The needle jumped on the Billie Holiday record I was listening to, but I didn’t even feel like shouting at D . C I just repeated to myself what my girlfriend had told me.
Leroy Jones is back.
The first time I met Leroy was two years ago at a party. He was sitting behind some of my friends. They were all dressed up, but he blended into the background like part of the furniture.
Compared with everyone else there—the women, who had obviously spent most of the day deciding what outfit to wear, and the gay men, determined to look their best in their sharp, well-made suits, Leroy was camouflaged—he stood out no more than the table napkins or someone’s jacket casually draped over a chair.
Every now and then I stole a glance in his direction. He was sitting behind a really talkative guy I knew called T-Baby, smoking cigarettes and listening to the music with his eyes closed. Everyone at the party knew one another, but no one seemed to know where anyone else worked or what he did. The fact was, we weren’t connected by our daily lives at all, only through parties—and we lived for them.
I was interested in Leroy because I couldn’t understand how he came to be a part of our scene—he didn’t seem to fit in with us party animals.
It wasn’t so much his dark skin or his extraordinarily thick lips that set him apart from the rest of us, but the hideous clothes he was wearing—his suit was a serious “World’s Worst” contender. But even more striking than that, he was unshaven and kept looking around nervously. Every thing about him said hick. And we hated people like that- he just wasn’t sophisticated enough to be one or us.
When Leroy got up from his seat, I struck up a conversation with T-Baby.
“Why’s he so quiet?” I asked.
“Who, Leroy? He talks with a long, Southern drawl, that’s why.”
So that was it. Listening to the sharp, snappy conversations everyone else was having, their fast-paced city talk laced with one-liners, it must have seemed like a foreign language to him.
Personally I kind of liked the way Southerners talked, although sometimes I couldn’t understand a word of what they said because of the slow drawl of the accent. But I found it strangely erotic, as if those long, lazy words were long, lazy fingers, softly stroking my skin, gently caressing me.
“Hey, everybody, Ruiko likes Leroy!”
I squirmed with embarrassment, blushing as I tried to deny the accusation, but my protests were drowned in a frenzied sea of cheers and whistles.
Suddenly all the noise and excitement died—Leroy was back in the room. Despite the excited chatter about us—someone had even suggested cracking open a bottle of champagne to celebrate—no one seriously imagined we would get together.
After that, people kept winking at me and smiling knowingly, making sure that Leroy was looking the other way first so he wouldn’t notice. Despite the sudden interest, however, no one paid any attention to him directly. Just because of the way he was dressed, no one wanted to allow him to become part of our group.
I felt a little ashamed to be part of such a stuck-up crowd, and I moved my chair over to where he was sitting. And as I did so, the topic of conversation changed to music and clothes; they soon forgot Leroy and me.
Leroy just sat there, his socks drooping down around his ankles. I was in quite a mischievous mood anyway, so, instead of starting up a conversation, I reached out with one of my red stilettos and hooked a long, sharp heel into the top of one of his socks, and gendy pushed it down as far as it would go—till I could see his ankle. He looked taken aback for a few moments. Then he seemed to come to his senses and reached down quickly to pull his sock up.
I pulled it down again, the same way. After I’d done it to him four or five times, Leroy finally turned to face me squarely.
I thought that his eyes would be angry, but they were clear and un-troubled.
“Why don’t we go out and grab some breakfast together?” he asked calmly.
His question took me by surprise and I looked around to see if anyone else had heard him.
Or would you say it’s too early?” He paused and looked down, then looked up at me again and said, “Why don’t you come over here and sit down next to me?”
So I did.
He didn’t talk much, but when he tried to say something and couldn’t find the right words, he’d just stop and gaze at me with those gentle eyes again. I was somehow more touched by what I saw in them—straightforward admiration—than I ever was by the flirty games of hard-to-get that our crowd loved to play.
My hair was touching his shoulder the whole time we sat together, and I felt as if each strand were alive and sucking up the sweat from his body. Leroy was smoking Marlboros and that was just something else to add to the list of things which made him look out of place: all the other black guys at the party were smoking menthols.
Leroy was terrible at making conversation, and the look on his face betrayed worry that I might be bored. But I wasn’t bored at all—far from it. For one thing, I could just see the neckline of his undershirt and I was fascinated by how white it was. He noticed that I was staring at it and in a flush of embarrassment, he pushed it back down under his shir collar to hide it. But I didn’t like that—he hadn’t asked for my permission first—so I leaned forward and pulled it back out again. As I did so I caught his scent. It was the first time I had been so aware of how a man smelled, and I christened it Southern Black Gospel Singer. I told him, and he replied shyly, “You know, I used to be a gospel singer.”
His Southern accent suddenly got the better of me—I just couldn’t hold back any longer—so I leaned forward again, put both my arms around his neck, and pulled him toward me, kissing him hard on the lips.
Near dawn, I began turning over in bed, intentionally brushing against him and tempting him while I pretended to be asleep.
In the end we hadn’t bothered with breakfast. We left the club and my noisy friends behind and walked through the grassy park. I was in the mood for love. Leroy was about to light another cigarette, but I pursed my lips and blew the match out before he had the chance. Then I half lay down on the ground, and as I did so, the heavy dew on the grass soaked through my silk stockings. I started to take them off but they stuck to my skin, and as I tore at them it felt as though I were peeling freshly burned skin off my legs. Finally, I pulled my skirt right up above my waist.
“Put your matches away and come over here and light my fire.”
He spread his wrinkled jacket on the grass for us to lie on. As he made love to me, my eyes never once left his face—I wanted to see his expression change as he reached the heights of passion. From time to time he opened his eyes and saw me staring at him, but that just made him hold me tighter. I remember how he seemed excited by my body, and that just made me want him more.
I didn’t reach orgasm on that first occasion, but I writhed around passionately on the grass to make him come hard, though it didn’t seem necessary to make the usual faces of agonized ecstasy that I did with other men. My skin was drenched with the sweet scent of wet grass, the slippery wetness adding to our pleasure as he sucked and sipped his way over my body. Each time he let out a moan of pleasure, a wave of satisfaction came over me. I knew I held him right in the palm of my hand, and it felt good.
There was no heavy sigh of relief when he finished. I lay in silence beneath him, the only sound the distant, somehow comforting noise of the party. His body, almost darker than the night itself, seemed to blend into the midnight air, and I felt sure that if anyone had noticed us, it would be because he’d caught the moving whites of Leroy’s eyes.