Choose Me (8 page)

“She’s just mad ’cause she caught me alone in the house with Diane.”

“And what were you doing in the house with Diane?”

“Nothing. Just kissing. And stuff.” I looked at him doubtfully and he smirked. “I swear. We were just kissing. I’m not a virgin
but she is. I like her. A lot.”

“Don’t do anything to mess up your future.”

“I’m not. I know how to take care of business.”

“You do know no birth control is one hundred percent effective?”

He made a dismissive sucking-of-the-teeth noise. “Man, please don’t tell me abstinence is the only effective birth control.
I already hear that at church. Do
you
practice abstinence?”

“We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you.”

“Ahhh!” he whooped. “Double standard.”

Again, he got quiet and stared out the window. I debated whether to tell him that I hadn’t been with a woman in over a year,
without giving him the extenuating circumstances. But I remembered what I was like when I was his age and I knew he probably
thought I was too old to care about sex.

“Hey Adam?”

“Yeah, man?”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Of course,” I said without hesitation.

“’Cause I don’t think I do.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know. I just think about all the things going on in this city, you know. People killing each other, drug dealing.
If there was a God, why doesn’t He stop it?”

“Well, He gave man free will. Everybody has the power to decide between right and wrong. God doesn’t interfere with that.”

“My mama said He does. She said when you think about doing good, that’s God; when you get bad thoughts, it’s the devil. You
think that’s true?”

“Yeah, I believe that. To some extent.” I started to head back toward his house.

“Hey, Adam?”

“Yeah, man?”

“Can we go to Burger King?”

“Your mom cooked dinner,” I reminded him, amused at how suddenly he switched subjects.

“Man, I can
not
eat her meat loaf.”

“You shouldn’t talk about your mom’s cooking like that,” I said, trying not to laugh.

He laughed. “You know you want to laugh. I’m serious, Dawg. I love her and everything but her meat loaf is
too
dry. It gets all stuck in your throat and stuff.”

I couldn’t remember when I decided I didn’t want children. Growing up, there always seemed to be an exorbitant number of kids
on my block, many without fathers at home. It always seemed to me that there were just too many children in the world as a
whole. Maybe it was meeting my father’s children nineteen years ago at his funeral when I was seventeen. Or perhaps when the
doctor diagnosed my cancer and I learned I was sterile and couldn’t have kids, rather than I didn’t want them. But Justin
and Ricky, and the boys I came in contact with at work, not to mention my niece and nephew whom I adored, were all like my
children. I enjoyed going to their parties and school plays and graduations just like I was their father. They were enough
for me.

When I got home, the loft was quiet and I was grateful Luciano wasn’t there yet. Lately he had been beating me home and I’d
find him sitting in my favorite chair, simultaneously listening to my Afro-Cuban jazz records and watching ESPN. Without his
constant interruptions, I would at least be able to get some writing done. I changed out of my suit and into Bermuda shorts,
then briefly shuffled through my CD collection before settling on a mix of Parliament-Funkadelic and Frankie Beverly and Maze.

The idea of writing my latest screenplay grew out of my estrangement from my father. For the past nineteen years, I had been
trying to come to terms with his betrayal. I never got a chance to tell him how I felt since his secrets didn’t come to light
until after his death. I spent my last two teenaged years lashing out at everyone because he wasn’t around to take my blows.
Then, in my twenties, I pretended he had never existed, acting like a boy who had never known his father. In college, whenever
I had to write a sociology research paper, or an assignment for my elective creative writing classes, I would always focus
on Black children without fathers, even though I had never been one of those children. My father had been the kind of father
who had tossed the ball in the backyard and taught me how to fix cars. He had been the kind of clichéd father who seemed to
exist only in sitcoms, not to the extreme of
The Cosby Show,
but pretty close. By my early thirties, my attitude had become somewhat ambiguous; I couldn’t decide what he had meant to
me. Writing was the only way I could sort it out. But even in my writing, I couldn’t be truly honest. Unable to write a nonfiction
piece, I gravitated toward fiction, in the form of a screenplay, a film that would eventually be glamorized with Hollywood
lights, cameras, and special effects because all good fiction contained some truth.

