Davia
1:00 p.m.
I mean I freaked the fuck out. You’d have thought that me and Colby, the passenger I’d picked up, you’d have thought that we were close friends.
“…what the fuck? Oh my God. Really? There’s a body in my trunk? What am I going to do about that?” Yes, I said this to Colby, like we were tight.
“Okay wait, calm down. Let’s call the police right away…”
“But what if they think it was me? They gonna want to investigate me. I can’t have all that in my life. I have goals—”
“I got this. Don’t worry.”
Then I looked at Colby, this nicely dressed white guy…Latino guy?...white guy, tie in order, shirt fitted, thick legs underneath the slack, and I wondered, why are you so calm?
He was picking up his phone calling the police for me.
If I had finished collecting myself from the whole body-in-trunk thing, I might have protested this random man calling the PD on my behalf. But the freakout was still going. All I could do was watch this man handle all of it. I should have expected as much – he was white, or at least looked white, which is enough for them to take his story over mine. He waxed poetic, whitesplaining, mansplaining and corporatespeaking the whole story.
Meanwhile he had good enough sense to get the paramedics over too. They were over there near the trunk and I was standing near a tree worried underneath the branches. Thinking to myself, is this what God wants? Is this immediate retribution for my Uber-orgasm? Was then when I earned the 12 Years a Slave sentence?
I was so caught up in this drama, no, real fear, that I missed the shocking part: the paramedics put the man from the trunk on the gurney and started rushing.
“He’s alive?” I shouted.
But by the time I could make it to the vehicle, he was already in the back of the truck, full siren production. Now, I was mad. I’m nosey as fuck. I wanted to know who he was and I could have—would have looked at his face if I’d known he was alive.
The entire time, Tom Hardy was talking to the PD, nodding, saying things, laughing.
The cops broke the full inquisition and came over to ask me for my license. I gave them all the licenses.
Then I waited while they walked back to the car, all the while feeling bad about stereotyping him, especially as I was standing over near a tree scared to death looking like Erykah motherfucking Badu.
Now when the officer came over and did not arrest me, I was dumbfounded.
“We just want to as you some questions, Affidavia,” the officer said. “So we really need your cooperation when we reach you.”
They were going to let me go and entrust me to come back? They weren’t taking me in for questioning now? Not even after they said my full government first name? I looked at Colby/aka Tom hard in the face and stared.
“Affi they just want you to chat with them later about the ride. All will be documented with Lyft,” Colby said in rapid fire like this stuff was normal.
Affi? This colonizer just took my government name which he has not been authorized by me to use and remixed it into a nickname? I couldn’t even speak, especially since now was not the time to be ungrateful.
“We have your lawyer’s information so we’ll be in touch.”
“My lawyer??”
“Yeah, I just gave him John’s information, no worries, Affi,” he said coming toward me. “Thanks officers,” he said toward them.
When we got back to the front of the car, I looked at him.
“Um, what’s the story? What did you tell them? Will these people be at my house?”
“Wait Af—”
“Do not use that ever again. My name is Davia, hi I’m Davia, nice to meet you, that’s Davia, uh huh, no worries, yes, Davia.”
He backed up and apologized. I mean he physically backed up, with swag even. At this point I was really worried about who this cat might be.
To keep it one hundred, he couldn’t possibly know how angry the whole subject of my name makes me. My mother had a Poppies-from-The-Wiz period between my sister and older brother when she had me. When she named me Malfeasance, the thought cells were in rebellion, but at some point she realized her mistake. She got the affidavit to correct it.
The problem is when she filled it out there was too much alcohol involved so she put the name of the document on the line where my new name should have been. And she misspelled it too. Thus I became Affidavia Malfeasance Zirconoia James.
Or just Davia, please and thank you, mercy Jesus.
“Davia,” Colby said, “I have worked some things out, just consider it a favor. I just need for you to be sure to show up to whatever John needs.”
“This discount law is still law. So what else might John need?”
“No, no, no, it’s nothing like that. I just mean cooperate with them helping you, that’s all.”
