5 Minutes and 42 Seconds (7 page)

So I had to come up with a plan of my own. Fashad told
me and his boy Smokey to find a way to hide the money and flush the yayo. I said I can't do all that shit by myself. Well, Smokey used to play the trumpet in high school, before he got caught up with Fashad and dropped out. He can't really play it, but he stole the trumpet the day he dropped out, said he was going to play it on his own rap album someday. Said one day he would blow that trumpet and all his dreams would come true. It's sat in his closet for six years. Now it's in mine.

When I get the word, I'm supposed to blow the trumpet—that's the signal for Dream to get the chain saw, and for the boys to flush the yayo and get their salt shakers to throw off the dogs. That's if they're home. If they ain't, I gotta do it all myself. I don't know if I want to. I don't know if I have to. Even if they are home I might forget to do something. You know? Maybe Fashad might have to go to jail. Maybe it will do him some good to have some time to think. Maybe Fashad has to enter his prison cell before I can exit mine.

I don't know what's going to happen to Fashad. What I do know is: my name is Cameisha Bradley and when that trumpet sounds, that money is going to be mine.

W
here she at?
She 'bout to make me miss Bow Wow on
Regis,”
barked Andalacia Johnson, twirling her blood-red beehive as she spoke.

Dream walked boldly through the salon's front doors, not bothering to avoid her coworkers. The way Dream saw it, now that Smokey was going to get her out of this hell-hole they called a beauty shop, she could care less if there was conflict or not. For the first time in her life, Dream felt like she knew who she was, where she was going, and how she was going to get there. The horrible things her coworkers said, or thought, didn't mean a damn thing. For Dream, the shop had gone from life-and-death to trivial. This wasn't a permanent gig, it wasn't even temporary—it was meanwhile. Smokey was preparing to take care of her, the way husbands are supposed to take care of wives, the way Fashad took care of her mother. In the meantime, she'd
do some hair. Fuck the impatient clients, and, most importantly, fuck her shit-slinging coworkers.

“It's so unprofessional to keep clients waiting,” said Daryl as if he were simply stating a fact, rather than firing off an insult, as if his statement were directed at no one. The place fell silent, as it always did when Daryl badgered Dream. In that silence Dream could always feel the dynamics in the room: the others felt sorry for her, but they didn't necessarily disagree with Daryl's assessment. Her own client would contemplate whether or not to step in on Dream's behalf. Everyone would stare at her, the way the kids used to when this one or that one replaced her regular Pepsi with a Diet Pepsi at lunch. Over the years she'd learned to close her eyes. She figured people had always thought she was praying; the truth was, she was simply closing her eyes and daydreaming—of disappearing.

Instinctively her eyes began to shut, before jolting open as if she had been electrically shocked. She knew she had to make a choice. The new Dream could either be as timid and bashful as the old, or she could be venomous and no-nonsense. After a year at the shop it had become clear that avoiding conflict meant permitting, sometimes even promoting, her own disrespect. Quietness had gotten her nowhere, so with the knowledge that Smokey was behind her no matter what, she spoke. “At least I got clients, ya broke-ass faggot,” she said, pluggin' in the curling iron with one hand and planting the other on her hip. There was a symphony of “oooooohs,” then a chorus of laughter that drowned out Daryl's spirited response.

Dream didn't have to hear him to know what he said,
he probably said all the things she'd been afraid to hear since middle school.
You're fat. You're ugly. No one wants you…etc.

“I don't give a fuck what you think about me. I got a man. Do you? Do you have a man?” The laughter grew more raucous, as Dream found herself yelling at someone other than Cameisha for the first time in years.

When the laughter finally subsided, Daryl took a deep breath, then spoke regally. “I don't know how you people can behave like this, but I am a professional and I cannot work in this environment. Miss Ford and I will be utilizing the chair in the back. Do not disturb. Come on, Carolyn.”

“Somebody been holdin' out,” said Xander, as he positioned his client underneath the hair dryer.

