Between Lovers (7 page)

“No. Just trying to understand.”

“You're going to put this in one of your books.”

“Stop saying that.”

“You always do. All of your books are about me.”

She reached back and pulled me on top of her backside, found my half-hard penis, rammed that deflating part of me in what was left of her wetness, whispered in a frantic tone, “Love me, baby. Help me get these crazy thoughts out of my head.”

And when we were done, she kept her back to me, her eyes to the wall.

I ran my fingers through the back of her hair, kissed the back of her neck before I told her, “You're so fucking beautiful.”

“I'm fat. Can't lose these last ten pounds no matter how much I diet, no matter how far I run. My hair is always too dry. Dandruff the size of Corn Flakes. I have to wax my lip every other Friday. And I'm too damn old to have pimples.”

“One pimple.”

“The size of Mt. Fucking Rushmore.”

“Give it a break. You know you're beautiful.”

“I'm a cross-eyed gerbil. Anyway, beauty hides faults. People are so busy looking at the wrappings of a package that they fail to see what's inside. Or what's not inside. Half of them don't care.”

The thoughts had been there before the dance. Her own fantasy rising to the top. But she had never been that close. Had never felt the warmth and softness and tenderness of a woman. Had never been teased by a woman until desire dampened her underwear.

“One of the big problems with sex is miscommunica tion,” the comedian says as he sips his beer, then sets the bottle on a bar stool near the mike stand. He's tall, dark, and bald. Has on a three-piece suit, one with a long, six-button coat, looking ghetto fabulous. Well dressed in a casual world. The women send laughs and wishful smiles up his way. He's under the spotlight, so I doubt if he can see beyond the second row. He goes on with his routine. “Men and women, we speak the same language, but we don't mean the same thing. Right men? Women, y‘all know what I'm talking about. Now you know André ain't gonna lie to ya, so all of this is coming from the real.”

André pauses and smiles down at the crowd of about two hundred people. I'm at a comedy club out in Walnut Creek, the ‘burbs that are about thirty minutes from Oakland. André's about fifteen minutes deep into a twenty-five-minute set, so the mixed crowd is already heated up. They're smiling back, at least half of them laughing already, anticipating something good.

So am I.

“Like we say we wanna make love all night. Brothas will promise that, won't they? Look at that sista nodding her head. Brought back some memories, huh? Brotha probably said”—he grabs his crotch and switches to a Barry White voice, brings the character to life and puts some old school pimp and new jack swagger in his motions—“ ‘Yeah baby, I'm gonna be knocking dem boots all night.' ”

A lot more laughter with me leading the pack.

“Now, all night, to a woman, that means ‘until the sun comes up.' That's all night. To a man that means ‘until the dick goes down.' ‘Cause that's all you gonna get tonight.”

The room explodes with laughter.

He keeps the crowd roaring. “Most men make love like a union worker.
Clock
in for fifteen minutes, then wanna take an eight-hour break.”

Another explosion. Some choke on their brews, a few slap the tops of their round black-topped tables along with their chuckles, some clap like André's a comical genius. Women sitting in the section underneath the Laurel and Hardy mural give non-stop hello, tell it like it ‘tis, raise candles, and send finger snaps.

He does more on dating, his ugly children routines, slips in a pretty creative one about Bush, calls his tax plan “reparations for the rich,” and gets a huge applause, which is an easy sell in this crowd. Then moves on and ranks on local rapper E-40 and his creative English.

André gets mega-laughs all the way down the line. He has the gestures and the light-hearted tone to make even the simplest routine go over. He closes his act by doing a musical spoof of Jesse “Playa Playa” Jackson singing a whacked version of Outkast's “Ms. Jackson.” Nothing like seeing Jesse apologizing for cheating and not using a condom, while first dancing the cabbage patch, then getting down and rolling his ass to the Tootsie roll.

At the end of his set, he leaves the stage to huge applause. The emcee high-fives my friend as they pass on the stairs, gets back on stage.

