Decadence (9 page)

I lick my lips, take
another look at my surroundings since I know where I am
now.

There’s Chris, who looks as if he’s had
better nights of sleep with a girl lying close beside him.

A girl. That girl. The mystery girl named
Candice. She’s a mystery despite the fact that she’s lying there
beside him naked. We’ve both seen her orgasm, we’ve both been
inside of her, and yet we hardly know a thing about her.

That girl.

She did something to us earlier and now that
I’m thinking about it my imagination is running wild with
possibilities. Did she slip us both something? Was she just waiting
for us to approach her all along? Chris and I thought we’d chosen
her, but it could’ve been that she’d chosen the two of us.

I shake my head. My newest theory doesn’t
make any sense. My newest theory sucks.

I’d had that panicked feeling when I first
woke up and wasn’t sure of anything, but now I wish I hadn’t
recalled, that I wasn’t fitting pieces of this crazy puzzle
together. I wish I could un-know what I now knew.

Chris had cum in her. Cum in a stranger. Went
inside her deep and raw. Looked at her like she was his forever, as
if they’d known one another for just as long as I knew him.

After he’d drilled her half to death and done
something out of control, he’d looked over at me with a hollow look
in his eyes that I’d never seen before. That look he’d given me
made me wonder just how well I knew certain parts of him when he
was one person who I’d always believed I knew every part, or at
least nearly every part, of him.

Chris and I were in
kindergarten together. We hadn’t played much together, hadn’t
really noticed one another since he was a boy and boys were yucky
to me back then and I was a girl and had an invisible gaggle of
fictional cooties infestation on me since every girl had them as
far as every little boy had been concerned, not until the day he
came to school with a broken finger. He’d looked so sad, sitting
away from the other boys when it was time to play kickball out on
the playground. He couldn’t participate since our teacher had been
afraid that he’d hurt his finger even worse than it had been hurt
already. My heart broke just watching as his fell apart piece by
piece, not being able to participate in the raucous activities that
were a mere few feet away from him. I sucked up my pride. None of
the other kids were taking his obvious sadness into account as most
kids tend to do.
Let the
adults handle it
, had to be the theme of
nearly every five year old on that playground, but I couldn’t
ignore his broken heart. I hardly ever could.

I sat near Chris that day, a little boy who
was only three months older than me, a little boy who I shared my
toy with that I’d had in my pocket that day. We’ve known one
another for over twenty years. Had one another’s backs when no one
else had ours.

And now this. Now I was feeling something I
shouldn’t be feeling. I couldn’t believe my own nerve.

I got up and went to the bathroom. Ran the
hot water for a shower. Ready to immerse myself under heat and
moisture. Let it wash away these feelings I couldn’t shake. Clear
my head. Clear all the excess of the last few hours from my
flesh.

I wish I could be the old me again. The me
from years ago. The me who only wanted to be with one man. The me
who wanted a family, wanted to be a mother, wanted to be a good
wife, wanted nothing more than to come home from work and be loved
and give it in return. I avoided my reflection in the mirror. I
didn’t want to look at the version of me I’d see in it right
now.

The hot water was welcome, felt great on my
skin. I let the steam obliterate the walls I was surrounded by so
that all I saw was a mist, like the kind that surrounds you in a
dream.

I didn’t hear the door open, didn’t know
anybody else had come into the bathroom until the shower curtain
was being pulled aside. I hesitated to turn and see who it was, but
I felt them, knew who it was before I could bother to look.

I felt him close in on me, start to touch me.
I hated myself that I wanted him to touch me. I hated myself
because I didn’t even want to bat his hand away.

We said nothing to one another, just looked
at one another through the haze of steam from the hot water. I
didn’t want to say anything to him. I wasn’t sure of what I wanted
in the first place. Really, honestly, there wasn’t anything to say
at all.

He grabbed the shampoo from the top shelf in
the corner of the shower wall. Got a good bit of the gel in his
hands. Started massaging that through my hair and onto my scalp.
His heavy masculine hands felt good working the lather through my
hair and on my skin. He made sure he had all of it rinsed, and then
he repeated the process. Got the loofah, got it nice and sudsy,
washed me from head to toe. Got the towel and did the same to me.
Washed me as he’d done before. Washed me in silence. Washed me with
sorrow in his eyes for more than I knew he’d been letting on. He
wasn’t telling me everything. No one, no matter how well or how
long you knew them, no one told you everything.

He washed himself. I stayed and watched as he
did. I stayed and remembered who we used to be and who we’d
become.

Our parents had struggled. Our grandparents
had done the same. The people before us had done their best to make
sure that we’d be the best, that we’d have it easier than they
did.

Now look at us. I didn’t even know how to
define us.

Chris had been one of the few non-black kids
that lived in our neighborhood growing up. His mother’s parents had
grown up in around our way and that was where she’d ended up. Then
she’d gotten out. Left. Married. Gotten pregnant with Chris. Only
two years after he’d been born she’d shown up on her parents’
doorsteps again with a toddler in her arms and bruises all over her
face and other body parts that no one could see. Suburbia only
looked better, gleamed shinier and brighter from the outside.
Domestic violence lived on that side of town as well. Just as many
crack heads lived behind those big pretty houses as they did in the
hood. It was just that the people who lived in suburbia knew how to
cover up their badness, their meanness, their mistakes and their
failures better than those in the hoods, the ghettos, those that
crossed the other side of the invisible line that separated those
two worlds. I found that out myself years later. Chris’s mother and
father let her back in as she started waitressing at a diner at
night and took classes during the day. She’d been determined to
have a better life with her husband and child the first time
around, but the second time around she’d been determined to
cultivate a better future for herself, set an example for her son,
teach him to build his life from the ground up and take care of
himself and not to expect it from anyone else. That was what she’d
done and that was what she’d passed on to him.