“Not yet,” said his client, Shenay Jones, her eyes wide with anticipation. “This is too good, and I can't hear under there. Who you shackin' with?” She removed a roller that was hanging down and blocking her left ear, eager to have something to put through the Detroit grapevine.

After years of listening, never speaking, Dream could feel the underlying meaning of a sentence with a sixth sense. Shenay didn't want to know who Dream was shacking with because she was happy for Dream. Shenay wanted to know who Dream was shacking with because she wanted to know who in the hell was ugly, broke, or desperate enough to shack with her. As tempted as Dream was to break her promise to Smokey, and taunt them all with her gorgeous beau, she feared word would get back to him, and he'd leave her. “I'm not telling,” said Dream.

“Why not, girl?” asked the client. “You got some good
man news, share it. Lord knows we hear enough of the bad in here.”

Translation:
If you're not lying, tell me who it is.
Dream sucked her lip and bit her tongue. “I saaaaid I'm not tellin'.”

Shenay laughed. “Xander, are you hearing this?” she asked, and her tone clearly implied Dream was telling a blatant lie.

“Yeah, I'm hearing it,” said Xander, sighing as he placed the roller back in Shenay's head. “Sound like you got the same problem I do.”

“And what's that?” asked Dream with a sass in her voice she didn't mean to use on Xander.

“A man that wants you to keep secrets,” said Xander.

“Nigga, my situation and yours are two totally different things, so don't try to tell me what the fuck is going on between me and my man, okay! 'Cause my man is one-hundred-percent straight!” That time she meant every last bit of it.

“Well, if he ain't trying to keep it on the low, then why can't you tell nobody about y'all being together?”

Dream said nothing.

“Mmmmhmmm. I'm not mad at you, girl. We all gettin' played—it's going around like the flu. I know how it is, though. People talk about it like it's so easy. It's like a roller coaster—you like it, and you hate it at the same time. You want to get off, but you don't. You want to complain, but then you remember you stood in line for the torture.” He paused to put Shenay back under the dryer. Dream tried to pretend like she wasn't paying him any attention, but when
he described her sentiments exactly, her ears couldn't help but perk up.

“You just got on,” Xander continued. “All that drama and danger might feel good right now, but wait a few years, you gonna want to get off. You'll want it to stop, but you won't be able to live without it. By then you'll be past addicted. You'll be a-DICK-ted.”

Dream immediately closed her eyes and wondered if she really was on a roller coaster, if Smokey was taking her for a ride. The very thought turned her stomach more than any roller coaster ever had. She was about to give into doubts, but she concentrated instead on what she used to be and who she had become with Smokey. She figured Xander was just mad he didn't have her to kick around anymore. Finally she opened her eyes and said, “Shut up. I'm trying to do this girl's hair before
Regis.
”

S
prawled across the bed
he'd lain in for the past ten hours, unable to sleep, Xander reached for his cell phone and pressed one on the speed-dial.

“Stop calling me,” said the voice, picking up for the first time that day.

“Why you been avoiding me?” asked Xander, ignoring the request he was sure his lover didn't really mean.

“I ain't been avoiding you. I been busy,” said the muffled voice on the other end of the line.

“Doing what?”

“Minding my own damn business. Why don't you try?”

“You are my business.”

“I told you I hate fags, Xander,” he yelled. Then he whispered, “I ain't gay.”

Xander had no idea how to handle the whole “I'm not gay” thing. He didn't believe his man when he said it, and
he knew that if he ever wanted to be something more than just a piece of man-ass on the side he'd have to confront his lover, eventually. The problem was, he didn't know how to say what he felt without pushing him farther away.

“I don't know about this no more, Xander,” he continued, breaking through Xander's stammering.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe I should just be with my wife. I told you, I ain't gay.”

“I know you aren't.”

“So why you always acting like I'm your boyfriend?”

“I'm sorry. I'll stop.”

“We fuck. That's it,” said his lover, raising his voice once more. “Just because we fuck, don't mean I'm a fag. Niggas in the pen fuck all the time. It don't mean shit, Xander. It don't mean shit.”