André left them wanting more. I slip through the darkness and catch him as soon as he breaks away from some chatty people.

“Whassup, frat?”

He turns and sees me. “Whassup, nigga!”

He gives me that frat handshake, then changes to a masculine handshake, the kind that looks more like a WWF challenge than ten years of friendship. “When you get here?”

“Rolled up in here right when you went on. Chilled out in the back.”

We snake around a waitress, dodge a few people, and make our way toward the bar.

I tell him, “You were actually funny this time.”

He dabs his forehead with a napkin. “ ‘Dem damn lights were cooking my ass. Had me sweating like a felon in a high-speed chase.”

I laugh.

He goes on, “So you thank I was funny?”

“Off the heezy.” I'm mocking his E-40 routine. “Did better than you did on
Comic View.”

“Niggas in Oakland recognize skills. Have to see me unedited to appreciate what I do.”

“Why does everybody on
Comic View
do jokes about fucking?”

“When the people stop laughing, people will stop doing jokes about fucking.”

We laugh, rag on each other for a few.

“Man, you should‘a had 'em brang you up front. Would‘a introduced you.”

“That's why I stayed in the shadows. Had a thing at Black Books Spring over in Vallejo. That was enough attention for one day.”

“We could‘a done did a book thing here.”

“Like these chain-smoking alcoholics read.”

People come up; everyone wants to touch him. He introduces me, and the people have blank looks in their eyes. Never heard of me. Here, I'm a ghost. This is his venue. He says a few things to a few people, and we snake through the crowd and move out to the café style lobby, a part of the club that has checkerboard floors, wooden ceiling fans, and pictures of every comedian from Charlie Chaplin to Jim Carrey on the walls. With the direct access to the bar and the kitchen, I'm inhaling everything from Bacardi to Coors, tacos to burgers. The doors are heavy enough so we can't really hear the show without being inside. It looks like this part of the club is a restaurant in the day, maybe a lunchtime spot for the people in Walnut Creek.

He asks, “Still running?”

“Always. Did the Culver City Marathon back in December.”

“How far that?”

“Twenty-six miles.”

“Shit. You crazy. Last time I traveled twenty-six miles I took luggage.”

We laugh.

I ask him, “Still teaching chemistry?”

“Man, you crazy? Hitting this full-time. It got so bad that teachers in L.A. Unified have to walk through metal detectors and they give up combat pay for dealing with those drive-by fools.”

“Combat pay? Is it that bad?”

“Like Vietnam.”

“You didn't go to Vietnam.”

“I saw Oliver Stone's movie. That was close enough.”

We get cut off when a group of women come over to the table and talk to André. His excited fans wearing sweaters, short dresses, high boots, and plenty of perfume.

My I-pager hums on my hip. It's Nicole. Wants to know where I am.

I use one finger to type her a message, push send.

When the fan club leaves, I turned to André and say, “You serious? Combat pay?”

“Yeah. Students in L.A. Unified shoot, stab, poison, and drown teachers every day.”

“Wild.”

“You couldn't pay me enough to sub in L.A.”

My I-pager hums. Again it's Nicole. Wants to know when I'll be back at the Waterfront.

I send her another message.

Some people measure time in minutes, some in hours. I measure time by missing Nicole. I do other things, try to maintain a full, non-reclusive life, but my time with her is all that matters.

Me and André talk some more. We haven't seen each other in a while. Both of us are out of L.A., used to do our thing at the Greek shows, used to hit all the parties at UCLA and Cal State Long Beach together. Now we pretty much live on the road, have to keep in touch the way the rest of the world does, via e-mail. Today we happen to be in the same city at the same time for a few hours.

A short woman comes over in full flirt mode. She's very nice looking. Long hair. Mixed to the bone. The kind of girl you see on BET. The only kind of black woman you ever see in front of the camera on BET. Her eyes are almost as tight as the dress she has on. She tells him, “You were funny.”

In the next few seconds she says she's up from Palm Springs, came up for a technology show in San Francisco at the convention center.