I thanked him, wondered what the hell I had just gotten into and then decided to take the rest of the day figuring out what was going on. What my rights were.
The learning curve was hurtful. But I finally got enough information to know that I needed to check on the guy who was somehow not dead but didn’t have a pulse a while ago. I needed to find out what the hell happened and if my last rider put him in the car by himself or with help, and why, mainly because I was not trying to get killed by some random negro trying to make sure I can’t identify him when the police ask me about it.
But the problem is that I could not go to the hospital myself, because he was taken to Hollywood Presbyterian on Sunset and Vermont. Hm. I was 86’ed from that hospital a few years back. I know, I know, it begs the question about how somebody could be banned from a hospital. But it was for assaulting a security guard. They had me on everything—it’s a long story; the point is that if I ever get seriously injured and need to go to the hospital, the ambulance has to take me to the other one, whatever that is.
It’s fine. Marc would have to go for me and find out everything about this cat. He is in to me for so many favors anyway so he doesn’t have any currency for No.
Shaw
1:25 p.m.
I had to leave my fiancé.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure I was ready to get married even though it’s everything I’ve always wanted. Obama got the words right – the audacity of hope. That’s the kind of hope I had that I would be absolutely sure about a man.
I was sure the others weren’t right. One ended with prepositions no matter the code and would not keep a job. Another punched a saleswoman at Macy’s and would not take his lithium. My inaugural boyfriend could not keep his hands off my friends.
But this current and fourth one I said yes too because I knew that to marry him would be to marry a beautiful man with a good heart, good benefits, a Morgan Stanley Active Assets account, a condo in Bulgaria, a Liebowitz over the sofa in the study, a Lawyer of the Year award from the National Bar Association, a lake house in Wales and a lake in Korea. Granted, the lake is part of one of the properties that holds offices of a his globally branded nonprofit. We would argue deliciously about mass incarceration as it pertains to the capitalization of slave labor and then have beautiful, standard fare missionary lovemaking sessions. More of the arguments than the lovemaking.
He never seemed that sexually driven.
But as I leave a client earlier than planned to drive to my house unexpectedly, I remember that my ex-fiance bought me a Mickalene Thomas portrait for my birthday.
I’m in a cubic zirconium ankh with a diamond in the center that he got me for my birthday. Although it’s over between us I kept it, because it reminds me that I’m equal parts salt-of-the-earth real and high couture opulent. And for another reason.
My illusions about this got twisted up when I met a guy at a Starbucks who zeroed in on me like a heat-seeking, challenge-seeking missile. He knew I was the type of man whom no one had ever witnessed passing gas, who glared at belchers and refused to allow anyone to see the sweat.
Ten minutes later, it was me in the bathroom scene of Unfaithful. This man tore open my shorts. He pulled down his pants. He picked me up by my behind. He pinned me against the bathroom stall side panel. And then he did an hours worth of fucking in five minutes. Not one person entered that bathroom. Only my ass was entered. He knew instinctively that I’m high maintenance. He saw my effort to not get disheveled, protecting the Eton linen shirt from ripping, making sure the Dolce tank top wasn’t damaged. He guided my chin to the side, choosing ear over eyes and whispered, “You like it tidy. I’m gonna teach you messy.”
I had never cum so hard.
Nor so undone.
I had to tie the underwear back together and wear them out by themselves, rock them with the sunglasses, tank and linen. As a look – of course I turned it.
I told myself not to call him, but I called.
Every time I went to his unkempt place, the routine was the same. I looked for a place to sit, found nothing suitable. He promised to make me sweat, made good on it and then used that sweat to slide me up and down the wall. It was a mission. An obsession. He didn’t even cum most of the time.
The dynamic didn’t seem possible. Same height, him denser, more muscle-y, and me long of torso and slight of waist. Snatched. He would mount me on his dick, lever my head to one side by my chin and use his strong thighs to push me up and down the wall.
He would grab my bronze ass cheeks and pull them away from each other as I slid down on his dick.
