things back home.

Whatever she wanted to know was explained to include my version of falling out of the shower. We chuckled about the sound of the curtain ripping from the rod and how the shampoos and soaps went flying across the bathroom. Charlene’s laugh was hearty and loud, but I loved making her cackle because it threw me into hysterics. She was good for my soul.

The next thing you know the coffee kicked in and we were on a caffeine high. My objective was to make her piss in her pants with stories that make you want to slap your mama.

“So, this couple must have been wealthy because they gave us fake names, but who cares, right? They were so fucking rich I nearly shit my pants when Doug and I walked into their house. There were big game heads mounted high into the cathedral ceilings. I’m not talking about five, I’m guessing about thirty! Girl, it was like moose heads and wild boar and shit!”

“Where was Patty?” she asked to get the story straight.

“I don’t think I was with her yet. Anyway, we are in the Jacuzzi, which by the way was connected to a pool that had a waterfall, and the husband starts kissing up on Doug.”

“Wait, he
is
straight, right?” she interjected. She held the coffee cup to her mouth, but she was too involved in the story to actually take a sip.

“Totally. And you should have seen the look on his poor face. So me and the dude’s wife, a hot redheaded totally fuckable mom, rush over to rescue him, and we start having a foursome in the Jacuzzi. Then the wife says we should take this to the bedroom, so we go back into the mansion and start doing it. Imagine: the wife sits on Doug’s face, the husband starts sucking him off, and I’m bored like a motherfucker, so I participate as little as possible by giving the burly husband a hand job.”

“No, you did not!” Her eyes widened with the steaming coffee cup still in front of her face.

“Yes, girl. They were rich and we were hoping to get something out of it, shit. So Douglas gets a little overzealous and bites the chick’s clit too hard…”

“Oh shit! I fucking hate that!” She set the cup down on the table and sat back in her chair with a grimace.

“I know, right? So I rush over, start eating her out, and make her cum. Then I’m like, fuck, how do I get out of this? I don’t want to continue. So I told the mother fuckers I started my period. Nobody was banging me that night.”

Charlene laughed and refilled our coffee cups. “You are crazy.”

“Char, it gets worse. The couple wanted to see us again. They told Doug that they wanted to find another couple to take to Africa for a month to go big game hunting. Let me break this shit down, an all-expense-paid, thirty-day vacation… Vay-cay-shon, you hear me? To mother fuckin’ Af-ree-ka!”

“Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack. But, I had to work that night so Doug went alone. He was so scared. He didn’t want to go without me, and I had to convince him that it would be all right because the wife would be there. ‘Just focus on her,’ I told him. Then Doug says to me, ‘What if the husband tries to suck my dick again?’

“With hands on my hips I yelled, ‘Bitch, you better do it for Africa!’”

Charlene roared with laughter. Her knee hit the bottom of the little café table and practically knocked two cups of hot coffee to the floor.

“I was chanting that shit like a mantra, ‘Af-ree-ka. Af-ree-ka.’ I was trying to convince my husband to lose his dignity for twenty fucking minutes so we could go on a vacation to the motherland.” I made random clicking noises and stood up to throw an imaginary spear.

“Holy shit! Did you go?”

“Do you see a bone in a bitch’s nose and a tan on my face? Hell no, we didn’t go! They fucking tricked him! When he got to the house the wife left, claiming she forgot she had an appointment.”

“Oh my God, so he was left alone with the burly guy?”

“Yes, and, of course, he got noodle dick and couldn’t do it. The poor baby, he said he tried to let the guy suck him off for Africa, but he couldn’t do it. I mean, he is straight, but he gave it the good old college try, God bless his heart.” I giggled as I reminisced.

“I can’t even imagine what was going through his mind.”

“I know, right? I don’t blame him. The guy was hairy and kind of fat. I wouldn’t want to have a first time gay experience with a dude like that. He told me it was like having a hairy gorilla on his noodle dick.” Both of us roared in laughter before getting up to take a piss break.

Charlene intensively listened to every word that came out of my mouth in the corner of that gas station. We were there for hours. She laughed at every detail I sensationalized while we continued to fill our cups with more caffeine. As the stories continued, she became more amazed with my life.

“You crushed the man’s balls with your stripper shoe? I can’t believe he gave you forty bucks for that.” The lights above the gas pumps automatically turned on as the sun began to set. The customers came and went. The day cashier clocked out as a new one rang up the next customer.

“She left you at the bar and took the pizza! How the hell did she drive drunk on a motorcycle and carry the god dammed box?” A fresh pot of coffee brewed at the drink station while a man outside smoked a pipe just beyond the window where Charlene sat.

“…home invasions and prostituting yourself, man, you sure do have some stories.” A mother pushed her stroller into the ladies room while two other women sat at a table behind me to eat a donut. Neither woman should have indulged.

