Choose Me (2 page)

“I … I don’t know.”

“Do you think it’s natural, normal?”

“For some people, I guess it’s natural, like priests, or nuns.”

“But what about normal, everyday people? Like, say, a woman who hasn’t had sex in five years.”

I knew that if I made any movement, any facial expression, any noise, he would know she was talking about me. Giving her dirty
looks was almost routine for me so it was hard to keep a straight face, but I kept my cool and kept my head down as I slowly
turned the pages.

“I guess if she’s happy not having sex, well, I say go for it. But I mean, I can’t see how, for five years … unless she was
like, unattractive, you know, or really fat.”

I could keep quiet no longer. “That’s a really nasty thing to say,” I said, looking straight into his mocha-colored eyes for
the first time.

During my teenage years, I had fought anorexia when I wasn’t even overweight, before it had become a popular women’s problem,
before I knew it was a disease with a scientific name. Then years later, when I did gain weight, I went on yo-yo diets, losing
and gaining the same thirty pounds over and over. The only good thing that came out of my last relationship with a man was
that he helped me lose the weight that had been dogging me, and I had succeeded in keeping it off after the breakup. Still,
I carried a sore spot for overweight people and took it personally if I saw or heard anyone criticizing them. Inside, I was
still like them.

“I mean … I just don’t think it’s normal for an attractive, healthy woman to deny her sexuality,” he continued, not really
apologizing at all. “Unless she has some leftover issues from her childhood.”

Jerk!
I wanted to yell. I got up, ready to go, and then I heard Simone go too far. “Well, Eva’s celibate.”

I shook my head in disbelief even though she had done this to me many times before, when we partied long ago before I got
saved, but back then we were usually drinking and I was able to laugh it off. I dropped the book on the table and spun around
and walked away. She called me but this time, I didn’t look back.

Being celibate has its advantages. First of all, I had cleansed my body of what I considered to be unclean, germ-carrying
men—the men I had slept with in my past without using latex protection, men who had been with countless other anonymous women.
Even before the AIDS hysteria, before I found a reliable birth control method that gave me a false sense of protection—from
pregnancy but not from STDs—I thought celibacy made sense. Second, celibacy gave me control over my body, which in turn, gave
me power over my emotions and my life. I was free from the drama that came with sex. I didn’t miss the games, waiting for
calls that never came, and the taking for granted that happened once a woman gave herself to a man. But most important of
all, being celibate had spiritual advantages. The knowledge that being intimate with a man outside of marriage was wrong went
back to my religious upbringing and was reinforced by my mother’s warnings. To know that I was pure once again in God’s eyes
was the biggest reward of all.

So I was proud to be celibate and even wore the T-shirt—“Celebrate Celibacy!”—which Simone had specially made for me on my
first anniversary. As one of the leaders of my church’s youth ministry, I counseled preteens and teenagers to lead lives of
abstinence. I felt blessed when Maya would tell me of her never-ending drama with Alex, her husband, or when I saw how depressed
Simone became after men dropped her once they realized they were being used. So why was I so angry with her?

“You were the one who said you wanted to have stimulating conversations with educated men, with similar tastes. Were we not
in a bookstore? Is that not where educated men go? I was just trying to help a sister out. I love you, you know I love you,
but I hate to see you denying yourself what is fundamentally a human right. A basic human right that should be covered in
the Constitution. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness,
and
getting your groove on. I mean, why does it have to mean anything? Why can’t you just have sex and stop attaching so much
baggage to it?”

I had forgotten Simone was in the car. When she followed me out of the bookstore, I refused to talk to her, and realizing
she had crossed the line this time, she sat in the backseat instead of next to me in the front. She knew my anger was the
one thing over which I hadn’t gained control. Because of my unpredictable temper and because Simone and Maya thought I hated
men, they called me “Evileen.” Most of the time, it didn’t bother me because I knew I didn’t hate men, I just didn’t have
much patience for the majority of them. However, the nickname still stung when I wasn’t in the mood.

