Sweet St. Louis Read online

  “Where are you going?” Celena asked her.

  “Do you have to know?” Sharron asked. Show some darn manners and tact, girl! she shot with her eyes.

  “Oh,” her girlfriend responded, catching on. “Well, hold on, I have to go, too.”

  That set off an alarm from Celena’s bolder-than-average date.

  “Wait a minute. Both of y’all have to use the bathroom at the same time? What is that?”

  Celena moved to silence him with her own boldness. “Don’t act like y’all didn’t do the same thing, hangin’ out on street corners, drinking beers, and pissing on trees.”

  “Yeah, but we don’t do that shit now,” he refuted.

  His friend, who was with Sharron, let out a forced laugh, the kind that he could have done without. It only showed how incompetent he was as compared to his partner. It also made him seem more like a pom-pom-carrying cheerleader than a jersey-wearing player.

  Embarrassed by it, Sharron made her way to the aisle and hustled out of the theater much faster than she originally planned. Both dressed casually in fitted blue jeans, Celena was hot on her tail as soon as she entered the restroom.

  “Sharron, you don’t like him, do you?” she correctly assumed.

  “I mean, what’s to like about the boy? ‘My cousins did this. I got that. I can’t wait till I do this,’” she ran off, mocking her date for the evening. “He sounds like a teenager. Are you sure he’s twenty-five?”

  Celena laughed. “Maybe he’s not. You think he was lying about his age? He does look kind of young. Let’s go to a club after this and see if he gets carded,” she joked.

  “I don’t think so,” Sharron snapped. “I’m ready to call it a night right now. This is not even an interesting movie, and he keeps trying to lean closer and closer to me.”

  Celena found it all humorous. She would. She was the one who had set everything up. In fact, far too many matchmakers suffer from a God complex, and they don’t have the faintest idea why their matches don’t exactly fit. They just think that they know what they’re talking about, and with your life!

  Sharron checked her hair in the mirror and said, “This is the last time for this. And I mean it!”

  Her friend smiled, knowing better. “Until two months from now, when you’re all lonely and watching late-night movies on cable again.”

  Sharron didn’t even flinch. “We’ll see,” she declared, and walked out of the bathroom. Celena followed her out.

  “You really wanna go home already? It’s only nine o’clock, Sharron. What are you going to do with yourself?”

  She smiled. “Well, with some things, I can just turn them on and off, and I don’t have to worry about going through all of the other bullshit involved.”

  Celena frowned at her. “Girl, a real-ass man is always better than a vibrator.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Sharron responded. Realistically, she didn’t own a vibrator. Nor did she ever use one, or even fondle herself. Sharron was more of a fantasizer, picturing herself with the perfect man, and imagining the perfect love, if such a thing existed. Her fantasies had often gotten her into trouble with reality, like with Mr. Married Man.

  “Well, then again … I guess not in all cases, no,” Celena answered with a chuckle. “But, I mean, don’t you want someone to hold on to while you’re feeling it?” she asked.

  Sharron thought about it as they continued to linger out in the hallway. Of course she wanted to hold on to someone. She wanted to kiss someone’s neck and massage someone’s shoulders and lower back, and play an intimate game of Twister with someone’s strong, warm, masculine body. But not just with anyone. Who wanted anyone?!

  Overhearing their conversation, a teenage usher smiled sheepishly. Older women speaking so openly about sex could give a young guy a fast hard-on. Not all males were afraid of assertive women. Younger guys—because of having to deal with the immature giddiness of virgins and the insecure doubts of once-around-the-track girls—were easily attracted to older, more assertive women. Young girls were not as experienced in sex to talk about it in detail like older women could anyway. So the young usher began to have fantasies of his own, right there on the spot.

  Celena was definitely his type, too: shapely and medium brown, with plenty of sexiness and gusto to match. She even appeared young, with her smallish head and facial features, accompanied by her youthful energy. Sharron, though, seemed too reserved for his taste, or at least from what he had heard from her. Reserved girls like her were a pain in the balls. At age nineteen, he knew enough about high-school virgins and hopelessly romantic college students to know that fact full well. So his fantasies were all about Celena, just like the average man’s would be. As for Sharron, with her extra cock-blocking cognitive, she would surely get a fast boot. Because whenever a woman thinks too much, she jumps into asking questions that most guys don’t want to answer, no matter what age they are!

  Why do you do this? Why did you do that? What does this mean? What does that mean?

  Truth be told, most males would rather their relationships with women just … flow, like a well-written novel instead of like a textbook, where they may be forced to answer twenty questions at the back of each chapter. Then they’d be quizzed on all of their answers, with a cognitive woman’s high expectations of a grade A.

