Chapter One
Hot Pursuits, Secrets & “Gray” Areas
Down to the literal minute, we had the time set as to when we would all finally spend time together.
We had Shana’s mom clocked:
At 6:30p, she would be leaving out for her club meeting.
Our guys were to arrive about 6:45, leaving open-that fifteen minute window to allow enough time for Shana’s mom to come back and pick up anything she thought she might have left.
She would be walking back into the building at exactly 9:25p.
If all goes well, we all should be good and out by then-as if we never were there.
We made plans to get together over at Shana’s house on that cold November 4th day, where Shana would be cuddled up in her bedroom with his friend Wes. And he and I would be snuggled up on the comfy living room sofa by the door-you know: “talking.”
Shana and Wes tucked themselves back into her cozy bedroom-door closed-while he and I had the luxury of looking at the front door while we talked. My heart was beating fast. I was shaking like the last leaf on a tree.
“Come here and stand up. Stand right here-right here in front of me,” he said to me with a deep frown in his brow, strategically positioning me in front of him like a chess piece.
“Why?” I asked repeatedly all the while, allowing him to position me the way he wanted me.
“I just want to look at you,” he responded.
He began to run his hands down my arms, waist, hips and thighs without saying a word, like he was examining me. It was creepy and weird to me: his touch, his way, the scene-everything. I couldn’t tell if I was turned on, scared or both. I think it was both, but I was so afraid to allow myself to be aroused enough to respond, so I just stood there.
He then lifted my shirt up, grabbed me by the waist, and then turned me around so that he could now look at me from the back. I cooperated by still allowing him to turn me in circles as if he was admiring something that he was about to buy, take home, and eat. When I made my way back around to standing in front of him, he moved closer to the edge of the couch while looking up at my face as if he was asking for permission, yet, nothing came out of his mouth. He placed his hands around my ass and something finally came out: “Why do you always wear things to cover your butt? You can still see it!” he said-bluntly-in a tone totally opposite the moment.
That caught me off guard and made the moment even more awkward for me. I reached to pull my shirt back down while quickly removing his hands from around me as if to convey the message: “You blew it!” to him.
He ignored the gesture. He then stood up to turn the kitchenette light on then turned off the light in the living room (where we were).
He sat back down and proceeded with more instructions: “Stand back right here,” he asserted.
He was so awkward and technical. I was so nervous and nervous. When he reached underneath my shirt again, I jumped back a little bit-not wanting him to touch my stomach. He was going straight for my breasts anyway; grabbing them while letting out an awkwardly aroused sigh that sent chills through my body as he began to caress my breasts fervently.
Before I knew it, my pants had hit the floor along with my shirt and all the rest of my clothes. He scooted back on the couch for me to get on top of him. I grabbed his dick and thought hard about mounting him, and just going for it-only because I could tell that was what he was expecting and positioned himself for me to do. I wasn’t quite ready to do it though. He had positioned himself about as blunt, awkward and assertive as he was in conversation that whole evening already. I was powerless the whole night: from the conversation, his touch and this very moment. I needed some time to think, even though my clothes were off of my body.
Although I knew he was laying there waiting for me to mount him, I could not do it. I froze. My mouth froze as well. I wanted to tell him that I needed him to enter me first-before I could mount him. At the point of intercourse and entry, I had a thing about being laid on my back, missionary or any way submissive and “in receipt-of” first-before the party could begin. It always seemed like that was they way it was supposed to go. It turned me on. I gestured to let him know how I wanted it without dripping a word from my frozen mouth. He cooperated.
He laid me on the couch, folded my legs toward my chest and gently slid himself into to me. At that very moment, there were fireworks woven in between his moans, grunts and breathlessness. I had no idea this was going to be like this. I felt like a fucking virgin. It felt so good. My mouth dropped and I began to cry. I didn’t know what was happening to me at this moment. I just couldn’t process it at all. His shaking and deep breathing lead the whole moment as I followed his lead by slowly meeting his manly thrusts deep into me. We were fucking as if each long stroke was something that we both wanted to last forever. We must have sounded like two animals in a slow heat.
He jumped, yelled out and pulled out of me as if he was trying to stop himself from cumming so soon: “Angie, please-please get on top of me, I want to talk to you,” he pleaded. I could do it this time. By now, if he asked me to stand on my head I probably would have.
But he lay on his back.
I got on top and mounted him. My legs were shaking nervously like a doe struggling for strength. I was afraid to grab him and put him inside of me, but rather-hoping he would take the lead again.
He did.
With his right hand, he grabbed his dick while holding my ass with his left hand and slid himself back into me, biting his bottom lip as if he was singing his favorite song; thrusting into me as if he was making moves to the beat of that very same song. It was awesome. All I could do was throw my head back and bite my own bottom lip.
He went from biting his bottom lip to puckering them and frowning with a kind of pleasure like he was in full concentration of the circumference of my warm vagina that gripped him so tightly. He nodded his head back and forth in total disbelief yelling “ah shit,” repeatedly-as if after this night, it was going to be some trouble…
It was explosive.
It was weird because initially, I wasn’t in the mood to fuck him and he hardly gave me the foreplay that I was so used to with Santana, and I certainly didn’t give him the foreplay that I loved to give. I wondered if my pussy would even get wet enough for him. But from the moment he lay me down and entered me-I exploded and it was on and popping from there.
His awkward lovemaking was slowly turning me on. I felt like I could get used to his way. His touch-every sound, every facial expression he made, turned me on. Every step of the way, he surpassed my arousal times ten. So much so that I could barely fuck him back. I remained frozen stiff throughout the entire fuck. I could hardly move-consistently. He dominated everything all the way down to the way he fucked and thrust me. It was as if he just wanted to take and scrape it all. I eventually allowed him to use me every which way he wanted to. I had no other choice.
This second sexual encounter (with him), felt like what my first time (with Santana) was supposed to be like. I didn’t know the how-many-eth time it was for him, but I know he wasn’t a virgin-like Santana was-our first time. I didn’t care though. I just knew that from the moment I was with him this night, I felt like a virgin-all over again.
He more than busted my cherry (so it seemed), he also busted my fucking tear ducts because I cried silently while biting my own bottom lip as well, from the very moment he entered me throughout the entire fuck-the whole night. It felt unbelievable. I was a combination of: embarrassed, horny, virginal, sad, happy, worried, uptight and aroused with this weird dude who had been stalking me forever and a day. He didn’t know what to think about all my emotions in this moment. All he could do was let all that he had inside of him-out, while he looked up at me wiping my tears:
“I wanted this so bad. I wanted you so bad. I thought about you for so long. You don’t know how bad I wanted this moment. I’m so happy right now-girl, I’m so happy right now,” he confessed.
I still could not say anything back because I was still frozen. He was still doing all the fucking and grinding deep up into me while my eyes continued to roll in my head and my tears rolled down my face. I believed what he said, because he had been fucking me that night like he had been alone with me inside his mind and in his dreams he kissed my lips a thousand times, and sometimes saw me walk outside his door.
Hello…
I was stunned. I placed my hands on top of one another, covering my lower stomach with my fingers and kneading my pussy-in an effort to keep his focus on and into my pussy only.
“Angie-you got some good pussy. This pus’is gooo-ed,” he pronounced and grunted, with his lips puckered again-looking like he was some thug, yet he was far from one. He seemed to pucker his lips when it would get exceptionally good to him. I liked that. It was especially exciting because I always had a thing for opening my legs for my man. So the thought of mounting him with my legs spread apart while he looked right down into my world as he slurped through his lips, was exciting to me. He would grunt, pucker and stare at my crouch-while enjoying the rhythm he had going; thrusting himself upward and deep into me with that concentrating look on his face-listening to the sound of himself going in and out of me-still puckering his lips and looking in as if he could see the circumference of it all in x-ray vision.
It was a mess between us. He was digging from inside of me-a wet rush down onto him that was making all kinds of sounds that he was enjoying like good music. Each thrust into me seemed to pop sparks inside of me, yet I still couldn’t respond. He had a firm grip onto me and fucking me as if the top of me was not even there. He kept grunting and stroking up and into me harder as if he was going to fuck a verbal response out of me. He grabbed me by my waist and held me stiff, then began to grind up into me like he was punishing me for not fucking him back or telling him how much I loved it. I refused to say a word and do anything more than bite down on my jowls, eventually, I was gasping and moaning out for mercy. He was working hard and enjoying it so much. It was almost like had I told him I loved it-the fuck wouldn’t have been as good. He was working hard. I couldn’t talk if I wanted to, I could only gasp and squeal into the air. I was too stunned and speechless. Scared and aroused-all at the same damn time.
The more I gasped and squealed with my head falling back, the harder, deeper and slower he grinded up into me. I dug my nails into his arms, biting down on my teeth until my jaws and ears wanted to pop out the sides of my head.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
I fell into his chest and bawled myself up like a snail while he lifted his legs up-nearly folding me in half; thrusting even deeper, and harder up into me. In an instant, he grabbed my shoulders to look me in the face: “Angie-Angie! Say you’ll have my lil’ girl, say you’ll have my baby. Say it-say you’ll have my baby.”
Little did he know those were the magic words that snapped me out of the daze I was in: im-me-diate-ly. I wanted him out of me, and I wanted me having this lil’ girl from out of his mind (once again): im-me-diate-ly.
“No, no!” I finally spoke.
“Please!” he kept asking-desperately. “Please have my lil’ girl.”
I could hear him near gargling, so I quickly lifted off of him but held my face into his chest while holding his dick with my both my hands; covering it completely as if I did not want any air to get in and ruin his moment and change what it was his dick was feeling while being inside of me.
I was insulating.
He was ejaculating.
I was jerking him.
I made sure every ounce rested in my hands-not inside me.
I wanted off of him-but he kept holding me like he did not want to let me go.
As we got dressed and after, I never responded to anything he said to me for the duration of his stay-at all. I just wouldn’t talk to him. I froze up-all over again.
It was time for Shana to make he and Wes leave so that we could straighten up the house before her mom came back home.
I walked towards the kitchen away from him and he came following me, backing me into the wall. He kneeled and dropped down to his knees to look up at me almost apologetically and like he had one of those “Lady Sings the Blues”/Billy-Dee Williams moments. It was so manly and romantic-his “way.” The way he frowned his brows and puckered his lips as if to say “ooh” when he would talk to me-like he finally had the gift he had always wanted. It was a combination of lust and adoration; almost like my pussy + heart were was written all over his face. That’s what turned me on more than anything about him. He looked at me the same way he did after we fucked, the way he did before we fucked. The same way he looked at me standing outside talking to me, in Wes’ car and everywhere else. That look was always there before and after. And I liked that.
He was so awkward, but sexy.
I was feeling just as awkward as I did before we fucked-standing there feeling just as awkward after. No less awkward while standing outside talking to him, in Wes’ car and everywhere else.
I held my head downward but turned to the right some-not wanting him to look at me in the face. His placed his thick fingers to the sides of my face-trying to secure and center my face in his hands to look at him:
“Please talk to me. Tell me if I made you do something you didn’t want to do?” he kept saying, over and over.
“No, I wanted it. I just have something on my mind, that’s all,” I responded.
To him, that must have sounded like this was goodbye forever:
“Angie, tell me. Is this the last time I’m going to see you again? Tell me,” he demanded to know.
“No, no it’s not.” I replied.
“I’m going call you later tonight. Is that okay?” he asked.
https://youtu.be/4ZVS-nC8B6c
He did.
We talked on the phone for a long time about our night we had and the days before it. All of a sudden, my other line rang. The male party asked: “Angie, what are you doing?”
I was confused because it didn’t sound like Santana, but I knew that the only other guy who had my telephone number was Pucker (who was on the other line with me).
The male party opposite Pucker started laughing in my ear. I was really confused then.
It was Pucker using his parent’s line trying to confuse me. When we got back to our line he said to me: “Angie, I notice that you were nervous-real nervous, why? Why were you so nervous?”
I didn’t have a clear answer for him, but I did not tell him that I thought he was Santana either. We talked for a while longer, and then got off the phone.
We ended up cozying up on the phone pretty much the same time everyday-routinely-until my schedule changed because I had gotten a job at the hamburger joint that I had applied to, the same night that I officially met him.
You see, we had originally first saw one another once while shopping for sneakers for Santana one Saturday afternoon-back when I was pregnant and home on one of my weekends from the pregnant jail.
He and Wes were in the sneaker store following Santana and me around every section that we turned to walk through. Pucker would make his way across from me-forcing me into eye contact. I managed to ignore him for a long time, but it was obvious that he was not going to leave the store until I acknowledged his presence at some point. I decided to look back at him and he looked at me like a baby deer caught in headlights. I kept Santana preoccupied with conversation representative of my being his personal shopper, slash fashion critic, slash buyer; so as to distract him away from this guy and his buddy who totally invaded my space.
It was soooo weird.
If Santana caught that exchange, he would have sworn I knew them, but I didn’t.
I didn’t think much of Pucker at that time because he looked like an older guy. And by this time (and years into a relationship of normalcy with Santana); it was like my crushes on older guys and my flings with girls, was [what I thought it was]: a phase that would soon pass. So in that sneaker store, Pucker (in my eyes) was merely another cute older guy trying to get my attention. And I did not want to give him the same opportunity that I gave the last older guy that sequestered me the last time I was in a store with Santana. It was a nightmare for me.
It happened quite some time before I was to report off to the pregnant jail. I was no where near showing-in the face or stomach.
Santana and I had walked around to the store to buy all the things to calm and satisfy my cravings that I was having: vinegar, pickles, peppermints and plain potato chips. Out of nowhere appeared this older man (who invaded both of our spaces). He looked at Santana with his arm around me then looked at me as if he had a flashback and remembered his own daughter was once in love the way were. He had a few choice words for me:
“Don’t let this young man ruin your life! Don’t let him mess your life up before you get to live it! You bea-u-ti-ful girl you! Don’t let him get you pregnant and make your life go down the drain! Don’t do it!” yelled this stranger- sounding like the ghost of my estranged dad who would rather burn in hell than to know that I was in the condition that I was in.
It caught both Santana and me by surprise and ruined my day. I was already waning in and out and back and forth about what I was going to do about the pregnancy. This all was too much for me. I looked around for my dad in that store because it sure as hell seemed like that man was paid to say that, or some hidden camera person was going to jump out and apologize. Santana and I hurriedly walked out having bought nothing. My taste buds were even affected-my cravings were no longer. I just wanted to go home and finish off the cry that had begun the moment I turned away from that strange man and burst through the doors of that store to head home. Santana was so hurt. That scene both haunted and traumatized the both of us. Neither one of us said a word to each other about it-ever again. He just held me while I cried myself to sleep.
So when Santana and I were sequestered in that sneaker store as Pucker followed us around; I would be damned if this was going to be a repeat of what had happened just a short time right before. Uh uh-no how! No way! I insisted. So I broke Puckers forceful eye-contact then coached Santana into picking out the nearest sneaker, and we hauled ass out of that store.
But Pucker seemed to reappear what seemed like every other time Santana and me would go for a walk around the block and down to the (haunted) corner store.
From the moment we would make it to the left side of the street to begin our walk down on the long main street, like clockwork-this blue vehicle would be out in the distance blasting this classic jam by a group called “Cameo.” As lyrics would play: “Back-back-and-Fourth-and-Fourth. Our loves goes: Back-back-and-Fourth-Fourth. As we go…Back-back-and-Fourth-Fourth…” I could tell when it would be moving closer to us, because the sound would be clearer-backed by a lot of base from his speakers. After about the third time this had happened, when I would hear it, my heart would begin to beat faster. Because just as disregarding to Santana’s presence he was in the sneaker store-he was that same way when he would see us walking. It’s just that when we were in the sneaker store, I had no idea that he was that same guy-all that time.
But this day in particular that he had come down the street blasting his music, it all came together-it was him, yet again. Each time we would see him, I would just lower my head and hold Santana’s hand tightly, and he would grab mine even tighter. Even though Pucker was intrusive, Santana knew I didn’t know him-so we both just ignored him.
Pucker refused to be ignored though. His face was becoming more common to me; popping up in strange places all over the city.
This next time, from behind the kitchen of a chicken joint he was working at. He was peeking out at me looking like Tyrin Turner peeking from behind the fence in awe of Janet and her crew in that Rhythm Nation video. It was strange-he was strange.
This time however, I was not with Santana. I was with my oldest brother’s girlfriend-out shopping. It was the same day that my mom and Dana’s mom’s had Santana sequestered in the house, torturing him by breaking the fake news to him that I was gone out on a date to explore my options. Ironically, I was out without Santana, but instead: being explored:
“Hi, how are you doing?” he asked, feeling like it was his lucky day.
“I’ve seen you before! I’ve seen you before! Can I talk to you for a second?” he said, excitedly and as if his double-confirming that he had seen me before was enough to have earned him the right to have my hand in conversation.
I didn’t respond to him, but rather, acted as if I didn’t hear him; fidgeting through my purse as if I was preoccupied and digging for something-do or die.
“Can I be your friend?” he asked-urgently. It was so awkward.
I thought he so was weird because he was so eager and excited. But he was simply trying to get in on this first open opportunity he had seen me without Santana-which was a rarity for anybody to see. Wherever I was, Santana was not too far behind.
I looked up at him and snapped at him: “I have the same boyfriend!”
He kept on insisting:
“I can be your friend. Can I be your friend? I can be your friend,” he kept insisting-impatiently and awkwardly as if he was bargaining at his last chance at life.
I scolded him with my eyes and gave him the look of death. Because although it wasn’t visible to him, little did he know, I had a possibility growing inside of me and it felt gross to me-having him in my face this way.
We made it out of the chicken joint without my being plucked.
Pucker refused to be ignored however.
He appeared again-the day Shana and me were up at the mall shopping and picking up job applications. We ended up, last, in Walgreens. At the end of the store aisle I saw a man staring down the isle as if he knew either Shana or me. I couldn’t make out that I knew him and I was sure he didn’t know me, so I moved out of his view and stood closer to Shana and whispered to her: “Girl, you didn’t take nothing did you? ‘Cause it’s a man in here way down at the end of the isle-following us from isle to isle!”
I had to double-check on that with Shana because she was cunning as they come. She was a very sweet girl with a soft-spoken and delicate way about her, but you had to watch her. She could steal the clothes off your ass and have you walking around not knowing you were naked.
Once, she borrowed a pair of my sneakers and I called her up to get them back from her. She did me one better-she brought them to me. She allowed me (and went out of her way) to make me see that she was returning them by sliding them right back under my bed. But sometime during her visit, she stole them right back from me and tried to convince me that I must have misplaced them. She was sneaky like that-so, you had to watch Shana. I sure as hell didn’t intend on going to jail from Walgreens that night.
“Girl I didn’t take anything! I swear-she insisted.
I responded: “Girl, he keeps looking down this isle at us like he knows one of us-or something.”
She squinted and looked down the isle but he had walked away.
Coast clear.
Another guy walked down the isle, and up on Shana:
“Hi Wes!” yelled Shana into the guys face, they hugged.
She introduced us.
“I’m in here with my dude-you guys hanging out longer? How are you getting home?” asked Wes.
From the other end of the isle, that same man walked towards us slowly.
He nodded and spoke to Shana as if he knew her. She spoke back to him. Wes was whispering in her ear.
