T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

Achilles nodded. “I believe you, man.”

“Really?” asked Wages.

“Of course.” And he did.

Wages took three quick, deep breaths as if making a wish. He held the last one as he kicked an egg-shaped rock down the bank. It cut a path through the monkey grass and hit the water with a subdued splash. He nodded with satisfaction. “Yeah. Don’t worry about her. She knows I love her. I just got to keep it under control.” He kicked another rock and another, then tossed in a big branch that was sharp at the end and bent like an arm holding a knife. Without complaint, the dark water swallowed them all.

“Bethany’s mom can really burn.”

Achilles nodded.

“Let’s head back.”

“I’m in the other direction. I’m meeting Ines,” said Achilles.

Wages looked remorseful, like he had miscalculated terribly, calling in the wrong coordinates for an air strike.

“I swear,” said Achilles, even though he was lying.

A FEW DAYS LATER, INES INVITED HIM TO DINNER, AND AFTERWARDS TO her place. Her spacious studio in the Warehouse District was nicer than the restaurant in which they had eaten, a soul food restaurant where Achilles had loaded up on hot sauce, licked his fingers, and, because in Nawlins it was an insult not to, wiped his plate clean. With the industrial wood metal accents and exposed brick, it could have passed for an art gallery and was decorated like one. Portrait-sized black-and-white photos of King, X, Carmichael, Hosea Williams, Huey Newton, and Bobby Seale graced the foyer walls, each one labeled with a brief bio like museum displays. In the halls, Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, the Weathermen; in the living room, Camus, Sartre, Baldwin, Ellison; and, in the kitchen, Martha Graham, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Toni Morrison.

“Big family,” said Achilles.

“Before I hung them, my friends called it Uncle Tom’s condo,” said Ines, leading him through the apartment.

Ines’s one-room studio was larger than Wages’s entire house. The bedroom was cordoned off by an embroidered tapestry, and the bathroom door was pebbled glass. Very little privacy. The transitions between living spaces were marked by changes in the floor: hardwood in the living room, tile in the kitchen, a rug in the sleeping area, polished concrete everywhere else. When he pointed that out, she complimented his keen eye. There was no point in explaining that he was used to reading the ground when on foot for trapdoors, and from the air for hot zones, safe LZs, weapons caches. So he merely nodded at the compliment. It was the kind of apartment Achilles had only seen in magazines. Obviously, her nonprofit business was doing well. He praised her apartment with reserve. Women were turned off when guys were too easily impressed. As she gave him the nickel tour, he pointed to the curtain around the bedroom and said, “The specialists’ area.”

She continued explaining how she had chosen the fixtures.

Tell no jokes. He didn’t want to fuck up when finally in sight of the prize. Persistance had paid off, but the apology cinched the deal. Sorry if I offended you by asking for that number. I thought it was a blind date , he’d said, neglecting to mention that he’d often been set up with women on the basis of race and that it never went well.

They settled into the sofa about a foot apart and slid closer with each drink. Achilles knew the strategies: make her laugh, maintain eye contact, convey confidence through open body language. Be interested but aloof, humble but cocky, bold but sensitive. Humorous. He could think of nothing funny and unoffensive. Maintaining eye contact was easy enough. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. But it was hard to make the move. A pattern emerged. She spoke, he nodded. She smiled, he nodded. She nodded, he nodded. No matter what Ines said, Achilles agreed, murmuring assent while imagining her naked. Did she have moles? Did those freckles go down her back? Would he have trouble unsnapping the bra? He hadn’t been with a regular woman since Janice, who did that herself. When he finally leaned in for a kiss, she turned so quickly it was obvious that she had long been waiting for him to make a move.

Their lips met, his hands found her body, outlining her form in the air, running his fingers down her neck to her shoulder and arm and then across her belly, each pass venturing closer to her breasts. Her lips were softer than he’d imagined, and her tongue sweet, like her piña colada, and shy, gliding across his lips but never entering his mouth. As their kisses grew more intense and her tongue bolder, he grabbed her breast and they fell onto their side as one, lying the length of the couch. He would go down on her. It was sex karma, earning him the right to do what he wanted.

After one long, breathless, lip-locked spell, she took his hand. “It’s shaking.” She kissed his fingers. Smacking her lips, she said, “You should wash your hands before you hurt somebody.”

He remembered the spicy meal and how his fingers had tingled from the peppers. He went to the bathroom and took a piss. The pain hit him while he was washing his hands. He tried washing his dick in the sink, but it was too late. On the bulb of his penis, exactly where he’d touched himself, a purple, star-shaped blister had erupted that looked and stung like he had an STD. He slapped the wall. “Are you okay?” Ines called out. “Fine,” he said, slathering on cucumber-scented lotion. It took quite a bit of cucumber to cool down. He flushed the toilet again before he went out. Ines was smiling as if she knew the answer when she asked, “Why do men always flush before they finish peeing?”

The curtain was pulled back, revealing a woman’s bed: two box springs piled high with pillows of various shapes and thick, tasseled spreads, all red and gold, like the tapestry. Before he reached the bed, his dick was burning again. After a few minutes of kissing, he was perspiring heavily and worried about sweat dripping into her eye. The CD had ended, and the only background music was the wind against the windows, their breathing, and the sound of their bodies grazing against each other, the rub of jeaned thighs, shirts chafing against the bedspread, the gentle strum of hands caressing faces. The more excited he became, the more his dick burned. His movements grew more pronounced, aggressive, and she responded, moving faster as well. Together, they pulled her shirt off. His hand on her breast, an asterisk. She squirmed out of her pants, writhing as if shedding skin. He kept his pants on to hide the blister, not to mention that the burning threatened to snipe his erection at any moment. Ines reached into his fly, cupped his balls, and tugged twice. He came in her hand.

She froze like a thief caught in the act. He looked down at his feet. As Ines slowly withdrew her hand, he offered his shirt as a towel.

“I guess I have the touch.”

He heard Margaret laughing about this over tea, her manly voice, I knew a guy at Spelman, who … Blah blah blah … Ma ma sa, ma ma sa, ma ma ma coo sa …

“It’s okay,” said Ines. “It’s early.”

He nodded, absentmindedly rubbing his fingers on her belly and kneading her leg.

“Are you going to eat me or something?” asked Ines.

She was bold. He wasn’t yet in the mood, but that would get him off the bench and back into the game. “Okay.”

Ines pinched his cheek and sat up, her breasts swaying as she laughed. “I meant the way you were squeezing my leg, it was like you were … but you meant …” She doubled over, holding her sides, her back heaving, her shoulder blades fluttering like sprouting wings. She pointed at him again, eyes wet, “You’re such a darling. You were going to do it. You must have thought, ‘Damn that bitch is demanding!’”