SIMONE’S SCREENING PARTY
for her film,
Two Many Men,
was in her apartment, which she referred to as “the Penthouse.” It was really two one-bedroom apartments combined into one,
located on the top floor of her father’s four-story multi-unit apartment building. It had double the number of rooms, including
two bathrooms, and every inch was occupied with the cast and crew of the film, including Zephyr—her filmmaker-director-producer
lover—and a bunch of her model friends as well as some mutual friends. The plastic people—the models and actors—stayed in
the front end of the first apartment, which included the balcony, while the real people—everyone else—kept to the back apartment,
which extended to the porch.

It had been a bad week for me and I almost didn’t come. My headaches had been so severe that I called my doctor to request
a new medication. The old one didn’t alleviate my nausea and had too many side effects, including hallucinations, the most
recent being the Oak Tree Man in my backyard. In addition, I called my pastor who offered me a healing prayer. The new medication,
combined with a cold towel on my forehead and a nap in the dark, had worked on the latest headache that I had had earlier
that morning.

“Come on, guys, you’re supposed to mingle,” Simone begged Maya and me and the rest of the group on the porch. Simone was decked
out in seventies’ wear that included a Cleopatra Afro wig over her own ’fro, bell-bottom slacks, and platforms.
Two Many Men
was set in the 1970s, so she had asked everyone to come dressed as their favorite pop-culture character from that decade.
Not everyone complied, including me, with the exception of my bell sleeves and flared slacks. The seventies was not my favorite
decade for fashion. I could have used a wig though. Because of the earlier humidity, it had taken more than the usual amount
of water and gel to quell my frizzy hair.

“They don’t want to mingle with us,” Maya said, patting her nurse’s hat. She had come as “Julia,” and with her recent pixie
haircut, she didn’t require a wig. “Their
ca-ca
doesn’t stink, ours does.” Maya struck a model’s pouty face and strolled across the porch in her best imitation of a supermodel’s
walk. We all laughed.

“Stop it. They’re nice people,” Simone insisted.

“Then you go hang out with them,” I told her.

Simone clicked her tongue and left the porch, walking away in her trademark supermodel walk. The porch crowd burst out laughing.
When people first met Simone, they thought she was phony, but she was really a good person with a lot of displaced love.

Despite Maya’s request that I not confront Simone, I had called her anyway and demanded that she come clean about the man
she was presumably setting me up with. She denied it so vehemently that I almost believed her. I eyed her suspiciously all
night, waiting for the loser to approach me. But no one stepped up or made inquiries. Earlier, when I was waiting in one of
the bathroom lines, the guy in front of me offered to let me cut in and struck up a conversation. I thought he was Simone’s
set-up guy since no one had so much as asked my name. Simone had designated a bathroom for each of the sexes, but no one paid
attention to the homemade computer-generated gender signs on the doors.

“So, what’s your name?” Mr. Model-Actor asked after I stepped in front of him.

“Eve,” I answered, giving the short Anglicized version I had used during my clubbing days.

“Eve, huh? Like the ‘Garden of Eden’ Eve?” Even heathens knew the story about the fall of man.

I rolled my eyes and didn’t bother to acknowledge his comment. He didn’t say anything for a while and as I was surveying the
scene around me, I caught him looking down my blouse. Although nothing was showing, I crossed my arms.

“You here alone?” he asked.

“I’m celibate,” I told him, a comment that always threw men off.

“Huh?”

I turned toward him. “I’m celibate. I don’t have sex.”

He held up his hands. “Okay, whatever. I didn’t ask.”

After that incident, I stopped being so defensive and tried to enjoy myself. Maya and I attempted to mingle with the
Two Many Men
clique but failed, since they were so self-absorbed. We returned to the porch crowd just as it began to drizzle; the temperature
was dropping, normal for Chicago’s late-summer nights. The gusts of mist that intermittently blew my way felt good after the
sweltering summer day.

