LEANDRA
My back was killing me. “I can’t sleep on that sofa.” Taj was dead to the world, sounding like a freight train in my ear with all that damn snoring. It reminded me I needed to stop by Walgreens and get him some of those nasal strips Nishelle had told me about. I was willing to try anything to keep him from doing all that snoring. Ask Taj, and he’d swear up and down that he didn’t snore.
I woke up to him spooning me with his arm snaked around my waist. He felt hard and warm against me. That’s what I love about Taj, his ability to make me feel safe, like nothing can hurt me, which was something I never felt when Rick was alive. Can’t believe he’s been dead for twenty-two years. After I buried Rick, there was barely time to mourn the man. I was a single mother who had a son to raise into a man. I wanted Emjay as far away from the street life as I could get him. I would rather see him dead than to end up like his daddy selling dope or running with one of these gangs out here. I’ve seen too many kids die from all this craziness out here. Saw on the news last night that a six-year-old boy was shot and killed by his eight-year-old brother after finding his daddy’s gun in the house. I don’t know what I would do if something ever happened to Emjay. I don’t have nobody but the good Lord Jesus to thank for leading my boy in the right direction. And to think that I raised him all by myself. Lord knows, it was hard, but I did it.
* * *
I walked to the bathroom to see if there was something in the medicine cabinet to numb the pain in my back I had endured from that lumpy sofa. “Please let me have some Aleve in here.” I jinxed it as soon as I opened the medicine cabinet to find that I was out. There was only Tylenol and Ibuprofen, which was nowhere near as good. “Add Aleve to the list along with nasal strips.” I had some Icy Hot, but I wanted something to work on contact. I popped two Tylenol and hoped the pain would quickly go away.
The digital clock that sat on one of my bedside tables read four minutes past eleven. “Feels later than that.” Taj was dead to the world snoring and drooling on my sofa. With the crazy hours he’d been putting in at that magazine, I let him sleep and went to the kitchen for a little late-night snack. I raided the cabinets to find a box of Cheez-Its sandwiched between a box of Sugar Smacks and Honey Nut Cheerios. I grabbed the box of snack food from the cabinet and sat down at the kitchen table where something that looked like a book manuscript sat opposite me. My interests had piqued. I glanced down at the bottom of the title page that read Directed by Jimi Bryan Productions. I flipped through a few of the pages to the casting list where I recognized Taj’s name with Dillon Durke typed next to it. I began to read the words typed in courier. There was dialogue like “feed me that big black dick” and “break that dick off in me” running through my mind like ticker tape. It was then that I knew what it was. “Is this what he’s been working on?” I noticed that this Dillon Durke role he was playing included him fucking a man named Vance. I read until I felt myself get sick to my stomach. I sat and thought all the phone calls he made to me saying that he would be home late, that I shouldn’t wait up. “Fashion shoot, my ass.” I grew angry and pissed as I thought of all the lies Taj had told me night after night. I hauled off to the living room with the script rolled tightly in my grip to where Taj was sleeping.
I stood over him. “Taj, wake up.” He didn’t hear me, but just kept on snoring and drooling like an overgrown-ass baby. “Taj, get up!” I yelled. He rolled over on his left side, turning his back to me. I was so hot, I could have spat lava. “Taj, wake yo’ ass up!” I yelled, whacking him across his head with the thick, rolled-up script. He was lucky it wasn’t something harder than that.
“What the hell,” he said, with his eyes squinching to the lights of the ceiling fan that hung in the center of the room.
“What the fuck is this?”
“What is what?”
“This shit right here,” I said, hitting him in the head again. Taj shielded his head with his arms in protection from my assault. “Is this the kind of shit you do when you’re working these damn sixteen-hour days with the magazine?”
“Baby, what are you talking about?”
“Taj, don’t play games with me. I’m not in the mood. I saw this sitting on the kitchen table. What the fuck have you been out here doing all time of the night?”
Taj’s eyes adjusted to the ceiling fan light. “It’s just a script.”
“I know it’s a script. I’m not stupid. I can also see in here that your name is on here where you play some dude named Dillon Durke.”
Taj sat up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “Lee, I can explain.”
“You’re not working on a fashion shoot, are you?” He looked at me like he was reaching for the next lie to tell. “Are you really a photographer?”