“Are you going to stay mad at me all day?” she asked when I didn’t comment on her tirade.

We didn’t speak for the next couple of miles, ignoring each other: me driving in contemplation, her thumbing through her latest
movie script. She was currently starring in an independent film about a woman who couldn’t decide between the two men in her
life, a role that was written for her by one of her two lovers, an amateur screenwriter-producer-director eight years her
junior. The other man, an older man, was the owner of the salon where she worked, her day job.

At the next light, I braked extra hard, jerking her forward.

“That was totally unnecessary. And childish,” she said.

“Put your stupid seat belt on,” I told her.

A car pulled up next to us at the light and I looked over casually at a late-model Mercedes, then at the brother with a bald
head, wearing a business suit and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel to a Ramsey Lewis tune on his radio.

“Unfortunately, Don was involved with someone,” Simone continued.

The brother bopped his head over in our direction and nodded in acknowledgment. Still upset, I ignored him.

“Hello,” I heard Simone call from the backseat.

“Hello,” he answered, smiling over his shoulder at Simone. “Why are
you
in the backseat?”

“My friend likes to pretend she’s my chauffeur.”

The light changed and I hit the accelerator, jerking her back.

“Do you have to speak to every man you come in contact with?” I said, disgusted.

“Why does it bother you so much?”

“It doesn’t bother me. I just don’t understand why you have to flirt with every man who speaks or smiles at you.”

“It’s basic human nature. I am woman, I like men; ergo, I flirt.” She explained this with her expressive, salon-manicured
hands and her slow, clipped English. “I can’t help it if you don’t like men. Miss Evileen.”

I decided to let that one go. “Just because I don’t screw men as often as I go to the bathroom doesn’t mean I don’t like men,”
I told her, hoping my words would hit their mark and shut her up. “Just because sex is basic human nature doesn’t mean you
have to act upon every desire. You’re not an animal.”

“For your information, I don’t screw men as often as I go to the bathroom—which is a tasteless analogy, by the way. You need
to stop being so self-righteous just because you have a low sex drive. I can’t help it if I’m high-natured.” Through the rearview
mirror, I could see her glaring at me, furiously snapping the pages of her script.

“How many men
have
you been with?” I asked her.

No response except the flipping of pages.

“Are you ashamed? I mean, if you’re so high-natured, and it’s such a basic human need, why can’t you tell me?” I pressed.

“Because it’s too personal. And no, I’m not ashamed.”

“You know my sexual history. I have nothing to hide.”

“I don’t either, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to confess the intimate details of my life to you.”

“Is it that you don’t know or you can’t remember?”

Her eyes narrowed like a snake’s and when she spoke, her voice was not her own. “My sexual life is between me, my men, and
the Creator, and no one else.”

“I only asked to prove a point. Women want to be equal to men when it comes to sex, but the truth is, we can’t brag about
our conquests like they can, because we are the spoils, we are the ones who get soiled. And it’s not just because of societal
stigmas. It’s because of the way we’re made biologically. It’s the way of the world.”

“I’m not ashamed,” she repeated. “I just don’t think it’s any of your business.”

I shook my head, exasperated. We had had the same argument many times and it always ended the same. She accused me of being
a man-hater; I accused her of being a man-teaser. Back in high school, Simone wasn’t very popular because many of the other
Black girls didn’t like that she spoke so-called proper English and had long hair. Back then, she wasn’t tuned in to her Afrocentric
side and wore her hair relaxed. The same Black girls didn’t like me because even though I looked Black, I spoke with an accent.
The Hispanic girls stayed away from me because even though I was Hispanic, my skin was too dark, my hair too curly, bordering
on kinky. Unlike the other girls, Simone never questioned why I read
Essence
or books by Black authors, nor did she ask me to teach her Spanish curse words. The teasing and our exclusion from the popular
cliques made us best friends. One would think she would remember those earlier days, before she pulled a stunt like the one
in the bookstore.