Low and behold, it was that same guy who drives up and down my street, who works at the chicken joint and disregards my boyfriend.
This time, I was outnumbered-everyone knew each other except me. Confidently, patiently and like a gentleman, he gave me his hand, and introduced himself to me by name.
I replied:
“Hi,” I said quickly, throwing my hand up then down: quickly, too.
“Angie is it okay if Wes takes us home?” asked Shana-in front of everybody.
I pulled her to the end of the isle:
“That tall man always tries to talk to me girl! No! Not if he’s with him!”
I laughed and gasped-thinking of how he seemed to show up everywhere I seemed to be.
In her high-pitched voice, Shana replied:
“Girl that aint no man! That’s Wes and n’em’s boy. They all grew up together. They’re all around the same age. He’s only about a year or two older than you and me! He just looks older than us. He is so fine! All the girls chase him! He is fine! I don’t know what you’re talking about! You’d better get on with that one if he’s chasing you like that!”
I laughed and said:
“He’s so hairy and tall. Look at all that shadow hair on his face. He’s got hair all on his arms and shit girl. No! What eighteen year-old boy looks like that? He’s sooo hairy!” I cringed.
Shana thought that was the funniest thing she had heard all day.
We walked out and over to Wes’ car. Hairy got happy-thinking he was going to be able to sit next to me in that back seat that he stuffed himself into with space left for me. Before seating could take its course, I told Shana to switch places with me so that I could sit in the front with her friend Wes-who was driving, and she could sit stuffed in the back with happy Hairy. She agreed. We got situated and starting heading home.
From the back seat, Hairy’s long arm kept reaching for my arm.
He kept begging for conversation in that same bargaining and impatient way he did at the chicken joint that day. I would short answer his constant questions with my head turned downward and to the left, then I’d turn quickly back to the right to look out of the window.
We pulled up to Shana’s house and I hurriedly opened that car door to get away from that man! Eighteen my ass!
“Could I PLEASE talk to you for a second, one second-PLEASE,” he pleaded as if he could not take the chase anymore. I looked at him and squinted my eyes as if I was seeing if I could trust him:
“Yeah…” I snapped.
He looked surprised, and looked me in the eyes as if he trying to trust that I would not yell: “Psyche!”
I didn’t.
We stood outside the apartment talking small talk.
“May I switch phone numbers with you?” he asked.
“I keep telling you that I have a boyfriend! I cannot call you! And you can’t call me!” I snapped again, desperately hoping that it was enough to make him go away and I would never see him again.
“Pleeeeeaase let me call you. Call me then-please, I just want to talk you soooo bad,” he pleaded.
I paused. I was trying to think of a question to ask him that would be a perfect exit and way out for me. We went at it-and fast-like a game of talking tennis:
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“We just broke up.”
“What was her name?”
“Yolanda.”
“Why did y’all break up?”
“It just wasn’t working out.”
He was ready. He refused to lose-knowing that he would never get another chance at me like this again.
Eye of the tiger.
I paused for a second then mechanically gave him my phone number while still squinting my eyes, and looking him into his.
He called me that night, and the next few nights.
I decided that I liked him after all. He was good-looking and it was something awkwardly sexy about him that I could not resist. He wouldn’t let me. And the way he would talk to me would be like he was pulling my arm-afraid that if he let go, he would never talk to me again. I could tell that he liked me a lot. During one of our conversations, it turned out that he lived in the next community over from me. We joked about him stalking me and clocking me down to the usual time of day I would be walking to the corner store-which typically would be the time Santana made it up to the house after work, and we would go on our daily walk and talk.
I would laugh-listening to his awkward methodology and things he was telling me he was doing trying to get to me and how he had narrowed down the proximity of where I lived. Little did he know, at that time, all those times that he would stalk me and Santana walking down to the corner store, I was craving something vinegary, salty, pepperminty and pickley in taste. My “possibility” would be sending me to the store almost the same time everyday with that craving (unbeknownst to him) but I did not tell him that part…
We talked about everything, enjoying getting to know one another. Day by day, I warmed up to him-letting him in on anything but that. So although I enjoyed our talks and thoroughly enjoyed our first night over at Shana’s house and every other time we would get together; all bets were off when it came down to actually discussing Santana, and what was (then) my “possibility.”
Pucker had no idea that all those months he was stalking me; I was with-child. He had no idea about all the transitions, transformations and changes I had gone through in my life during all those very same times he was pursuing me. And as far as I was concerned, none of it was his business or a topic in our many lengthy conversations in getting to know one another. The fact still remained (and as he had already known) I still had that same boyfriend. And he had no idea that by the time we first got together over Shana’s mom’s house that day, I was no longer with-child.
But he had a secret too.
All that time I was keeping a secret from him-he was keeping a secret from me: A girlfriend-at the hamburger joint I had applied to and was working at who too, was my new friend working there with me…
~~~~~~~
My first day turned out well: Learning how to make mashed potatoes in bulk, carve biscuits and bake them, sweep the floor, busts tables, fill up the honey jars-it was all gravy.
It was a girl there that remembered my face from being in my home one day with a mutual friend. The mutual friend attended the same artsy school I went to.
When mom and me first moved to the neighborhood-far and away from my closest friends, although me and TGGF kept in contact, that left a lot of time for me and Santana, especially since Twin was sent away and expected to go live with my dad, whom I was still estranged from.
Mutual also lived in the vicinity-within walking distance, and wanted to drop by to see how I liked the neighborhood. The girl she brought with her was this girl in particular-who worked at the fast food joint with me. She had come in just a couple hours behind me on my first day:
“Hi! I remember you!” she said to me.
“I’ve been to your house before! You have the boyfriend who you had been with for some years and you guys are all deep in love and stuff, remember me? I play soccer. I was on my way to practice when I had run into my friend who was on her way over to visit you, that’s how I met you,” she said.
“Oh okay, yeah I remember! Hello! Good to see you again! I remember. You live in the area as well! Okay I remember!” I replied.
“Well actually, I live right at the bottom of the hill and around the corner from you-closer to you than she does actually!” said Soccer.
“Oh okay, that’s good. Well it’s really good to know that, and good to see you too. Small world huh?” I replied.
This girl seemed to be so taken by my relationship with Santana. She had no idea that so much had happened with Santana and me in those months since then-when I was obviously feeling very gung-ho about us then (let her tell it). But by this time, I had gotten some of the best dick that I never dreamed of. I had been cuddled and hugged up with Pucker so much in the meantime and in between time, that all she was reminiscing about Santana and me, seemed so long ago. I listened and played along:
“Well maybe we can take our break together! Hold on, let me go and ask if we can okay? I’d love that Angie,” she said.
“Sure, I would too! Do ask him,” I replied.
We had our break together over biscuits and honey, talking about how she met Mutual-just rambling on-and asking questions about Santana and me. I could tell that Mutual probably had briefed her on my relationship with Santana, considering the fact that all the years Santana and me were in high-school and in love; Mutual attended there too, and was one of the many girls who wanted Santana oh-so-badly but couldn’t have him because he was with me. So I was sure that Soccer was feasting of all that information that Mutual had given her. It seemed to be such a fairytale to Soccer-like at one time, it was for me: that fairy-tale version of Santana and my relationship that by this time, oh my, had run into lions and tigers and bears a-plenty, yet, we were still holding on to the love that both of us could not let go of and now, the bond we shared…
After some time, Soccer and me hit it off pretty good and had a good work relationship. It became a pleasure to come to work and have break with my new friend whenever we were scheduled on the same day. My life schedule was so filled up with trying to spend some time with Santana, work, and squeezing Pucker in, with his hungry demands. He couldn’t keep his hands off me. I had no time or energy to be intimate with Santana whatsoever and Pucker was clocking my life and schedule down to the hour to make sure I would spend less time with Santana to his hopeful point of never. He was trying hard.
Shana and Wes’ relationship wasn’t going as hot and heavy as Pucker and mine was. He and I were still “honeymooning.” Shana and Wes weren’t, so getting access to Shana’s house or Wes’ house was getting to be tough. I would be able to squeeze Pucker in for a few hours when my mom would be out with Shana’s mom in the evenings during the week-which wasn’t that often.
Sometimes we would have to make due with taking it to the back or front seat of his car-which was working out fine until we had our hide away infiltrated by the cops one day.
This thing with Pucker was almost like a drug to him and for me, but for different reasons. It seemed to be so new for him, and it definitely was new for me. My first time (with Santana), I had already been so “prepared”-ready, so mechanical and knowing just what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it, and with whom I wanted to do it with for my first time. I had just “had it”-had sex. I was the “rehearsed” one. We both were virgins yet, he was the only one who got the full-on feel of what feeling like a “virgin” was (during sex, our first time). I merely got the fairytale of being the envy of all the girls who wanted the popular guy that ended up with the “different” girl, changed her style and molded her into the princess he wanted her to be–the prom night Cinderella story and the rest is “history (in the making)”:
Possibilities.
Promises broken.
Now Pucker.
…fighting hard to meet his needs while trying to maintain life, work and my relationship. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was so busy tending to Pucker every chance I got that I was hardly even noticing that Santana was actually open, out, and away more-giving me the room I needed to tend to Pucker, for reasons that until later; I would not find out.
Pucker was on it.
His way to me was a long hard road and climb. And he made sure I would not ever get away for any moment of the day that he could have access to me, any way he could.
Whenever I couldn’t see him face to face, he would be on my phone breathing hard and mumbling with this awkward tone of voice as if he was jerking off. He was so creepy and sexy to me. It would turn me on when he would lower his voice and talk to me about any and everything nonsexual until he would get up the nerve to just say (in words) what the lust in his voice would already be saying for the whole hour that we would be on the phone.
We had gotten into that routine and habit of him calling me and starting the conversation out that way; cuddle-talking until he couldn’t take it anymore. It was like he wanted to see if he had the willpower to allow us to enjoy our conversation from start up until we’d get off the phone, but it seldom worked out quite like that. He’d confess and remind me how good our sex was to him and how he needed me, when I couldn’t get to him. He was so pitiful. I’d masturbate on the phone with him to help him get off.
“Angie, I love that pus, I love that pus I love that pus,” he’d be saying over and over while I would be masturbating and moaning for him. To help me along, I would need for him to get rough with me-and talk rough sex with me to get me off quicker:
“Angie-I’m going to kill that ass, I’m going to tear that pus up when I get to you-do you hear me! You hear me!”
“Rougher,” I whispered and demanded, desperately.
He would grunt and fold his lips tighter-spewing sexual threats about fucking and laying in to me every which way possible.
I needed it rougher. His awkward, creepy ways were easy in helping me discover sexual things I liked to do and feel that I did not think I had in me to feel with Santana. Santana’s style was completely different than Pucker.
Each step of the way-it began to get me higher to take him higher; listening to the sound of his awkward heavy breathing, desperate and perverted-like we had never seen one another before, or in ions.
Considering how he had me intimidated on our first night together, while spending so much time with him; I was learning that he was lamer than he thought he was or would ever cop to. I could tell that he had never been this kind of intimate with a girl before. I mean, I knew he wasn’t a virgin, but he was far too excited at the newness of it all-like Santana was. But Santana was a virgin. It wouldn’t be until later that little did I know about this bit of “history” of mine in the making…I was creating a monster that later bit me in the worse way.
But in blind-sight’s meantime and in between time, I was growing to love what we had and what we were doing because he made me feel desired-just like Santana did yet, I guess because he wasn’t a virgin (like Santana was), his touch-his way was more aggressive than Santana’s was. In that regard, Pucker was good for me-that worked for me the way it should have the first time, my first time.
Although receptive and as “virgin-rehearsed” as my mind and imagination told me and I showed Santana I was on one hand, but as mechanical and rehearsed for my big moment as I was on the other hand-despite the fact that Santana and I were both virgins-it was like I took his virginity rather than him “having” or “taking” mine. In my mind, as a virgin, I knew all the submissive and aggressive steps, positions, and all that I wanted “re-enacted” from like—a list in my mind. So our first time was a gumbo of every aggressive then submissive sexual and sensual thing possible. My every submissive [and especially] aggressive move was like marking off a line on a list of “things to do.”
With Pucker although I wasn’t a virgin anymore, it felt like he “took” and “had” my virginity—the way it was supposed to be. I relaxed and just allowed him to “do” and let happen, whatever happened. I didn’t have any “things to do” in my head. Unfortunately, the “things to do” in my head all came from things I had no business experiencing during my innocent years; sensations that I should have never been turned on to. So my first time with Santana-I was chasing sensations. This time with Pucker, I let sensations chase and catch up to me. And I loved that feeling. It aroused me immensely.
He aroused me immensely.
The exciting part of it all was that our telephone conversations that would start off normal, to the point of him breathing hard and mumbling with his awkward tone of voice. Jerking off came to be a kind of foreplay before he would come to pick me up on those times I could get away to see him. We would have phone sex to the point of arousal and then stop. The plan was for me to always come to meet him “as is;” wet and ready for him to grab me like I owed him something-pulling at me to straddle him with no words being said between the two of us. By the time we would pull over to fuck, he would be rock-hard, ready, lit and stiff like a cement street light pole.
Routinely (creating this monster that I never knew would come back and bite me in the worse way), while he would be driving us up to our spot, the moment I would get into the car and before he could even get momentum going; I would sit up on my knees and bend over to suck him senseless-opening my mouth and throat to devour him slowly, deeply and tightly without coming up off of it, doing my best to concentrate on matching the head job in my mind with the way we would soon be pulling over to do: Me-mounting him, while he would be grinding deep up into me every which way possible until he was about to cum. He would rarely thrust in and out of me-just grind up and in to me like he was digging for gold.
I loved that with him. He loved it, and loved that I loved it. It was like our central moment in all this was the mounting time. I wanted to please him as best as I could.
On route (while driving) and until mounting time, I was giving him head until the very moment we pulled over. He lifted my skirt up and pulled my panties over to the side-that aroused me: having my panties pulled to the side. He seemed to know all the right things to turn me on without any reminders other than his retaining all the secrets I would whisper to him during phone sex. I was so impressed and taken by his extreme attention to those little important details that he meticulously turned around to use on me to make me feel good.
I immediately climbed on top of him and without warning, or conversation of any kind, he impatiently grabbed me and thrust himself inside of me with a vengeance, knowing that the only time he would be hearing me howl and open my mouth to moan and scream aloud was at that very moment.
After that, he did what he always did: hold me down by my waist and ass so tightly as if I was about to run away if I got the chance to raise off him enough. He locked me down and grinded deeply up and into me while taking these awkward, deep, desperate, large bites all over my face neck and shoulders. We would be stuck like two cats in heat with him repeatedly yelling: “Killin’ that ass. I’m going to kill this ass” ritualistically. It seemed to get him off like it would when he would say it over the phone during phone sex-as if he couldn’t wait to get his hands on me.
I was always too stunned to move my own body or utter a word or sound when we would fuck. I’d just hold it in-resisting. I was so afraid to make a fool of myself if I were to let go of all that I was feeling going on inside of me from my pussy, heart and head come bursting out of my mouth.
He seemed to be aroused by it and be frustrated by it at the same time.
We both had two kinds of resistances going on-driving us both crazy.
Him: grinding a dam-making it hurt so good and locking me down so that I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.
Me: wanting to grind back, but being forced to sit there and take it-pissing him off by gasping and squealing and resisting that loud moan and scream that he seemed to be trying to thrust and grind from up out of me. Like every other time we were together, tear rolled down my face. I couldn’t help myself. This must be love.
His lips were puckered up so hard while he grunted sexual expletives as if he was cueing the fuck out of me for me to chime in and sing soprano. He was so routine and mechanical.
Every single time we’d fuck, I knew when he was about to cum:
Grab me (tightly).
Shake (like he was having a seizure).
Bite my cheek (trying to control and grab hold of himself).
Those became my cues.
Routinely, I jumped off of him and engulfed his penis in both my hands as best I could, to insulate and keep the sensation going for him. The feeling of him shaking and grunting so hard would drive me crazy wild because he’d sound like he was slobbering, but he wasn’t. Like he was having a seizure, but he wasn’t.
A monster in the making…as this history in the making would soon prove….
We had just gotten done and I climbed from on him and sat back into the passenger seat-worn completely out. He was tired, and placing his hands on top of his head trying to regain his composure-oxygen circulating back to brain.
Someone stood outside, pecking on the window on my side:
Knock-knock.
That oxygen made its way to Pucker’s head and I regained all my strength on impulse.
Our eyes stretched wide, looking at one another shell-shocked. Alls we knew was that we were safe because the doors were locked, but we could not pull off and away because we weren’t parked in a position to drive straight out and down that long narrow hill.
All that fucking like grown folks we were doing a minute ago meant nothing because at this moment, we behaved like two kids caught in the middle of something and about to get in trouble of some kind for it.
The knocker decided to help us out by shining the extremely bright light into the window at us:
Knock-knock (again).
“Roll that-there window down will ya’?” said the cowboy with the shiny silver and gold pins covering his shirt and collar, gun by his side.
Pucker rolled down the automatic window:
“What’s the matter, your parents won’t let you date this young man?” asked the cowboy, looking at me and then the both of us.
“No sir,” I replied-probably looking and sounding like Celie answering to Mister.
“Well that’s too bad lovers, got to take this party elsewhere-but not in this park. I’d better not ever see ‘ya’s again over here at this hour okay?” warned the cowboy.
“No sirrrrrr, never again,” we replied in unison. Two late teens doing grownup things but sounding like two busted missing youth choir kids.
~~~~~~~
Pucker called me with third degree bass in his voice; never having sounded so serious all the while I had known him.
“I want to talk to you about something Angie,” he said.
“Sure,” I replied.
“Let me think of how I can say this,” he contemplated.
“Say what?” I asked curiously.
“I see you some mornings at the bus-stop when I’m driving to school. Do you ever see me? Do you ever see my car?” he inquired-cautiously.
“Uh, no, I don’t-I don’t. Why do you ask me that? And why wouldn’t you offer me a ride if that was so?” I asked replied-knowing that where I was going in the mornings, I probably would have turned him down anyways, for fear of him figuring out why I would be going where I was going, but my destination sure wasn’t to school…
Although I would be at the bus stop standing near the rowdy bunch of boys and boisterous girls looking like I too, around the same age as them, was probably preparing for college (like them); my direction in life had gone differently than theirs.
Pucker continued to speak really slow-as if he was thinking about and processing every syllable of every word that he couldn’t wait to get out to me:
“Well, I-be like, having a few people carpooling with me in the morning. Wes sometimes drives, and my friend Slip-who goes to another school nearby-will sometimes drive. He drops us off and we ride back with one of the homies. Slip says his sister went to school down there with you,” he paused a second, I guessed to see if I had a response. I didn’t, I continued to listen:
But uh, a couple times though, somebody else who was riding with us had made mention of you…that’s all,” Pucker threw out there-almost sounding: broken-hearted (slash) speechless (slash) let-down (slash)-at a loss for the words to say-ish.
“Well who is it and what did they say!” I snapped, knowing full-well it couldn’t have been anything of a sexual nature that could hurt or upset him to cause him to have this kind of sound in his voice I was hearing. He already knew that I had a boyfriend.
