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Leave Him and Live. That’s the full name of our group, but none of the members actually uses the whole thing. Most of us shorten it to Leave Him—as in, “Are you going to Leave Him tonight?” or “I’m gettin’ ready to go to Leave Him,” and we all know what we mean. Osceola Deadrick and Nelda Battey, the founders, started out calling it L.H.A.F.G. for Leave Him and Find God, but as the group grew, several of us disagreed mightily on who or what God was or wasn’t. Like when the nineteen-year-old who’d just graduated from Yale announced at her first meeting, “God came to me in my dorm room and She’s a patchwork-colored woman with breasts and testicles,” Osceola was so upset she threatened to resign as secretary rather than record what the girl said in the minutes.
So after a while it was decided that the one thing we could all agree on was that no man was gonna leave us wondering whether we’d survive past the sound of his footsteps fading. Actually, in my case, there wasn’t any divorce that left me sighing, wringing my hands. No two-week wonder-if-he-will, I’ll-be-only-half-the-woman-I-am-if-he-don’t affair leaving me weary and ten pounds overweight like more than a few of the members.
Turtle Washington didn’t travel fifty miles from my side without calling to say where he was for the fifteen years we were married till he had a stroke behind the wheel of his UPS truck and drove through the window of a Safeway supermarket. I didn’t give myself time to wonder whether I’d survive not having my back up against my Turtle at night, his one hand high between my legs, his rough heel scraping against my leg. “Turtle Washington,” I used to tell him, “if you wanna keep rubbin’ up against me, you’ll get up and put some lotion on those old tough heels of yours.” He’d chuckle and ease his hand a little higher between my thighs, but he never lotioned those heels. Not in fifteen years.
By the first anniversary of Turtle’s death, I tried to leave a few of those memories behind. I moved from Harlem to downtown and a whole other world, where there were fewer colored men to remind me of my Turtle coming around the corner, staring with his tongue between his teeth like he was seeing me for the first time. Or standing in the middle of the sidewalk pretending to check the sports scores in the Daily News, knowing I was coming down the block, watching what the sun did when it hit his lips. Or admiring how nobody could hide the muscles in those calves with wool, cotton, or corduroy.
After I moved downtown, the only time I thought I saw him for sure was when a UPS truck would ease up beside me. I’d look up smiling, knowing I was about to hear him call out, “Old Turtle’s got a delivery, baby. A Rotina Special.” But it never was my Turtle up there in the driver’s seat, and eventually Nelda Battey suggested if I joined the group, I might stop listening for him altogether.
I am proud to admit it was me who suggested at a Saturday Night Potluck that we change our name ever so slightly to “Leave Him and Live,” and do you know we voted unanimous on it? (By the way, I have started suspecting that a few of the girls who joined recently are in the group ’cause they decided to Leave Her and Live and they don’t wanna tell no one, and that’s fine with me. But I do hope they come to understand one day that livin’ ain’t about hidin’. From nobody.)
Some of us come to Leave Him with our insides so dislocated from our last ten years, ten months, or ten days with whomever we been giving that much energy to, that the first meeting is like a baptism—full immersion. I’ve seen women run the room like they got the Holy Ghost just because they’re so grateful to be in a place where they can wonder out loud how they got to shore and have women who almost drowned to welcome them to dry land. How many times have I seen Nelda stand in the middle of the room like the Great Old Ship of Zion and tell a newcomer, “C’mon girl. What you need is a good old-fashioned hold-on-tight-and-cry hug”?
But the dry-land part—that’s the trickiest. That’s the part that even today when women are the boldest and the most free-mouthed I’ve ever known ’em to be, some people still believe a woman who’s got any dignity won’t talk about being hungry.
And Hungry was exactly the neighborhood I was ashamed to admit I’d been living in for at least six months. I’d Seasons Greeting’d myself through Christmas and redecorated my way through New Year’s Eve, but by our February first meeting my L.H.A.L. sisters were wondering if they should chip in for a two-hour massage at the Smiling Muscle Spa (male masseur requested), which several members swore had gotten them through a rough patch or two.
