The funny thing about being on a roll where things are going well is that something always creeps up and raises the stakes a bit. In these past few weeks, things have been perfect, so much so that I’m having to pinch myself. I don’t know if it’s because all of this is still new or if it’s because we really want to make this work. But all of that runs through my mind while I’m awake. When I go to sleep, it’s a whole other story.
I keep having these dreams about Jasmine, my ex-girlfriend from roughly a year ago. In the dreams we’re having ferocious sex all over the place. I keep seeing this large, four level house, and we start in the basement, where I tease her and follow her to the back wall, where a secret set of stairs rise up throughout the back of the house, taking us up level by level, as we sneak through the populated house, looking for a place to unleash ourselves in a fit of ecstasy. In some of the dreams Lailah is there, but I’m sneaking with Jasmine between floors along this hidden path, so she can’t see me. Just before I climax in the embrace of Jasmine’s mahogany embrace, her calves hiked up by my hips, the sides of her bare feet caressing my legs, I wake up. I have had this dream several times, some times at my house when I’m alone and other times when I’m staying the night with Lailah. Each time when I wake up, I feel guilt shrouding me, as if I’ve actually done something wrong.
Jasmine was definitely an uninhibited, shit-talking libertine, and being with that kind of woman, especially in a monogamous relationship, can mess a brotha up if he tried to carry that type of thing on to the next woman. Even now I can remember the sound of her voice saying, “I’m going to undress you and make a banana split out of you. You dare me to lick you clean?”
“You had better,” I would respond, trying to maintain some sense of authority, although inside I was jumping up and down like a kid who had just won a chance to meet Elmo in person.
With her desire to satiate every single sexual desire that I had, it didn’t take me long to drift towards an addiction with her. It was that addiction that urged me to try to guide her toward the altar. When she started pushing away from me, I became scared and tried even harder to hold on to our relationship. In the end, she decided that she needed space, and she started avoiding my phone calls. Not being around her or inside of her was like going cold turkey. After the kind of rigorous sex that we had, I had to take to handling my business far more frequently. I hesitate to think that if my hand was made of sandpaper, I would have whittled myself down to a needle—all while replaying the shit that Jasmine used to do to me, over and over again.
That was a year ago. A year ago. But it feels like it was a lifetime ago. Or it did until I started having these dreams again.
While Lailah and I have done a variety of positions and styles, she hasn’t come anywhere close to the kind of freaky shit Jasmine did. In all fairness, though, we have only been together a few weeks. I still wonder how she would react if I started talking shit, breaking out the handcuffs, playing with the toys I keep hidden in a drawer in my room. My favorite is a modified bullet that I use while giving head. I call the lick and vibration exchange “dodging the bullet.” Even though I think she would be cool with it, I wouldn’t want her to come out of the zone completely by asking me where I got that thing from or who I might have used it on in the past. I’m not sure I even want to open that can of worms.
Then the thought hits me: is it true what they say about married couples having boring, infrequent sex? I hope that was spoken by someone trying to market the notion of staying single, because if there’s an ounce of truth to it, I might be up shit creek without a paddle at this point. But as Akil tells me from time to time, don’t worry until you have something to worry about.
I decide to keep the dreams a secret, not even sharing them with Akil or my cousin J. What would be the point? I’m getting married, and I love Lailah. And in the end, that’s all that should really matter. Right?
The jeweler I deal with at Steinhem’s is a heavyset white guy with closely cropped gray and black hair. His nametag reads Seth, and he’s eager to assist me when I mention that I’m looking for an engagement ring and matching band.
“I would like to see some things that are nice, but affordable,” I say, already feeling like a cheapskate. I have to remind myself that I am also paying for a sizable portion of the honeymoon—and then there are the incidentals that come with us moving into the same place and getting furniture and appliances we can agree on. (Truthfully, I’m not picky. As long as I have a man cave, I’m cool.)