“I never said you was a fag,” said Xander, trying to quell his lover's tirade. He waited for a response, but all he heard was a click.

“Fashad. Fashad, are you there?” asked Xander. “Fashad, answer me,” he commanded. Then called back again and again for the next hour before work.

M
y name is Xander Thomas,
and when that trumpet sounds Fashad Douglass will be mine.

I met Fashad way back in the day, before anyone knew he was down low. He used to play ball for St. Vincent's, and every time they played my school, PS 23, I would sit behind the visitors' bench and stare at him until my eyes watered. Fashad was different. A lot of guys can make me think happy thoughts, and bring me to orgasms, but not too many can make me stare. Fashad's beauty goes beyond blood flow and spasms. He has the type of looks that hit you in the chest and take your breath away.

One time St. Vincent's was getting they asses whooped worse than usual and put in all the scrubs that never got to play. Usually when the scrubs get in everyone assumes the game is over, and hurries out to the parking lot before the gangs start shooting. This time Fashad was one of those
scrubs, so we stayed. Soon the gym was empty save for the players, the PS girls, and myself. Every time he touched the ball, we went wild. Shouting and shit, as if every pass were a marriage proposal. When he made a three-pointer we started jumping around, pretending to have the Holy Ghost. Maybe that's why I wanted Fashad, because everyone else did. It was like a competition, a free-for-all basketball game, with everyone out for his or herself.

I was in the parking lot at 4–1–1, an under-twenty-one club that every teenager who mattered in Detroit used to go to on Saturday nights. I was there with two of my homegirls, but they both went home with old heads. I was walking back to my car and somebody called me fag. There were a bunch of niggas in the parking lot, but they seemed more likely to help someone hurt me than help me get away. I knew I had to speed up.

I was almost to my car when I felt somebody pull me back out into the middle of the parking lot. When my momma found my purse underneath my bed the week before, she didn't yell or call me names, she just put a meat clever inside it and handed it to me when I got home from school. She told me not to be afraid to use it. But outside in that parking lot, there were too many of them. I got two of them, but it probably only made them madder. They beat my ass so bad I can't but hardly remember it.

I do remember waking up in the hospital about a week later. The doctors said if I hadn't been brought to them so quickly, I would have died. I asked them who brought me in, and they told me it was a handsome caramel-toned boy with long hair and piercing brown eyes. Fashad was my
hero. He was Romeo to my Romeo and we were meant to be together.

I tried to find Fashad the day after I got out. Just to thank him, and tell him that I felt just as passionate as he did. Silly me, I thought we could skip the drama cursed upon all lovers and jump right to the happy ending. It was the week after graduation. I saw Fashad standing outside of 4–1–1 with his friend Pie and two other boys I didn't know. When I saw Fashad, I panicked. I'll never forget it. If I had just taken that chance and gone over to talk to him, who knows what might have happened. But I couldn't. I didn't yet believe I deserved that happy ending. So I turned around and went back to my car, just to make sure everything was perfect. I decided to pick my hair a little on the left because my fro was a little flat. I put some lip gloss on because my lips aren't full enough without it. I put on lotion underneath my Levi's just in case, because I didn't want my knees to chafe later on that night. By the time I got out of the car, Fashad was waving good-bye to his boys and heading off with some beautiful light-skinned sister.

As much as I adored Fashad I couldn't ignore the signs anymore. Playing basketball plus hanging with dudes plus leaving clubs with broads equals straight. If there was a Romeo to my Romeo, he was not it. I was heartbroken but still young and resilient. The search went on.

So that was that. I had a lot of relationships that didn't mean a lot—then I had one that did. I was with him for four years before he up and left me for another man. Said I was “obsessive and clingy.” Just like that. One minute he was there and we were happy, the next he was sucking some
other nigga's dick. I felt like he'd ripped my heart out and put it on display for the whole world to see. And if my heart was on display, their house was the museum it was displayed in. I used to sit outside it every night and watch them living the life I was supposed to have. One day I got spotted in the bushes and didn't bother to run. His new man called the police. They got a restraining order against me. It didn't faze me, though. It was just a piece of paper. Besides, my heart was in there, and I wanted it back. I went back to the house that same night, but they had pulled down thick, brown blinds that I couldn't see through. I needed to see my heart, so I broke the window and climbed through. They came out of the bedroom, half-naked and mad as hell. I told them not to let me interrupt and sat down on the couch that had sat in my apartment for four years.