I left the meeting armed with a special herb tea Doreen Chrimney said calmed carnal thoughts and an assurance from Egyptia Nelson that the longer I refrained from having sex, the better it would feel when it finally happened. Neither of these made me feel any less foolish about having confided to them, “I wish I was talking about a relationship, but I’m not. Sure as I still got my wedding band on my finger, I still got Turtle in my heart. But lately there’ve been nights when I’ve gone to bed imagining making love with the driver in an empty crosstown bus, with all the lights on, in the middle of Fifth and Sixth Avenues. And in the Sony Cinema 2, behind the screen with the man who sold me my popcorn, while the audience on the other side was watching the movie. You don’t know what I’m going through!” Doreen and Egyptia pulled me into a tight circle of three, whispered the Serenity Prayer over me before I left, and promised to call regularly for support.
I was still shaking my head in regret at having told them, knowing full well it would take about an hour before everyone else in the group had heard about my dreams as well. On Ninth Street, hopscotching my way around some dog business, I jumped even wider to avoid tripping on two big cranberry-colored cowboy boots growing out of a tenement stoop. I frowned at the owner to let him know he wasn’t making my life any easier.
“Easy now. You’re going to wind up in my lap.” At a glance, I decided he was Puerto Rican. With a salt-and-pepper mustache curling around an insulting sneer.
“Not in this life.” It was my way of cursing at him without getting knocked into the pile of dog crap I was trying to avoid.
“Well, you have a good evening anyway, sweetheart.” He sounded like he’d decided to ignore my snarling and bless me. With a Spanish accent.
By the time I got to my apartment, I’d stomped myself into a substantial pout. I boiled some water and made a mug full of Doreen’s Higher Plane Tea, throwing a shot of cognac into it. I slammed the refrigerator door so that all the magnets fell off, letting my Xerox of the L.H.A.L. mantra slide to the floor. I stooped to pick it up, staring at a photo of myself glued to the side. Originally, it was a picture of me and Turtle on the Circle Line boat that goes around Manhattan. I’d cut it in half when I joined the group, as a reminder that I had a responsibility to the one of us who hadn’t gone through the Safeway window. Above my head was printed in large purple letters, EVERYTHING THAT TRULY GIVES ME PEACE, I CAN FIND IN MYSELF. A MAN ONLY GIVES ME SOMEONE TO SHARE IT WITH. I stuck my finger deep into the mug of hot tea, honey, and cognac, then slowly up the center of my tongue and farther down into the back of my throat. Soon. Let the sharing begin.
It doesn’t feel unusual for me to be coming down the street carrying a mug of spiked tea, although I can’t remember ever doing it before. What is stifling, though, is my winter coat with the rabbit collar buttoned up around my neck. I know it’s the end of July, so I don’t know why in hell I have it on in the first place, but I sense I don’t have any choice—it’s the only thing I own right now, which isn’t exactly a calming thought by itself.
What does seem to have a soothing effect is the sound of singing farther down the block. I know I’m getting closer to the singing because it gets louder, but no matter how close I get, I can’t seem to understand what language the singing is in. I’m pretty sure it’s Spanish, though, and it’s a man’s voice. When I get right up to him, I know it’s Spanish I’ve been hearing because it’s the man in the cranberry cowboy boots from the stoop. As I get closer, I have to blink my eyes because I am so shocked to see the boots are all he has on.
Well, this time I cross to the other side of the street because I am not at all interested in whatever he’s exposing right there on the stoop. And I know this has upset me somehow, because if I thought I was perspiring before, I can feel the coat clinging to me now, at the small of my back, under my breasts, and in between my legs. I can feel that the entire outline of my body is there for all of Ninth Street to see, as though I have on a wool skin-diving suit, and I’m damned humiliated and angry at the same time.
I decide to take a quick look back to see if maybe I haven’t made the whole thing up, and sure enough, there he is—Mr. Puerto Rico, stark naked with his legs wide open and that damned sneer on his face. Grinning at me. Like a lunatic.
The next week I avoided Ninth Street. I suppose my dream embarrassed me so much I was afraid I might run into Mr. Puerto Rico again and he’d somehow know he’d mattered enough for me to dream about him. Exposed like that.
Saturday night, though, at our L.H.A.L. meeting, Ainah Trotter spoke on Staring Down the Obstacles, and as much as I find Ainah goes a little heavy on the dramatics when she’s giving her Personal Experience Testimony, I found myself picturing Mr. Puerto Rico again and decided I should definitely take Ninth Street going home. It was silly for me to avoid an entire block because of a man I was probably never going to see again. And as it turns out, I was almost right.
