A Brief History of Seven Killings (65 page)

—Wah kinda remark that? You spit on a man, that’s disrespect.

—It’s just water. Like would you spit on my ass and lick it?

—Lawks. No.

—Because of the ass or the spit? You realize by licking ass you’re licking your spit anyway.

—How you can lick back up your own spit? Once it leave your mouth it gone, it not supposed to come back ever.

—Haha. Roll over.

—What?

—You heard me. Roll over.

—I like it this way. You go deeper.

—Deeper my ass, you just don’t want to look at me.

Afternoon in the room. I roll over. The bed too soft and me sinking and he on top pushing me down in the sheet. Sinking. He say inhibited but I don’t know what he mean, even though he say it with a smile. Looking at me
and not turning away. Today is a Tuesday, a yellow-looking day. He still looking at me—me lips dry? Eye crossed? He thinking I going to be the one to look away first, but I not going look away and I not going to even blink.

—You’re beautiful.

—No bother with that.

—I’m telling you, not many men can pull off that glasses thing.

—Boy done with that shit. Man don’t tell man them things that is some—

—Batty boy business? I know, I heard you the last seven times. I swear you’d love the Puerto Ricans. They don’t think sucking dick or fucking ass makes them gay either. Only if you get fucked, then you’re a fucking fag.

—You calling the brethren a bombocloth faggot?

—Oh no, you’re crazy about the pussy.

—I like pussy.

—Dude, we fucking or am I supposed to be Harry Hamlin to your Michael Ontkean?

—What the r’asscloth you talking about?

—You want to guess how many times in just two years I just had the previous discussion? It’s tired, man, and I’m tired of cocksuckers on the quiet tip. Especially you black guys. I just wanna do this.

I keep my lips shut. I wait on him. But he already sucking my right nipple and then the left one harder, like he going to pull it off. It start to hurt and I about to say what the fuck it hurt but then he lick it. Flick his tongue, flicking and licking. I shudder. I want to beg him to lick the right one just to stop shuddering. I feel a circle of warm spit on my nipple that he blowing dry and cool. He need to stop making me the woman. Not from a fuck but from a blow on the nipple.

—Christ, just let it out, you fucker. You mumble any more you’re gonna choke.

—What?

—You can’t be cool as fuck and enjoy your own damn body the same time, so give one of them up. Maybe I should leave and you can call me when you make up your mind.

—NO. I mean, no.

He back in my mouth before I can say bad man don’t kiss. Sucking my tongue, moving his lips over my lips, tongue on tongue, dancing it and making me do it back. He is making me think like a faggot.

—Aw, look at you. You just giggled like a school girl. There may be hope for you yet.

Lip on top of lip, lip turned on the side licking me in the mouth, tongue on top of tongue, underneath tongue, lips sucking my tongue, and I open my eye and see him two eye close tight. That moan come from him not me. I reach up and squeeze him nipples but not hard, I still don’t know hot from hurt. But he moan and now he taking him tongue down my chest to my nipples and my navel leaving a wet trail that feel cold even though him tongue warm. New York spying me do this? I spy what do you spy? B A T T Y with a tight needle-eye. Outside the window is five floor up but I don’t know. Too high for the window washer or pigeon or whoever climbing the wall although nobody would be climbing no wall. Nobody can see but the sky. But Air Jamaica going fly right by and Josey going see me. The man tickle my navel with him tongue and I grab him head. He look up for second and smile and the hair pass through my fingers so thin, so soft, so brown. Hair that make you sound white when you describe it.

—Come back, fucker.