“Well, it was a girl who says it. The girl is a girl who I’ve had an off and on relationship with for few years.”
“Yolanda?” I asked, remembering the name of the girl he mentioned out in front of Shana’s house that day we stood there tennis-talking.
“No…you work with her,” he confessed.
My heart started pounding a mile a minute, knowing that I had only met about three girls and only one was close enough to be able to say and tell anything about me: Soccer.
“Who is it?” I asked, impatiently-hurriedly. Knowing that Pucker knew nothing about my fairytale fantasy of relationship with Santana and all other “possibilities” made possible and brought to life with feet for slippers…
He paused for a long while.
“Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it?” I kept probing-trying to poke holes into this awkward silence of his-to get him to spill the beans.
When he spoke, low and behold it was indeed Soccer: my new friend from work whom I would most probably be having biscuits and honey with in a few short hours.
I flipped the script and said to him:
“Why? Why didn’t you tell me this! Oh my goodness. Oh no! Soccer never mentioned you, or even having a boyfriend-ever. Why did you do this to me? Why did you put me in a position like this? I like her,” I sighed-stunned.
He didn’t seem to care about that at all. That wasn’t the point of his phone call and this conversation.
“Yeah, she likes you too. Every morning that I drive past you, she points you out and says: “There goes my friend from work-she is so pretty and so sweet.”
Lowering his voice to the point of envy and confusion-like he was mimicking Soccer-he proceeded: “It went from that to: “She’s got the best little relationship with a guy that she’s been with for a few years now and I met her almost over a whole year ago. We met up again and the two of them now have a BABY and are going to get MARRIED! …he emphasized, and continued to mimic: “He looooooooooves her-she’s such a sweet girl!” he stressed-making sure he emphasized the word “love”-the same way it was delivered to him.
Part of me felt like I didn’t owe him any explanations because he already knew that I was with someone. And he knew that detail of our relationship or the stage it was in at this moment was always off-limits and never up for discussion. So with that in mind; my being shocked about him bringing this news to me-quickly wore off. The only thing in my head at this point was Soccer, she was so kind to me and really wanted to be my friend. And here I was unknowingly fucking her man—and thinking I was falling in love with him. That hurt. But now I have to look her in the face tonight and several more nights going forward-coming to the realization that I probably looked her in the face many of other nights where in the daytime, Pucker would leave school on his lunch break or leave early for the day-to come see me. We saw each other so much and fucked constantly-I lost head count as to how many times.
Pucker broke the dead silence and my daydreaming:
“Are you mad? Are you-you going to leave me? Are you mad? Don’t leave me,” he pleaded.
Dead silence.
He broke through with full-force, so as to remind me that my ‘gray’ lie was no better than his ‘gray’ lie.
He yelled:
“You lied! You lied too! You said nothing about getting married and having a kid and shit!” he kept repeating, trying to probe me into discussing it-feeling like I owed it to him at this point.
I returned another awkward silence.
He quieted himself and calmed down.
“Are you not going to be with me anymore more?” he inquired nervously.
(Awkward silence-still).
Eventually I replied (simply):
“Nah, I will,” not wanting to answer any more questions-period, and as well, Pucker could tell that I had no interest in answering or elaborating any further…
Chapter Two
~~ Sex, Lies, & Ties~~
Perhaps it was the constant belly patting I was doing. I don’t know, but Thing’s single relay races and drop-kicks from the inside out to me, or those cute little early morning butt-in-the-air stretches changed my heart, my mind and my plans. It got lucky and made it to life and into my arms.
Throughout my pregnancy, that little thing seemed to have a mind of its own and knew just how to play my emotions like a harp many-a-mornings while up at that pregnant jail. Eventually, it became a game of “damned if I do” or “damned if I don’t” between the both of us. Together, we bonded and disbanded back and forth like some rubber-band game of passive-aggressive, aggressive-passive.
In between that time, when I would come home on the weekends and if Santana and me were together; I would be sleeping, then awaking to him having slipped away someplace-somewhere, doing some thing I couldn’t quite put my finger on…
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I would be left alone, repeatedly playing this classic RnB song that I personally dedicated to Thing, by Rene and Angela called: “You Don’t Have to Cry.” While bonding, I would be singing to Thing while making promises in my mind that I would not give it away to some strange couple who finally got “how to love” right-for better or for worse, for richer and for poorer-simply because Santana and me were struggling to.
My poor baby was probably so stressed with this emotional tug of war that I was putting it through, that it refused to wait any longer and as if it was ready to catch me at an emotional moment during a time when the rope was on its side of this constant tug of war and pull between us.
Well, “Thing” got lucky and got a name finally: “Lucky.”
I ended up bringing Lucky into this world by cesarean.
Everything happened so fast.
It was almost as if I went in, fell asleep, woke up and then there was love and life.
The dramatic side of me at first-was hurt and sad because I had no say over the birthing because back when we were honeymooning and literally living a fairy-tale relationship; I fantasized about the whole knock-down, drag-out, panic, screams, hair pulls and hysteria that I would see only in the movies. Daddy at mommy’s feet watching his seed being brought into the world-taking pictures and video taping the whole shin-dig.
Yet that other side of me, which heightened especially after he cheated on me and proved himself unfaithful and unworthy, did not think that childbirth was one of those things that a man should witness; it’s too sacred.
With a firm maybe, the exception of a man and woman who are truly in love and never cheated the relationship, I felt that the only thing the man should witness in the birth of a child was the pain on the woman’s face as the tears would roll down and the veins popped out of her head and neck so thick that he could see the blood flow through them-pumping life through to his seed. Other than that, he should never see the business down below, because when all was said, screamed, squirted, quiet, and done; that other side of me felt that he could appreciate the agony involved in giving birth much better than all involving the birthing process itself.
Childbirth should always be a female mystery to a man throughout his life to his death. For me, despite my fantasy and emotions of what I felt was ideal, in the truth of my heart; that was on the top of the list (even my bearing Santana’s child).
In my heart’s truth, I felt that a man could not process the thought of childbirth after it was over because the fact still remains; he has to touch that, kiss that, suck that, and fuck that-night after night. And as my mother would say: “That’s a whole horse of another color.”
That other side of me knew, that in my mind, after seeing all that business below-in due time, he would rather buck that-than to touch, suck and fuck that. Maybe not every woman (like, if he saw his niece or nephew being born), the back of his mind could survive that-but definitely not the sight of his very own child being born to the mommy that he was still laying up with.
That other side of me-in my mind, was sure that mommies sex-life had an expiration date no matter how “beautiful” or “special” the moment of witnessing childbirth was for dad. Childbirth is just something inconceivable for his mind that other side of me never felt men could not process retaining and then mix it with sex, romance, intimacy and sensuality.
Sex + romance + intimacy + sensuality + [childbirth?]…Hmm…
That other side of me felt like something in that order of things did not compute.
That childbirth business down below was still something that he has other business with and eventually, one moment-one day out of the blue; the thought of it would clash in his mind.
The only way that other side of me could make sense of it was sort of like the process of buying a present and wrapping it: the tape, the folds, the bends, the twists and the turns is not as exciting to a man as that present simply being handed to him-all wrapped up in a red shiny bow, awaiting him to untie it.
That other side of me said there was a difference between the baby in the box below…and what was inside of the box below the shiny red bow-where all the work to make it presentable and pretty was unknown; never any of his business.
The finished product, the agony and the effort was all he needed to hear about and imagine-but never see. Like: immaculate perception.
For me, in my mind, childbirth is the top of the line godly experience that a man and a woman could be responsible for procreation of. It’s the catalyst for the beginning of life of all mankind.
But “sex” for men was an altogether different thing, so I was learning and experiencing-my experience was showing me. Sex for men, is in a class by itself by which the sacred is temporary.
Throughout my innocent years and in ways that I shouldn’t have known; I had already retained so much about boys and men even before I lost my virginity to Santana. Being with Santana day in and day out, having perfect love, affection and attraction for one another could all change, even if temporary and for the moment-no emotional connected needed-with mere space, opportunity, and just the right moment in time and the opening of another lover’s legs as if somehow: the perfect love, affection, and attraction that you already have and feel-never mattered or meant anything sacred, at least for that moment. The plethora of unrighteous secrets that we can keep and somehow, still manage to function is something little did Santana know; I learned and retained along time ago.
Throughout being preggers with “Thing,” I learned that men are not as maternal as the attachment and feelings a woman has to what’s growing on inside of her. In my experience-my agony and emotional tug of war night and day over what to do, and what not do with Thing-was all mine.
I learned that men could only handle the emotional anything for short or long moments in time, but all definitely had an expiration date as to when something in him would cause a change in him, or he would simply change.
Sex as well, has an expiration date however-it was still in a different class by itself with men. It could lure them, retain them, and even keep them for however short or long period of time whereas the emotional, monogamous, and fraternal are in a class by themselves.
Men are sexual funny creatures-so I was learning…
I was convinced of that because throughout my (sexual) “grinding” little lifetime at “inappropriate” ages in time; I had mounted and unmasked many men much too older than me and boys my age during private times when I should have been just a little girl being a little girl and doing little girl things.
Growing up without even having a name for what I still was understanding, I knew what made them tick much earlier than I should have.
I knew what was beneath the surface in a male, and like a puzzle or an animated picture; I had watched many men and boys’ facial expressions, heard many-a-pulses, heartbeats and wiped the sweat from atop the brows of them all-earlier than I should have, all-while still remaining a virgin.
When it came to a man, I always knew just what each one of them wanted and needed individually, as well as the thoughts they retained within their thoughts, desires, likes, dislikes, apprehensions, inhibitions and fears. They seem to have some secret society inside of them-connected to their secret little and big desires, “secret” nonetheless.
That other side of me-when it came to a man (women too)-sexually, sensually, intimately and romantically; I knew just what to do to with a body and a mind if I didn’t know anything else. And my mind and my heart didn’t know much else during my innocent and naiveté years of life outside of what my own experiences taught me and I was still in the process of learning, while this history of mine was in the making…
~~~~~~~
I still wanted to be a mother that Lucky could be proud of.
I wanted to have something, to be something, and do something with my life.
I always had a fear of a trifling life that, where I was from-no doubt-began with a young girl getting pregnant and having a child. That was just the ticket to “Team High School Dropout” and a nonproductive life, but I was not going to fall into that trap-I insisted on getting my life.
Although my tummy was sore from my cesarean, from the moment I was wheeled to the front door of that hospital and Santana’s mom came to get me to take me home, I was looking out into the light of the day making plans in my head to avoid being a county check mom: going through the motions of ghetto life, ghetto living, and all things that reminded me of it: Monthly checks and social workers, Similac formula, WIC food and pamper allotments and food stamps. Oh the horror, the pain, the pain.
In order to execute my plan of productivity, I had to gather up all my records from the artsy school then the pregnant jail I attended in order to design the perfect plan of action that would ensure me that I would be graduating on time-still. Although I would not be graduating with all my friends I had grown to know and love for all those years back at the artsy school, nothing was going to stop me from graduating on time and “as-was,” down to the same exact year and month as if there never was a baby or even a Santana (I insisted). Any day, or year other than what “was” before one of my many situations, was too much like my signing my “statistic certificate.” So I persisted.
This approximate six-month wait time could not come soon enough for me.
Paperwork was gathered, phone calls made, and preparation date set for me to meet this goal of mine included my having to go to night school and summer school in order to do so. I didn’t care what it took-it was going to get done.
During this wait time however, within a couple months into these six months, I was up at the mall trying to find myself the first job that would have me-all to avoid being a magnet to the welfare line, aiding and abetting the beginnings of all that I could see was a trife life, doors open welcoming me to the team.
Although I dodged being the magnet to that bullet (because a job did have me) here I was…drawn like a magnet to Pucker who too, was drawn to me and stalked me practically throughout my whole pregnancy, unbeknownst to him.
So when he sprung it on me-the fact that Soccer told him about my (once upon a time) fairytale love life; he had no idea about the transitions, transformation and changes that I had gone through since his relentless pursuit of me.
Along with any conversation or details about Santana and me, my plan of productivity, my baby, my transitions and changes too—none of that was up for discussion in full force even more so now that Pucker threw Soccer in my lap and now the full truth was out and on the table [about the extent of both of our situations].
As far as I was concerned, the best that Pucker and me could do in this situation of ours (that by now, both of us would rather die than let go of) was to kiss, make up, and take up one another’s time wherever and whenever I would have time to squeeze him into my situation and he would be able to squeeze me into his.
With everything already out and in the open, Pucker began to feel comfortable telling me more. He started in timidly:
“There’s also something else that I didn’t know either. I didn’t know you had a twin. I know him. He goes to school with me. Why did you never mention him?”
I replied:
“It was never a subject between you and me. Twin is living with my dad and his wife.”
I was shocked to know this information as well, because last I was told, Twin was attending a school for delinquent bad boys-I didn’t know he had enrolled into a high school so close by, which, in mind-was too close for comfort considering all the things I had going on with Pucker at this time. These things would be much harder to get around with Twin back home-if that would soon be the plan. My mom never said anything about it but still, Pucker telling me he had changed schools was even new news to me.
I listened on:
“Well, when I found out that he was your Twin I told him that I never knew he had a sister, and then immediately he said: “Man, don’t ever let me catch you on Nethrand Street Man. My sister’s got a baby and a boyfriend. I’m serious, Man-don’t ever let me catch you on her street-ever!” mimicked Pucker, desperately, sounding as if he wanted my help on this badly.
“Why would you do that? What would possess you to ask my brother anything about me especially knowing that you and your girlfriend both go to the same school with him-and furthermore, you know that I have boyfriend too! You were out of line for that one, in so many ways!” I scolded.
In my mind, I could only hear the theme music makings from a movie of a soon to be murder about to take place of an over-protective brother killing some man for liking his sister. Man, Pucker shouldn’t have done that. I was pissed. That opened up a can of unnecessary worms and fucked with my comfort and what I had going on with him.
I continued going in on him:
“That was not necessary-at all, I mean, it just wasn’t,” I sighed and said to Pucker-thinking that he really must be borderline retarded to have done such a thing, especially considering both of our situations.
Pucker replied:
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Okay!” he pleaded.
After the moment of silence, he continued, slowly (treading lightly):
“You know uh…and uh…you know he mentioned your baby and boyfriend and all,” he said-again-this time in the form a statement with a question-type of undertone.
I went on to offer him a tiny bit of information, just to alleviate the confusion that I knew he had going on in his head about how I could have possibly had a baby considering all those many months and Sundays he stalked me and I never had a big belly:
“I was pregnant all the times you were pursing me, but I just wasn’t showing. I was one hundred thirty five pounds all that time you saw me preggers, and afterwards, I was one hundred thirty three pounds. The baby came much sooner than expected. But I do have baby. Please believe it. And again, if you don’t mind, I would like to keep my baby and my boyfriend out of this thing that you and I have okay?” I replied empathetically (but firmly).
He was feeling so bad and beat up at this moment, he replied (stuttering):
“I understand. But-but-but what’s up? I mean, do you have feelings for me?” he asked, wondering exactly where he really was going to fit into this equation and complicated situation of mine.
I felt really bad. I softened up my defensiveness:
“Yesssss. I do. I really do Pucker and they are very strong, they really are-please believe me,” I said softly (and empathetically).
I began to process how badly I had been going in on him about this whole debacle and opened can of worms-not considering that he sounded as if he brought up his knowing me to my brother with some crazy hope that brother was going to offer him some warm welcome into the family but instead, got threatened and forewarned not to so much as be seen on my street.
I had always cut him off at the knees where the subject of me and Santana was concerned, so he probably thought it was okay to ask my brother about me in hopes of finding out I was lying about having my same boyfriend that I had all that time that he was stalking me. Understanding that it probably seemed next to impossible to be able to spend any amount of time with this “boyfriend”-especially considering how much time I was spending with him. Little did we both know, it wouldn’t be until later in this history of mine in the making; that I would find out just how Santana left me open for being able to be with Pucker the way that I was with him…
And believe me you, I enjoyed every single minute of it.
Sitting here on this phone-in this very moment of feeling so badly about Twin and myself coming down so hard on Pucker; my body was curdling up inside from my heart pumping blood through to my fingers and toes. I more than liked him at that moment; I think it switched to loving him-in this very moment after he spoke again:
“So…if this all came out, would you be prepared to leave your boyfriend? Would you even leave your boyfriend for me?” he asked softly and innocently.
“Well, yeah…I would. I would,” I replied back. Feeling that side of me that knew deep down inside for quite sometime, I was over Santana and what we had was gone; knowing that the only tie that bound us at this point was our baby. Regardless, I still wanted Pucker to know that he mattered to me and that no matter what; he was here in my life and in my heart to stay.
Yes, I was crazy as hell about him and wanted to be with him, but the test of those waters being sampled would have to be the bridge we would cross if we ever got to it-and to be honest; I didn’t foresee that happening anytime soon. I certainly was in no emotional position to just up and leave Santana despite what we were going through and despite the fact that I knew in my heart, something even outside of what I was doing with Pucker had already been driving us apart (whenever we were apart). But when we were together-I had his undivided attention: completely. It was just like when he cheated on me with Carmen-back in school his senior year. There were no signs, and within our relationship; no reasons. He just took advantage of the place and opportunity and saw it as an opportunity-then cheated. Even (then), like despite whatever it is I knew in my heart he was doing (now), he never stopped looking at me, touching me, caring for me, desiring me, holding me, and making love to me as if we were drifting. But the fact still remained: we really were drifting (now)-but why…I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
I can’t say that I even cared to because this time, the shoe was on the other foot and I found somebody that couldn’t keep his hands off me, and well…mine off him either. So this time, should the situations come to a head, Santana would most probably have a lot put on his head to deal with.
In this history of mine in the making, I just hoped to not ever have to cross that bridge because some hearts are going to bust and some heads are certainly going to roll…
~~~~~~~
I continued to work at the fast-food joint but began to avoid Soccer like the plague for as much as I could. I had gotten very quiet, reserved, and a little less inviting and receptive to her. I did not want to continue our breaks and leisure time any longer because I could tell that in due time, especially considering the fact that she lived so close to me, eventually our work friendship would possibly extend past us being work-friends. At this point, I definitely could not let that happen.
Part of me struggled not to feel so bad about it because we weren’t technically “friends” outside of work. She didn’t have my phone number and had only known where I lived because she visited my house with Mutual some time ago. But other than that, our friendship remained that of the work-friend kind with my now purposely avoiding any close encounters of the strange kind.
Regardless of anything, the fact of the matter was: I was kicking it with Soccer’s Pucker. The factoid was: I was in this thing with him unknowingly. Neither ever said anything about the other-ever. Thank goodness I was always secretive and kept my business to myself because had I not, me sitting at work telling my new work-friend about how good I was having some of the most insatiable and intense sex with a hunk of a man who was driving me wild, would have been less than a scrumptious lunch break and awkward time to find out that it was indeed her boyfriend lighting sparks to me in more ways than she could ever imagine.
The other part of me felt badly for her because she was so very nice to me and really wanted to be my friend. This was a bad situation that my heart would not feel good about even if I had quit working there. The mere fact of just knowing that it was her man fucking the shit out of me (despite the fact that I didn’t know he was her man) my heart felt bad for her. But I couldn’t help what I was feeling when I would be snuggled up on the phone with him and especially having actual sex with him. It was all too new for me and as far as my mind and body felt, it was meant to be. Pucker felt the same way-which aided and abetted all that I was feeling; right or wrong. Pucker seemed to feel no way about it. Although he lied about having a girlfriend, he seemed no way as protective about discussing the details about he and Soccer like I did with me and Santana.