When I got to the corner, all the stoops were clear. I let out a breath that made me realize I’d been holding on to it, and as I started down the block, I smiled thinking of how Ainah had finally closed her testimony by telling us to remember, “Just when you finally have the courage to look at those obstacles close up without flinching”—and I thought of how foolish she looked doing her version of a flinch—like she was about to be struck by a bolt of lightning and bit on the backside by a rabid Doberman at the same time—“very often,” she told us, “those same obstacles have shriveled up and disappeared.”
At the same time it was occurring to me that I might want to try to remember a few details of what Mr. Puerto Rico had looked like in the dream. I could admit to myself that the dream had not only been abundantly specific but was also not altogether unpleasant, considering the man was a complete stranger to me.
“You’re on my block a lot, aren’t you?”
I jumped, instinctively clutched my purse up under my breasts with one hand, and reached into my pocket for my open safety pin with the other.
“Man, why are you always trying to catch somebody off guard?”
“Truly, truly I am sorry. If there’d been any way to give you a warning, I would have.”
There it was again. And if it wasn’t a sneer, it was the best damn imitation of one I’d seen. I marched away from him, calling back, “If I’d had any warning, I’d have gone in the other direction.”
“Now you see how you are to me? And I was going to send you a valentine.”
Bastard. I’d gone to the meeting early and stayed late trying to ignore the fact that it was Valentine’s Day Eve. Egyptia Nelson, who’s got to be somewhere around the same age I am, claims she’s had her share of valentines and she’s content. She says Valentine’s Day is for the card companies to get rich on; it’s only one day on the calendar, and if you occupy your time wisely, you won’t notice. Well, I think Egyptia is beginning to sound older than I ever want to feel, ’cause when Valentine’s Day comes on the fourteenth of February, I notice.
There were lovers giggling in the A&P, nose to nose in the ATM line, holding on to each other in the Chinese laundry, slapping butts coming out of the YMCA, and the couple in front of me hadn’t even stopped kissing long enough to answer how many coffees they wanted at Starbucks. The man just held up his hand for two and paid for them with his mouth still glued to the little blonde’s he was with.
“I’m going to wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day, anyway.” Mr. Puerto Rico was right next to me. I thought he might be exaggerating his accent. He was probably used to revving it up, using it on women who were susceptible to having their ears opened a little wider by a foreign tongue.
“Don’t you have anything better to do on a Saturday night than run up and down the street harassing women?”
“As a matter of fact, I have a young lady waiting for me now. But when I saw you go by, I could not pass up the opportunity to come out and say, Hello. Buenas noches, señorita. Happy Valentine, beautiful lady.”
“And you left another woman to come out here to speak to me?” I suddenly realized that I had actually stopped to have a conversation with this man.
He shrugged and pointed behind him. “She won’t mind. She has at least another twenty minutes under the dryer.”
He was pointing to a small hairdresser’s shop that I’d never really noticed before. It had two oversize flowerpots with white birch trees in them on either side of the doorway. The name of the shop was written in turquoise-blue script that I couldn’t read from where I was standing.
“And she doesn’t know her man is out here in the street trying to hand a silly line to a woman he doesn’t even know. In Spanish.”
It wasn’t as though I hadn’t seen it before. But it had definitely been years and then some since I was the woman being run out to. Well, I’ve never been desperate enough to stand openmouthed while someone was feeding me a line. I turned to go. He hurried alongside me.
“It’s true we have never been introduced. But then you have never stopped long enough for an introduction.” He held out his hand. “I am Cortez Rojo Picasso Velasquez. And the woman under the dryer is not my lover. She is my seven-thirty appointment.”
“Excuse me?”
It wasn’t as though I hadn’t heard him. I’d heard him as if there’d been no other sound in the streets. Mr. Puerto Rico grinned so that the one part of his body I hadn’t paid much attention to, either live or in my dream, opened in front of me like a velvet drape before a wide white movie screen.
“I’m the lady’s hairdresser.”
And I was trying hard to take it all in. His announcement, his teeth, the full tan lips that framed them, and the mustache with hair thicker than most women’s I knew, dark with silver strands, smiling back at me. More silver at the temples and the nape of his neck. The same as me except he wasn’t dyeing his ’cause he must’ve known it was right on schedule and in exactly the right place. This was more information than I’d had to deal with in a very long time.