I want to say I am here but he just swallowed my cock and that’s not what come out of my mouth. Something about foreskin, him saying. Pulling it back, looking at the head, diving down on it and I jump up.
You uncut guys are really sensitive, huh?
Licking, sucking just the head then swallow all the way down until he bump into my crotch hair. Up and down, fucking it, and I feel his lips and his tongue and the top of him throat and the wet and the warm and the vacuum suck and release and suck and release and suck and release and I can’t stop grabbing him shoulder every time him pull the foreskin back. And the look, white going down on black then coming up, white going down and coming back up with a twist and lick with pink tongue. The third time I grab him shoulder and squeeze. He stop finally. But then he grab me two ankle and push me ass up and him tongue fucking
me. I don’t think about how I don’t like it so much, don’t think that it just feel like something wet is wetting up me asshole. Him leaving me legs up in the air. He roll off the bed and picks up a condom. I still can’t tell the difference between covered up and bareback, which is also the name of a condom so I don’t understand. I know it’s five floors up but what if somebody pass by the window right now and see my leg up in the air? This is really going to happen again. I don’t fuck enough yet to not think every time that this is really going to happen. I don’t fuck enough yet not to think that there is another hard cock in the room and is not mine. And me just want to grab it and squeeze it and tug it, and maybe suck it one day. And then his fingers now rubbing lube in my asshole, and for once me not thinking prison fuck, though by saying me not going think about prison fuck I do think about prison fuck and he’s really rubbing that stuff in me asshole good and fucking me with him finger and he reach something and somewhere that make me jump and no I don’t wonder if this is how woman feel when me hit the spot, because fuck women and fuck pussy and fuck trying to fuck the faggot out, at least right here, right now five floors up. And fuck thinking what it going mean the white man on top because I don’t think about the white man on top until I think that this is America and if I think like a nigger then it mean something that the white man on top and maybe I should go on top even though he can still ride me. Thank God me not the one who need to have a hard cock.

Phone ring again.

—You gonna let me in at some point, honey?

—What? Oh.

—What are you so uptight about? Gotta say hon, this whole thing about Jamaicans being so chill is turning more and more into a myth. Just sayin’.

—I not uptight.

—Baby, I could probably hang from the ceiling with my thumb stuck up your butt.

—Haha.

—Aha, so the trick is to keep you laughing then. Or to fuck you in the dark. You didn’t seem to have a problem then.

—Every movie I ever see them fucking in the dark. Even TV.

—At what point did it hit you that not every man in America looks like Bobby Ewing?

—I like the dark.

—Holy switch the subject, Batman.

—You switch the subject, not me.

—You know the only person who’s going to see you out that window is Superman. You can choose to believe it or not. I gotta take a leak, be right back.

Had to slap my hand over my mouth so that I don’t say hurry up. I still can’t stop thinking that Josey going pop up outside the window like Kilroy was here. And you know what, I going say, This is America and me can do what me want so fuck what any of you want to say, or as Americans would say, Kiss my ass. Lower East Side all lock up and I deal with that business in Bed-Stuy myself and didn’t have to call the idiot Eubie either, and if he don’t watch I soon take over the Bronx too. In fact I don’t need no Bronx and fucking black people, I got white people in Manhattan who will pay three times that much. And when that plane finally land tonight he going see that Weeper run New York and everything that he need done, do better because of me so just fucking leave me alone and don’t come to my house and don’t look under the sheet but if you do look under the sheet, don’t say nothing. How much more fucking things a man must do?

Things just heavy. That’s all. Things just heavy.

He come out of the bathroom with him cock hard and bending left and with a rubber on already. White man have lighter skin in the exact shape of the brief they wear. And ’round him cock and balls is firebush. I’m wondering if man supposed to be tender. Is the tender thing that make this feel faggot-like. It never feel that way otherwise. Not at Mineshaft, Eagle’s Nest, Spike, New David’s Theater, Adonis Theater, West World, Bijou 82, The Jewel, Christopher Street Bookstore, Jay’s Hangout, Hellfire Club, Les Hommes, Ann Street Bookstore, Ramrod, or Badlands and not in the Ramble, not with the businessman going home to the wife, or the cyclist, or the
hippie long-haired student, or the
guapo
and
muchacho
and
mariconcito
, and church boy, and the clone with all eight inches print out in their jeans, or the man that other man call preppy, or white-hair man walking they dog, or man who look like an ordinary man doing ordinary thing and nothing more. Some come up right behind me when I pull me shorts down, some take me home if they have the white wife, though nobody in America ever know what I mean by white wife so I just say lemon, or yeyo, or weasel dust or big C, or just fucking cocaine. A dealer can pilfer his own stash. Home or park I pull shorts down and they spit or lube and fuck and I wait until the shudder and sometimes they wait until I cum first, then they just jack off on my bottom. But it just feel like man grabbing a man to be a man. In bed and so soft we feel like two faggot. We sound like two faggots. So what? Then we must be faggots.

—You going stand there jerking off all day? I say.

The phone ring right there. He look at it then look at me not looking at it. He go to say something but don’t. The phone still ringing. I wait for it to stop and he climb on the bed and grab my ankles. The ringing stop and he have both of my legs in the air. I wait for the phone to start ringing again, because if it was really important he she it would call back. He rubbing my asshole with lube. No phone ring. He rubbing him cock with lube. No phone ring. I almost expect him to say here goes and though he don’t I giggle anyway, like some girl. He smile, look at me straight and push himself right in, not fast not slow but he go firm and he don’t stop and the onesecond hurt just disappear when he fit himself in with that curve cock and just hit it.