“Okay, look, a few months before I met you, I fell on hard times.”
“Oh, I bet. Fell on a hard dick, you mean.”
“It’s nothing like that. I was going to school like I told you, but I lost my financial aid after failing a few classes. I came close to being evicted out of my crib and losing my SUV.”
“So, you what, went out and started fucking other men for money on camera?”
“Lee, you know how hard it is out here to find a job. I busted my ass applying for anything I was qualified to work, and putting in applications for every ‘now hiring’ sign I saw. The only thing I could get was flipping burgers at Mickey D’s or working at Walmart like every other black man in Tallahassee.”
“Flipping burgers is better than doing this shit.”
“I was going to tell you.”
“When exactly were you going to tell me that you suck dick for money?”
“Shut up. I don’t suck nobody’s dick.”
“Then what then?”
“I . . .”
“You let faggots suck on your dick, is that it; or do you let them fuck you?”
“I don’t do nothing I don’t want to do; let’s get that shit straight.”
“So are you gay, Taj?”
“Fuck no. I ain’t no faggot.”
“Then why are you doing this shit here for?”
“I do it for money, that’s it. I don’t get fucked and I don’t suck no nigga’s dick. Jimi gave me the script to look it over, to offer up some suggestions.”
I sat there with my hand against my forehead.
“You come home to me, and stick your dick in me after you’ve fucked men up the ass. You’re disgusting.”
“It’s not even like that.” When Taj tried to console me, I pulled away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Jimi runs a clean production company. Everybody gets tested.”
“Oh, so that shit is supposed to make me feel better about you letting guys suck on your black-ass dick?”
“I was trying to figure out the right time to tell you.”
“Nigga, there’s no right time to tell somebody some fucked-up shit like that. You got gay niggas slobbering all over your dick.”
“Baby, it’s just a job, that’s all.”
To hear him call me baby was enough to turn my stomach. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this shit right now.”
“I’m clean, Lee, and I don’t bring nothing home to you.”
I could no longer stand to even look at Taj. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Lee, I’m sorry that I wasn’t upfront with you. You gotta know that I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“But yet and still, you have. You know the fucked-up part isn’t that you work in gay porn; it’s that you lied, Taj, about what you do for a living.”
“I guess I was afraid of how you would react.”
“Oh, fuck you. You’re not a fuckin’ child. Why do men feel like they always gotta lie about every little-ass thing? How can ya’ll sit here, fix your mouth and say you love somebody, but then go behind a bitch’s back and lie?”
“Other than I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say to you.”
“Who are you? Who the fuck is the man that I’ve been sharing my bed with for the past six months?”
“I’m still the same Taj Bowman that you met at the Blue Moon. I haven’t changed, baby girl. I’m still me.”
“Shit, I doubt that.”
“Let me ask you this: would you have gone out with me had I told you what I do for a living?”
“Whether I would have gone out with you or not, is not the damn point, Taj, and you know it. You lied, Taj. You looked me dead in my face for months on end and lied to me. It doesn’t matter how I would have reacted. We’re supposed to tell each other everything. What else are you keeping from me?”
“I’m not hiding anything else.”
“What, you got like a litter of kids out here that I don’t know about, maybe you on the down low with some nigga, or maybe he’s the one you playing house with and I’m the down-low bitch. Is that it?”
“I told you. It’s only a paycheck, that’s it. I don’t have any kids unaccounted for and I’m not on the down low with nobody.”
“How am I supposed to believe anything that comes out of your mouth? First, my son and my best friend have been fucking around behind my back, and now I find out my man is on some gay-for-pay bullshit?”
“Look, the bottom line is, I was afraid of losing you if I told you the truth.”
“Yet, you have lost me with a lie.”
“What?”
“You know what; you’re a grown-ass man. I can’t stop you from doing nothing you don’t want to do. If you want to fuck men, fine, but I’ll be damned if you’re going to make a fool out of Leandra Fox.” I hurled the script at Taj. “I want you to get your shit, and get the fuck out of my house.”
“Baby, come on, let’s talk about this.”
“Fuck you. I’m done talking. I want you and all your shit out of my house, and I want you out of my life; we’re through.”