“How did you get the tranny’s purse out of the bar without anyone noticing? Wait, was that the same place Zelda threw her pussy at you?” A group of kids, who were too young to smoke, lit cigarettes near their car. An older customer walked over to yell at them for smoking near the pumps. Then he walked to the register to yell at the clerk for not paying attention. The cashier was apologetic and, when the gentleman left, she wrote and posted a sign that reminded patrons to not smoke near the pumps. Then she busied herself with cleaning the drink station for the fifth time.

“You should write a book.”

“Huh? Oh yeah, Doug tells me that shit all the time.” I looked away from the cashier spraying cleaner on the counter to my coffee, which Charlene refilled.

“No, really, have you ever thought about it? You have some crazy stories, girl.”

“I joke about writing one all the time, but, come on, who wants to read about the shit I’ve done?” I ripped open two sugar packets and dumped the contents into my cup.

“I’d buy it. You know we’ve been here for almost six hours? I have been dying laughing this whole time…I’d buy your book. You should write it. Make sure you write how the shampoo bottle flew across that bathroom!” Charlene could barely contain herself; she giggled through her words before she finished the sentence. I laughed when recalling our shared memory.

“Well, it gets worse. I got fucked-up shit that I haven’t even told you yet. Complicated shit that I couldn’t imagine writing about…did I tell you I boned Jill?” I interrupted myself.

“No, you did not. What happened?” Charlene snapped.

“If I put this fucking story in the book, I’ll have a chaplain’s assistant putting a bounty on my head.” I stirred creamer into my cup.

Charlene sipped her coffee and tightened her face when she realized there wasn’t enough sugar in it. “She is uptight. Frigid in the bedroom, that’s what Kathrin told me.” She opened another packet of sugar, dumped it in and retested it to verify it.

“She was right, stiff as a board. Had her legs straight as an arrow, but that isn’t all. Put it this way, lizard-tongue kisses, of which I couldn’t get the onion taste out of my mouth for three days, and an Amazon deep jungle bush that queefed during the entire sexual experience!”

Charlene threw her head back, half in shock, half in laughter. “Oh, are you shitting me?”

“That’s what the fuck I said! The whole…time! How can you not feel that? My hair was puffing away from my face every fifteen seconds.”

“Oh, Jesus. Well, Jill and Kathrin aren’t serious, but I won’t say anything…as long as you put it in the book.” Her face lit up as she smiled from ear to ear. “Come on, Emma, do it for Africa!” Both of us roared as patrons of the donut shop turned to see what the commotion was about.

Embarrassed, we finally removed our crumpled mound of sugar packets from the table and called it a night. As Charlene drove me back to the barracks, my mind raced over the profound idea that I could potentially help others by telling my fucked-up life stories.

Figuring out my sexual identity was not an easy journey, and surely through the laughter of my adventures, someone could relate and benefit. It’s not easy being gay.

Someone once told me that, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it must be a fucking duck. This was my holy shit moment. It gave me the confirmation I needed to come out of the closet for the third time.

Chapter 13

Strangely empowered with both confidence and clarity, I called each family member to tell them that I was a lesbian. I paced alone outside of the barracks at Fort Gordon, Georgia, as the phone rang. “I wanted you to hear it from the horse’s mouth, Dad,” I said as I lit a cigarette and paced the sidewalk surrounding the barracks.

“You’re not telling me anything I didn’t already know, Emma. You are more worried about it than I am,” he professed calmly.

My mother was a little less accepting. “Are you sure? It’s not right, Emma. It’s a sin,” she said, and cried.

My grandparents on both sides were in their late seventies at the time and took it surprisingly well. The reason this was surprising was that my mother’s gene pool is rich with active evangelists or ministers of the word of God. In fact, my maternal grandfather was a retired Pentecostal preacher when I made that coming out phone call and my aunt, an active minister.

My grandfather, whom I deeply respect on many levels, reminded me, “You know the Bible and what it says. I am not the judge, the Father is. I still love you.”

When I was finished coming out to everyone, I called my sister. After I’d told her their general reactions, she asked, “Did you tell Doug yet?”

“Well, he knows, I’m sure, but I have not officially come out of the closet to him. God, I haven’t figured that part out yet. This was kind of spur of the moment.”

“Wow, I can’t believe you just called everyone out of the blue like that.”

“It’s not out of the blue for me. I’ve been dealing with this for years, you know.”

“I know. Are you okay?”

“I’m good, just tired. Well, to be honest, I’m not sure how I feel right now. I think I just want to chill.”

“Well, call me back if you need to talk.”

I hung up the cell phone and continued to pace while I smoked another cigarette. It was late and the streetlamps attracted swarms of bugs. I watched them swirl and bounce around each other, completely disoriented.

I couldn’t relax. My thoughts circled my head like the moths in the light. I finally sat on the curb to smoke one cigarette after the other as I shut off my phone and didn’t get up until my throat hurt from smoking too much. Eventually, I went to bed tormented between deep thoughts and numbness.

The next day I called Mandy after classes. “I came out of the closet to my family last night. I’ve done it now. There is no turning back at this point, Mandeesa. How did you come out?” I asked.

“I never did, really. I just dated women. My family never asked either. I don’t have a coming out story, girl.”