Pissing in the bathroom and the fucking phone ring again.

—Hello?

Shit. The man in bed answer the phone.

—Hello? Let’s do this again, hello? One sec. I think it’s for you.

Five seconds before I take the phone.

—Hello?

—Who the fuck was that?

—Who? What you talking about?

—What the bombocloth you think me talking ’bout? Is duppy just answer the phone?

—No, Eubie.

—Then a who that?

—Is me brethren from down the hall, him come over because him . . . hear me playing some music you . . . you know Phil Collins?

—And you have him answering you business phone?

—Now hold on, Eubie. Me never have him answering nothing. Me come out of the toilet and see that him answer it already. So, wha’gwaan, my youth? What’s shaking?

—Don’t talk to me with that American lingo.

—And don’t talk to me like me is you pickney. Something going on?

—Bet your ass something going on, is three time now I call the brethren.

—Well now you get me.

—I definitely got something.

—What the fuck that mean?

—Anyway, plan change. Me picking up Josey, not you and—

—Fuck that. Josey would tell me if he change him plans.

—Then by all means come to the airport and watch me pick him up. The more the merrier I always say. Another thing. Josey don’t want to go to East Village again, he want to see operations in Bushwick.

—Bushwick? Any reason him want to go to Bushwick all of a sudden?

—Any reason you suddenly think me name psychic? You have a problem with Josey talk to Josey.

—I was going take him to Miss Queenie’s first. Best Jamaican food in New York City, right in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

—Weeper. Josey Wales look like he leaving Jamaica where he can have Jamaican food all the time to fly up for imitation fuckery? You is a idiot or you just play one on TV?

—Yow, a who you ah call—

—Picking him up nine-thirty. Meet we in Bushwick.

Dorcas Palmer

M
aybe some people
know something I don’t, but I’ve never come across a man saying “I’m just curious” who didn’t have some other motive.
You live alone? I’m just curious
, yes, that was the start of a fabulous night. Granted, I was the idiot from taking him home the first place. Why? Because after going after the man in that loud Jamaican club because he didn’t look Jamaican, picking up said man, and giving him a reason in the parking lot to go further, I didn’t want to go to his house because what kind of slut does such a thing? the principal of Immaculate Conception High School would have said. Took the man home and he immediately grew seven more hands, one ’round my neck, one already down my panty, and scooping me because he must’ve thought a clitoris popped out front like a cock. Funny how beer breath smells sexy only in a bar. I said I changed my mind and he grabbed me by the throat and started to squeeze. I grabbed his hands but he only squeezed tighter saying, We not going have any problems are we? I said no baby, me just want to go in the bedroom and put on something more comfortable. You know, like how them do it in movie.

—Then where is the bar so I can fix myself a drink.

—You won’t have time for that, babylove.

So I go into the bathroom and I did find something that made me feel much more comfortable. I remembering walking all the way down to near the end of Gun Hill Road just to find one. The shopkeeper looked at me and asked is what me plan to reap with it. The man set himself in one of the dining chairs I had in the living room. No problem, I only needed to walk a block or two and another chair would be waiting for me. Collateral damage. He was bent over, tugging the only clothes left on, socks that didn’t match. The cutlass cut through the air so fast I almost couldn’t con
trol it. It chop clean through top rail and lodged in the back. The man jumped but not fast enough. He did what men feel they must do, step in closer, nudging and nudging and laughing like he think woman ’fraid. But it wasn’t the swinging that frighten the shit out of him. Is was that I could catch myself so quick and swing again, like I was stunt double in a Bruce Lee movie. A girl needed a hobby my mother would say. I slice after him again and start to scream come out of me bombocloth house! He’s saying easy baby, easy, and I start screaming rape! Come out of me bombocloth house. I swing to make it look like I missed him and shattered my expensive vase, but the vase wasn’t worth shit and I smashed it just to show that this mad bitch mean business. He was still backing away too fucking slow. Can I have my clothes at least? he said but I kept screaming and chasing after him, swinging the fucking cutlass left and right like I was clearing away bush. He ran to the door and slipped out screaming down the hallway about some crazy motherfucking bitch. Don’t know who he was talking about. I wonder if I was more Jamaican then and am nothing but some American spazz now. And—