I fell apart after that, literally. Some called it a breakdown. I had to take some time to get myself back together. Once I'd been released, I saw a therapist, but she didn't understand. No one did. There was only one solution. I went right back to they house and snuck in through the garage door. Nobody was home. Turned out they had moved. When I went to the bedroom, I saw pictures of a nice Hispanic family. The love of my life was gone, and he took my heart with him. I tried asking both of their families where they went, but nobody would tell me. I hired a private investigator, but between him and therapy I could do perms and twists for all of Detroit and still be broke.

Without my heart, I thought I could never fall in love again. I stayed locked up in the house every night for a year. Slowly things started to get better, and finally my gay white
friend Eric dragged my fat, lazy ass out to a new club called Spector. I wasn't going to go at first, because I knew I was looking tore-down and broken-up. Besides, Spector was a gay club, and I didn't want nobody to see me there. Not that I care if people know I'm gay—people can kiss my ass. I just know how it is. If I seem too obviously gay, then the down-low niggas won't touch me with their ten-inch poles. I don't like gay boys, so being out would mean being single for the rest of my life.

Eric told me that the place was all white, so I knew nobody in the down-low community would be nowhere near it, but I still didn't know if I wanted to go. There were going to be too many faggots running around, and down-low niggas hate fags. Besides, fags are probably the most racist group in the world. Unless they sucking on your big black dick, they usually don't like seeing your black ass around. I was afraid somebody would say something ignorant to me and I'd have to use my meat cleaver. So I asked him if it was “All white like
Friends
and
Seinfeld,
or all white like pre-Rosa-Parks-we-wants-to-kill-us-a-nigga-today?”

He assured me I wouldn't be in jail by the end of the night, and that there would be a few niggas there who weren't a part of the down-low community. In other words, nobody important would see me.

We walked in the door and I had to squint from all the bright colors. Now I knew why the rainbow was their symbol. Everyone seemed like they were high off some other shit that black folks can't afford, and they were all dancing to their own rhythms. It was flat-out debauchery and chaos. Men were kissing out in the open where anybody could
walk in and see them. Drag queens were walking around with bulges sticking through their skirts. It was just a little too different for me. I like my man inconspicuous.

After the club everyone went to the diner right across the street. It was there that I met a boy named Cutter. Cutter was a cute young black boy. Too young to know anything about the way trade works. “Trade” is what we call it when a straight woman loans us her man's dick for the night. I don't know why they call it “trade,” when she don't get shit in return. Anyway, he was trying to come home with me, but I “wasn't trying to be in no relationship.”

“Neither am I,” he said.

I told him I only had sex with my man and I wasn't ever going to have a man again.

“Why?” he asked, his skinny little arm nudging me in my plump stomach as he sensually leaned toward me.

“Because I've been hurt too many times, and the last one took my heart,” I told him as I turned away.

“Get a new one,” he said, putting his leg over mine.

“You're too young to understand. It ain't that easy,” I answered.

“What happened to it? Maybe I can fix it for you.”

I knew he couldn't, but it was nice to have the attention, even if it was from some boy who'd probably never seen another gay black man and would have thrown himself at any one of us. I decided to talk to him, just because it was rare I get to talk to another nigga that sucks dick besides Daryl. Twins don't talk, they just fuck. “What happened
when
?” I asked, patting him on the leg, more like Santa Claus than
like a lover. “I guess we can start back in high school, with Fashad, and work our way up.”

He opened his mouth in shock, then removed his leg from over mine. “Fashad! You mean fine Fashad that own the record company that don't come out with no records?”