I approached Simone’s apartment building and braked, switching into park abruptly and bringing the car to a jolting stop.
Still looking at me in the rearview mirror, Simone gathered her bags from her earlier shopping spree, her fashion magazines,
and her script.

“So are you coming to the screening party this weekend or what?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know. I’ll let you know.”

“Maya’s coming.” She leaned on the passenger headrest, suddenly trying to make up. “I need you guys there. You know I love
you, right,
chica
?”

“I told you, Puerto Ricans don’t say
chica,
they say
mija.
”

“Well, I like
chica. Mija
sounds like ‘hee-haw.’”

Simone, who had been my girl for over twenty years, was finally learning Spanish, but like everything that took time and patience,
she wasn’t trying too hard and wanted to write her own rules.

“You forgive me?”

“Yeah, yeah, get out.”

She blew me a kiss and exited. “BYOB!” she yelled as I drove away. The second “B” referred to not only “beverage,” but to
“boy”—the latter of which I didn’t indulge.

Home at last, I kicked off my shoes and absentmindedly browsed through the mail on the sofa, petting King, my sons’ rottweiler,
as he snuggled his head on my lap. When they were little, I promised my boys, Tony and Eli, that they could have the dog of
their choice once we got a house. When they asked for a rottweiler, however, I hesitated, given the bad reputation the breed
had in the media and the public’s mind. They tried to convince me that we needed a big dog to protect us since we didn’t have
a man in the house. After talking to a dog breeder who insisted that it was the owners who made the dog, I caved in. The boys
took the last part of their grandfather’s name, my father, Joaquin, and named the dog King. As everyone predicted, I ended
up taking care of King after they left for college. At first, I threatened to give the dog away, but eventually I fell in
love with the vicious-looking, yet noble, animal whose bark and appearance were worse than his bite.

I reached over to the phone table and checked the voice mail. I had six calls: Maya called twice and my aunt, Titi, called
the other four times, from Puerto Rico. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, not even my sister, who was closer to me than
anyone else would ever be. I felt the beginning of a headache, which could mean one of three things: my monthly cycle, a barometric
pressure drop, or stress. Since it wasn’t that time of the month, and Simone’s childish prank, while not stressful, had thrown
my good mood out of whack, I attributed it to a storm front that the weatherman had been threatening for days. Sometimes I
thought it was denying my “basic human right” that made me so moody. But other times, I knew it wasn’t just that; I had been
moody since I was a kid.

I fed King and let him out into the backyard. After changing out of my workout clothes and into a top and sarong, I reclined
on the sofa, pressing the remote connected to the stereo and TV. On the stereo, I had Yolanda Adams and Táta Vega’s CDs from
the day before. On the TV, I pressed the mute and closed-captioning buttons because I preferred to read the news rather than
listen to the broadcaster’s scripted commentary.

The best part about my being single was the peace and solace. There were people who always needed to be with someone—like
Simone—and then, there were people like me who longed for oneness. I had never been alone, going from my father’s house, to
my aunt’s house, then straight into an early marriage and premature motherhood. After my divorce, I raised Tony and Eli, who
were, at last, both away at college. The things I enjoyed doing in my spare time—reading, listening to music, and writing
essays and articles—were all things that didn’t require another person. I was only just beginning to enjoy being alone.

I glanced periodically at the TV screen with a combination of disbelief and dismay. The images of the latest murders, political
corruption, and terrorism had become all too familiar so that the reporters’ straight-faced presence seemed trivial. By the
time the newscast closed with the feel-good story about a toddler calling 9-1-1 and saving her mother’s life, it was too little,
too late.

The phone rang, but I didn’t move to answer it right away. After spending the majority of my day on the phone at work, it
was the last thing I wanted to do at home. I debated whether to let the voice mail pick up, but I knew if it was my sister
or aunt, they would think something was wrong. Ever since my children left home, they constantly checked up on me, worried
that I was at the mercy of the psychos who roamed the streets of Chicago. I reached over to the phone table, just out of reach,
and ended up on the floor with a thud.