ONE LAST RIFF BEFORE
WE HIT IT AND QUIT…

IT WAS WITH A STRANGE ELATION that a week later I found myself alone with Alice. She had invited me over for dinner, and after we’d eaten, I felt guilty that my thoughts were on going to bed with her and not on Otis’ funeral, which had been earlier in the day.

“It’s still hard for me to believe that Otis is dead,” I said.

“Hard or easy, it’s all the same,” she said.

“I guess you’re right. You know, I still haven’t been able to feel anything behind his death.”

“What do you want to feel?” she asked.

“Something.”

“Oh, come on, Melvin! Otis was never your friend.”

“Maybe that’s what’s been bothering me—knowing that I hated him all those years we were supposed to be so tight. And now that he’s dead, feeling guilty about it.”

“That’s nothing to feel guilty about. I can see why you resented him. I never understood why you let him make you his flunky. If I were you, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. But, Melvin, you’ve always been hung up on what you’re supposed to feel, and not what you do feel. You want to be on everybody’s side but your own.”

We were on the couch and she was sitting with her legs crossed with the right foot tucked behind the left ankle. I followed the way her finely whittled body weaved its way vinelike up into the couch.

“How’re you doing?” she asked.

“I’m all right. Still a little sore, that’s all.”

“Does that hurt?” she asked, sliding her hand along the left side of my rib cage.

“Unh, unh,” I lied. She continued rubbing, moving her hand in a slow, waxing motion up into my chest. Our breathing became labored and loud enough to be heard. I cupped her face tentatively in my hands as if to make sure she was real.

“It’s been a long time,” I said.

“For me, too,” she said.

“I’m not sure I’m gonna know how to act.”

“I think you’ll remember,” she said.

Our mouths met and I sucked back the pungent taste of brandy, nicotine, and onions. She moved her mouth to my ear and drove me to moaning with the flicking of her quick tongue. “Let’s go in the bedroom,” she whispered with my ear still in her mouth.

I had no sense of undressing as my rising desire for Alice seemed to pressure the clothes right off me. As she undressed, the light from a shaded floor lamp caught the cognac color of her body. We got into bed and I lay my hands on her feverishly, wanting to do everything at once. My mouth found its hunger in her sweet and sour mouth, under her arms, on her breasts, in the creases of her navel, at the peak of her thighs, behind her knees, and on her fingers and toes. Her taste was sweet soap mixed with the salty moisture of her heated odor.

Rolling around the bed like tumbleweed, we finally came to a stop with Alice on top of me. She reached between my legs and as I swelled she sucked and cowlicked me into a frenzy. Moving over top of me, she lowered herself down, guiding me until I was inside her. The feel of how snug we fit set my whole body on fire. We began to move and when my stomach hollowed out in a contraction, her rounded pelvis drove into the space, pushing me deeper inside her. The sheets of the bed hissed under us as our stomachs made a click song, and sweat washed up against the shore of our ribs.

My mouth locked open, but I couldn’t catch enough breath to scream. Tears stung my eyes.

“Ohhh shit! God damn, baby! What you trying to do, make butter?”

“Yeah, that’s right! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” she panted without missing a stroke in the insistent churn of her hips. I was in a crazed state, bucking to come and at the same time not wanting to spend myself. I pounded my fists into the bed; then kneaded Alice’s back with my hands and finally let them ride her writhing behind. But if you move you lose! If you Move you Lose! If You Move You Lose! IF YOU MOVE YOU LOSE!

Lying in the wetness and smell of spent desire, we were curled back to front into spoons with me contracted into Alice’s back.

“Melvin?”

“Yeah.”

“You remember what I said at that party when you asked me if I liked to fight?”

“I remember.”

“Well, I’m serious about that. If I can’t fight with whoever I’m with, I’d rather be alone.”

“But what do you mean by fight?”

“I’m not talking about being beat up on, but living my life in a certain way. For a long time I didn’t care enough about myself to fight for the way I wanted to live. So I let myself get fucked over by men I didn’t even care about. It’s taken me a while to come out of that, but now I’m at the point where I’m not going to use myself up anymore with men I don’t care enough about to fight with. I like you, Melvin, but we won’t get along if you don’t fight or try to stop me from fighting.”

We didn’t say any more. There was only the hush of our bodies laboring slowly, slightly apart. Everything that had happened over the last week had taken a lot out of me, and listening to Alice gave me the jitters. She was definitely up to something more than a little light sport. But I figured I had done enough fighting for a while and didn’t know if I had the energy to get conjugated with her. A part of me wanted to renege on everything and just lay dead. Hadn’t I earned that right? I had paid my dues. Yet what I would trade off by basking in the non-use of myself could be even worse, since a thing never meant a thing until it moved.

I pulled Alice’s full spoon-shape closer to me.