by
Jennifer Jaz

_____It was Yvette who hipped me to Starlite – 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 sunnavabitch that he was, blew me off, pretending not to hear. Gay and horny as the best of them, homeboy could be such a straight-laced 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. Shytiq and I were not the kind of roommates that lived according to rules and schedules. We did our laundry together, shared soap, food and when we had nothing to do would lounge side by side in my bed and watch t.v.
_____He knew what he had to do to keep his best friend.
_____A few days later, he called Yvette up 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 half-heartedly agreed to meet 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 travelled 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 couple of monster-sized doorwoman who stamped our hands with flourescent stars and 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 a bar where over my scotch and soda and her beer, we carried on the most ridiculous conversation which was more like an interrogation about whether I was coming out or not. It was only out of courtesy, that I didn't wander off to explore the red-lit passageways and shadows of the club. I felt like a child in an amusement park. I studied every woman who passed, barely paying attention to Yvette's sarcastic tips on how to break the ice, not even noticing that in her own frigid way, the witch was flirting with me.


_____I returned to Starlite 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 to the center of the action. Occasionally, women would make eye contact with me and, by the interest in their glances, I realized the aspect of myself I considered odd and 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 couple more drinks, the novelty wore off a little or at least enough for me dance. There was no one I was attracted to enough to want to leave my shadow in the corner. It felt sexy just being in the midst of so many out of control, sweaty sisters.

_____Starlite became my regular spot. I'd go there after work almost every Friday, gradually making the acquaintance of one of the bartenders and a friendly enough sister who checked bags and coats, 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 a drug in my drink. Let me describe the moment:
_____I was soaked with sweat, stomping my heels to an insane rhythm around 2 a.m. The D.J. was deep inside some acid house funk trance mix. 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 the most haunting eyes surfaced out of the fog. I did a double take but there she was, checking me out, this milky glow in her study of me that signified sensitivity, kindness, and compassion. Acting coy, but not too coy to tug me out of my shadow into the heart of the action, Maya teased me up close with her curves, perfect tits and waist that blossomed into hips she gyrated to maximum effect.
_____"Can we go somewhere? I feel lightheaded." I confessed in her ear, nearly choking on the words. The girl had gotten me stupid.
_____Without hesitating, she took my hand and walked me to a windowsill where we sat arm in arm. When Maya put her lips to my ear, the smoky scent of her breath would send shivers up my spine and her voice had this 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 in the face without squinting. It was her easy, milky gaze and the soft warmth of her body so close to mine. Then, ass suddenly as she'd appeared, she asked me for my number and explained she had to go.

_____In the morning, I woke up feeling 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 her. Then the rush began again, the dizziness, accelerating heart and wetness. My voice was trapped in my chest, but I managed to make a date to meet her that afternoon. She said she wanted to take me to the movies.

_____Sitting in a dark theater beside Maya, was an exercise in self-restraint. She was wearing a tight sweater that clung to her perfectly round tits and the girl exuded this magnetism that forced me into its field. I didn't see the film on the screen in front of me. Nothing mattered, but her. After the film, she let me know she had to rush home. It was something to do with her son, an eight year old. I couldn't focus on what she was saying, she was so hot it was distracting.
_____"Don't go." I moaned. "Come back with me. I'm going to go crazy if you don't." We were in the middle of Times Square. She placed a seductive finger over my lips, saying: "shhhhh. You don't want a million guys sweating us."
_____As was now her habit, she tugged me like her naïve puppy into an empty subway stairwell. There, I couldn't resist it anymore. I pushed her against the wall and began kissing her, the smoky taste of her tongue rushing like some high-powered weed straight to my head. Her lips were flavored with Newports or mint chewing 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.
_____"Not here. Not now." She said sadly.
I walked her to the downtown train platform in defeat. At least she agreed to see me again.

_____Maya was wearing a pair of white leather pants and slingback heels that seemed too dressy for the occasion and her hair was twisted into corkscrews that didn't fit her face when we met again in midtown. She wavered between being distant and nervously silly. We walked east, did some window shopping, had lunch and wound up at my place in the early evening. Shytiq 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 the music wafting from my stereo. All I could do was accept that I was with her. That's how it was with Maya. Hot then cold. She;d call me three times a day, then I wouldn't hear from her for weeks. It drove me mad, then I had a full house one Sunday afternoon, Shytiq and four of his Jersey City buddies, drinking knotty head and arguing over the best way to prepare collard greens.

_____"Hi, it's me. I guess I'm just sad. I don't know. I need to see you." She stammered when I actually heard the phone ring over all the commotion and picked it up.
_____She wasn't far away, she said. In a half an hour she'd stop by. I went back to the kitchen to sit with Shy and buddies, sure I wouldn't see her that day, but Maya showed up about an hour later, as social as she needed to be, helping to dice some green peppers for a meal the guys were now surely too drunk to make. After a while, we went to my room and closed the door. A cold autumn chill was sneaking in 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, she nibbled harder, holding my hands down so I couldn't move, while I moaned deliriously beneath her. When I was fully whipped by the hickie she had so expertly put on my neck, she wiggled out of her pants, then panties. But before she unclasped her bra, her eyes filled up with tears and her lips got even poutier than usual.
_____"I have stretchmarks." She said in that breathless voice of hers. "After Nashawn was born. This is how I look…" she was apologizing with her tongue in and out of my ear. It was impossible to separate Maya's tits from the rest of her. They didn't look as round and ideal as they did when she was dressed. They were flat, yet full like two ripe mango, but bouncy like mangos aren't. So this was what all her hesitation was about.
_____"You're crazy. " I told her, laughing.
_____"No, you." She said.
_____I devoured one then the other, wrestling her now beneath me, Maya's cunt as lush and moist as a wild garden, ready for me to taste it finally for the first time.

THE END

Copyright © 2000. Used by permission of author. All Rights Reserved.