“Oh my God, T, you know Douglas?” My eyes shifted from Terrance’s smile in the back to Doug adjusting the rearview mirror in the driver’s seat. Admittedly, I was confused as to how they might know each other because they were so different. Terrance was a hardcore party animal who frequented raves. Not that Douglas couldn’t party, but he just seemed to be in control of things and very responsible. Club kids and studious college students don’t usually hang in the same crowds.
“Yeah, girl, this here is my boy! The pimp!” he said as he shook the headrest on Douglas’s seat, then scuffed the top of his head. Douglas immediately began to fix his hair in the mirror, but he didn’t seem pissed; he was smiling.
I knew Terrance from the club where we had been friendly dance partners a few times. The weekend prior I had given him a lift when he was too drunk to shake his lanky ass anymore. He squeezed his six-foot, three-inch frame into my Geo Metro the best he could without throwing up, and I dropped him off at his barracks. “So what happened after I dropped you off from the bar?” I shifted in my seat to see him more clearly.
Terrance pushed back into his seat and began to buckle his seatbelt. “I went to bed and knocked the fuck out. Didn’t get up ’til about fo-thirty the next day.” He clicked it tight and put his arm around the girl sitting next to him.
Doug interjected to ask me, “You know this fool?”
“Yeah, he got ripped at the bar, so I took him to his barracks last week. He was dancing like a he was having seizures.”
I laughed as Terrance used his free hand to nervously exaggerate his embarrassment. “Please don’t tell these things.” He removed his arm from behind the girl’s neck and folded them over his crotch. Not only was he a tall, skinny black man, but this was the first time I took notice of how fidgety he was. “I’m losing all my cool points and shit. It wasn’t even like that man, it’s all lies!” Terrance nervously giggled, then leaned forward between the seats to change the CD. “Let’s go already. I’m gettin’ a fucking cramp in my black ass back here.”
We let Terrance dominate the first fifteen minutes of travel conversation. He provided the ice breaking we all needed so, by the time we arrived in Tucson, we were behaving like best friends.
I’d been surprised that Douglas, with all his portrayals of sophistication, would be buddies with a down-to-earth, slightly ghetto kid like Terrance. It definitely helped soothe my comfort level and showed me another side of Douglas, the great Italiano Magnifico—I mean “Medi-fucking-terranean.”
After having a few drinks at the hotel room, the four of us walked to the club. After having a few drinks at the club, Douglas and I walked back to the hotel.
I figured it would be better to have sex in private than to have his hands in my pants on the dance floor, although no one was actually looking. I was wet and this was rare in itself, so I whispered in his ear, “Let’s go back to the room.”
Without hesitation, we left our drinks behind right along with Terrance and the girl he came with. On the short walk back he held my hand, smiling. It was a genuinely happy smile, unlike the greedy, lustful faces I was accustomed to seeing. I thought he was absolutely the sexiest man I’d ever met without a shadow of a doubt. I wanted to sleep with him, and so it happened.
I cannot tell you how long it actually lasted or how wonderful it was because my first time with Douglas wasn’t about the sex. I actually can’t remember that part. It was all of the things before the encounter, and all of the things after it, that made me fall in love with him.
Afterward, I rested in his arms for hours as if we had been together for years. We talked and joked and laughed the entire time before deciding to really make an effort to fall asleep. In the morning we were the happiest couple. We dove into conversation as soon as we realized the other was awake. When an hour passed, Douglas got up to pee as I brushed my teeth at the sink. Then, he stepped into the shower as I took my turn on the toilet, quite naturally choreographed.
I pointed out a fact as I wiped the urine off and flushed. “Jesus, look at us, we have not stopped talking. You would think we were married! I’m peeing in front of you for God’s sake. I never do that!” I got up to wash my hands and proceeded to pick my teeth and two pimples in the mirror.
He echoed from the shower, “I feel like we are married too! Go make me breakfast, woman!”
We giggled and laughed together like lovestruck idiots before Terrance threw a pillow at the bathroom door and moaned for us to shut the fuck up.
Douglas and I just knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, our futures would be together.
We ordered a pizza upon our return to the barracks. The plan was to relax and watch a movie with his roommate, Terrance, and a few others.
But, while the cat’s away, the mice will play. We certainly took full advantage of the empty room while everyone was out gathering their share of the pizza payment and booze. Terrance, who was in charge of collecting the money, accidently walked in on us during an exceptionally compromising position. “Dude, you guys are fucking already? How rude; I was fucking talking to you, man. Put your dick away for two seconds so I can get your half of the pizza money.”
Douglas passed him the money with his pants half down, then resumed kissing me. Terrance left the room, mumbling audibly. “You guys do what you do, but the fucking pizza will be here in forty-five minutes.”
I stopped Douglas before things got heated, telling him I needed to use the restroom, and rushed myself down the hall. I stood in a stall with my pants half down, quietly listening for anyone who may be there. It took me less than a minute to masturbate before I zipped my jeans up and walked back to his room. This was my timed ritual with Franklin so I knew how long it would take for my body to produce wetness after a clitoral orgasm. After all, this guy was amazing, and I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t interested, nor did I want to attempt sex with my Sahara Desert vagina. Any woman knows how uncomfortable this is, even with the best of partners.
My clever little secret was duly noted by Douglas moments before we had sex hanging from the inside of the wall locker. But this fact is unimportant among the events that led to us to falling in love.
Who can explain why you fall for someone or what exactly happened? It’s all so intertwined with a series of things that lead you to that point. Some people are lucky enough to know when they first realized it was love and can tell a wonderful story to their families or friends. Gay people want the flamboyant coming-out tales; straight people want the story of the moment true love engulfed them. For me, once again, my account is totally lame.
What I can tell you is that I wanted to die when I accidentally slipped the words “I love you” after sex. I really thought he would never call me again, especially when he didn’t say anything.
I can tell you the story of his “wooing” me under the moonlit sky on the range in Arizona with words in Italian: Your eyes shine as beautiful as you under the light of the moon. I can tell you how we were attached at the hip after that night in the club and how natural it was to tell my first love, on the phone, that I just couldn’t marry him. But explaining the “story of the moment” it happened eludes me.
Maybe it was when Douglas and I painted my barracks room together and I received a call from my first love. Almost callously, I broke off our engagement. I don’t believe I even cried during the shocking four-minute breakup. Douglas was a little surprised, considering my history with Robert. He graciously asked if I needed some time and let me know that, if he should go, he respectfully would.