He admitted that she had a key to his house (where he lived with his parents) and spent many-a-nights there in his bed, and had gotten up to get ready to ride to school with him as well (many-a-days). He admitted that she was practically in a “family way.” Let him tell it, her parents and his parents were close and had been “Team Pucker + Soccer” since middle school. They were an “item”–kind of like how Santana and I were.
Although Pucker told me everything about he and Soccer, he insisted on Team: Me, and that I remain Team: Him for Team “Us,” and I did too.
Back at the gig and still avoiding Soccer, when I was jotting down my work schedule down for the week, across from my name and my Monday through Sunday hours, the opposite side read: “Soccer: M-T-W-Th-F-Sat-Sun” I wrote hers down as well.
As if Pucker didn’t already have this under control before confessing that Soccer was his girlfriend, I was checking the schedule to make sure she was indeed at work mashing potatoes while I would be working on Pucker-smashing him. I never told him that I knew her work schedule, but he seemed to really be about this “Team Us” because he never missed being with me on the exact days and the exact times that I had stuffed in my purse where Soccer would not be an interference.
Although I wished the situation wasn’t the way that it was, my young mind would not allow me to let go of my selfishness. Selflessness and that kind of empathy comes with time and experience, and alls I knew was that by this time-the experiences that I was having with Pucker during sex had gone from “Ah shit” to “Ah damn” to “I love you.” Soccer definitely kicked in and during “I love you.”
I wasn’t feeling vengeful about Santana cheating. Everything with Pucker and I happened naturally. Initially, the only apprehension I had was that now, another man other than the man I lost my virginity to would be touching, kissing and loving all over my body. But I never set out to get Santana back. I simply let things flow and while allowing, knowing that outside of Lucky; any bond that Santana and I had was officially canceled-null and void after that November 4 day that I let Pucker in (the door to Shana’s house), into me (my heart), and inside of me (my body). I knew it was over. From my own experience with Pucker, now, in hindsight, I knew it was over in a way like when Santana cheated on me, it was probably over for me too—the moment he went in (to her friend’s house), and inside of her (body). That changes everything, no matter what was.
No matter what—that changes everything…
~~~~~~~
The shit hit the fan and the secrets came out. If I knew Twin, that retarded move that Pucker made by opening up that can of worms made Twin want to probe to find out what, if was anything he needed about me and Pucker. I know Twin headed straight for Pucker’s inner circle and swarmed down on the most honest one, non-other than Wes-Shana’s guy. Wes told everything-every detail and that sent Twin into a rage.
Instead of Twin roughing Pucker up-something that would surely get him sent back to the bad boys school, he turned it on me by telling Santana on me, putting the fight on me-in my corner of my humble and disrupted abode at moms:
Knock-Knock!
Bang-bang!
Knock-knock!
Santana was doing his best to knock that door down.
I had just got done getting dressed that early afternoon.
I opened the door.
“Come on! Come with me! Now! Come on! We’re about to go somewhere RIGHT
NOW!” he demanded-grabbing my wrist so tight that I could feel the blood rushing to my fingers ready to skeet from them.
I frowned.
He was in a tizzy and wild like a mad man. I had never seen him like this before.
“Where are we going? Where are we going! What’s wrong?” I asked him, but the tizzy he was in was told me everything.
As if his heart was literally falling to the floor in front of both of us he asked exhaustedly, in complete denial and disbelief from a low to a high octave:
“Tell me Angie…Tell Me It Aint So…TELL ME IT AINT SO!!!!!!” he broke down and cried in tears-so badly.
“Tell me that your cheating on me is a lie-a LIE! Tell me! PLEASE!” he begged.
I could totally identify with that feeling going through his body. It felt just like the one going through mine that very day that Aya brought me the news of his cheating and I came rushing over to him. Who would’ve thought that the irony of this very moment of my history in the making, it wouldn’t be but a short time after all this that my friend Aya and Twin would be hooking up as a couple-and it would be Aya that sealed the nail on the coffin of mine and Santana’s relationship forever and for good-that right now-in this moment in my history in the making; Twin is the cause of drilling in its hole in preparation for that very same nail.
In a tizzy of tears and frantically, Santana continued to beg to be put into denial: “Tell me that your cheating on me is a lie-a LIE! Tell me! PLEASE! Just tell me it’s a lie! Tell me!” he begged.
All he needed to hear was me say that I was not cheating on him and I could tell that he was ready to turn around and live in that denial.
Instead, I mumbled something-trying to probe him to tell me exactly what it was he knew, although I knew he knew enough: I cheated-regardless the details.
He yelled and grunted:
“Are you fucking some motherfucker that lives out here Angie?”
I replied again-mumbling-this time, some scattered rhetoric, wondering how something like this news could have gotten to him. Pucker and Santana were from two different worlds and associated with two different kinds of people. In this moment, I hardly put two and two together and entertained the thought that Twin could be at the forefront of this.
Santana knew me for being a homebody who never hung out-at all-not even so much as sit out on the porch for five minutes. He knew I had no real interest in getting to know the neighborhood or anybody in it. He also knew that all of my friends were from the same artsy school that we both attended. My other closest friends were the ones I had grown up in the neighborhood during my innocent years-the same neighborhood mom and I had just moved from. Santana knew those friends as well, so, he knew that there were no new friends. He knew I didn’t fuck with people like that-strangers and such. He knew me all to well and any moves I would or would not dare make, all but this one…but neither did I.
He and I were conjoined at the hip for years and everything that needed to be done-we practically did it together or I did with his auntie or his mother.
He knew everything. This one threw him off and boy was he baffled and rattled.
He grabbed my wrist and like a rag doll; dragged me out of the door of the apartment building, opened his car door, grabbed me by the waist and plopped me tightly in to the seat as if I really was a doll or a kid. He was angry-and steaming mad. And still, I had no idea where we were about to go and was just as baffled about how he knew anything.
Twenty minutes later, we were pulling up to Twin, Pucker, Soccer and Wes’ school’s building. My heart dropped.
Everything was set up and preplanned between Twin and Santana.
Twin had worked his way and managed to commandeer school security-they had all obviously had been expecting us. They were waiting at the front door and escorted us inside the building and up the first set of steps like royalty.
This shit was timed and covert like some movie plot. It was even more staggering for me because all my years, I had attended the artsy school, and the entire look of this high-school and the people walking around it looked totally different-in every way possible.
I was so shaken.
Everybody was in the know about what was about to go down except for pulsating-hearted me.
Twin spearheaded the line with Wes and two other guys next to him as we stood in this empty hallway for about five minutes.
Nobody said a word.
Then something I hadn’t heard in a long time rang violently loud in my ear: the sound of a high-school bell.
When the door to the classroom that we were standing by, opened, Soccer and Pucker lead the line exiting that door.
The first face Pucker saw was mine.
He was a mixture of shocked and confused at the same time.
I threw my shoulders up as if to say: “I have no idea.”
Soccer, who hadn’t seen me as yet, had already turned to her locker and but turned and looked up to Santana charging towards Pucker whose arm was in sling from hurting himself while playing basketball.
All hell broke loose.
I was leaning against the lockers-stunned-with my hand over my mouth.
This all was a total culture shock to me-everything.
Throughout these halls, there were no sleuth-foot ballerinas, painted faces, sketchbooks, tackle boxes, loud singing or trumpets blowing.
Instead, these halls were overcrowded and thick with wild boys, loud girls, a bunch of big numbers on leather jackets and strumpets with asymmetric and identical hairdos galore. They all looked the same and dressed the same.
It was wild.
I had never seen Santana behave in this manner-he was from my neck of the woods. But in this moment, he was becoming a different person to me.
I was blown away at his riot.
Santana didn’t get a hold of Pucker during this mess because all of Pucker’s friends, some I knew and others I had never seen before; stood guarding and protecting him-yelling out to Twin: “Just let it ride man! Just let it ride man. Long story man. Let it go man-please! Let it ride. It’s deeper than this!”
It was all like vertigo. My head was spinning.
The commotion and the scene was so overwhelming to me.
The security guards lead Santana and me back out to the car where I remained quiet, sitting on both my hands and looking out the window to my right with my brows frowned-in tears-bottom lip shaking like a baby.
“Angie-you didn’t do this to me did you?” asked Santana still insisting on being put in denial.
I kept my head turned then crossed my legs and turned my body towards the window so as to let him know that I did not want to talk to him.
This was all Twin’s behavior and m-o, not Santana’s.
Santana, knowing how I was as a person, knew that lil’ scene most probably turned me off and that I was not only upset, but embarrassed as well. My still pleading the 5th + this scene put the ball back into my court, at least for a little while.
Santana’s needing to believe this was all some misunderstanding, compounded by the fact that he knew me so well and could account for the majority of my whereabouts most of the times; bought me the silence and the left-alone that I so badly needed right now.
I had Soccer on my mind.
I had Pucker on my mind.
…and in that order.
I gave Santana the silent treatment for the rest of the week.
Pucker got the cold shoulder as well. I just needed a break from everybody. It was getting too messy.
When I got settled into the house, I reached into my purse and pulled out the handwritten schedule of mine and Soccer’s; crossing my fingers and hoping that we didn’t have to work together that evening.
Low and behold, we did.
In Soccer’s world, before work and the moment we were due to be standing next to one another at that clock-in machine-usually smiling and talking-she must have gotten all the details, because that evening and that entire week at work, she did not speak to me at all.
We would be face-to-forehead with one another-her head was always the one hanging down-when it was mine that should have been hanging down, but I wanted her to look up at me so that I could talk to her. She couldn’t do it. She refused to look me in the face. She was too hurt.
We would be in front of one another standing at the clock-in machine putting on our smocks and sliding into our greasy work shoes; waiting for the time to turn to clock in and then out for break but eating our biscuits at two separate tables in the lobby as if we never sat at a table and broke bread and honey together.
She would look out the window the whole time, eating her biscuits without even looking at them between each tear of the bread. I would be eating mine, looking straight at her, trying to provoke her to say something to me so that we could talk. She refused. She couldn’t do it.
It was so weird.
That whole week, in sync and in unison; all of her work friends would stare at me, lowering their heads. And then stare at her and then lower their heads again.
This shit was crazy. I wanted to yell out loud, write it in the sky, and hang a sign around my neck that read: “I DIDN’T FUCK ‘YOUR BOYFRIEND.’ I FUCKED A GUY WHO PRACTICALLY STALKED ME AND BUMPED INTO EVERYWHERE FOR OVER A YEAR-WHO I FINALLY OFFICIALLY MET AND TOLD ME HE HAD A GIRLFRIEND NAMED YOLANDA WHO HE WAS NO LONGER WITH! ONLY TO FIND OUT THAT HE HAD A GIRLFRIEND NAMED SOCCER WHO HAPPENED TO BE MY NEW FRIEND ALREADY!”
I wanted to scream. Every day was hard for me-for everybody.
Later that week on Friday, Santana was outside waiting for me to get off from work so that he could drive me home. That was his usual routine anyways, but this particular day felt weird. That night, Soccer and I were closing the restaurant together that night but typically, she would be gone about twenty minutes before Santana would be picking me up. Pucker would be out back where there were no windows, waiting to pick her up (which was why I never saw him at our job). This time, she spotted Santana outside and got it poppin.’ She put in a phone call to her people to come up and jump on Santana, since Santana had come up to the school to jump on Pucker.
I was out in the lobby busting tables.
I never heard her speak a word that entire week then all of a sudden, from the kitchen where she stood talking on the greasy phone, I was listening the sound of her voice-loud and aggressive; rounding up a posse for my boyfriend who stood outside my job all by himself, not knowing that he was about to be toast.
That angered me so badly, especially considering the fact how she had been mute all week. I was ready to kill her at that point because little did she know, in my world, my man was still on silent treatment and I still had yet to get the details about how we ended up at her school, myself!
I removed my smock and headed into the kitchen, clocked out and went in on her:
“So you’re just going to sit here all week-quiet as a church mouse, making me feel all bad and not having the courage to ask me any questions and won’t even look at me. Yet, you see my boyfriend and you come to life! How dare you! You don’t even know what happened, why, or how, or nothing!” I yelled (into her forehead-still hanging low).
She lifted it-finally.
“He came up to my school to fight my boyfriend and my boyfriend can’t fight him back right now!” she yelled back.
I had turned away from her, hurrying to get outside to Santana.
“Get in!” I yelled at Santana, opening my side of the car door.
“We have to hurry back to the house-my brother is still over there I believe. This bitch is making phone calls trying to have some people come and get you for that stunt you pulled up at that boy’s school the other day Santana! You up there acting like a thug and shit…the fuck’s getting in to you!?”
Santana didn’t reply, probably stunned to hear my voice that aggressive, considering the fact that I gave him the silent treatment all week.
When we got to the house, Twin quickly placed phone calls to Wes first, and all other people in the know so that whatever didn’t go down up at the schoolhouse could go down outside of my mothers house.
My mom’s baby sister lived right across the street from us and wasn’t used to the kind of excitement that she was about to see involving Santana and me. It was almost as if this time, the tables turned fast on Santana-he was the only one out of the know: A visit had already been planned to roll up on him wherever he would be and standing.
Meanwhile, all kinds of cars and trucks were pulling onto to the long but narrow one-way street that I lived on as if they were the fucking secret service hauling the president.
Once everyone exited their vehicles, in the mind of the mind that I was used to, the only thing I could compare this to was as a scene clearly out “West-Side Story” I was horrified! This was serious. These public high-school seniors were nothing like the seniors at the school I came from. This was a full-on war. Twin knew this kind of thing would go down and that Santana was no where near the type of guy that could handle all this heat on his ass. I was pissed.
Everyone positioned themselves as such that both sides of the street knew who was on what side or the other. Everything happened so fast. My head was turning from left to right to back around behind me-trying to figuring out who the fuck were all these people and where they had come from. We had just left work some minutes ago.
Still somewhat green to the neighborhood, I was very aware now that this was “The Land of ‘Pucker’ and ‘Soccer.’ ” It was as if the whole neighborhood knew them both. In this moment, it was all coming together for me as I remembered the scene up at the school the other day: these two were the superstar athletes [slash] popular couple of their school and treated a little bit like royalty themselves. My relationship with Pucker had nothing to do with anything remotely close to my even being in the know that he had some other happening and popular life going on, but when this all went down, it became evident: unmistakable and unequivocally so.
Although my side of the street was outnumbered but the one link that carried the weight on my side was Twin: nobody fucked with Twin. And each and every bad ass and pretend-to-be bad ass knew this.
Pucker hopped out of nowhere with his arm still in a sling but swinging a night-stick around in his free hand, chasing Santana around several parked cars with his lips folded and grunting: “NOW WHO’S THE MAN? WHO’S THE MAN HUH? YEP, I’M THE MUTHAFUCKIN’ MAN! YEP IT’S ME MUTHAFUCKA! I’M THE MAN!” he kept yelling. I didn’t know if that was some male-domination tactic of survival of the fittest or some male code to prove to Santana that he indeed was the “man” for fucking his woman (me), but alls I knew was that I was startled by it all.
I felt like I was going to pass out.
Santana kept dodging between the parked cars and Pucker’s long strong one arm swinging about in a back-handed striking position.
“Fight heads-up, put the stick down and fight heads-up,” Santana said to the one-armed “man.”
“Hold on, I got something for you too,” Santana said-heading to his car for something…
It was wild.
I knew Pucker had it in him to behave this way but this side of Santana was something I was not used to-he seemed to like this kind of thug shit. I didn’t.
None of it made any sense. The whole night didn’t.
I was stunned, hurt and embarrassed for us all: Pucker & Soccer, Santana and me.
Although it served its purpose by breaking up the commotion, out of nowhere, a voice came down the middle of the mess yelling but trying to make peace amongst it all:
“ANGIE…YOU AND THIS MOTHERFUCKER RIGHT HERE KNOW Y’ALL BOTH NEED TO TELL THE TRUTH!
He turned to Pucker and pointed:
“YOU TELL THE TRUTH MAN!”
He turned to me and pointed: “AND YOU TELL THE TRUTH ANGIE!”
I was scared shitless.
Pucker was calm.
Wes continued:
“There’s NO sense in keep fighting over something that we ALL know is true! They’re gonna go and be together tonight, tomorrow, the next day! They are! Y’all say y’all want to be together! THEN BE TOGETHER!”
I guessed Pucker had told Wes that should this thing ever go down, I agreed to ride off into the sunset with him, and him-me. Yeah, I said that-but I didn’t want to truly consider it until we ever got to that bridge and we were forced to cross it. Well, here we are, and I was standing there feeling like I was drowning.
Wes lowered his voice as if another personality set in:
“All I know is that I’m tired of this shit right here man,” said Wes’, sounding like an old man-ways tired. But then the first personality came back and spoke some more-he continued on-standing out in front of this big crowd of people and told our entire story from the point of the mall when he drove Shana and me home, all the way through what happened that night at Shana’s house, and anything else he knew about me and Pucker. He left no doors closed and no stones unturned including he and Shana’s secret. With all that he told, nobody could refute it. Shana was out there in the crowd on my side too, attempting to rebuke what he said about the two of them but Wes threw his had at her and shut her down because his spilling the beans wasn’t necessarily about the two of them. He wanted this case to be heard; and it was about his friend Pucker and a girl he claimed to want to be with should this very thing were to ever go down. That’s all Wes cared about getting out there in this open street of public opinion.
The street was quiet with everybody staring at Pucker on one side of the street and me on the other. This dime that Wes dropped was news to the majority of everyone standing on both sides.
My mom, auntie, Shana, my friend Aya (who, for a while now, had been dating Twin) spared me the embarrassment and turned away from me and everyone’s gaze at me and began to fidget around. Nobody could save me-not even the people on my side of the street who loved me.
Everybody stood there waiting on the announcement from either Pucker or me.
I had nothing to say. I had a family. I sure as hell was not going to say a word.
I just stood there. So…catch me if you can.
I glanced over to look at Pucker, who, like Santana; I had been giving the silent treatment to for entire week since the schoolhouse incident. He was standing over there looking all luscious in a pair of black jeans, black turtle neck and a fresh haircut. Not seeing him for almost a whole week was a pretty long time since the day I had first been with him. He looked so good standing over there-I couldn’t lie. I missed him and didn’t think I would feel that way with Santana standing near me.
Pucker stared back over at me with his one hand above his head holding onto the night stick-waiting on me to speak. He squint his eyes as if he wanted to ask me if I remembered what I said I would agree to should thing kind of thing ever go down.
I turned my head away from him-I couldn’t do it. All eyes were on us.
I took a brave glance back over at Pucker and I could see another Wes-type stunt forming and oozing out the corners of his lips that he was literally biting, a frown on his face-looking over at me like I lied and knew I would embarrass him if he took it upon himself to get “Romeo”-brave. He looked up at my auntie’s window then back at me.
I moved away from Santana and closer to my aunt, afraid Pucker was definitely about to drop the next major dime by pointing up to my aunts window to confess that he had been in that house to see me many-an-evenings as well, when I was babysitting.