It got worse (better) every time.
The next time I saw him, six months later, because it took that long to get past all my guilt, he did all that and then some.
Whispered, “Did you think I’d forget how much you love that messy cum I push out?”
No, no, that wasn’t a question. Because then he fucked me against two or three walls of the house in alternation.
By this time, and unlike any other time before, his penis grew further up me every time I came down on it. I neglected to understand the phenomenon. He even started out longer, as if his penis had more battery power than before, as if his goal was to send its tip to my throat.
Defiant, I did less, working to not sweat, to not produce the one symbol of my weakness for him.
I was sweating enough to lubricate my penis on his hard stomach and cum up to his chin.
He wiped it off me and put it in his mouth.
He wiped off more and tried to put it in mine.
I was horrified. This was base. Beneath me. Disgusting. Unbecoming.
He saw my expression, my repulsion. He grabbed my hips and pulled me down farther, my ass wearing his entire length.
He stayed there and stirred my insides slowly with his dick the stars arrived mid air inside his apartment.
I came again, this time an internal tsunami. And I sucked his fingers helplessly. Defeated.
I returned to his house again two weeks later.
Then a week later.
Then the desperation of lunch times, lies to lover and commuter daydreams. Unfaithful.
But that did not end well and this had to.
I went to his house one day and told him it was over.
He laughed.
“I’m not going to even let you take off that pricey ass polo.” He inverted me, leveraged me against the spine of the front door frame, slid me down almost to my head and scrunched off my pants. The tongue assaulted my anus as if to slay all its no’s.[JS1]
“Wait,” I said. “At least let me take off my jewelry.”
The eyes rolled, but he allowed it. Knowing I had planned to give him every exit paper, he conceded that if I changed my mind, he at least needed to respect that I could not have on my engagement ring, the Onyx bracelet, the opal stud in my ear, the sterling bands on wrist.
Clear of bling, he fucked me on the kitchen sink, the wall and the balcony, upside-down. He made sure to make me cum on my clothes.
Something had to happen.
And then one fine day, when I happened see him after work, he put me on the bed. He respectfully took off all of my jewelry and collected it on the floor. He put me on the bed and kissed every part of my body and pounded me with a sensitivity that I did not know could exist from men to men. This time I came all over the sweat covering my body.
“Do not move.”
I obeyed.
When he arrived back to the room, he used my driver’s license to scoop the orgasm and sweat off of me. I had no idea he was scooping it into a jar, a jar which temporarily had my jewelry in it. He later added his ejaculate
That evening, when he was sure I was home and in sight of my fiancé, he texted me.
Can he see you and me up on those bracelets?
That ring shining more with our cum on it? 😉
This time, I called off the engagement first. Because before the indignation at his gall set in, I got hot. My ass started to moisten. My entire girth jumped. Immediate responses to the audacity of him. Not of hope. Of him. This man who has abused my sense of order in favor of his inner higher power. I could not enter a marriage with this kind of complication, no matter how base. I needed to learn something else about myself that I did not know and couldn’t not know on the way down an aisle.
So I left my fiancé.
And then I ended the affair the next day, over the phone of course.
I’ve ignored his calls for six months. Until last week, when I had to listen to some of the voice mail to clear messages. He was in love. I never considered it because I was too confused to imagine that his heart could overpower his mission. There were teary messages of how much he missed me, how he’d followed every post, studied every post from every show I produced. He had never called a man’s name like he called mine before he came. Shaaaawwww…
Now, I finger the ankh, the only thing I did not have on that day.
I got a call early today from local law enforcement that there was a man who looked like an intruder on my property. There is an app on my phone that will show me camera feed and then work like Waze to show the quickest path to my house. When I saw the feed, I told the police to stand down because I knew the assumed perpetrator.
He must have done something desperate to warrant something this dangerous and extreme to get my attention.
I make it to the house and pull into the driveway and see him sitting there on my porch, hugging his knees, just as he was in the feed.
“What Curtis?” I say. “What do you want?”