Black Silk (38 page)

They inhaled and as their bodies sank deeper down, below, into that unknowable nearness of man-woman, a sly, crushing feeling
rose to meet the night music lingering into the room. The present moment evaded. Nothing. Everything. Eyes, spirit, merged.
Their kisses and fervent declarations multiplied to the sway of their drenched arched forms and made even vulnerability a
sweet remainder. Her femininity had nurtured him, enveloped him, and commanded a power worthy of worship.

For the first time in his life Cam felt a oneness with another human being that belied definition. It soothed him and he found
himself floating, a white cast of light upon an ebullient blue tide.

He inhaled, felt a shudder, a gentle tapping of delicate white birds. They lit him up and took him away.

_________________

by Jennifer Jazz

It was Yvette who hipped me to Starchild—of all people, Yvette, the witch, but I was desperate.

“Ask her!” I prodded Shytiq when I overheard him chatting with her on the phone and Shytiq, sadistic sunnuvabitch that he
was, blew me off, pretending not to hear. Gay and horny as the best of them, homeboy could be such a straitlaced prude when
it came to me getting my groove on.

“What do you need to go to a dyke bar for?” he groaned after he’d hung up.

“That’s fucked up, Shy,” I complained with more attitude than usual. Shy and I were not the kind of roommates who lived according
to rules and schedules. We did our laundry together, shared soap, and, when we had nothing to do, would lounge side by side
in bed and watch TV. He knew what he had to do to keep his best friend.

A few days later he called Yvette and passed me the phone, and even though I’d heard through the grapevine that Yvette considered
me a “flake,” I overlooked my mutual distaste for her and suggested she take me with her to a woman’s club some night. There
was some hemming and hawing. After all, Yvette was a career lesbian and arrogant as hell about it and I was just single and
bored with the men I’d met. Still, acting like the gatekeeper to a world too real for a flake like me, Yvette halfheartedly
agreed to an outing with me the next night.

Being that I lived in Harlem, it was a long trip via the subway to the street in Brooklyn where we met, but I would’ve traveled
to Timbuktu, I was in such heat. Yvette had driven, and when she stepped out of her car she was wearing the usual smirk on
her face. With the same condescension, she led me into a storefront with blacked-out windows past a monster-size doorwoman
who stamped our hands with fluorescent stars as we entered a crowded room of throbbing black and Latin women. I might as well
have landed on another planet, I was so awestruck. Unfortunately, Yvette kept me cornered at the bar over my Scotch and soda
and her beer, interrogating me about whether I was coming out or not. Nothing I said seemed to satisfy her. It was only out
of courtesy that I didn’t drift off to explore the red-lit hallways and rooms of the club. I felt like a child in an amusement
park. Checking out every woman who passed, I barely paid attention to Yvette’s bitter tips on how to pick one up and didn’t
notice that in her own frigid way, the witch was flirting with me.

I returned to Starchild a couple of weeks later by myself. It was a relief to be alone. I started at the bar, got myself a
drink, and found a wall to lean on by the dance floor. There was a constant stream of couples holding hands as they made their
way into the center of the action. Occasionally a woman would make eye contact with me, and I’d realize the part of myself
I considered odd or ugly was now my most electric asset. It was as if I’d found a home I’d been lost from my entire life.
After a few drinks the novelty wore off a little or at least enough for me to dance. There was no one I was attracted to enough
to leave my shadow, but it felt sexy just being in the midst of so many out-of-control, sweaty sisters.

Starchild became my regular spot. I’d head there after work almost every Friday, making the acquaintance of one of the bartenders
and a friendly enough sister who’d check my shoulder bag, but that was the extent to which I socialized when I was there—then
enter Maya.

She was the dirty fantasy in my head so suddenly real I thought someone had slipped some drug in my drink. Let me describe
the moment: I was soaked with sweat, stomping my heels to an insane rhythm around two
A.M.
The DJ was deep inside the acid-house trance funk thing. I don’t know what it was, but it felt sublime. The ladies were bouncing,
howling, grinding themselves into oblivion. The club was a big, sapphic orgy; then a set of such haunting eyes surfaced out
of the fog, I did a double take, but there she was, studying me, something in her stare that signified sensitivity, kindness,
compassion. Acting coy, but not too coy to tug me out of hiding into the heart of the action, Maya teased me up close with
her perfect tits and tiny waist that swerved into hips she gyrated to maximum effect.