I was so shaken and nervous.
Pucker’s eyes followed, looking at me, my aunt, the window then over at his friend Wes like it was on the tip of his tongue to go on and put me on blast, or hoping that Wes would take it from there-because Wes knew that Pucker would come visit me over at my aunties house too, but Wes spared me.
Still, I kept my fingers crossed but glancing over at and Wes saying a silent prayer.
Pucker kept literally biting his bottom lip but locked his eyes in on me.
Santana stood nearby staring at all of us.
It was wayyyy too quiet for mmmmmmmmmuch too long.
Everybody was waiting for Wes, Pucker, or me to speak again.
Soccer couldn’t take it anymore, she knew something to further drill the knife into her heart was about to go down if she didn’t do something-fast.
It was she who broke the silence and broke Puckers stare, so as to remind him that she was out there and still standing there. She popped the question-she couldn’t hold it in any longer:
“Is this true!? Is this true!? Is this true!?”
Pucker did not answer her.
He face turned intently serious as he stared over her and across the street at me as if he too, no longer wished to participate in this lie anymore either.
It began to feel like everybody was out there protecting me and my feelings, dying to let the whole cat out of the bag but wanted to give me the opportunity to step the plate to speak.
Still-I had nothing to say.
And-I have a family.
No-I sure as hell was not going to say a word.
So-I just stood there.
Again: Catch me if you can.
What happened was unintentional, and I wasn’t prepared to hurt Santana this way, nor was I prepared to break my family up for Pucker-as much as I was in love with him. What we had and what we were doing meant something totally different than what I was willing to cop a plea to.
Soccer got brave.
She didn’t get an answer from Pucker so she walked over to me (face-to-face this time) and yelled desperately. She was in tears-exhausted and practically out of breath:
“Angie. Will you just tell everybody that it’s not true so that we can all go hooooooome,” stressing the word “home” as if she was fatigued and hadn’t slept in days.
I could tell that she knew it was true, but all she needed to hear from me was that it wasn’t true. She wanted to be in denial the same way Santana wanted to be in denial. I felt her pain and her plight in ways that she could never imagine I did. I could tell she made a promise to herself that she would go on and believe that it wasn’t true if she just heard the words: “It’s not true” from me-since Pucker didn’t do the honors. But I couldn’t give her that answer anymore than I could not admit that it really was true.
I felt bad for her in that moment-because I remember all too well, that same burning feeling inside of my heart while I too, had stood between Santana and the bitch he cheated on me with, asking for answers as well; totally not wanting to believe it-totally wanting to believe that I was caught up in the middle of someone else’s nightmare. Totally remembering how I, too, embraced a girl whom I too, treated so kindly-like I thought she was, yet she fucked my man too.
Now here it is-life was unfolding, and in this history of mine in the making, I am now that very same girl to Soccer but under a slightly set of different circumstances.
I remembered that feeling all too well that feeling that Soccer was feeling while in front of me crying, begging and pleading for answers.
Although like the girl who fucked my man and didn’t give me any answers in the middle of my despair, that same man of mine who fucked her, got his chance to get an outer-body experience in this haunting nightmare he was now experiencing.
There he was, standing right across from me, watching the girl of the man who I was now fucking, in the same exact despair as well-looking just like me (back then).
Sure, it was déjà vu for me, but it was déjà shoe for Santana-because the shoe was now on the other foot and this time, I had cheated-big time.
They say Karma is a bitch but I don’t know if she would want to have anything to do with all that had happened, and all that was going on right now. Perhaps they meant she had a bitch of a cousin named: “Boo” who would make her way around to you haunt you because Boo! The joke was on Santana now, the tables had turned. He had a date with Karma’s cousin at the most inconvenient time in the relationship for the both of us, but definitely at an even harder time for the deeper depths of where his grown-man heart was in this, as compared to where his school-boy/first love heart was (back then)…
The night eventually ended, without further incident (or resolve).
Everybody walked away hurt and quiet-like a funeral procession…
My brother and Aya, Shana, my mom and auntie all went up to my auntie’s house.
Shana was my girl, so she knew what to do for me should Twin, my auntie and mom start asking her any questions. She totally had my back on this and no one could break her down about it.
Aya on the other hand, knew every true detail up to and including the truth behind Wes’ side of the story. Although we Aya and me were closer in grade school, middle-school and high school, the fact still remained that after this night for sure, I could tell she was now fully under Twin’s spell, so no telling what she would do-that-in this history of mine in the making; I would be soon finding out about the bomb she dropped on my life in a short time from this very night…
Santana headed to his car to get something as we began to walk across the street to my house. I continued to walk up the steps slowly, to give him time to catch up to me.
When we got into the building, and the door slammed shut. Just like the way he grabbed me by the waist and plopped me into the seat of the car that day; he grabbed me by the waist and shoved me into the kitchen, picked me up and plopped me on the kitchen counter then grunted angrily:
“Tell. Me. The TRUTH Angie! Tell me the truth Angie! TELL me the truth!” he begged-repeatedly, holding his body up by the counter between my right thigh and left thigh.
Still, I was silent.
This time, it was he who was violently angry-just like me (then) when he cheated.
I will give him credit though-at least he buckled and told the truth. Me? I couldn’t. My mouth was shut like cement.
He may not have been in love with the girl he cheated on me with, but I sure as hell could not say the same about the guy I cheated on him with. And by this time, I had grown out of love with Santana. Santana merely cheated out of boredom and having the opportunity, time, space and thrill of knowing he had a chance to fuck a second virgin, knowing that me: his first virgin- was at home and in love with him and like he was-me. But that still, did not stop him from stealing away with the moment.
Now here I am, having stolen away with many moments myself but knowing I was fully out of love with Santana and only hurt over the fact that now we have a beautiful child involved in this mess of ours that if we hadn’t, this particular night, some hearts would have been busted wide open and some heads would have certainly rolled at the end of this procession-for sure.
Everybody’s lucky that Lucky saved ‘em all.
And even me too…sitting here straddled with Santana in front of me, now, denying it over and over-shaking my like “Styx” from the movie “Sparkle” while sitting in the back of the limousine with the loan shark holding a gun to his head playing Russian Roulette, asking for the girls or his life. Still, like “Styx” sweating bullets and the whole sha-bang. I still shook my head “no” repeatedly-refusing to come up off of the truth. I was scared for myself, just like I felt bad for everybody else in this triangle. But this girl: me-I was going to sit on the truth and guard it with my life, even if that night, Santana held a gun to my head-about my role…
~~~~~~~
Enough already with this night, I was exhausted.
But Pucker refused to hang on to the cold shoulder that I had been giving him since the day of the riot up at his school in conjunction with what had just occurred-he felt like now, I owed his something. He took the plunge and his chances on calling me late into the night. I answered the phone, he did not even say hello:
“Why didn’t you say anything Angie? Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t we say what we both were going to do if this ever came out?” he insisted.
“I have a family, and I can’t give that up. I just can’t. I couldn’t do it.” I told him.
He replied:
“Yeah, I mean-I will admit, it would hard as hell in my household-my house and my life without her too. My mother is in love with her. But, you know…”
He breathed into the phone:
“Now, I have to worry about your brother and shit, too” he sighed, as if that was the only obstacle between us that he had to think about a master plan-to try and work through in order to be with me in a special kind of peace. As if he was a free man himself.
I snapped:
So what! You opened up this Pandora’s box and now you have to figure out how to close it, so deal with that Pucker!” I replied.
Although I loved Pucker, as far as I was concerned, leaving a relationship with Soccer simply because she was in a family way around his parts-was nothing in comparison to the family I had around these parts.
I had much bigger fish to fry. And after what I had gone through tonight, I was as dipped, cooked, and under enough fire as I could take anymore this day.
At this point, I just broke down and cried because I was so overwhelmed and sad.
Pucker sighed and replied:
“Angie. I miss you. Don’t cry Angie. We are going to work it out okay? We are going to work this out-you hear me? We will…”
He had no idea, NO idea what I lived through that night…
Chapter Three
~~ Backstabbing & Surreal Reality Checks ~~
We eventually moved from the “Land of Soccer and Pucker,” back near the area of town that I had grown up in. Though scattered about, all of my neighborhood friends where still in the vicinity. Our transformations and situations varied, but it felt good to be back home, on familiar soil-despite the fact that our lives had gone in several different directions as we’d gotten older.
I quit the fast-food joint and decided to find myself a “regular” job close by where I lived until summer and night was to school began. I was becoming quite the diva and fast-food work was just not my bag and taste anymore.
Pucker and I still continued to see one another. The distance to come see me was never too far for him. He was still as attentive as he was like when we lived in the same community. Considering my situation…I had to be more careful and covert than I ever was with Pucker. He had no idea…But the distance between us afforded me the time allotted for more careful planning. It was a load off my head that since that nearly fateful night of mine, any spontaneous action done in the name of lust and love could cost me big time-this time.
This time, if I busted Santana’s heart wide open again, he…was gonna make my head roll for sure…
Without having landed the job I wanted yet, and while waiting for summer and night classes to begin; it seemed like me and Lucky: fat, healthy, happy, and home now; had a lot of time on our hands. I couldn’t tell if it this stretch of free time was because for a long time after I had him, he was still in the hospital incubator fighting to grow. I made it my business to get up to that hospital on schedule every Monday through Friday early mornings like I was going to school, and on Saturday and Sunday late mornings-religiously; just to make sure I could stick my hands in that incubator to rub Lucky from head to toe to help him thrive, and to give energy to his body when he would wake up to looking at me with his tired little cute face. Santana: absent. His work schedule was not as consistent as mine, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt for that reason and that reason only. There were a few times he’d pick me up and we’d ride over together, but they were very few and far times in between. Outside of that, if or whenever he made his way to ICU, I never asked and I never knew. I secretly felt that he felt as long as his mother made it over, it was fine with him. He had bigger things to do-occupying his time, that too, afforded me more time with Pucker.
We eventually called it quits for good because this thing with Pucker was picking up hot and heavy. But until that time, although Santana and I were still together, there was indeed wedge in between us that I still could not put my finger on-nor did I seem to care enough to slow down with Pucker to investigate just what that thing was, but it didn’t take much time because everything began to unfold and everybody’s truth was laid out on a picnic table one fine day-courtesy of my dear old friend since dear old fourth grade: Aya.
I never knew how these covert meetings would be set up behind my back-how Santana would be sequestered into some cocoon; all nestled up, receptive and ready to discuss my transgressions with my Twin. Then from out of the abyss, he would be ripped, rattled and torn; coming towards me like a storm-and with my calm demeanor, would quarantine his thoughts immediately.
But this time…this time…there was no way out. Aya got the job done this time, and she and Twin drilled that nail into right into that finger of mine that I could not put on what was going on with Santana, and together-they crucified any and everything Santana and me ever had or was trying to salvage. Together they had risen.
Aya knew almost everything about me, and what I was doing, so there was no way I could drill holes in the story that she carved out for Santana and Twin at that picnic table meeting.
She was able to give details like: “remember that time you were at work-the same day that you and Angie did X-Y-Z? Well, A-B-C happened…” As this history of mine was in the making, according to Santana; Aya had all the g’s nailed on the head.
She could give him all the grooves, splinters and heartbreaking details of my whereabouts and goings on with Pucker and cut down anything I could do or say to seal the holes of any scenario that Aya exposed.
All this time, little did Twin and Aya know, I never brought up Pucker to Santana and worked really hard on helping him live in the denial that he’d rather live with knowing than to have the answer about whether or not it was a true hardcore fact that I had slept with another man. That, compounded with the fact that he felt confident that he put the fear of the devil in me while sitting me up on that kitchen counter that nearly fateful night was enough to make him feel a bit more secure-especially when we moved. He had grown somewhat comfortable that if I really did cheat, I would not, anymore. And just like that, out of the blue, one day; Aya and Twin wiped it all away for no reason other than not minding their own business-spilling the beans to a man as if they were talking to some little boy about his girlfriend and there was no child involved. In addition to this being neither of their business (to tell him); neither one of them took that into consideration, at all. I wasn’t fucking my brother. If what I was doing meant that much to him, he should have come to me. Santana wasn’t fucking Aya (at this time-yet)…so if it meant that much to her, she too-should have come to me. Instead, they took it to Santana many months and Sundays after the big mess that happened outside my mother’s house where we no longer lived. And unlike the last time; this time was different.
This time, Santana was not going for the okie-doke.
This time, he did not ask any questions.
This time, he lit right into me like the capital letter “T” turned sideways.
This time he man-handled the holy shit out of me with no remorse or emotion other than complete manic rage.
By this time, my TGGF was a beast at the five-finger discount and any high-end store’s worst nightmare. She was excited by the best of the best. I was sharp as hell that day-wearing an outfit that she had boosted for me: A white fitted-tank, a sky-blue corduroy and sheep-skin Carole Little mini with the sky-blue corduroy and sheep-skin Carole Little puffy jacket to match. She kept me laced in Adrienne Vittadini and Carole Little exclusives. But this day, my little ass was caroling octaves of a soprano-desperately fighting hard to get my balance and grab hold of either the banister or Santana’s strong hand that held my entire body stiff and unable to turn around to gain any footing. Regardless of the direction I tried to turn, I was being dragged backwards: scalp, head and body throbbing with a kind of pain unheard of.
I was coming home from a long day out with Pucker, and just as I was about to slide the key into the door of my house, I felt a heavy hand grab a big chunk of my hair and wrap it tightly-like you would wrap a belt around your hand. My head rolled…and I knew this was it.
We lived on the third floor of this big wide huge vintage apartment building that you had to walk six flights up or down (to get to my house). Each flight of stairs had about fifteen steps. Santana had the tightest grip on my hair, dragging me down backwards while the back heels of my shoes hit every step like fingers pouncing the piano keys of an intense and violent score played by Bach or Brahm while I tried to scream opera of the Kathleen Battle kind. At first, my lungs and larynx would not help me compete.
He did not care if my body from neck to my feet was going to make it down each step without injury or no, all he knew is that he had my head in his hands and was about to take me somewhere. I could hardly breathe. I was gasping like an asthmatic. My breath wouldn’t make it to my throat to help me scream no matter how hard I tried to. It was crazy. It felt as though my heart and all the air in my body completely locked and wouldn’t allow me to scream for that help I so badly need no matter how hard I kicked, wailed, and tried. My scalp was throbbing as if that was where my heart surpassed the wind in my body and retreated after that first drop to the ground when I felt the force of his grip. By when he got me down to the first floor my windpipe miraculously opened and I screamed to the top of my lungs: “HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!! SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!” Over and over.
I wasn’t as afraid of Santana, or even this moment in the middle of his anger as I was afraid to have him plop me down and the car and drive me off. That would have been the point where fear would have set in for me.
Still, I was petrified, and knew I was either about to go into a state of shock if that same scenario was about to be repeated outside this building-because I knew that this time, he was going to kill me. He wasn’t going to put up with that masquerade and charade again like before-never again. While screaming and wailing, I could hear the sounds of some guys coming from the apartment where all the Goths lived. They must’ve been having a party that night. They all screamed and yelled in my defense with the force of a firing range but were too scared to run up on Santana while he was dragging me down that half-mile stretch of hallway leading to the door outside. I begged and pleaded for them to help me. I screamed out to them: “DON’T LET HIM PUT ME IN THE CAR!!!! HELP!!!” Over and over.
I knew that when we busted through those doors and if he was parked right outside in front and could throw me into that car-it was curtains for me.
Instead, when we busted through the doors he tossed me over to the right towards the parking lot of the building.
I was stunned, tired, and sore as hell. My body was so weak I was ready to fall to my knees and crawl back to building. Thinking that it was all over, I stood there in total vertigo and Shaken-Lady Syndrome, trying to focus in on non-other than Aya and Twin standing there with their arms folded and looking unsurprised-as if they knew he had plans to do something drastic anyways.
This time, the Goths were the only ones outside on my side at this moment while Santana began walking around the parking lot like a crazy man with his hands shaking and trying to figure out what to do with them. He snapped again. He ran up on me and picked me up and began tossing me around every which way possible while he tried to decide at what point and where he wanted my lifeless body to land while he prepared to throw it. When he got tired of tossing and swinging me around, he stopped to catch his breath and began choking the wind out of me as if somehow the wind from my body was going to be enough to give him the wind to set sail.
I kept both my hands up and visible in a position of surrender but he paid that no mind.
He wanted to use his fists to hit me so badly but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
He wanted to kill me-so badly-but he was scared.
He was rabid.
I had never seen him this mad before.
I was right in the middle of that moment where I could clearly see how someone with their bare hands, could kill another person who they loved-in the heat of an angry moment.
I saw it coming. I could see the rage in his eyes and lips underneath the light outside of the building that lit the dark parking lot.
The anger of not having the heart to kill me caused him to do everything else but strike me. He knew that if he struck me-he would definitely kill me.
I was so tired. I didn’t care anymore. At that moment-I was numb. My mind, my body, my soul and my spirit were literally numb. Little did he know he had already killed me right there but my eyes remained open. I was so numb and my body was such that if he would have struck me, I swear I wouldn’t have felt a thing. For what seemed like forever he kept picking me up and tossing me around like he was trying to debate where to throw me. I wished he would’ve just hit me and been done with it, because I could feel that he wanted me to physically feel what his heart and mind was feeling when he let me off the hook with the first couple times this Pucker situation reared its head.
The firing range of screams of all the Goths right up on us and in Santana’s face still did not phase him.
Half of them split and began yelling over to my left at the couple who appeared to know exactly what was going on and who either ordered this ass-whipping, or provoked it.
“You know these guys? Why aren’t you helping her? Why aren’t you stopping him! This is crazy, man!” Twin and Aya said nothing.
The scene got quiet while Santana calmed himself down by walking back and forth across the parking lot, holding his hands to the sides of his head then placing them on his hips as if he’d just got done running a marathon.
The bravest Goth who had just got done reading Aya and Twin the riot act, couldn’t help himself, he was so angry. He walked closer to Santana:
“Dude, I know you’re mad-and I don’t know what happened and-and-and-and-and-and it’s none of my business. But NEVER EVER hit a girl like that EVER in your life again man. This aint cool! It aint cool at-at-at all,” he stuttered.
With his hands on his hips and calm demeanor, Santana looked over at him:
“I didn’t hit her,” he defended, in a low and exhausted tone of voice.
The Goth guy insisted:
“Dude, it was the next worst thing man-you lost your cool alright? I know what I saw Pal. I know what I saw. I was IN that building. She was screaming for her life man. And YOU had a pretty good grip on her. Look, I don’t want any trouble, I’m just saying-I know what I saw. It should stop RIGHT here, RIGHT now-regardless of whatever she did! She-she-she’s still a woman,” he said, scolding Santana, with his index finger pointing to him, the ground, the building, and me.
Santana didn’t reply back.
I stood there staring over at Aya and Twin in complete and utter disgust.
Aya wouldn’t look back at me-instead, she stood there with a look on her face as if a gun was being held to her head and she was forced to nail me the way she did. No, crossed me is what she did. And I wasn’t buying her victimized look. I was officially done with her and she knew it. I couldn’t believe that she was in on all this as if, though long ago, wasn’t she who delivered the news of Santana cheating on me that fateful day that just so happens to be the catalyst and one of reasons for all this. I couldn’t believe Aya-my friend since fourth grade who knew my feelings for both men and she dumped the hurt in the lap of the one who she knew mattered most me. That hurt me.