“You, you work there?”
“I do. She is my last appointment for the night. If you would consider giving me your number I could call you when I am finished here and maybe you would allow me to take you to dinner. That is, if I knew who to ask for when I dialed your number.”
Oh, he was smooth. Yes, indeed, he was. Like Wesson Oil in a hot iron skillet. And this is how I sounded.
“Rotina. Rotina Washington. But I can’t go. To dinner. Tonight.”
And it’s not that I could tell you Mr. Velasquez wasn’t real easy to look at, because even if my tongue wanted to start, some other part of me would be whispering, Rotina, you’re lyin’, lyin’, lyin’.
“Of course. It’s the short notice. I’m sorry, Miss Washington. But you inspire the impulsive in me. Whenever you say. You give me the night. I’ll make the reservation.”
I looked down at the cranberry cowboy boots with the gold tips, trying to figure out how I could buy some time to think about this without making any commitment—but without turning him down flat either.
“Why don’t you give me your number? I’ll go home and check my datebook and give you a call.”
“Ah! Fantastico!” This Mr. Velasquez shouted, like a ten-year-old at Christmas. “Come to the shop and I’ll give you my card.”
“I’ll wait outside.” What would it look like with me coming in there like some gullible schoolgirl waiting for the man to give me his autograph?
He ran ahead. I walked slowly behind. Before I even got to the door, he was back outside already waiting for me. I tried not to go right up to the window where I could be seen, but he wouldn’t move from the doorway, holding the card out to me and flashing those white Mercedes teeth. I took the card as quickly as I could and mumbled, “Yes, well, you take care,” trying to sound as if I was used to doing something I’d never done before in my life.
He called out, “Hasta muy pronto!” which could have been something disrespectful except for the way he bowed when he said it. I hurried across the street determined not to look back, which I didn’t until I had prayed, Please God, if you love me, please don’t let him still be there. And even though I always tell myself God’s gonna get tired of me testing Him like that one day, He’s never failed me yet. Mr. Velasquez had gone back in to his seven-thirty and I was able to stop long enough to get a good look at where he worked. It was small but clean looking, up to date, I suppose. But nothing could have prepared me for what was over the door. In big, turquoise script it said, PICASSO’S SALON DE BELLEZA and next to that was a neon mustache curling over a pair of full lips. I looked at the card and there it was again. Mr. Velasquez was Picasso! And even though I knew he wasn’t the real one, I didn’t even think Picasso was Puerto Rican! Well, even if it was just Mr. Velasquez being extravagantly ambitious by calling himself Picasso, I thought it was kind of admirable. It meant he had vision. In those cranberry-red cowboy boots with the gold tips. Picasso. I’d dreamed about Picasso. Imagine.
I carried his card around with me for almost a week before I decided what to do. On Friday I called him at his shop.
“I would say to you that I was beginning to give up hope,” he told me, “but number one, it sounds like a line from a bad movie, and number two, I wasn’t giving up hope because that is not who I am. I can be disappointed, yes, but I was taught by a very determined woman to never give up hope.”
I was impressed, but I refused to sound like it. When he asked me to pick a restaurant, though, I was stumped. “Oh, I’m open,” I told him and immediately regretted my choice of words.
“Well, Rotina, I will have to think of a place with enough light for the rest of the room to see how lovely you are, but romantic enough for me to begin to say the things I’ve been thinking these past five days.”
On one hand I thought Mr. Cortez Rojo Picasso Velasquez was coming on like a local train makin’ express stops only, but it was also true I had pretty much given up ever hearing anything that even resembled a seductive routine. Turtle’s idea of seducing me was calling to say he was gettin’ off his shift early and that I should wait up ’cause he wasn’t a bit tired.
Mr. Picasso told me he knew the perfect French restaurant, Les Deux Fleurs, and we agreed to meet there at eight-thirty. He wanted to make it earlier, but I decided to go to my L.H.A.L. meeting, if not to share my news, to at least center myself for the evening ahead.
One of the reasons I didn’t feel comfortable telling my Sisters about Mr. Picasso was that there was a not-so-unspoken code among the members that part of sexual sanity as an African American woman means restricting your dating to African American men. Egyptia even went so far as to say, “Stick to men who look like you. Don’t no man make you crazier than a man who’s got it in his mind that every time he enters a black woman, he’s conquering Africa.” And she got an enthusiastic chorus of “amens” on that one.