“Can we go somewhere? I feel light-headed,” I gasped, really, truly dizzy.

Without hesitating, she took my hand and walked me to a windowsill, where we sat arm in arm. Whenever she’d put her lips to
my ear, the heat of her breath would send shivers through me; her voice had a breathless quality as if she were talking while
coming.

“God, you’re beautiful.”

“No, you.”

“No, you.”

There was little we could think of to say. I couldn’t look her full in the face. It was all so much, her creamy gaze, the
softness of her body next to mine. Then as suddenly as she appeared, she asked for my number and said she had to go.

In the morning I woke up euphoric, fearing that my memory of the night before was just a good dream when the phone rang. I
picked up on the first ring. It was Maya. Then the rush began again, the dizziness, accelerating heart, and wet panties. My
voice was trapped in my chest, but I managed to make a date to meet her the next afternoon. She said she wanted to take me
to a movie.

Sitting in a dark theater beside Maya was an exercise in self-restraint. She was wearing a smooth sweater that clung to her
tits. The girl emoted a feline charm that turned me on and up. I couldn’t concentrate on the screen in front of us. Nothing
mattered but her. Crossing Times Square, she informed me that she had to rush home. Something to do with her eight-year-old.
I couldn’t focus on what she was saying, she was too gorgeous. It was blinding.

“Come home with me. Please or I’ll go crazy.”

“Shhh,” she warned. “You don’t want a million guys sweating us.” As was now her habit, Maya tugged me like her naive puppy
into an empty subway stairwell. There, I couldn’t take it anymore and pushed her into a wall and began kissing her, the smoky
flavor of her tongue rushing like some high-powered medicine to my head, her lips tasting of Newports or spearmint gum or
some exotic spice that seemed to ooze from her pores. I was so aroused, I was in pain.

“Please,” I begged as she eased me away.

I walked her to the downtown train platform in defeat. At least she agreed to meet me again.

When we met the following Saturday she was wearing a pair of white leather pants and sling-back heels that seemed too dressy
for the occasion; her hair was twisted into corkscrews that didn’t fit her face. She wavered between being distant and nervously
silly. Loitering randomly through Greenwich Village, we did some window-shopping and had lunch. We wound up at my place in
the early evening. Shy wasn’t around. It was perfect for my plans, but Maya didn’t seem to want me. I tried to undress her,
but she laughed it off, keeping her seat in a chair that felt a million miles away from me and humming along with a song wafting
from my stereo. All I could do was accept that I was with her. That’s how it was with Maya.

Then one Sunday afternoon as Shytiq and four of his Jersey City buddies were drinking Knotty Head and arguing over the best
way to prepare collard greens, she called.

“Hi, it’s me. I guess I’m sad. I don’t know. I need to see you,” she stammered after I finally heard the phone ring over all
the commotion. She wasn’t far away, she said. In half an hour she’d stop by. I went back to the kitchen to sit with Shy and
his friends, sure I wouldn’t see her that day, but Maya showed up about an hour later, as social as she needed to be, helping
dice some condiments for a meal the guys were surely now too drunk to make.

After a while we went to my room and closed the door. A cool autumn chill was sneaking through the window at the same time
that the first heat of the season was hissing from the radiator. Maya pulled off her sweater, watching me intently. I sat
on my bed and pulled her to me.

“I’m so glad to see you,” I said, expecting her to laugh at how serious I could be, but instead she buried her face in my
neck, lightly biting me and moaning. Maya worked out religiously. She was strong, and when her teeth and tongue began to tickle
me and I began to resist her, she sucked harder, holding my hands so I couldn’t move while I writhed deliriously beneath her.
When I was fully whipped by the hickey she had so expertly placed on my neck, she wriggled out of her pants then panties,
but before she unclasped her bra, her eyes filled up with tears and her lips got poutier than ususal.