She and Twin got into her car and pulled off.
The Goths walked behind us to return back to their party on the first floor.
Santana followed behind me to head up to the third floor.
When we got in, my mom and Lucky were way back in the front end of the house sound asleep on the couch having slept through it all. I was amazed. If my mother did peep out the window to see the commotion, I knew she already knew it had something to do with that same “LiL Boy” (Pucker’s name between she and I and when she’d catch his calls). She probably rolled her eyes in her head, took the baby to the front of the house and went to straight to sleep. Pucker was a household name in my house and my relationship by this time. She already knew that whatever happened, it was a long-time coming.
Santana and me made a cot with two pillows and lay by Lucky’s bed. We used the night light that was plugged into the wall to light the way to our much-needed, long over due conversation:
“So how long has it been going on Angie?” he asked.
“A little while after I had the baby” I replied.
“How did it happen Angie?” he asked-robotically and as if he was sticking his chest out to be able to take every bullet penetrating his heart and blocking it from getting to his head as well.
“He was the guy that had been driving up and down the street that long time ago back when I was pregnant-back when you and I would take walks down to the corner store out. He had been after me for about a year before I actually met and started seeing him.” I confessed.
I continued:
“He was just everywhere-like a stain. No matter where I was; restaurants, times when I’ve been shopping with you-all that. But I never would allow him to talk to me” I said.
He took a deep breath:
“I know everything Angie. I know everything. E-ver-y-thing. The sex y’all were having. The stuff he was saying to you. The stuff you were saying and DOING to him. I know it all. And I-know-that-you-love-him-too!” he grunted, drilled and said really fast and angrily.
“Oh God, I could only imagine,” he sighed.
I didn’t respond.
Awkward silence.
He took another deep breath of a different kind:
“I guess I’d better tell you what’s been going on with me as well,” he prepared.
I lay there, calm-because I called it a long time ago and was already prepared–too. I knew something was going on with Santana but like I said, I just couldn’t put my finger on it, but I listened on:
“I’ve been seeing girl for a while now too. I met her around the time you were up at that school for pregnant girls,” he confessed.
I sat up on my elbows and looked over at him:
“You mean to tell me you were fucking somebody while I was up at that pregnant jail agonizing, crying, and lonely. That was the loneliest times of my life?” I gasped and asserted.
“I tended to you Angie-I was still in love with you. I was still in love with you,” he defended.
“She knew about me?” I asked.
“Yeah…yeah she knew” he nodded.
“Wow Santana, so in counting, you’ve already fucked two girls-one was a virgin-smack dead in the middle of our relationship and having had my virginity first. Now here it is I find out while I was preggers and sent away, you were boo’ed up with the other chick. My situation with Pucker didn’t even occur until after Lucky was born. And all this time you’ve been at me about him-as if! Aw man” I gasped and shook my head.
I didn’t shed a tear.
It merely saddened me considering the changes I was going through at that time and to now know for sure, what he was doing-meanwhile, back at the ranch…
“I was still in love with you. I was still in love with you, Angie. And you know that” he insisted.
I ignored him.
I rested my forehead back into the pillow and I tuned him out with so many things dancing around in my head.
I knew it. I knew I should have let him go the first time he cheated.
I should have just let him go then.
I was at a safe point in my life. I wasn’t pregnant and I had dreams then. I had goals then. Now, the only goals and dreams I was looking forward to, was getting my ass back in school for which I had to attend night and summer school classes in order to graduate on time.
What a dream. What a goal now.
Had I let him go the very first time he cheated, my life would have been a whole lot different. In my corner, I had Ms. You-Know-Who, on “Team Me.” All she wanted was something better for me. She saw greatness in me. She loved me so much that she was ready to finance my life to do anything I wanted to do besides cozy up with some “light-bulb head boy” who she warned me would ruin my life. This shit is surreal now, but impossible to see-then. It was his senior year. My prom dress what bought and paid for, his festivities planned-it was so much going on around that time that bailing out on him after all we had been through felt like leaving him standing at the alter. Besides that-I loved my fairytale boyfriend…
That cheating thing is amazing.
Just like an animal getting that first taste of blood, from there on, it does not stop. And unless a man makes the decision that he finally “got it right”-he will continuously be out on the prowl. Santana obviously didn’t make that decision that we had it right.
To add insult to injury, this motherfucker did not even have the decency to consider the fact that I was lonely and crying; calling home during the week in search of comfort, all the while he was out in-search-of: some other bitch…when I was pregnant.
Considering the details that he had revealed to me, I could only imagine the field-days he was having Monday through Friday while I was knocked up and away at the preggers jail, agonizing over my innocent child growing inside of me with my emotions oscillating like crazy.
This revelation was almost unforgivable to me but I listened on, and just like first time he cheated, I made him run down every detail-except for this time, I was calm. We were older now and I was well-over preoccupation of being the high-school popular and good-looking couple. I’m a woman now, and this is real-life now. There are no facades and faces to put on for anyone except for the two of us laying there face to face (now)…in the night light with Lucky in the other room sound asleep listening to birds tweet and counting sheep.
The sordid details:
She was the half-sister of a girl that went to school with us.
Unlike the first girl he cheated on me with-who like me, was a virgin, Sordid wasn’t, so the two of them had been fucking like jack-rabbits. I didn’t even care by this time-she could have that dick.
(More details please):
He told me that the thing that made him like her was how whenever he would have to leave to tend to me, she would drop to her knees, crying and grab onto his legs while he would walk towards the door. That was why he was late getting to the hospital the day Lucky was born-because Sordid dropped crying and hanging on his leg.
Sigh.
In that moment, I had a life-changing revelation about my whole situation with him.
“This fucking fable Fabio,” I said to myself, rolling my eyes in my head while listening to this romantic hero. He was good for romance. I knew how he was. He lived for those “cutesy” fairytale-like moments like this. With Sordid down at his feet, I could clearly see him lifting her from the floor and kissing her passionately like a scene out of some corny ass movie. Sordid may not have been a virgin, but that drop to her feet move was her money shot and way-in to his heart: (for the “moment”).
I knew him oh-so well…
While learning him, he taught me that you gotta shake these men down from their secrets-make them tell you everything in order to find out their motives and reasons behind the shit they do, because somewhere in there, somewhere-you will find your own self in there…or out of there.
I listened on to the Sordid details, remembering the details I made him spill to me about the first girl he cheated on me with and instantly-those details too, came to mind where even back then; I could clearly see him making that romantic decision to carry that girl up the steps after she revealed to him that she was a virgin. That was her money shot (and “moment”). I remembered his confusion in his very last letter to me after it happened. He was partially excited about his new romantic moment, but at the same time, still in love with me because all day-everyday I gave him plethora’s of “moments” that fed his Fabio.
I knew his moves-all too well.
An impulsive romantic is what he just: was.
I was perfect for him when he first walked into the library that day and I was standing way up high on that ladder while he stood below it. The whole scene for him was classic “Romeo & Juliet” all the way down his beckoning me from the ladder and into his face-where he could clearly see me as some virginal, homely, Cinderella-like being that he could turn into a princess for a night, that ended up turning into years simply because of how my personality just-was: I had a never ending supply of “cutesy” moments, so he was constantly enamored by me…well…by that (first) and then came “me,” which made “us” possible for so long.
When we were younger, I swear I would see Disney-like movie scenes and carousels dancing around his head; circus music blasting loudly from his heart-playing loud enough to drown out the constant juggling of Ms. You-Know-Who and my mother repeatedly riddling me this: “He’s too immature for you! I don’t care that he is older than you! You are far too mature than he is-you will see, in due time!”
All his letters to me-all the cutesy little things we used to do and the things that I would spontaneously do to fit into his B-Boy world, like: putting on his sweat suits and Run-DMC hats-standing there dancing for him to the Beastie Boys’ “Brass Monkey” and “She’s Crafty.” He loved that too. The scene in his head would light up like E.T’s index finger and his heart would glow and show like E.T’s as well. I swear I saw all this in his Disney frontal lobe. Cutesy little things like that would make him carry on fantasies of the two of us being swept away on some Italian Riviera with some young fit lad named Geno Scraggaadagi, dressed like a matador, spear-heading our wooden boat adorned with the curly front and back ends.
Looking debonair and straight out of the cover of a Harlequin romance novel, Geno would stand at the front of the boat carrying a long stick in his right hand, while his left hand would be covering his lifted brow-looking out to the waters while the two of us sat in the little boat, me: singing and pouring flowers into the water while Santana would be holding on to the boats oars; rowing us away into bliss and obscurity.
“This romantic hero” I said to myself while rolling my eyes in my head.
It didn’t take much to send Santana’s mind off into some play land and in the matter of an endearing literal moment, he could entertain the thought of the house on the hill, the two-car garage, the white picketed fence, the horse, the baby, the carriage, and the two dogs that go: “woof-woof” all in a matter of minutes, then with the snap of a finger-he’s in lovvvvve simply because you’re near me! (singing).
My eyes rolled in my head as I shook my head again.
We were young and in love then. He worked real hard to win me over-all kinds of tricks, flips, and letters, I knew no better. I was in love too. I had a fairytale idea of a relationship and it seemed like God plopped just the right boy in my life and gave it to me.
I held his attention for so long because I had so much young love in my heart for him, insisting on proving my mom and Ms. You-Know-Who dead wrong.
Hopelessly devoted to him was I; cuddled up and watching one of my favorite old movie classics: “Grease” listening to Olivia Newton-John sing my song while at the drive in park-up on the screen there-played a cartoon of a hot dog and a bun where the hot dog, like he-Santana, was doing all kinds of flips and tricks hoping for the bun to finally open up for him to jump in. The bun eventually opened up and allowed that hot dog in and from that point on; they were America’s favorite happily ever after.
At the scenes end, I turned to look at Walt “Santana” Disney who was lying next to me-daydreaming and looking like a big ole kid watching a Saturday morning cartoon. I shook my head and said nothing-instead, I watched the scene in his head play, and I watched his heart illuminate. I remember that day oh so well.
No sooner than the next school day had come to an end, I walked upon him standing in a crowd of his peers laughing and joking in the hallway. There, stood a girl from their senior class-clowning around, her name was Vivian.
I stood back and watched Santana and the whole scene, awaiting that look in his eyes to appear. It would start off as a charming smile, turned gaze. That gaze would then turn into an off-stare, and that would be the point where the house on the hill, the two-car garage, the white picketed fence, the horse, the baby, the carriage, and the two dogs that go: “woof-woof” (and Italian “Geno”) would appear. But right before his daydream could crystallize, I walked over to Walt Disney, lightly smacked him in the back of the head, stood on my tip-toes and whispered into his ear: “Come back to the light lover boy. No doing tricks for the bun already. You are so Walt Disney,” I said-shaking my head.
He was partly embarrassed and felt a little bit busted, but at the same time, that was another “cutesy” thing to him-something else “cute” about me that he so adored: The jealous girlfriend. So in his mind-at that moment, it was he and I that rode off into the sunset where the circular window of the movie ending would read: “The End” (for Vivian-unbeknownst to her). I ended up winning that scene by the way.
That was his style.
Being with him, I was learning him; what triggered him, and that was precisely it.
He just loved: love and certain moments reminded him of love. And whomever fit that moment; he could “love” them. Reality set in when reality showed up. That’s when he would get scared and the clock would strike twelve o’clock.
As for me, I refused to part with my virginity for anybody that couldn’t give me the fairytale boyfriend in my young mind. And viola! There Santana was: perfect (and like me-a virgin, too). Heaven must’ve sent him from above, in my eyes.
But despite my shyness, I was always a little more mature than him, and even as a very young girl; I always observed people for years even before I met him. He was my boyfriend, so he was definitely under my microscope.
He never grew mature enough to understand that while being in love with love was fine-you have to love the one person that you are not only “with”…but that one person whom you love-not just “love” of the moment. A person is not “moment.” He had no concept of understanding that in love (with that one person you are supposedly committed to); you can’t be swept away by cute and “love-like” moments. That’s not what real love is…
I knew now, why he had sooo many girlfriends back before we began going steady and just how he managed to remain a virgin. He had a lot of “moments.” Practically every third girl at the school had made out with him; he just ended up in a full on relationship with me-I was the one with the never ending supply of “moments.”
Such a romantic idealist he was-it’s never so much as “love” being about the woman, it was the endearing moments in romance, or those remarkable moments of any kind that looked like love to him that made him liked, or loved the girl. A man like that could cheat a thousand times a day and not even know it.
As I was learning and observing his ways, truthfully, I couldn’t see the thought of marrying him back when we were young with hopes for it in our future. I used to read in his letters where he would talk about it, and I would shake my head back and forth-knowing that he loved him some “love.”
In the midst of our reality-way past twelve o’clock, I lay there on our cot continuing in my head:
“Do you understand?! What do you see?! Why are you with me?! What do you actually see when you look at me?! I could be anybody! Let’s see: I have on a long white dress-black at the breast, with white puffy ruffled short sleeves. I have a red belt around my waist, with red ribbon in my hair. I have seven short fat friends who play with me! Don’t I? That is probably what you see! You just love the thought and the act of being in love! That is what you see! This is real-life for you! I had a real heart before you and all of this! We have a real baby with a real beating heart!” …I wanted to look him in the eyes, grab him by the head, shake it and say. But instead of saying that to him, I kept it in my head because in that moment, I knew that if I would have said all that to him, Italian Geno would have appeared and we would have been right back on the boat. And I couldn’t bare the thought of being on that boat with him Santana anymore.
This was real-life to me. Not some increments and moments of the heart and head.
Into the night, I lay there with him-calm and pensive.
I didn’t even care anymore about the details he had just revealed about he and this girlfriend of his. My mind began to race and reminisce about the-us: then and the-us: now…now with a child having being brought into this world amongst all these circus acts, this chaos, this confusion, and this mess of a man-child I now had a “baby by.” That is when I began to cry uncontrollably. Because I swear to God I say as I grunt…I know him so well now, like I knew him so well, then…And had he run by me a long time ago; the Sordid details of that money shot moment that made him fall for her: that drop to the leg scenario bullshit-I swear to GOD I would have had this very same moment of clarity about his Disney thinking-then.
And had he told me this-then, I would have run away from him: THEN. That would have saved us all this Pucker trouble that we had gone through, now-unnecessarily as I lay there with a sore neck, body and headache from outer space.
As far as the likelihood of us succeeding together as parents-we were a mess and that killed me, for my baby. At that very moment, I knew what I was in for going forward.
I lay there knowing that I was going to be needing to woman-up real soon. I prayed that every fiber, tissue, and bone in my body would begin to repair and prepare itself while I rested-starting now: [whatever o’clock time it was] because I knew for sure in this moment of clarity, I had a real live “baby”… “baby daddy,” not a “man,” or a “father” of my child, and definitely not the husband for me. Because he was still now, like then, was no more than a man-child out here in this world trying to function: fucking and dreaming out of a Disney frontal lobe for a brain, a scarecrow’s fear, a tin man’s heart, and a puppy-dog existence, who was far from a lion.
There I lay on my side on that cot next to our beautiful son’s bed while my lil’ baby-daddy lay behind me listening to me weeping-holding me tightly; most probably with the whimsical notes of a carousel of some damsel in distress love story playing around on his mental Miramax, having no idea the seriousness of this moment for me right now.
There, he lay next to me-the same person now-as he was then…I was the only one who had grown up in this situation of ours. I cried uncontrollably as I balled up into fetal position-scared myself in that moment (of mine).
He held me tight and began to cry with me-most probably thinking that my tears were from the Sordid reveal and details he gave me about his lil’ girlfriend, but little did he know, I could care less. I was very sad for him, and I was very sad for me—for us: as “parents.” But most of all, I was sad for Lucky. That was all that mattered to me in this situation right now.
He begged me not to leave him.
He wanted us to try it one more time-to give the relationship a chance for us to be a family.
He wanted us to let go of our sideshows that we both were sneaking and seeing, to do this right.
I knew I wasn’t in love with him anymore any more than “Angie” was this innocent “girl” anymore. Admittedly a bit naïve at this point in my life with more growing to do; but far from the girl from the girl he first fell in love with that too, loved him back.
I knew I couldn’t stomach the idea of making love to this man-child anymore. But it mattered more to me that my child would have a father, and if he was willing to try and be a father, I couldn’t begrudge him the chance of trying.
I figured the only thing I could do was help him see himself in a real-life regular mirror, rather than some “funhouse” mirror in a carnival of life. And perhaps, we could take it from there.
I’ve always felt that the night-time brings about all kinds of goings on, thoughts, and feelings that the morning time would either: solidify or dissolve. So I needed to see how we would feel in the morning after all these fears and tears of ours subsided.
I would have to wait until the sun leaves footprints across the sky…and we could take it from there.
~~~~~~~
Saturday morning.
The sun left its footprints across the sky.
He woke up with that same look of love in his eyes. He then kissed and held me and grunted: “I love you so MUCH Angie,” he said adoringly.
I just looked at him and smiled.
He was so happy and fresh-faced. I chuckled as I laughed to myself while he lay there, holding on to me with the kind of force of tightening the lid on the bottle of something that you never want anyone else to open but you.
I could tell that all this felt new to him: To be able to wake up next to me in this way, considering the fact that my mother didn’t play that shit. No matter how much older we were getting-and if we had five kids together, Santana could never sleep over at our house. It was different for his mom and his house-I could sleep night or day over there, on any given day. So this morning most certainly probably looked like a different moment of a fantasy for him: A money shot moment that won him over (for the moment)…because low and behold, in a matter of hours-that moment was merely a footprint left across a sky that next rained, thundered and poured on me….
~~~~~~~~~
We made plans to spend family day together-the whole day.
When he left, his plans were to go home and get freshened up then come back to pick us up early that same afternoon.
Something happened though. Some other “moment” sure as hell must’ve beat me to him.
Because late into that afternoon, my neighbor-a girl who attended high school with both Santana and I-was slowly dragging her feet and walking up the last section of steps to the third floor that we both shared.
My bedroom door was wide open which was directly across from the front door to enter or exit our apartment.
I was waiting on Santana already, so I could hear her shoes crackling slowly and I knew it wasn’t him. Her feet even sounded like she had bad news for me-each step she took towards my door.
I got up from the bed and turned the knob to open it to say something to say hello to her, but she started first:
“Hey girl, sorry about what happened last night. It was a lot going on out there-and in the building. Are you okay?” asked Nayba.
“Yeah, I’m good. It’s a new day, so…” I replied optimistically-although I was pissed because it was way past “early afternoon.” It was now almost evening time, and Santana was not at his home, nowhere to be found, and still had not called me.
“Santana moved quickly after last night didn’t he?!” she said, then continued:
“He had the nerve to be out there kicking on your ass last night and he’s downtown-right now-as we speak…all boo’d up with some chick! I thought I was seeing things at first. I mean like…he’s boo’d up with her as if you, or last night never happened! I was shocked! It was just weird because I’ve never seen him with another girl since you and him-all these years. Totally awkward, just totally awkward. But…he is down there with a girl…right now-I promise you that,” she confessed.