But shit happens. Other people come into your
life and swap one thing for another. They change your outlook, the
caliber of your dreams, reshape your nightmares. Chris had tried to
be the best, I’d seen it for myself, but he’d gotten sidetracked,
as I’d gotten sidetracked. We all got sidetracked from time to
time.

I think of my parents. Two people who fought
like cats and dogs. Two people who should’ve gotten a divorce, but
were determined to stay together because they didn’t want a
divorce. Two people that didn’t understand that sometimes it was
better to let some things go, instead of holding onto something
that you shouldn’t strain the life out of. Love and hate and lived
in that union. Love and hate lived side by side at times. Love and
hate produced babies and made homes. There was sometimes more love
and hate under one roof than there seemed to be in the whole
world.

I still remember the days when Popsicles were
twenty-five cents a piece from the corner store and people froze
Kool-Aid in their freezers and sold them to the neighborhood kids.
Nobody was worried about getting sued. People just wanted to make a
dollar bill out of the few pennies rattling around in their
pockets. I remembered clotheslines in backyards, an old sewing
machine in the corner of our kitchen, noise and laughter and old
furniture that needed replacing and TV sets with no remotes and
antennas with aluminum foil wrapped around their base. There’d been
days with no air conditioners and nights with box fans in the
windows that let in cool air and mosquitoes. During those days I
dreamt of something better. I hadn’t a clue that those would be the
days I’d miss. I had no idea of how laughter could transform and
evolve into something else altogether. I had no idea of how much my
world could change and drag me along for a ride that felt so
unfamiliar I woke up on some days wondering who I was.

Now we were grownups. We’d
wished to be grownups when we still had time to be kids, carefree
and without a worry in the world. We were where we’d wanted to be,
where we thought we’d wanted to be. Always used to sing that same
song about
When I grow
up
, not knowing what it really
meant.

We were playing with thousands, millions of
dollars like we used to play with Monopoly money. We went to court,
went to work, we tried our best to take care of what we’d created
in our lives, the responsibilities that shaped our existence. We
were playing with all that money when not so long ago our parents
had struggled to keep their electricity on and the water running.
There used to be days when they wondered how they were going to put
food on the table. Now we spent that same amount of money they’d
been struggling to make for the month in a day sometimes.

Things had changed. The world was
different.

We had our own version of fun now, one I
couldn’t have imagined if I’d tried.

Chris and I dried one another off in silence.
It wasn’t comfortable or uncomfortable, but we were two people
who’d known one another for what seemed like forever. Had loved one
another forever and we had a familiarity that couldn’t be denied no
matter what else lay between us unsaid. Sometimes the silences we
shared were just silences, no more or less.

His face was a mask of concentration, his
hands busy with the towel drying my hair as I faced him. Noticed
his flesh and blood late night/early morning wood pointing directly
at me. A tool that could do a lot of damage, but seemed tame at the
moment. Then again, a lot of things seemed tame the moment before
they struck.

That part of his anatomy grazed me more than
once and it felt like I was feeling it for the first time every
single time it touched me. Sent electricity up and down my
spine.

He hadn’t fucked me. Hadn’t loved me. Hadn’t
done certain things he’d always done to me. I couldn’t shake my
unease on the matter. Couldn’t shake certain thoughts from running
through my head.

The door creaked open just as we finished up
and our eyes met the eyes of another, of a girl who was running in
on our territory. A few hours ago I felt as if I could’ve fallen in
love with her. Right now, I hated her. Love and hate took up
residence in the mind and it was hard to exchange the two, one for
another. Sometimes you just had to let them cohabitate.

“Is everything okay?” she asked timidly. It
must’ve been the looks on our faces when she’d walked in that had
made her ask that question.

“Everything's fine.” Chris answers for us.
Nothing is being given away in his voice. I can't read him,
therefore I know the stranger before us with the beautiful doe
shaped brown eyes can't possibly know what he's thinking
either.

Candice has the sheet wrapped around her,
hiding all that we've already seen and experienced. After the
orgasms we all try to cover up something, find our little hiding
places once the insatiable thirst that comes from seeking maximum
pleasure wears off.

“I just wanted to take a quick shower,” she
says and looks down at Chris's hardness that is pointed towards me.
It's hard for her to look away from it, I can tell, but she
manages.

“You're good,” I tell her. I also point her
in the direction of an brand new unused toothbrush under the sink.
Everything else I'm sure she'll manage to find without any
problems.

She looks so young without any makeup on her
face. After she and Chris's last sex session a little over an hour
ago she came into the bathroom, washed her face quickly, stayed in
the bathroom for about five minutes before she went back into the
room and collapsed on the bed again. Right now, she looks like a
cute young girl with a cum and sweat stained black satin sheet
wrapped around her. It looks wrong. I feel guilt. But all Chris and
I do is move out of her way and let her have her few minutes of
privacy.

We go back into the bedroom and lay down on
the soiled bed, remains of our lust splattered here and there as we
lay on it all.

The sheets can be washed, replaced if need
be. We'll take another shower. We do our thing, clean up, and then
later do it all over again. It's the cycle we're in. I'm almost
afraid that I'll somehow get used to it. That I won't feel the
strange pangs of guilt afterward.

Chris and I lie next to one another, not
speaking, even though there's so much I want to say to him, and
there is so much to ask. We're close and yet there's a chasm
between us.

I touch him, feel the warmth of his chest,
the beat of his heart. He takes my hand and kisses it. We're still
us, but I want to ask him what is happening to us. What is this
road we're going down. But there's still the silence that lays
between us. Silence and stillness and secrets.

Candice comes back into the room. I hadn't
even heard when she shut the shower off, when the water stopped
running.