“Were you thinking of a cluster or a solitaire?” he asks.
It’s a fair enough question, and while I know that a cluster could save me a great deal of money, I have to think down the road. What will I want Lailah to be wearing when she accepts that Nobel Prize for Literature? Maybe a combination of the two? But a solitaire needs to definitely be in there somewhere.
“I’d like to see some solitaires, with maybe some smaller diamonds around it.”
Seth begins walking me through the three C’s: color, clarity, and carat. I look at a variety of stones with the eyepiece on hand in the store. After about half an hour, I’m pretty convinced that a 1.5-carat princess cut solitaire is what will be the heart of the ring. The price tag is steep, but I can probably get a lift on my credit card limit and pay it off aggressively with my next few paychecks. If I have enough time, I might just save up for it with cash and buy it outright. That would be ideal, if everything came together properly.
Seth shows me a few more rings, which are smaller and less expensive. These will be the rings that Seth and I will show her first, and if things work out well, we will end at the princess cut. I tell him about the costume ring that I bought her, and he agrees to fashion a 14 karat gold version of the ring, using the solitaire in the center and putting much smaller diamonds along the outer edges of the design.
Leaving the jewelry store, I am feeling pretty good about how things are going, and I take out my cell phone to call Lailah when I hear someone calling my name. I turn around, and for a moment it feels as if my heart has just stopped beating.
I swallow and tell myself to man up, to focus and be strong. I refuse to be someone’s bitch today.
“Dizzy,” Jasmine repeats, pseudo-trotting towards me in her stilettos. Her dress is two inches above the middle of her thigh, and her body is even more bodacious than I remember it. She reminds me of Ki Toy Johnson, the video vixen from the Outkast videos. Every part of her is screaming, “I will rock your world!” Even her shirt rises above her navel as she moves, revealing a flat stomach, a navel piercing, and the hint of a six-pack. In the words of my cousin J, she is highly fuckable.
As she leans in to hug me, I can feel her pressing her chest against mine. The smell of her perfume reminds me of the scent she frequently left in my bed sheets. I loved that scent, and when she wasn’t there with me, I would take her pillow and hold it in my arms as I slept. It was a poor substitute, but it was a reminder that as long as I could smell her perfume, she was close at hand.
“Look at you. Looking all smooth. You look like a brown skinned DeBarge,” she says, inspecting me in my v-neck sweater and jeans.
“Is there such a thing?” I say, laughing. “Look at you! You look like you just stepped off the set up a movie.”
“I wish. What are you doing over on this side of town?”
It almost comes across as accusatory, as if in our breaking up, we had somehow subconsciously agreed to adhere to certain geographic boundaries so that we never came in contact again. I’m not sure she intends her comment to be taken that way, so I chill and let it roll off of my back. Still, I want to let her know that even as good as she looks, she can’t faze me.
“I’m actually looking at some engagement rings,” I say.
Her eyes widen, and she couldn’t hide the shock if she were wearing a Halloween mask. I wish I had a camera so I could take a picture of her. That way when she crossed my mind later on in the future, I could look at her face and know that I had successfully transferred all of that negative energy right back on to her ass. The picture would be the proof that I had flipped the fucking script on her.
“You’re getting married?”
I nod, not feeling the need to elaborate. This situation reminds me of when Ali and Foreman were fighting “The Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire and Ali clocked Foreman in the eighth round. Right when Foreman began to turn and fall, Ali had a moment where he could have hit him one more time—just for good measure—but he didn’t. He just let Foreman fall on his own accord. That is how I want to leave Jasmine today, falling off kilter on her own momentum.
“Who in the world are you marrying?” she says, her voice much more forceful than it probably should have been. She catches herself and repeats the question again, this time her voice a bit more controlled.
“My soulmate,” I respond. “Hey, look. I have to run some errands, and I’m on a tight schedule. It was good seeing you, though.”