At our dinner at Les Deux Fleurs, Mr. Picasso told me ever so patiently that I was a little hasty in deciding he was Puerto Rican. He told me his father was from a small village in Spain and his mother was Haitian. I was feeling too ashamed of my ignorance to say anything but, “Well, that certainly must mean you’re good at languages,” which I knew was ridiculous as soon as I’d said it. I told him about Turtle as though he was the only family I’d ever had, and maybe for the moment he was the only family I felt it was important to mention.
The romance that Mr. Picasso had promised for the evening was as potent as the wine he ordered, and when common sense told me to choose one over the other, I put my glass down and concentrated on that mouth. I remained sober enough to stop at my apartment door and say, “It was muy bien, gracias,” which I learned from the Berlitz paperback I’d picked up at the ShopRite on my corner. Then I reached into my bag and presented him with my business card. I’d sprayed it with White Diamonds and made sure I’d included my home phone in lilac ink, but I’d printed it out so he could definitely read it, which wasn’t always the case with my script.
Mr. Picasso called me on Sunday afternoon to say how much he’d enjoyed Saturday night and even slipped in that he’d gotten a good night’s sleep, but not before taking a very cold shower. I pictured what I’d only dreamed about standing at half-mast in his shower and giggled after I’d hung up. I’d agreed to meet him Wednesday night for an early supper. He said, “I’ve got a late appointment at seven-thirty again, but if we met in the neighborhood at, say, five-thirty, I could get back in time. Would you mind? I do so want to see you sooner rather than later.”
Of course I didn’t mind. Mr. Picasso suggested an Indian restaurant called the Taj Mahal on First Avenue. He brought me a single sunflower with another business card that said, “Picasso would love to run his fingers through your hair. Join me for champagne and a hot-oil massage. Anytime. After business hours.” I smiled slyly as he watched me read it. “I’ll let you know,” I told him, munching poori.
On Saturday night I insisted that we meet a little later so that I could go to L.H.A.L. I still hadn’t gotten up the nerve to tell the girls, but I’d made a decision concerning Picasso and I wanted their blessing, even if they didn’t know they were giving it to me. Picasso wanted to take me to Harlem to Sylvia’s Soul Food. Sylvia’s is a little touristy for my taste right about now, but the corn bread was still good enough for me to ask for another basket, and I did lick my fingers once or twice, wishing there was one more chop hidden under my fried onions.
Once we got back downtown to my apartment, I barely made it out of Picasso’s arms. When I’d locked my door behind me, I ran to the window, watching him cross the street and stroll slowly down my block with his hands in his pants pockets, under his coat. I smiled to myself. Maybe he’s playing with his change.
I closed the blinds and took off all my clothes. I sat on my couch in just my heels with my legs spread wide. I pretended the couch was the cab we rode down to the village in and Picasso and I were in the backseat. Picasso was on his knees in front of me; I could see his smooth back and his shoulders in the streetlight. But nobody including the driver could see what Picasso was doing to me or see me holding on to his hair with both hands as his head pressed between my thighs on the leather seat, trying to open me wider, wider. And my heels dug in to the floor of the cab and because I wanted to open them even more for him, for me, because we were both so greedy, I lifted my legs onto the top of the front seat and I held on to Picasso’s silver curls, telling him, “Yes. Deeper. Deeper.” And he’s on his knees, hungry, and there’s more—yes—more where that came from. Yesss. And my legs are moving—uh—up the partition toward the ceiling of the—oh—cab. Yes—ahh—yes-ye-ye-ye-ye-yesssss.
During the next week I told every member of L.H.A.L. I’m close to about Picasso, except I didn’t go into the Haitian-Spanish part. I considered those details saved for a later date or debate, as I realized it might turn out. All the girls acted surprised and pleased for me, which is the only way you can act unless you want people to suspect you’re jealous that one of your sisters might be rediscovering parts of her body and mind she’s numbed like a dentist so that the cavities can be filled. Now, everybody knows you don’t want to go around Novocained all the time. Tongue, teeth, and gums all got their purpose. It’s only when you’re trying to fix them that you might want to desensitize ’em for a while.