I replied:
“He ended up staying for the night last night. We talked everything over and had plans for today, and he’s downtown with a girl you say? Now I know why he’s not home and why I can’t find him…”
“Oh. Okay.” replied Nayba. “It’s okay, I’m about to get down there because I just need to see this with my own eyes.”
“Well, it’s true,” she assured me-again.
“Did he see you?” I asked.
“To be honest, I don’t think so. I saw him from the back and then I walked to the side to see who the girl was, and that’s when I knew for sure it was him-but I didn’t know her. She wasn’t from our school I know that much. So I walked back the other way. I doubt if he saw me though,” she replied.
According to Nayba, they were down at this major downtown landmark called “The Spot”-a place where pretty much everybody in the city, downtown, frequented. She said it looked like our high-school’s “Couples Day” down there. But what looked most weird to her was how Santana had long graduated from our school yet, it looked like a page from the scene reminiscent of the book of ‘Me and Him.’ No one down there from the school had ever seen him boo’d up like that with anyone else but me. And according to her, it was one hell of a sight to see—for EVERYBODY.
Nayba’s description of the girl matched the same description that Santana gave me during the sordid details of their goings on and such. I just rolled my eyes in my head and shook it pitifully, twisting my lips up with a pop-up bubble of the scene in my head:
Sometime between when he left my house and got home to his house, Geno appeared, and Sordid got on the boat. She and Santana then rode off into obscurity and bliss, leaving me at home looking beautiful-dead sharp in my designer five finger discounted sexy Adrienne Vittadini fitted dress, courtesy of my TGGF. My hair: the shit, shined and shellacked, while Lucky napped.
Nayba and I agreed to meet on the bottom floor of the apartment building in five minutes-she wanted to head down with me. Said she would point ‘em out over in the little area where they were all boo’d up.
Mom kept an eye on Lucky while I “headed out to the store for a minute.”
I shot down those steps. The front doors of that apartment building’s half-mile distance down that long hallway couldn’t reach my hand quick enough, this time.
My impatience wouldn’t allow me to stand there across the street from the building to wait on the bus so, Nayba and I began walking until we saw a bus come-hoping to make it to “The Spot” before the Boo-Fest broke up.
By some stroke of luck, my home girl Isis pulled alongside me with her boyfriend who was driving: “Where are you twisting and stomping your lil’ self off to girl? Somebody is about to get dealt with! What the fuck baby?!”
Breathless, and with a serious look on my face, I simply replied: “Hey girl.”
I peeked into the car at her boyfriend, Pierce, who graduated from our school with Santana. He and Santana were good friends during their junior and senior years.
“Pierce let me and Nayba hop in. Take us down the hill to the “The Spot” will you?” I asked, impatiently.
“Sure, it’s cool. Come on-no problem. What’s wrong?” he asked-concerned.
I ignored him and we climbed into the back seat in a hurry.
As the car pulled off-I got angrier, just sitting back there remembering how the previous year before this, that very same couple in the front seat ended up hanging out with me and Santana after Santana’s senior prom.
Instead of Santana and me riding home with our patient limo driver who escorted us there; he ended up getting a paid-for free night to himself and whatever lovely lady he wished to surprise for the night. Courtesy of Santana’s parents, he was already pre-paid to wait outside while my then, Prince: Santana, and Me: Cinderella-enjoyed our five-star glamorous night inside the formal gathering. Behaving like the rebellious teens we were, we did not want to go along with the hum-drum and formality of the pre-planned night for the romantic ride around town in the beautiful spacious limo. So instead-we decided to hang out with Pierce and Isis in the old-school Cutlass. Ironically, Isis happened to be a friend that I grew up in the neighborhood with-so it was perfect. We all had a blast. The night was so wild.
We ended up running a red light-speeding through the downtown streets and running from being chased by a cop car as a result of. Pierce somehow managed to lose the cop and we all hid the car out on a side street and made plans to split and meet back at it. We thought we were bad-asses in our heels and sexy shiny, pretty dresses. Our sharp dressed men in black tuxedo suits, and shiny shoes matched our sexy. We were running from the police in our visible prom attire-while during, I ripped my pretty bright red Taffeta dress but I didn’t care, we all had a ball. The night was so unconventional, spontaneous, wild and fun.
That was then, but this was now.
Everything was so timely and unfolding right before my very eyes: Last night’s revelation, this incident I was on my way to, and the irony of the couple who happened to pull up on me while on route to handle this Sordid and Santana situation. It was all too surreal for words.
I was now sitting in the back seat of that very same car that, a year ago-prom night-we ditched…now, this time-having been ditched by Santana. The space in the seat across from me where he once sat was now being replaced by Nayba, who was on her way down with me to get him bitched…while I impatiently sat in the back seat of that old school Cutlass-pissed-fidgeting like a gang member preparing to roll up on this mark and yell: “Break yo’self-fool! What sect ‘ you claimin’?”
I sat in that same back seat, jealous, watching this very same couple that hung out with us a year ago; still rolling and making it happen. In that moment, I was oh-so jealous…just…jealous.
I couldn’t get to “The Spot” soon enough. I was growing more livid by the minute.
“What’s wrong?” Pierce asked again.
Again, I ignored him but this time, pretending to be preoccupied with the contents in my purse so that I did not have to tell him what was about to occur. He would have followed and stood between the plans I had for Stupid and Sordid because he and Stupid were friends.
When we pulled near “The Spot,” Nayba exited Pierce’s side and I exited Isis’ side.
I kissed her on the cheek and told her that I would talk to her later.
As we began to walk through the wide dimly lit tunnel, I could see the large crowd of people and couples holding hands into what was left of the day light.
I needed my way through to the light as soon as possible so that I could get my hands on Stupid.
When we made it through, I knew the first couple that I saw: Yoshi and Darren.
They were a popular couple at school too-together for about as long as Santana and I were. Yoshi, Darren, and I were in the same class-two classes under Santana’s. My heart dropped when I saw them; and theirs must’ve done the same, because all three of us looked startled.
The last they had seen me was a almost two years ago, before I mysteriously left the artsy school without saying so much as “goodbye” to anyone. My mind gave me no time to. As a result of preggers, my mom pulled me up and out of that school my senior year so fast my last leg didn’t even get to split the doors of that school good. At barely there whispers and missing my first period she pulled me up out of that school like I was nine months preggers already.
The last they knew of Santana was that he had long graduated and was supposed to be a man now.
The last they knew about us was that he and I was supposed to have been getting married and on the love boat, sailing off to bliss and obscurity.
They had no idea that we both had a beautiful baby at home who at that very moment, was waiting on us to rekindle our family fire now, in this moment-to no avail.
I couldn’t lie to myself. The sight of Yoshi and Darren still together after hitching a ride down with another couple we knew-both, still making it happen-killed me inside. I was so jealous-twice, four times over. I just KILLED me inside. Although I was long over the preoccupation of those (then) seemingly large matters of the “perfect popular couple” kind, still, the couples that were still together from back when Santana and I was, too, chilled me to the bone.
Although my life had gone through so many transformations since then; for that moment, I suddenly felt like the high-school girl who, yet again, had been made a fool of-just like in high-school.
Pierce and Isis sent my blood rushing to my head.
Yoshi and Darren sent my blood rushing through my head.
Blood rushed to my head intertwined with my thoughts about the fact that I was no longer the traditional teenager turning adult, preparing for my senior year-life with my friends, doing normal “last year-of-being-teenager” kinds of things, like my friends had.
Instead, I was in preparation for being forced to have to attend night + summer school and then attend some wild neighborhood public school for my senior year.
Blood totally rushed to my head.
Because the one and only thing that lead me down to deal with this matter at hand was Lucky. Other than that, after Nayba delivered that news to me, I would have continued on with my Saturday-most probably, with Pucker, and without [this] incident that was about to occur.
Now, here I am, with incident:
“Yoshi! Darren!” I spoke out to them-as if to say hello and at the same time, as if to say: “Did you see Santana down here?” They already knew what was up.
“Yoshi gestured back first. With her lips tight, she rolled her neck out, then rolled her eyes tightly and twisted her lips upwards. She had large slanted eyes and wore a bad attitude-at all times. Her eyes always looked as if they were cutting you-even in regular conversation. She then turned her head to the right and rolled her eyes again to signal that what I was looking for was right behind she and Darren. Her entire face was turned up as if she smelled the stench of dead carcass. I followed the stench.
I spotted my prey and threw my purse over to Nayba.
Like the female king of the jungle-fresh from hunting and securing life for her family only to come back roaring mad at the scene in front of her-effortlessly, and with the agility of a panther; I hopped on top of the ledge where Stupid and Sordid stood stinking busted: Frozen-with their backs turned to me as if they had already seen me talking to Yoshi and Darren.
They looked as if they were hoping that I would see them both as mere bushels of camouflage. Stupid was at such a distance from Sordid that a stranger could have very well walked between them, copped a squad and asked: “Are you two together?” And he could’ve easily said: “No.” I think that was what he was hoping I would ask, so that he could reply the same way to me.
Nah bitch.
He did not know what to expect, because throughout our entire relationship, the only other time he had ever met the bitch in me was the last time he was in this same exact predicament, but this time, complete rage went through my body as I reminisced about the hurting he put on my body almost twenty-four hours prior to this very moment.
Sordid was so far away from Stupid that I had to look over at Nayba to nod and confirm that this indeed was the chick she saw.
Nayba confirmed it.
I stood up on that ledge above Sordid while her body and face remained so far turned to the right that I swear if she turned it any further, her face would have been Exorcist backwards.
I needed her to flinch-to have the balls to look up at me, so I yelled over to Nayba:
“Is this her?”
Nayba yelled back:
“Yep-that’s her. I don’t know why they’re so far apart because I swear-they were just hugged up on one another earlier, but that is her!” confirmed Nayba.
Santana snapped. He turned quickly to Nayba and began to yell out all kinds of expletives with the force of a thousand knives being thrown into her-nearly matching rage he had inside of him from the previous night’s rage.
And just like the previous night, again, courtesy of my TGGF, I was sharp as hell-wearing the same designer fitted sexy black dress that Lynn Whitfield wore in “A Thin Line Between Love and Hate” when that thin line was crossed in that moment in the movie. And just like her, I was ready to kill a bitch.
In this real-life moment, that same thin line was crossed and Santana had definitely walked it. To prepare to walk this tightrope with him, I began to tie a knot with the front end and the back end of my long sexy black dress to give my legs room on the side of the long splits to allow me the leg room that I needed to rumble with this bastard, this time.
In position like the top kicker on the highest-paid football team; I curled my fists, held onto my bottom lip, stepped back, twisted my lower body and punted him in his back with my sexy high-chunky-heeled strappy red, yellow, orange, and black designer sandals. With the speed of a football flying across a field, I was hoping to see his heart, larynx, lungs, esophagus and other organs come flying out of him and land onto the cement in front of us.
I wanted to provoke Sordid so that she could get fly with me because I was dying to slap her face so badly. I could taste the sting of doing it:
“This Winnie the Pooh looking bitch. Are you crazy? How dare you! You love this fairytale bullshit from the look to the letter!” I said-standing there: sharp and sexy, built like a brick-shit house. Standing there-looking far from my innocent days, now: a closet-shallow, materialistic broad…thanks to Prince Santana who changed me from my Bohemian taste in clothes and shoes and convinced me that designer everything was the way to go (with him-anyways). Even my thinking was different. For a quick moment, I wondered what my life would be like had I just left his ass at the bottom of that ladder in the library.
For now, though, currently, he was beneath me arching his back in excruciating pain-now standing at a safe distance across from all of us. He began to yell, telling me to calm down and just leave-as if the previous night had never happened! As if we did not sit up for hours talking about working things out to rebuild our family. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing. I felt like I was standing in the middle of someone else’s nightmare.
“That’s all he’s got to say to me?” I thought.
“That’s how he talks to me? As if we never were in love? As if we hadn’t shared our first everything together, but more importantly-as if we did not have a child together? I shouldn’t even be standing right here-in the middle of this!” That was all my mind could take in.
I couldn’t believe that I actually had a child with this cartoon character-a child who was at home at that very moment waiting on both of us to come home to it.
Still in pain and grunting to get his words out, he proceeded to yell at Nayba, who never could live down the rumors about the many who had allegedly resided in her “humble” abode:
“You whore! You whore! You’re nothing but a stupid whore!” Santana yelled.
“Don’t respond to him-girl,” I said to her.
It didn’t seem to affect her. She shrugged her shoulders and looked at him as if to say: “I don’t care, I’m not your friend-I’m a friend to her.”
I told her to come with me so we could go on and leave, but not without spewing botox-the proverbial female code and ex-girlfriend thing to do: Yell out any and everything to tear at his manhood, his pride, and his ego and to take back from him-all that you gave and could not take back even if your life depended on it or you had the money for it: Your heart, your sex, your oral sex, your time, and most of all, all the things you did that taught him. All the things that taught him how to be even a smidgen of a better man than he was-all the ways he learned from you how to love a little better than he did before you and when he took up all your heart, sex, and time…under your instruction and construction just to take it all and build with another bitch-right underneath your care and awning. You just gotta shit on it all.
In my heart of hearts, in the middle of this big pay-back, I knew I couldn’t even include Lucky in my wish list of the big take-back, because I always felt like Lucky was really…all just mine. From bonding, to nurturing, and existing—all mine. Despite Santana being one-half and part of Lucky-no doubt, I just don’t think Lucky was a part of that Disney theme going on his heart and head. Any whimsical and carousel playing in his head, I believe was exclusive for the fantasy of romance, not the reality of, and for a bambino. It’s like every step in this situation was so ordered for some reason that I just couldn’t explain. Every door kept opening in succession: A Situation. A Revelation, and then a Light that lead me to the next door—crazy!…
My mother shipping me off to the preggers jail must’ve had been some kind of blessing in disguise (for me and Lucky). It enabled Santana to pick right back up on a dramatic romance of what, for him, must’ve felt like some unrequited love (considering his situation). It was like for a reason, on and for some purpose, I kept a flat tummy before, during, and after-and baffled many friends and family as to how, or when Lucky came. It was miraculous, like it was destined in the cards for me to not be in that typical motherhood preggers woman form: fat, wobbling, stretch marks, and swollen-as if somehow God knew that would have been too much for Santana-his biggest nightmare and culture shock. It was as if he spared him nine months of that kind of reality on the strength that I had already gone through enough emotionally during the few months preggers that I did-so he spared, and let live: Two birds from one throne…But at some point in the situation, Santana would be forced to deal with the reality that Lucky really was real-but have fun living in the carnival of your heart and head until then.
With that on my heart and in my head, I had to break him down. I had to break up all the only parts in this that he loved, cherished, and cared about-the parts that mattered and meant so much more to him than his own seed. I had to break him down to the point where, from the first girl he ever loved, had sex with, and shared his first meaningful experiences with—she would be the one to make him feel like none of that ever mattered, since what too, mattered to me-did not matter to him. I wanted him to feel like everything I had ever said in the name of a letter, linguistic, love, lust and in the heat of any sensual or romantic moment-all were nothing but mere burning lies and ashes through the fire, to limit, to the wall (for the chance to be with him, I gladly risked it all). The bet and bounty of the head that Ms. You-Know-Who and everybody else had on our relationship had finally been delivered, and over something that I never even entertained the thought of ever being a reason for.
I had to break him down.
I needed him to feel that all things involving love from my mind, body, heart, and mouth were nothing but bold-faced lies of the soap-opera kind and that we never had anything but close encounters of a long, strange kind.
So with without use of my feet, or my hands, and nothing but my mouth as my artillery; while standing high above him on that ledge and right in front of his bitch, I ripped and gutted him from inside out, upside down, and in ways that no ass-whipping could deliver and no death he cause. Nothing he did could compare to the way I was lighting into and killing his entire soul that day, and he deserved every hole I shot into him.
Like someone else’s nightmare I felt I had walked into, I wanted him to feel the same.
I wanted him to feel like he was standing there in ladies silk panties and a garter-questioning who really wore the pants in the relationship. I wanted Sordid to feel like that whole time with Santana, she had been getting fucked by a woman with a dildo who merely had a talented tongue.
I meant business.
Like the capital letter “T” turned sideways-I charged into his ego and anything he felt was safe, solid, and sacred between us. I spit venom all over into and up and through their shit-which a nice calm demeanor and not having to raise my voice barely and octave.
He was pissed and embarrassed and couldn’t take it anymore. So now, Nayba and I were both whores:
“Fuck both of you! Both of you are whores! She fucks anybody and you’re fucking somebody else too, who’s got a girlfriend too-you whore!” he slowly emphasized down to the spelling and the one word syllable-perfectly.
My brows frowned downward nearly expanded to the shape of a wide letter “V” like some evil cartoon character that never made it to the Disney frontal of his many head fantasies.
My mouth dropped and that second shot of botox spewed:
“Oh okay that’s the part that you didn’t know about. Kudos to you for being honest with your whore right here-by being honest with her and telling her that you had a baby on the way by a girl gone far away who was in love with you and had always been faithful to your tired ass while you were down here in the city cheating with her whore ass… knowing that you had a baby in conception dammit! That’s the whore right there,” I pointed down at Sordid and redirected my scorn.
Sarcastically I said:
“Unfortunately for me, the guy who pursued me (for over a year and finally bagged me I might add) was so desperate to not lose what he worked so hard to get that he lied like a rug. Yeah, he sure did. Unlike you, he was dishonest in keeping from me-the fact that he indeed had a girlfriend (who wasn’t preggers I might add)…but unlike you honest Abe, that dick and the fuck was righteous-from day one. So take that from my mouth-what you couldn’t bare to hear the details about last night during our pillow talk where you preferred to be left with the flat version from Aya’s mouth—furthermore, his lying ass gives a good righteous fuck and that’s the reason I don’t fuck you! He fucks me senseless-so I can’t even think about you! He earned it and knows what to do to keep it! ” I drilled in:
“Sure, he lied, we’re over that. And other than that, he handles his functions over here–something you couldn’t do too well. Now “whore” that!” I said.
I smirked and looked down at Naybor as if to give her a high five while she covered her mouth and continued to laugh like a Frat Boy at a Frat Boy college party. I let off an aggravating giggle while standing above him, looking down at him fold his bottom lip and stretch his nostrils-wanting so bad to jump up and strike me while I stood strumming pain to him and singing the death of our life together with my words…killing him softly. And he deserved every bit of it. He really wanted to kill me just about as bad as he wanted to break down and cry. I didn’t even care anymore. I dared him to buck this time. I continued:
“Go on and buck. Jump on me like you did last night. Jump on me in front of all those people over there and in front of your whore right here. Show her how you behave when somebody busts open your fantasy and takes your woman on a ride. Show her how you do,” I challenged, and proceeded to take another bite out of them both:
“And before you two whores think you’re going to continue to receive any life pumped into this bullshit relationship y’all call yourselves having while my poor baby is at home fatherless…Whore…You…” I pointed down at Sordid:
… “you can stand down there all you want to with your head turned down and afraid to look at me, but one thing about me is that I sure as hell wasn’t afraid to look the girl in the face whose man I later found out I was fucking. That’s because I’m not a coward. You’re a coward and he’s a paper tiger, and your sorry weak asses deserve one another.”