“Yeah. Right,” she musters. She looks like she doesn’t know if she wants to loudmouth me or not. Instead, she turns her head, rolling her eyes. “Whatever.”
She might be doing more than that right now, but I wouldn’t know. I have already walked away.
By the time I get in my car and crank it up, I’m proud of myself for being able to walk away. But it was anything but easy.
Just remembering how sexy she looked makes me have a fleeting thought of sneaking in one last mind-blowing round of butt-ass-nasty-ass sex, the kind that requires video footage and a lot of licking and sucking and fucking and swallowing, a virtual grown man’s wet dream. I turn the music on my radio up loud in hopes that it will drown out these thoughts and wither the erection I’m guilty of harboring like an FBI fugitive.
As I get back onto Interstate 85, my phone buzzes with a text message. While I know I shouldn’t be checking it while I’m driving, I still take a quick look. The name on the screen says “Jasmine Reed.” Beneath her name are the words “You r a trip!!!” I want to call her back and ask her what she means, and as I ponder this, I realize that I really shouldn’t care at all what she’s thinking. Still, I can’t resist the urge to indulge in this bit of theater. And it’s in moments like these that men make the kinds of decisions they might one day later regret. When I type, “What do u mean?” back to her, I know I have just stepped partially off of home plate. The cleats beneath my toes are yearning for the dirt of the base path, and I’m doing all I can to anchor my heel where it’s safest.
That’s when my phone rings.
I pick it up and answer immediately.
“How did I know you were going to call?” I ask.
“Because I’m a good fiancée,” Lailah responds playfully, and I nearly steer out of my lane. I am so thankful that there were no cars in my blind spot, or I might have caused an accident.
“Hey, you,” I say, trying to cover for what would have been a major mishap had I said anything more—or different. I quickly make a note to myself: Check to see who is calling first, and don’t assume a damn thing.
“I was wondering if you were up for working on the wedding registry this evening. I promise I won’t make it too boring for you. I’ll even cook for you afterwards.”
I smile. I love Lailah’s cooking.
“That sounds like a plan. You have any idea of where you want to set up the registries?”
“Macy’s, Target, Wal-Mart, Lord and Taylor, Bloomingdale’s, and Pier One,” she says. The list is so matter-of-fact that I realize that she must be reading from a sheet of paper.
“All of those places? Why not just three?”
“Options are important, Diz. Some women have twice as many registries. I called myself going about this as simply as I could.”
“Would it make you happy to do the ones on your list?” I ask, hoping to appear to be a selfless, good groom.
“It’s really about both of us, not just me. So think of this as a project for us to do as a couple, not just you tagging along.”
I hold the phone away from my face for a quick moment and sigh, already dreading the thought of patrolling all of those stores with a price gun, tagging things that we probably don’t need anyway. Then I remember a line from Chris Rock when he said, “You should look in the mirror and say, ‘ Fuck you. Fuck your hopes. Fuck your dreams. Fuck your plans. Let’s go make this woman happy.’” Even my favorite emcee, Phonte, uses this line on his album Charity Starts At Home. I return the phone to my ear and tell her that I look forward to working on the registry later in the evening.
As soon as I get off the phone, I see that I have gotten another text. When I click on Jasmine’s message, a picture of her navel, bare, the top of the playboy bunny tattoo that sits nearly two inches lower, fills my screen with the words “Do you remember when you were mine?” resting underneath.
I quickly exit off of the interstate and pull over into the closest parking lot. That’s when the fear strikes me. It’s not the fear of Jasmine or the fear of Lailah, but the fear of what I might do if I can’t get a handle on my thoughts.
I delete the picture from my phone, but not before staring at it long enough to memorize every flawless inch of flesh. I take a long, deep breath. I can do the right thing, I tell myself. But as I say this, I realize that if I have to tell myself that much my mind is not as 100 percent focused as I thought it was.
And that thought is the scariest of them all.