I told my sisters that I’d decided to cook for Cortez Rojo Picasso Velasquez, which they all decided was genius on my part. Cooking is one of my God-given gifts. I’m not too experienced with international cuisine, but a good cook is a good cook in any language, and it occurred to me that if I could pull off a couple of tasty Spanish dishes, I would not only be very proud of my courageous, adventurous self, but it would be the perfect aphrodisiac for an evening at Rotina Washington’s with Mr. Cortez Rojo Picasso Velasquez.
There were Spanish markets in my neighborhood, but I decided that putting together a menu on my own was too risky. I tried to think of who might help me, but I’m embarrassed to say that my circle of friends is fairly small and extremely conservative in their eating habits. For most of them, going to a restaurant like the Temple of Thai after a Saturday-night meeting is a walk on the wild side.
I came up with the idea of going to Pacquito’s, my local neighborhood Mexican restaurant. I wasn’t sure if Mexican was the same as Spanish, but I’d ask, and if I was showing my cultural ignorance, I’d start again at the beginning. I took it as a sign of good luck that Pacquito himself was there, in his white shirt and pants, standing over the stove.
“Hola!” I called to him, a word Picasso taught me. Pacquito smiled and nodded. If he remembered me at all, he remembered I’d never been that friendly before. “Mr. Pacquito, could I speak to you for a moment, please? I’m having a small dinner party and I need your advice.”
After the first twenty minutes trying to convince me to hire him to cater the evening, complete with homemade flan for dessert, Pacquito finally admitted there was a difference between Spanish dishes and Mexican take-out. But he convinced me they had enough in common that if I listened carefully to him and followed his instructions, I could prepare a relatively simple meal with a Spanish flair that he guaranteed was the place to begin, but would not be where my evening with Picasso would end.
“The secret”—he paused for a moment, I’m sure to give me some drama—“is jalapeños.” He smiled very slowly and raised one eyebrow. “You want your evening a little hot? You let him know.”
“Well, I’m not sure that’s what I had in mind,” I lied, “but I’ll definitely pick a few up.”
Pacquito’s advice was to keep my dinner simple. Quesadillas, beans (not too many) and rice topped with guacamole, sour cream, salsa, and finely chopped jalapeños. A small salad on the side with healthy lettuce, avocado, tomatillo sauce, and, again, finely chopped jalapeños. A bottle of Spanish rosé, and I took the easy way out with dessert. Homemade flan from Pacquito’s.
I bought a CD of Spanish guitar music called From Madrid with Love. It had a photograph of a bullfighter’s hat on the floor next to a pair of backless pumps at the foot of a bed, and I knew somebody thought it was a sexy picture, but I swear to you the first thing I thought of was that this bullfighter was wearing some woman’s shoes before he’d gone to bed. But I went ahead and bought From Madrid with Love. It was the only thing I could be reasonably sure was Spanish for real, besides Picasso.
When I heard the buzzer, I was putting a few more chopped jalapeños in the salsa to liven it up a bit. They were hot enough to make my makeup run, but I knew Picasso was probably used to them. I threw the last few bits into my mouth. My tongue felt like I’d put it over an open flame. What the hell did I do that for?
Not only was I proud of my dinner, I knew I’d created an atmosphere where I could feel comfortable. In L.H.A.L. a woman learns that it’s fine to be the seducer, especially if you feel you can be safe should you change your mind. I watched Picasso’s butt as he strode across my living room to study my bookcase and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be changing my mind.
We ate dinner practically in silence. Picasso communicated by putting his hand across the table over mine and squeezing it gently, like a promise. Or tucking a bit of jalapeño back into my mouth and leaving his finger between my teeth for a moment as I bit it, gently.
He said he was surprised at my menu, but that he was flattered and it didn’t matter whether it was authentic Spanish or not. “The point is,” he told me, “you have a generous soul, and that is a gift.” I was preparing to be even more generous and hoped that he had a gift.
We were up and dancing to a ballad called “My Spanish Guitar,” which Picasso said was one of his favorites. My fingers ran down his spine; then I used both hands to feel the meat of his back on either side. He held on to me, clasping just above my hips. I leaned back so that he had to get a firmer grip. Turning in his arms, I felt Picasso’s guitar against my behind.
I reached back and took his hand, leading him to my bedroom. I lit candles, which I’d placed around the room, and checked for both safety and flattering shadows.
