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I WAS FORCED TO RUSH over to Wayne’s parents’ home in the middle of the next week. I had to abandon my classes for the day without leaving any assigned work for my students. Ever since I had made that trip to Antigua I had known that this day would come. And the longer it took to arrive the more I started to have hope – hope for Wayne to get help and to find a way to live with dignity. I had started to get used to the idea that Wayne was going to be around for some time when his mother called, shattering the vestige of hope that I had.
“Clay, Wayne died. He slit his wrists.”
I stood on the corridor outside my classroom, looking at the green hills under the blue sky, and the trees swaying in the breeze, and the birds chirping – all signs of life. How could my friend be dead? I could not reconcile the fact.
On the other end of the line Wayne’s mother was remarkably calm, like she had done a dress rehearsal for this moment. “I’ll make the funeral arrangements for Friday.”
“I’ll come over right now.”
Wayne’s parents were working the phone when I arrived but they quickly ended their conversations and ushered me into the living room. With her usual efficiency, his mother brought pineapple juice and currant rolls to the table and we helped ourselves. She sat with her husband waiting.
I ate as much as I could without managing to look greedy but stuffing my face was a stalling tactic that was not working too well. “I guess you want to know why?” No response. Of course they knew why, stupid. “I suppose I owe you an explanation for how this whole thing started.” And so I recounted the details of the night I swore would never be spoken of again.
I had always heard about bachelor parties but had not been to one until well into my twenties when one of the few high school friends I kept in touch with made the plunge into wedlock. It was a tame event compared to the stories I saw on television. We picked up the groom-to-be at his house on the night before his big day, blindfolded him, took him to the beach and played pranks on him. We had lots of food – pizza – and then those who had already made it to the altar spoke quite frankly about marriage, sex and children. We returned home in the wee hours of the morning to get some sleep and to get up in time to get ready for the ceremony. Very tame indeed.
But when Jake was getting married it was a different ball game all together. Wayne had flown in a few days before the wedding for he was one of the groomsmen, and I was the best man. One of Jake’s associates from work, Josh, picked up the three of us from Jake’s home at around eight o’clock in the night. We made our way to a four-star hotel and it was the first time I had misgivings about the night.
We checked into a luxurious suite and talked about how life had been when we were undergraduates, how work was a bitch and how marriage was going to change our friendship. To my amazement, the guys drank heavily while I nursed a beer. Somebody had to be the designated driver and mentally I consented. There was a knock at the door and Josh darted to open it. Dinner, I thought, but almost fell off the bed when I heard the women’s voices. They were ordinary-looking women, young and thin, in jeans and carrying a CD player and knapsacks.
“Hi, I’m Lisa.”
“I’m Jolene.”
“And I’m Ayanna.”
“And we’re going to make this night one you will never forget.” They excused themselves and went to the bathroom.
“Guys, I’m not sure I like what –” I started to object but was shot down by Josh.
“Don’t be such a pussy. This is Jake’s last night as a free man. Let’s just have some fun.”
The logic of Jake embarking on what Josh (my dislike of whom was growing astronomically) was proposing and then declaring love, honor and faithfulness to his girl a few hours later escaped me.
Josh apparently was an expert at what he was doing. He opened a bottle of rum and some bottles of Coca Cola as a chaser. I sipped on the soda. He then started wrapping joints of marijuana and the other guys lit up. I passed.
The women emerged from the bathroom and the entertainment began. Lisa, who seemed to be the youngest, was transformed to a vixen: black leather outfit barely covering strategic parts of her body, black makeup and wild hair.
Jolene, the oldest in the group, was well-endowed and we soon learned that she was the most flexible of the three. Whatever she lacked in beauty she more than made up for in talent. She proved to be the most tantalizing of the threesome.
And then there was Ayanna. Ayanna was what Trinidadians refer to as a “red woman”. This was the most desired, or envied, complexion among women, usually acquired from the intermixing of African and European blood. Women of this complexion knew their worth and would make some poor slobs jump through hoops for them. They were high-maintenance and fickle. So it was surprising that a “reds” like Ayanna found herself in such a line of employment especially when men, rich men, would die to make her their trophy wife.
Like the rest of the world, I had grown more than just a little bit fed up of Celine Dion’s music after hearing, ad nauseam, the theme song from the movie Titanic. But that night when the women turned on the CD player I was shocked to find that Celine Dion could sound so good again. The women, in their high heels, moved their bodies in ways I never imagined a human body could move; maybe they were part serpent. They managed to wiggle their way down to the floor and spread their legs with the ease of a Russian gymnast. They caressed their breasts, and the guys roared.
My eyes bulged and I started to sweat. Their hands continued to move, all the way down to their shaved mid-section, and that is when the girl at the front desk had to come to tell us that the guests in the other rooms were complaining about the noise. The threesome carried on anyway.