“Well, I have, like, three of them, and they all suck. Technically four, if you count when I hung up on my mom. You can have one of mine.”

We said our goodbyes and ended the call.

My search for something to write on began the moment we ended the call. It was time to tell my story.

An unused yellow legal pad and a pen that only worked half the time came of my feverish searching. My first written line was an attempt at being a smart ass:
Ode to the mighty dry hump; the godsend to any little girl’s clitoral repertoire.

About twelve handwritten pages into the story, Zelda phoned. I had to step outside to get reception. “I am going to write a book,” I told her.

“About what?” Zelda asked.

“My life. Check this out. This is the first line.” I read it to her and waited for a response, you know a giggle or something, anything.

“What the hell does that mean?” Her self-proclaimed lack of education was apparent.

She once yelled at me when I said I was “humble” about my artwork. She screamed at me to get off my high horse and called me vain. I tried to explain what the word meant, but she yelled even harder for treating her like she was an idiot. It took much restraint to remind myself that she was phenomenal in bed and was willing to show me her pussy at the club; otherwise, I would have told that dumb bitch to kick rocks.

“What do you mean, which part, Zelda?”

“That’s not funny. What’s an ode? I don’t get it. I heard ‘dry hump’ and ‘clit.’”

“Forget it. The point is I’m writing a book.”

“For what? Listen, I called because I got tickets to come and see you with the money I won.”

“Why don’t you pay your bills off first, and then come see me?”

“I did.”

“No, Zelda, I mean like pay three months in advance so you don’t have to worry for a while.”

Our conversation seamlessly blended from being responsible with her money to something vulgar and sexual.

Within minutes of finally hanging up, Private Marche, my easy listening station, text messaged me her request to stay the weekend. She was a welcome relief from everything that was going on in my life. By the time she arrived on Friday evening, I was well into thirty handwritten pages of an autobiography. She encouraged me to use her computer for the next week to help the creative process.

That’s all I needed to become dedicated to the cause. My butt was glued to the wooden chair in my room, which was laden with several pillows and two blankets. I became a recluse, perfectly content listening to the same song on repeat for six and a half hours. My breaks were utilized to urinate and perform a deep groin stretch when my ass went numb. Food was delivered and eaten as I typed and stared at the blinking cursor on the screen. The focus was pure and somewhat animalistic. Like how a lioness must become when she zeroes in on her kill at a watering hole.

My story didn’t need to be told; it
had
to be told. I felt compelled and convinced this book was my calling.

Unbeknownst to me, a week had passed by the time Marche visited again. Excitedly, we scrolled through pages of text to exploit the work I had been committed to while she was training.

“Can I read it?” she asked. Her interest made me proud as she read my unedited draft. Her facial expressions morphed through each emotion. She giggled out loud a few times, smirked a lot, and then her face went serious before she finally finished with a soft sigh. “It’s good. I want to read more. It kind of made me horny.”

With laughter and delight, I bounced on the corner of the bed. “Would you buy it?”

“Yes, I’d buy it.” She swirled around in the shitty computer chair to face me.

“Good. So, you’re horny, huh? Maybe we can fix that.” She caught my suggestion without hesitation. Marche was becoming less timid with each sexual encounter. The dynamic was certainly getting stronger, but the chemistry with Zelda far surpassed what Marche was able to bring.

Infatuation is an understatement when it came to Zelda. It was more like one hundred percent lust. Her visit was less than memorable, but we shared some good times before her return to Vegas. Her presence lingered beyond her stay and became a nuisance to my friendships. She was the topic of every conversation because I was still in heat, a Zelda-heat, days after she left. Mandy and Marche suffered through each idolizing speech about her with glazed, disinterested eyes.

In a last-ditch effort to gain my undivided attention, Marche asked me to take her out for her twenty-first birthday.

Private Marche, try as she might, could not match the heavy drinking standards to which Mandy and I were accustomed. Her attempts to match our shots ended in a parking lot vomiting session as we waited for our cab to arrive.

She crawled onto my lap and rested her head on my shoulder as the driver shot me a warning look from the rearview mirror. I rubbed her back, occasionally kissed her forehead, and hummed a song the entire trip back to the barracks. She apologized the next morning on the phone and was quite upset that the last night we shared together was wasted in a drunken stupor. “I just wanted to be with you one more time before I went back to Illinois.” Her voice was tired and scratching at my ear through the phone.

“You had fun, right? That’s what twenty-first birthdays are for!”

I heard a smile through her attempts to lick her lips. “I really did. I had so much fun with you, thank you. I just…wanted to be with you and I fucked it up.”

“Aw, I’ll miss you, Squishy. Remember to go forth and be bold! Don’t let any more women walk all over you.”

Marche laughed at the nickname. “Got it. I’ll miss you too.”

We said our goodbyes and Private Marche returned to her home state the next afternoon.

We’d met at a crossroads where I needed her as much as she needed me to teach her independence. Giving her advice was easy. Following my own words of wisdom would prove to be more challenging.