“I have stretch marks. After my son was born… this is how I look…” she apologized, her tongue darting in and out of my ear.
It was hard to separate Maya’s tits from the rest of her. They were flat, yet full like two ripe mangoes, but bouncy like
mangoes aren’t. So this was what all her hesitation was about!

Taking one in my mouth and then the other, I told her, “You’re crazy.”

“No, you,” she said.

“No, you,” I said, wrestling Maya down beneath me, her cunt rising to my hunger like a tray.

_________________

by Andrew Oyefesobi

I locked the front door, hoping to lock out the pouring rain with the day’s frustration. It was day three of my wife’s vacation
with her girlfriend, so again, I was returning to an empty house, another microwave dinner, and another sleepless night.

We promised one another we wouldn’t call. She deserved this vacation away from all the responsibilities waiting for her in
Chicago, which included me. I didn’t deserve the loneliness I felt, but I wouldn’t have been able to contain myself if I had
heard her voice. I would have begged her to return home to fill the empty house, fill my stomach starving for a home-cooked
meal, and fill our bed with the other warm body I needed to sleep through the night.

We were newlyweds of six months. We were sickeningly in love. We missed each other if one of us simply left the room. Our
sex life was magical. That’s why we promised we wouldn’t call.

I removed my cashmere trenchcoat, flipped on the jazz station, and sat at my computer. I wanted to check my e-mail to see
if my best friend, Victor, had responded to my invitation to hit the racquetball court the following day. At that point, I
needed anything that would take my mind off Delia.

My electronic mailbox contained an apology from Victor for having to forgo our racquetball appointment in favor of an art
opening at the college with his new armpiece, Nicolette, and a reminder from my supervisor about the deal-breaking lunch meeting
with a client the next day.

The sigh I released was worthy of a reaction to losing my treasured Thelonius Monk record, but it was really a response to
feeling thoroughly detached from any sense of fun or pleasure. I missed Delia like a desert rose misses rain.

I went over to the bay window and gazed out onto the wet world. The rain was quiet, and since summer lurked around the corner,
it was warm. The storm—its wetness, its warmth— made me think of Delia. Her presence always had a way of doing that, appearing
in everyday things, keeping her with me when she wasn’t in arm’s reach. Then it hit me. She was thousands of miles away, and
my satisfaction was with her.

I dragged myself to the kitchen to stick a frozen meal-in-a-box in the microwave.

“You’ve got mail.”

The computerized voice startled me, since I’d convinced myself that I was completely alone in the world. I dashed over to
my computer, hoping the new message was from Victor, saying Nicolette called off their date, or from my boss, saying the client
canceled the lunch meeting. No luck… but the new message intrigued me even more.

I was glued to the screen as I read:

Hey, Sugar. I miss you dearly. I know we said we wouldn’t call, but I would go insane if I couldn’t communicate with you in
some way for the length of my trip. I can’t say much, because I slipped away from the group to drop you this message, and
Sonya and Karen would kill me if they caught me
.Essence
magazine organized a really great event for book lovers called Passion in the Pages. Anyway, just thought I’d let you know
that I was enjoying myself, but every night I climb into that unfamiliar hotel bed, and I turn and you’re not there… my goodness,
all I can say is my body is calling for you. The passion in the pages of these books has nothing on the passion we share.
I can’t write much more, otherwise I’ll be on the next plane out of here and into your arms to pick up where we left off.
I’ll be home tomorrow, so save a place for me in your dreams. Aching without you, hugs ’n’ kisses, Delia.

My mouth hung open. I was lost in her written words, wishing she was in my ear whispering them in that honeyed voice I fell
in love with. I was so distracted I didn’t hear the firecrackerlike pops alerting me that my Lean Cuisine was burning in the
microwave.

Delia had done it. She had violated our no-communication stipulation. There was no way she would escape my mind that night.
I needed my precious lover with me. I needed my new wife to make me feel that old feeling. Outside, the rain came down harder,
feeling my pain as well.

I walked upstairs to our bedroom, stripping my corporate costume along the way. I dropped my silk tie on the stairs, my starched
shirt at the bedroom door, my pressed slacks at the foot of the bed. I flopped onto the king-size waterbed, but my journey
from the computer to the comforter didn’t relieve a drop of my frustration.