We guys were weak, lapping up the entertainment from our vantage position on the two big beds. We gritted our teeth, pounded the bed, squeezed the pillows between our legs, and did whatever we could to try to keep ourselves from jumping on any of the girls. And then the dancehall music started and the girls got nastier. They straddled us, unbuttoned our shirts, fondled our chests and poured drinks on us. When they felt like the fourth guy was beginning to feel neglected, one of the girls would take her turn with him. It moved like clockwork, like a well-rehearsed Vegas show.
I noticed that the girls seemed to compete with each other. If one of the guys was enjoying himself more than the others as indicated by the volume and intensity of his moaning and screaming, the rest of us would turn to see. The other two girls would then heat up their routine to cause their guy to devote all of his attention to them.
It got as far as them groping our manhood but then Ayanna got the bright idea of removing Wayne’s pants and rubbing her behind on his penis which was standing at attention in his briefs like a soldier awaiting the next command from his captain. I often volunteered to be the fourth guy – changing the music, refreshing the drinks, doing whatever it took to not be too involved with the rest of the group for in the back of my mind I could hear my preacher’s voice: “Fornication is sin and fornicators will go to hell.”
It was three o’clock in the morning when the party ended and the girls said that they had to work the next day. It turned out that Jolene actually was a married woman with a child and I never did find out how or why her alter ego had come into existence.
Wayne had locked himself in the bathroom with Ayanna and we could only imagine what was taking place. Wayne always had a way with women since he was the most attractive one among us and exuded the most charm. I felt sorry for him that he had to face so much temptation. Sometimes I envied him; I wished that some of his temptations would come my way if for nothing else than to boost my occasionally sagging ego.
“Did you guys have fun?” Lisa asked. The glow on our faces was all the answer she needed. “You know how to reach us,” she said to Josh.
The four of us lay on the bed thinking, reliving what had just happened, and I felt disgusted with myself for staying and enjoying it as much as I had. I felt guilty knowing that I had violated three women by treating them as if their sole existence was for my enjoyment. Sure they had been paid, but they probably did it because they needed the money, I reasoned. Still, I felt ashamed of myself. The night had gone against everything I believed.
I stood up. “Guys, I’m going.”
“We paid for the night. You can stay until twelve o’clock tomorrow.”
I did not wait to explain.
*
ABOUT TEN MONTHS LATER, Wayne called me because something was weighing heavily on his mind.
“I’m feeling fatigued these days, Clay. And I have these sores inside my mouth and a rash on my skin.”
“Have you been to a doctor?”
“If I have something I don’t want to know about it. Let me drop down and die if I have to.”
“But what if you could get help?”
There was silence on the other end of the line for a long time. “I had sex with that exotic dancer at Jake’s bachelor party.” The admission did not surprise me. “I didn’t use a condom, man.”
“No, Wayne.”
“Pretty dumb for a university graduate, huh?”
Way stupid. “I guess you were carried away in the moment.” I was not prepared for what he said next.
“I met her on the other days I was there and we had sex every time. I didn’t use a condom then either.” It was my turn to remain quiet. “Sex with Ayanna was not like anything I ever had, Clay. It was like she was filling a void that my girlfriend leaves. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I lied. Wayne was behaving like a village ram, wanting to hit every nanny in sight and now he had hit one too many.
We talked past midnight and once he had to excuse himself to vomit. “I’m doing that a lot too,” he said.
“You have to get tested, Wayne.”
“I couldn’t live with the shame.”
“What is there to be ashamed of? You had sex. Lots of people have sex.”
“But AIDS can kill you.”
“So can cancer, but there are always marches being organized for cancer research. Man, AIDS is another fatal disease.”
We talked some more and I encouraged him to pray. I promised him that I would be praying for him too. He ended the conversation with a statement that chilled me.
“The good thing is that now I can do whatever I want to do and not be afraid of the consequences. I’m going to die anyway.” He quickly hung up.
*
I SAW THE OTHER GUYS at the funeral. It was well attended, especially by our peers from university. Wayne’s parents were solemn but did not cry. Girls cried openly at the graveyard, and some guys discreetly wiped away tears that I’m sure they had instructed to not escape in public. After all, according to the Council of Manhood, a man is only supposed to cry in public if he is looking at a movie and a heroic dog dies trying to save the life of its master.
Afterwards I tried to inveigle Jake and Josh to accompany me to Wayne’s parents’ place but they both had other plans.
“I think his parents would appreciate it a lot. After all, we are partly to blame.” That got their attention. “He got the virus from the exotic dancer at your bachelor party, Jake.”
“That idiot!” Jake blurted. “He could never keep his prick in his pants.”
“I warned you guys,” Josh said, but I did not remember the girls coming with a label that read: Warning – Might Be HIV Positive. “He should have had more sense than that.”
“Are you always such an asshole?” I said to Josh as I shoved him. Jake held me back.
“Let’s not make a scene, Clay. I’ll go with you to Wayne’s house.” He led me by my arm and we left, me seething with rage at Josh whom I blamed for my friend’s death.