The front door, located in the middle of the apartment, opened and everyone on the porch glanced curiously through the open
kitchen window at the two men who walked in. Maya jumped up excitedly and I knew one of them was the infamous Luciano. I felt
nervous, like I was meeting my son’s girlfriend for the first time.

“This is Luciano, everybody,” Maya said, hanging on to the arm of the dark-haired one. “My
friend
” she stressed. Because some people who knew Maya knew she was married, there were a few awkward glances, and muffled “hellos.”
He was olive skinned and striking, with wavy black hair slicked back with gel or mousse, and a killer, crooked smile that
read:
That’s right, we’re together and we’re both married, and I don’t care who knows it.
I was surprised because Luciano did not look like her type, and knowing her all my life, I knew her type. And pale, pretty-boys
were not her type. Like me, Maya had always been attracted to Black men. Alex was biracial, but he identified more with his
African American side because he had more contact with them.

The other man had been accosted by Simone’s co-star, an anorexic woman wearing a feathered Farrah Fawcett wig. Through the
window, I saw her slip him a card, which he glanced at briefly before sticking it in his back pants pocket.

“And this is Adam,” Maya introduced the other man. “His friend.”

Adam stepped onto the porch half smiling, half waving, and squinting through the darkness at all of us from behind amber shades.
I guess someone forgot to tell him that the sun had set several hours earlier. Under better light, on another day, he might
have been good looking. It was hard to tell what he looked like through his five o’clock shadow and goatee. Long, thin, golden-brown
dreadlocks poked out from under a crocheted cap in the colors of the African American flag. He looked like a ganja-smoking
Rastafarian, the kind who frequented Rites of Passage, a reggae club where Maya, Simone, and I used to party back in the old
days. He wore a shirt, cargo pants, and vest, all in different shades of tan, and all in need of some serious ironing. He
looked very ill-at-ease, like he had just been dragged out of bed. Of course, being the person that I am, I tried to guess
his ethnicity. African American and Irish. Or some kind of Afro-Caribbean, old-world mix. In another time, when I was in the
world, I might have been interested in someone like him.

Everyone introduced themselves all the way around, but before I could say my name, Maya interjected, rather ecstatically,
“That’s my sister …” She paused for dramatic effect, then continued, “Eva.”

Adam looked straight at me, and I at him, and it must have hit us at the same time—Adam and Eve. For one momentary impulse,
I contemplated that the best way to hurt Maya was to call Alex up and tell him her little secret, confess her sin for her.
Of course I would never do anything that lowdown to my sister. So it wasn’t Simone who was playing matchmaker after all, but
my own flesh and blood. Why didn’t they both stay out of my life? Why was it so hard for them to understand that I was waiting
for a special man, a Christian man, not some Rastafarian-looking slacker? There was no way this man was a Christian.

Adam kind of smiled helplessly, uncomfortably rubbing the back of his neck. I looked away first, over at Maya; I was ready
to attack her with my eyes, but she was conveniently engaged in a conversation with Luciano.

Then “Dazz” by Brick began to play and some of the couples jumped up to go inside and dance. In one corner of the porch, a
loud debate distracted me from Maya and Luciano just as I overheard a woman make a comment against affirmative action in college
admissions, a topic that was headed toward the Supreme Court.

“I heard about this study where Hispanics who scored 130 and 180 points lower than Whites and Asians were admitted ahead of
more qualified candidates.
That
is totally unfair.”

“You want to know what’s unfair?” I challenged. “Getting into an Ivy League college when you’re a C-average student just because
your daddy went there.”

A few hoots rippled through the group. Someone imitated a cat’s shrieking sound.

“Well, I don’t think it’s fair for us minorities to think we deserve special treatment just because of our ethnicity. It demeans
who we are,” the young woman insisted, her eyes piercing through me. The woman looked like she might have been biracial and
perhaps thought she needed to prove something to the White side. There were several Whites in the discussion group and I knew
this kind of comment coming from an African American, even if she was half, could be construed as retrogressive.