She still wouldn’t look at me, but I continued:
“You may not have the balls to look up at me, but you are listening. You are listening. So I’m gonna put this bug in your ear before you walk away from here with this clown, playing into his fantasies of any untruth about how he: my baby’s father…this “man-child…is the victim here and was cheated on: He’s no victim. No, he cheated on me, after my losing my virginity to him and coincidentally hooked up with another virgin and played some fairytale Fabio to her too (for the night)! ‘Cause he’s cartoon-minded. And your day is coming too-whore! This man-child wasn’t cheated on until well after our boy was born, that, while conceived-he was cheating with you… And YOU knew! WHORE! Your day is coming! So don’t get excited by playing into his fairytales. Don’t that think I’m gonna walk away from here knowing that I’m about to be in this thing by myself and let BOTH you whores think you’re gonna survive off any lie off of me. So Whore…I know that one ear facing me is listening, so take in all in.” I said.
I paused.
I looked down at Santana and continued to speak my peace:
“And Santana’s right. I am fucking somebody else. I don’t want Santana him and haven’t for a long time now. So know that we’ve all met…and everybody’s clear on the 4-1-1, who did what, and who drop-kicked who; you don’t have to worry about dropping to your knees and crying at his feet for having to leave and come to see me anymore, ‘cause I don’t have to play pretend with ass anymore. So you best be conjuring up yourself some new damsel in distress fantasy to try and sustain this Walt Disney headed ass fool you’ve got on your hands, ‘cause I can’t help you with that one anymore,” I revealed.
I drilled it in. “You whores should be good and bored now, ‘cause now, I’m not the source of your lil’ unrequited love you had going. Whore, I don’t want your man. And don’t let him fool you into thinking that I do. I merely wanted him to do right by what’s innocent in this, which is what we both made a decision to do last night and he forfeited today-which is what brought me here. It’s not about him. So don’t get excited.” I said.
I wanted to make sure that Santana would not leave this mess he made with any life taken from me and mine only to be breathed into some happily ever after on my account.
He sat there to my right with his head down and legs swinging on the ledge.
Sordid stood to the left of me nervous-still, with her face turned to the ground-still-trying to look innocent and like she was ready to cry and die. I felt no remorse for that bitch or her feelings. She had no remorse or consideration for me and mine, so fuck her and the shoes she stood below me riding the sides of while never having the gumption to not look me in the face the entire time I stood there.
In those moments standing there something happened.
That wish that I prayed for to help me repair, renew and prepare, felt like it was working.
I did not shed one tear. My heart did not flinch any faster a beat per second, and I had no fear. It was in those moments while standing there, although being a real bitch about it, but speaking my heart; something changed inside of me. In between my venom while standing there on that ledge; those doors, those revelations, and those lights kept coming on, brighter and brighter:
40 Watts.
It was all coming back to me as I pieced together he and Sordid’s details from his confessional from the previous night and suddenly, I remembered the moment when I stopped having sex with him during my pregnancy. It was one of my weekends home from the preggers jail.
60 Watts.
From the rear, I remembered he was fucking me abnormally hard; rougher and more violent than we had ever fucked in the history of our relationship. In the middle of it, I was totally turned off and made him stop. It annoyed me, because I was pregnant and it just didn’t seem appropriate for him to be fucking me like that.
80 Watts.
I was very emotional during my pregnancy. I remembered how during one of my weekends home from the preggers jail, Santana and me were at his family reunion. They had some relatives come down from Canton. He had this one girl cousin who practically followed me from every table of the park-aggravating me, picking and prodding at me to the point that I was in literal tears and yelling at Santana who gaslighted me something serious-acting as though I was over-reacting…trying to make me think that her cynicism was merely apart of her personality and that what she was doing wasn’t personal. He tried to make me think it was all in my head. That day, I was so exhausted, stressed out, and overwhelmed. He should have protected me from that knowing how emotional I was during that time. But he did not. I couldn’t wait to go home and get away from him-even. I hated him that day. I was totally turned off.
100 Watts.
In the middle of all of this, I remembered how on one of my weekends home from the preggers jail, Santana’s sister stopped me on the back porch of his mother’s house, coercing me into a conversation about all the cons (and none of the pros) about our keeping the baby. I remembered how she presented to me-my life on a platter of sticky, sweet, shiny appetizing candy in comparison to the sauerkraut it would turn to should I keep the child; describing to me how all the fun and comings and goings on with my friends would be no more-as if my life would come to a complete end when I brought a baby into the world. That conversation was for a reason.
Back then, those weren’t pieces of anything that meant anything, especially considering how attentive and caring Santana was to me every weekend that I came home. I had no reason to assume that he was behind any of this. I had no reason to think that he was trying to make me get rid of the baby or at last resort: lose it-by way of sexing me to my baby’s unlucky death that by the grace of God, didn’t happen despite the fact that he came early.
Speaking my peace while standing on that ledge; that 100 watts of light put everything into perspective that back then-my INNOCENCE did not see.
A tad bit more seasoned now, and even amid my current state of naivete; I snapped right back into a special kind of consciousness and calm that came over me. In the midst of my fairytale turned nightmare this day, I relinquished all the illusions of our past, along with it; having learned more than I had lost—after the last breath I took when I had spoken to the both of them…
Immediately, I untied the knot out of my sexy dress. And that moment was like untying a knot inside me-about all of this, him, them and the life I once knew.
Suddenly, the storm was gone from my mind, and my heart was unclouded. Angie got over this situation and accepted them as illusions of life in those moments and mere blasts from the past.
With the blink of my dry eyes, acceptance took over, and Santana merely became just an old high-school first love and boyfriend to me. Just a chapter of a last page turned.
It was like an outer-body experience: one-me was standing there, and the other-me was helping renew, repair, and prepare me for the move on–right there in the middle of the moment.
Suddenly, the scene of Yoshi and Darren looking at all of this was apart of our past. I accepted that.
Pierce and Isis had long driven off-but even the two of them together as a couple, was apart of our past. I accepted that.
As bad as I wanted to show up at Ms. You Know Who’s beautiful big home and fall to the floor of her door and beg her to take me back. I knew that I couldn’t. So much had happened since she left me alone-like déjà vu: All the very things she tried to facilitate my prospering and protect and pluck me from. I had to accept the only thing we had in common now was my birthday being she and her husband’s anniversary and her lucky-day 11-11 birthday was nothing more than being representative of my being so not lucky-having fumbled that bag. I had to accept that.
What I went through and my feelings of loneliness while up at the preggers jail had come and gone-that too as apart of my past. I accepted that. In this history of mine in the making, that experience taught me what it was really like to really feel “lonely” and I never felt “lonely” in life again because I knew what really feeling “lonely” was like.
I let it go.
Hell, even while standing there looking at Sordid’s side view-hoping that she would get the nerve to look my in my face became apart of the past as well, too. She was never going to look me in the face-and in that moment, I accepted that, too.
I let it all go.
I let go of being worried about being a literal single parent.
I was done lying to myself and thinking that I needed an ally in a man-child in this thing, all merely for the sake of keeping up appearances-to keep from looking lopsided with a baby on my hip. Where I was from, that was no culture shock anyways. Damned near every friend of mine was a product of a single parent absent father home; being raised by their mothers and older siblings, and still lived.
The fantasy was no more.
No more: “boy meets girl-boy loses girl, boy gets pretty girl back.”
No more: “first time love, then comes marriage,” …nothing became of that but the baby in the carriage that, as a result; there would be no singing, no dancing, no acting, no painting and no going off to college just yet…I accepted that.
It was real life for me now.
My clear and present eyes were finally open and I began to truly see.
Repairing, renewing and preparing was taking over me.
The right here, the right now: minute by minute, moment by moment.
Regardless of the fact that I was set to attend night and summer classes in order to graduate on time, I accepted the reality of my current situation right there as it was in that very moment in time:
I was high school dropout with a baby.
I was a literal single parent with an absent father who in this history in the making; would graduate to being “estranged” altogether.
At that literal moment, I was a statistic-something I fought to avoid being labeled.
My mind stopped trying to resist that was my reality (at that very moment).
I did my part-I did all that I could do.
I did not have anything to prove to anyone, anymore.
And as I stood atop that ledge over both of them, I took the deepest breath ever and let it go.
I was calm.
I was clear.
Mentholyptic.
The strumming was happening to me right about now.
I could now hear every word of Anita Baker strumming my pain, singing my life with her words, killing me softly with this song-telling my whole life with the words “No royal kiss could save me, no magic spell to spin. My fantasy is over-my life must now begin. My story ends, as stories do. Reality steps into view. No longer living life in paradise – no fairy tales…”
As Nayba and I walked away, I did not look back and nor didn’t care to. I accepted my fairytale relationship, my fairytale dreams, and my fairytale life as something that was no more in this moment of mine.
In this very moment, I accepted that the only stage I would be taking a bow from was the one I had just hopped down from-from speaking a special kind of peace, where real life began from the moment my feet hit the ground when I jumped down from that ledge where any ounce of innocence left in me-was last left, too.
~~~~~~~
Meanwhile, in this history of mine in the making; I was still young and trying to find my way. Considering the slips and falls I continued to go through since Santana, I cannot say that I was getting it all right, but in my naiveté I got it all right about him for sure. Just like I warned him, his fairytale fantasies came to an end with Sordid. And he deposited a child with her who too, was left with a broken heart and no dad, too.
Over the years Santana would come by and talk, explaining to me about the same kinds of things going on in his life where I would just listen to the stories-knowing all to well that when the reality part of it kicked in, he’d go running. Stories about the very same thing that happened with us-our child, seemed to follow and plague him. Before he knew it, he had a clan. One, he escaped the “fate” of because the mother was in a relationship and got married. She needed to pass the child off as her husband’s so she stuffed a picture of the lil’ girl in his pocket while blissfully gleeing and fleeing. The only thing I could say was, although he was literally no good to any one of them; at least he had pictures of them all as, I at least got a chance to see what my son’s brothers and sister’s all look like.
As we were cordial at this time in life, I learned even more.
He knew me well, and was accustomed to detailed confessing. Aya made good on getting it in with him after all. He confessed to the fact that eventually he and Aya fucked over at a girl and her sister’s house who too, went to school with us.
His transgressions were plenty and he didn’t seem to care or have a reason-just opportunity. He seemed lost, but called it life. Eventually, he slept with Sordid’s half-sister too-who also went to school with us. He just said: “fuck everything and everybody,” I guess. He told me how the “f’s” went down and I just listened to the details of it all, never having to ask for any elaboration whatsoever. He knows me and knew what to do. So I just listened to every cranny and nookie…
We were amicable. Amicable and okay to the point where on occasion, I’d stop over sometimes after work and he’d fix his room up-nervously, smiling and happy to just have me there curled up on his bed taking a nap. He’d get a thrill just by watching me rest, rubbing my shoulders and smiling, being silly, bursting out saying: “You were my first piece of pussy, man.” I would laugh and return: “I raised you.” We’d laugh.
He never changed.
The only thing that changed was that he became a chronic weed smoker. It was odd to see him smoking blunts, looking experienced-and actually kind of sexy doing it…like he was some rugged Marlboro man now.
Walking in the room, disturbing his guest from her my nap; I would be laying on my side with my hand laid across my waist looking over at him-and shaking my head laughing to myself. Immature, looking at me he’d screech: “Whatttt it’s my room!” I’d laugh. The way he would prepare his space for rolling his blunts, crack open the cigar, or roll from natural leaf-you would swear he was from some island in Jamaica. He could do it with his eyes closed. I would just laugh at him and shake my head, because he wasn’t a little boy anymore (on the outside) but indeed was, on the inside.
The way he looked at me never changed since we were young. His biting his bottom lip, and that love in his eyes-just never changed. Before Geno could sail by, I would snap my fingers and tell him that he never had my permission to look at me in the eyes like that that as long as he has a child with me that he doesn’t even know and have a relationship with.
Into us being non co-parenting adults, he would still do child like things like ringing the doorbell to my home and when I would open, without saying a word; he’d give me a kiss-and run.
The very last time he did it, for old times sake, just like he did when we were teens; he handed me a card. This time, it had my first name with his last name written on the front of it. After he kissed me, and handed it to me, he ran. I just shook my head. I never tore the envelope open-because I knew it probably had a letter inside…with words I didn’t want to read. So I just smiled.
Eventually, he moved from his apartment and I never seen him again. He was somewhere out there, “out there.”
I felt bad for him somewhat. He was so good-looking, so talented, so charming. I never thought he would grow to not even care about life anymore (in this way). Sometimes I blamed myself because it all started with me-one kind of way, but ended with me-a different kind of way.
Nobody wants to hear about the memories of their first love being something that fucked their mind and heart up and changed them forever. I did find a little bit of solace in the fact that although I refused to be receptive to it; he never stopped looking at me the same way-as if we were still this teenage couple (without a child though)… It’s like, he and I was all he could see. And somebody else (even though the child is his) was a disruption. I remember that while over his house one day, I handed him a picture of our son with me. He was so happy-with that same look in his eyes. But all he saw (and acknowledged) was me. I couldn’t understand his ability to disconnect that. That hurt me. But I accepted it.
It was sorta Sordid. Some things you just can’t fight, even when you know what you are fighting is wrong, and you are right, and with every right to. I couldn’t fight that he mentally cropped out the fact that we had a child together. I looked at his apathy like the day I rolled up and tied a knot in my skirt ‘cause I wanted to kick Sordid right after I kicked Santana. She would not look at me nor would she turn her body towards me. You look like a fool literally trying to fight somebody that won’t fight you back.
He had no fight in him for his child that didn’t fit his fairytale any more than I had it in me to hang on to our fairytale.
Later into history of mine in the making, Santana was no better a dad while paying child support for years than he was before paying child support and ignoring the fact that he was a dad.
He was just about a literal “dead” (beat) dad as I was a literal single mom.
None of that was going to make him be a father. He didn’t play those silly ass games that some men play-who feel that because they are paying child support, they can disrupt the mother with custody and quality time fights, knowing they could really care less but instead, really only want their “money’s worth.” He didn’t play those games, so I didn’t play Baby Mama Drama games with him before, during or after all of that. I digressed. And I let him fly free on a ticket of acceptance.
Some things you just can’t fight when there are no dukes up, knives wielding, or guns drawn. It makes no sense to try to. Some shit you just cannot fight.
I let it go.
Trying to hang on to fighting that would be like trying to hang on to promises he made to be a great dad back in his countless love letters to me from ninth grade.
I have no Baby Daddy drama any more than I have a father to my child.
I accepted the fact that I had “Baby Deady” whose main concern was the life of the mother of it, period. So there was no Baby Mama drama to be had…
Knowing him the way that I do, I knew that his problems are more created, imaginary, and mental than what really seemed black, white, and trife. I did not come to accept what I always knew about Santana simply not wanting to deal with the reality of what happens after procreating during the fantasy—until later, around this amicable time of ours. But after that fight, I eventually gave up entertaining the “baby mama” fight with him and let him focus his aims on me, only-for, that was who was in this thing with him and I had to accept that. We never talked about it but it was just something that I knew. Our baby was just about as much an X Factor as a Lauryn Hill song and lyric that described Angie’s Situation perfectly: “Lauryn baby use your head, but instead I chose to use my heart. Now the joy in my world is Zion [Lucky].”
I accept that.
All his other “baby mommas” probably think he’s just a deadbeat and loser, but they have no idea about how he “began,”-and what I grew to know to be as the kinds of ideals that played on his head about life and love. They don’t know, because they just don’t know “him”; his fairytale frontal lobe-only I know that thing about him.
My innocent years grew me up.
I look at him and know two things about myself that I know like no one will ever know: Loneliness and Acceptance.
In my relationship with him, while preggers and away; I experienced what it was like to be at the deepest depths of loneliness, down the longest and most dimmest of hallways, the farthest in distance from anyone claiming to love and care for you, the quietist of rooms, at the most impressionable stage of your lifetime, and during your most emotional state of mind with absolutely no one to talk to-absolutely. I’ve never experienced or claimed being “lonely” since then. When people claim to be lonely, most have no idea. I just roll my eyes in my head and say: “Learn to be okay with being alone with yourself, because you don’t know lonely.” Because of him, I know what it’s like to truly being accepting of someone as a result of the most unusual and unacceptable circumstances yet, know that it’s about them-nothing to do with you…so you adapt. And learn to be accepting of that person because they just love you and wanted you; even if they couldn’t share it with what too, was a part of them, too.
I hurt, but I have no bitterness. I hurt, but I have no longing. I hurt, but I love our one child with the love of both parents despite him only having one.
I think I found solace in the malice of his absence because he’s just like that-across the board with all his seeds, unfortunately. It’s psychological and something inside his mind rather than inside his heart that he has to deal with. So I accept and understand that.
I think in life sometimes, you really do get what you ask for. And none of it comes with a warning sign or some way that tells you it’ll all be greater later (or happily ever after)….
Part of me felt bad because I’ll never know if as the young girl that I was, did I create this monster by having this young girl ideal about “how” and “what kind of” fairytale-like person my first boyfriend would have to be–and in walked Santana with no warning sign. I was growing up, but he wasn’t. I matured just enough to get over wanting a “fairytale person,” and just wanted a “person.” He never mastered that part-with me, or anyone else in his life…
But as history in the making would have it; my life away from the fairytale aint so perfect either. I may have had it all figured out with Santana, but I still had yet to deal with the monster I was creating in Pucker and going forward. Because this time-until I got it all right with myself; it, and other situations built me up, and broke me down, too.
Call it extreme acceptance or downright stupidity, either way-it all boiled down to pure unadulterated naïveté…
Chapter Four
~~ Character Flaws, Slips and Falls ~~
…and I accepted the fact that in the end of all this, I was merely left with nothing but insatiable sex with Pucker, minus any traces of guilt, sneaking around, fear, or shame.
The eyesore in that (in comparison my serious life, and something that Santana had all over Pucker) was that Pucker wasn’t very bright or talented, or had any other valuable or useful redeeming qualities outside good sex and his methodical pursuit of me. He was very good-looking, very awkward, and I liked his speaking voice-the way he talked-pronounced his words. He had a real sloppy
NOT YET PUBLISHED☝
Sequel – “Angie Situation (NAIVETE)☟
Prequel/Book1- “Angie Situation (Innocence)” published☟
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE 5
- The Roots of Picked Fruit 17
- The Precocious Ripening 33
- Ripe & Ready. Gangs, Bangs & Pangs 39
- The Queen Bee in Me 63
- Another Level. Blossoming. Beautiful. 80
- TGGF, Male Model & Me 101
- TGGF & Me 112
- Divorcing Dad 124
- You Know Who 130
- First Flings First 139
- In the Lion’s Den 170
- Cold Shoulders and Frozen Dancing Feet 195
- Pills & Frills 204
- You Know What: I Told You So 209
- Dichotomies & Dazes 228
- Situations, Decisions & Transitions 241
- Up, Out & Away 244
MEET the AUTHOR Q & A 254
READING GROUP GUIDE 257
SNEAK PEEK into book2
(“Angie Situation NAIVETE’” )’s CHAPTER ONE 260
OTHER BOOKS BY ANGELA SHERICE 269
ABOUT the AUTHOR 270