“Yes,” I said, embarrassed because I figured I sounded like a fool. I thought Fashad was so obviously straight. What's more, Fashad was almost a celebrity in Detroit. Saying Fashad broke your heart was like saying Michael Jordan did. It made everyone think you were living in fantasy land.

“I just licked that nigga's balls last Saturday,” he stated, nonchalantly, as he bit into a fried chicken wing.

He told me Fashad saw him on his job at the mall in the next town down. Fashad was wearing a baseball cap with his hair tucked in underneath, and dark shades that had to be designer. Fashad told him his name was Xander, but when Fashad took a call on his cell phone the person on the other end kept calling him Fashad. Cutter asked Fashad about it, and Fashad got angry and said: “My name is Xander—now, do you want to get a hotel room or not?” Cutter saw the commercial three days later and recognized him right away.

That's all I needed to hear. I knew Fashad was at Ralph's before the reverend burned it down, but everyone knew Fashad was the one that blew the cover off the place. If he was getting some in there it wouldn't make any sense for him to blow the spot. If blowing the spot was his way of covering his own fruity ass, I got to hand it to him, he was successful. Of course, with those nice suits, that long hair, and that
allegedly naturally good skin, people still had their doubts, but doubts don't mean much. It seems like every fine nigga is rumored to be down low, even Vin Diesel.

The kicker for me wasn't that Fashad was an MSM. It was that he was using my name. He remembered me from that night. He felt something too. I always knew we were meant to be together—I just didn't know that Fashad knew.

Finding out Fashad was my Romeo after all wasn't the end of the story, it was only the beginning. Then came the conflict: Fashad was down low, and had roots in Detroit. He wasn't about to come out. If two MSMs want to turn gay, they have to move out of the state, where can't nobody find out about them. Then they can both come back on holidays with tales of girlfriends who are visiting parents somewhere else, or are sick, or had to work. That's the happy ending: the twins live together far far away and are happy. Both of their families lie to themselves, and all believe their son, brother, or cousin is straight, and all are happily oblivious. Everyone's happy. I told myself I'd cross that bridge—from being Fashad's fuck buddy to wifey—when I got there. Little did I know there ain't no bridge, and every time I try to make one Fashad tells me how much he hates fags.

But first things first: I still had to make Fashad my fuck buddy. The next day I started going to the gym, and eating right. I read all kinds of magazine articles and shit. I even read a whole book called
How to Steal a Man from a Bitch.
A whole book.

Once I had my mind and my body right, I was ready to make the first move. The question was how. I figured one look and Fashad would know it was me, and I wanted to
make sure he knew I wanted what he wanted. I thought about going to his record company and saying I wanted to make a demo, but everybody knows they don't make no records. So I decided to pretend like my car needed fixing. I drove about a block away from Fashad's car garage, then went under my hood and cut some wire that looked important. I pushed that damn thing to the garage and asked to speak to the owner. They said, “He don't know nothin' about no cars.”

“Well, I just want to talk to him about the prices.”

“He don't know nothin' about no prices.”

“Well, who's your boss? Isn't it Fashad Douglass.”

“I don't know nothin' about no Fashad Douglass.”

“Who signs your paycheck?”

He leaned in and whispered, “I ain't got no paycheck.”

“So what do you get when you fix people's cars?” I asked, still not getting it.

“Nigga, we don't fix no goddamn cars!”

I almost broke my back pushing that car all the way back to Thirty-second Street.

The day after I went to the car garage I was more determined than ever to find Fashad. I decided to ask around about him, which was dangerous because everybody knew Fashad was into slangin', and snooping around about a gangsta makes you look like a snitch, which can get you killed. Ain't that some shit. Everyone could know he was slanging drugs and not care, but if they knew he was having sex with men they'd want his head.

Luckily, I ain't have to ask around for too long. My friend Uganda works out at the nice old folks' home where
all the rich white folks send their parents if they don't hate them yet. She told me that Fashad's momma was staying there. She asked me how Fashad “had all that money.”

“He owns a record company and a car garage,” I told her.