He asks, “So where your man?”

“Where's your woman?”

He smiles. She smiles too.

He says, “I'm downtown at the Hilton, if you wanna come by for the second show.”

She thinks a moment. A very short moment. “What time that second show start?”

“Soon as you walk in the door.”

“Does it last all night?”

“One way or the other.”

“Will I be laughing?”

“Not even a chuckle.”

Again she thinks a very short moment. “Write your room number down.”

“You need directions?”

“I know my way around.”

“What's your name?”

“Guess that would help. Toyomi Wilkins.”

“Toyota? Your momma named you after a car?”

“No.” She laughs so soft and sweet. “Toy-oh-me.”

“Pretty name for such a beautiful woman.”

She gets his info, gives him her pager number, then leaves, her hips moving in a hypnotic rhythm. We both make that
mmph
sound, the constipated noise men make when they see a beautiful woman.

I say to my friend, “Just like that?”

He nods. “Just like that. ‘Dey loves to laugh. This celebrity shit ain't no joke. I used to have to buy drinks and try to mack half the night. Now all I gotta do is show up and don't say nothing stupid.”

I say, “Toyomi has a nice ass.”

“She got booty, not ass.”

“What's the difference?”

“Twenty pounds,” he answers. “Ass equals booty plus twenty, gee.”

“True that to a Jenny Craig meeting.”

“Was that a weave?”

“Nah. Looked real to me.”

We talk about women, play catch-up for a few, and then we eventually talk about old friends down in Los Angeles. Mainly the people who were in my wedding. And Nicole.

He says, “You a better man than I am.”

“What you mean?”

“Most niggas would've beat her down. Or did an OJ.”

“That ain't me.”

“Man, look around the room. Women outnumber us nine-to-one.”

I nod, let him know that I understand what he's saying. “You should come by a book signing then. It's more like a hundred to one.”

“Man, I needs to change jobs. I'd rather meet a sister with a book in her hand than one with a drank in her hand. Goddamn codependent alcoholics drive a nigga crazy.”

At some point I tell him that Nicole wants me to meet her friend. Use him as my sounding board. Need to say it out loud to see how it rings. He shakes his head a thousand times.

He says, “Be careful.”

“I'm not scared of no woman.”

“A lot of niggas resting in the morgue used to say the same shit.”

I rock a bit, run my tongue over my teeth.

He goes on, “You better wear a bulletproof vest. This is real life, not all polite like that
Chasing Amy
movie.”

“What you mean?”

“Them girls be acting a fool. Some of ‘em anyway. Ain't no absolutes.”

“Educate me.”

“Man, I was in Atlanta, went by Kaya Club and Bistro to see Pru—you heard of Pru?”

“Yeah. Nicole loves her music.”

“Sister off the chains,” he says, then gets back to his story. “I was on the way out of Kaya, and this sista said hi to me, fine-ass girl, looked like Halle Berry with long legs. She smiled. I smiled back. Then the sista standing next to her grabbed her hair and yanked her ass through the crowd and out on Peachtree Street, screaming ‘Beeeeee-yitch! I know you ain't up in my face looking at no nigga.' ”

“You're joking?”

“Am I on stage? Jokey-joke time is over. Whooped her ass like she was a two-year-old.”

“What did you do?”

“Watched.”

“Watched?”

“She was with a sista who looked like Emmitt Smith in drag. I ain't trying to get beat down over some coochie I ain't never got.”

“Geesh. Yanked her by the hair?”

“Tore that weave out her head. She went from looking like Halle Berry to Chuck Berry.”

We double over laughing.

“What did the girl do when her weave got yanked out?”

“Stuck that horse hair in her purse and followed Emmitt to the car.”

We laugh so hard people passing by look at us and crack up too.

“Then”—he wheezes, coughs, wipes a tear from his eye—“then, check it out, I was up here last summer, over on Piedmont, and when we stepped out the restaurant, man, you should‘a seen it, two female bus drivers were going at it in the middle of the street fighting over a sista.”