“No,” I told him as he reached beneath my dress’s shoulder straps. “I want to undress you.” Picasso looked surprised for a moment, but then he smiled wide and nuzzled my neck with his mustache, traced the same pattern with his open lips. As I unbuttoned his starched white shirt and slipped it back to his shoulders, he was still smiling. Picasso’s shirt slid to his elbows and I slid down his body, reaching around his waist. I pulled gently at each sleeve, and his shirt fell onto my bedroom carpet. Picasso’s hands were out to the sides. I looked up at him. As I expected, he was more than ready to let me have my way. But he was breathing harder and I could feel his ass muscles tightening under my palms. I pushed my head into his groin and he moaned softly.
I unbuckled him and took his black dress pants and pale blue boxers with their navy blue stars on them down to the top of his boots. When I looked up now, I saw the guitar between me and Picasso’s smile. Now I haven’t seen that many instruments, but this was certainly one of the finest, from the rich deep color of the wood, to the healthy, muscular shape, to the energy and life it had just waving there above my head. Picasso leaned down slightly and laughed. “Hola. Hola, señorita.”
On my knees, I smiled back. “Hola, yourself.”
He reached to lift me from where I was kneeling, but I had no intention of stopping. I’d never made love like this before, taking the man for myself before I let him touch me. It gave me a feeling I wanted to remember, one I knew I could grow to really enjoy.
I opened my mouth wide and took one of Picasso’s balls in, releasing it quickly. I went to the other side. He arched back and groaned. I started up the shaft of his dick with my tongue and stopped at the head. Sitting up quickly, I stared up at him. I was Rotina Washington, Conqueress. I held on to Picasso’s dick as I eased up onto my bed and reached into my nightstand drawer. I’d bought Lifestyle Mano Grande Sensitivo. I didn’t have that much practice, but we had a special meeting at L.H.A.L. on Good Sex and Living to Tell about It. We practiced on bananas and all the girls teased me on how well I did putting the condom on it with my mouth and then oral-sexing it down.
I was able to tear open the package without letting go of Picasso’s dick. With the condom in my mouth, I moved my fingers gently up the shaft and parted the lips. Picasso’s entire body tightened like an iron clamp. I was enjoying my Woman in Charge Sex. I placed my finger directly into the eye of the guitar. Picasso’s face turned the color of eggplant and I thought, I’m better at this than I expected. Go easy on him, Rotina. Make it last, girl. Make it last.
Then Picasso screamed as though I’d bitten the head off his dick and wouldn’t let go. “Aaaaaaah!” I released him and rolled backward onto the bed. “What is it? Tell me! What did I do?”
“It’s burning! Burning! Aaaeeeeee!”
Picasso ran into the bathroom as quickly as he could, considering his pants were at his knees around the tops of his cowboy boots. He’d stopped screaming openmouthed, but he was grunting now, like he’d been shot. I was right behind him, feeling helpless, confused. What had happened that quickly?
Watching him at the sink throwing water onto his dick, I put my hand up to my mouth, terrified. What? What? Oh, no. No, it couldn’t be. Slowly, behind him, as Picasso continued to dance in front of the sink with his dick in it as far as he could get it, I held my fingers over my nose and breathed in my answer. Jalapeño.
Cortez Rojo Picasso Velasquez was experiencing Rotina Washington’s Jalapeño Love. It had been a long, hungry time in coming and now my Picasso was trying desperately to cool his dick from the heat of my touch. Oh, Rotina Washington. Jalapeño Love! Who, at Leave Him and Live next Saturday night, would ever believe me?
Almost an hour later Picasso and I lay on my bed eating flan and Breyers Vanilla Nut. I’d made an ice pack with one of my best towels and placed it between Picasso’s legs. He’d told me about twenty-five times it wasn’t necessary, that he was perfectly comfortable now. He’d even looked down at his crotch and joked, “I’m afraid to tell you, it has seen much worse.” But he quickly apologized, realizing I was still too shook up to find it funny and it certainly wasn’t my idea of romantic.
Picasso stayed the night. I began to dream as we held each other. I remember rolling over onto my side and thinking for just one moment of pulling Picasso closer behind me and guiding his hand up where I’d missed a hand as I slept. I felt his foot slide up my calf, but I shifted slightly so that he had to move it.
“Sing to me, Picasso,” I whispered. And he did. His own funny, lovely version of “My Spanish Guitar.”