  To hell with all of that! the young usher thought to himself. Just give me a woman who can understand me and accept me for who and what I am, a hard-shelled guy with sweet, hidden chocolate in the middle. Like an Easter Sunday treat.

  Sharron and Celena, catching the usher’s smile and snicker, decided to ease their way back inside to the featured film.

  “That was a long-ass piss,” Celena’s date commented.

  “That’s because I had to take a shit,” she responded, strictly for shock.

  Sharron shook her head, thinking, How long do I have to live through this kind of stuff?! Then her young date eased his right hand across her left knee and found himself rejected.

  “Would you like to keep your hand, or do you want me to donate it to science?” Sharron snapped, handing his slippery brown invasion back to him.

  “Oh, shit,” his friend responded with a laugh. His boy was shattered, for caving in to peer pressure. He knew good and well that Sharron was not at all cordial to his advances, and trying to force himself on her would only bring to the surface the issue of their incompatibility.

  For Sharron’s part, the dramatic approach was against her nature. Instead of public confrontations, she would much rather slip away and disappear, like a ghost. But insecure men rarely allowed women to be ghosts. Especially when they hoped for more than just a movie and a car ride back home after dark.

  At that moment, Celena knew that their night on the town was officially over.

  “We might as well go,” she stood up and announced.

  “Why, just because they don’t get along? They can both catch a bus back home.”

  And why were so many men hooked on the idea of boldness? Was it because so many women expected it from them? It was as if boldness were a requirement for maleness, and for serious dating. Women were used to it. Many of their fathers were bold, and their mothers’ boyfriends, and their uncles, and their male cousins. Not to mention hundreds of heroes that they saw in films, or on network television, or performing in male-dominated sports.

  Passivity was not acceptable. So the passive men, or sissies, became expendable. Of course, until it was time for appreciative cards, candies, and flowers. Women then seemed to want a sudden change—from well-worn T-shirts and Wrangler blue jeans—to a man who wears a nice tie and a soft cotton sweater across his shoulders. They want rough and tough with the crow of the rooster in their mornings, yet sweet and gentle as the sun goes down in their nights. Nevertheless, many men had obvious problems making such a dramatic character transition. Especially the men of the nineties era.

  “You know what? I’m about tired of all the shit that’s been coming out of your mo
uth tonight,” Celena spat to her date.

  “And what about your damn mouth?”

  “What about it?”

  “You were the one talking about you had to take a shit, so everybody in the fucking show could hear it! What about that?”

  Women, believe it or not, were hardly immune to the ego, they simply had less of an awareness of their use of it. As if an out-of-control woman was a good thing. But it was mainly used to counteract a male society’s expectations of meekness. Men who could not handle that fact created a defensive term to describe these women, calling them bitches. Which Celena had been referred to on more than a few occasions.

  Fortunately, there weren’t that many people in the theater. But for those who were there, public arguments between men and women nailed the point home that relationships were definitely something to be worked out, and could not just be flowed into, as most guys seemed to want. Nor was everything supposed to go perfectly on a first date, like many women expected.

  Sharron stood and said, “Let’s just go.”

  “Go ’head then,” her shot-down date responded.

  Sharron looked at him with a face of anger, but spoke with a voice of pity. “You need to really grow up. Both of you.” If she had no tact of her own, she would have included her friend Celena in that advice. She had said it all before. A hundred times. Or was that a million?

  “Are you just gonna ignore me all night long? God, it’s just one date,” Celena complained as she and Sharron climbed out of their taxi.

  “He was just one guy, and it was just one boring show. I mean, what’s the big deal?” she continued as they approached their second-floor apartment.

  There wasn’t much else for Sharron to say. One date, plus one guy, plus one boring movie eventually added up to a lot of unnecessary letdowns, all with the same results. Nothing! So why even mention names and descriptions, unless they really meant something? They all just became the one. Like in: the one who got drunk and acted like a damn fool; the one whose breath smelled like a trash can; the one who got arrested for doing “nothing” and called from jail to bail him out; or the one who lied about his age, his job, and his fiancée. After ten or twenty of the ones, what difference did it all make? Sharron had run out of words to continue explaining it. She was tired of it. Tired of caring, fussing, rationalizing, and tired of putting herself out in the meat market only to rot away in the window with no plastic wrapping for protection.

  “What are you gonna do, go back to reading that damn book?” Celena asked as Sharron headed straight for her room. “That book don’t have no answers. I read it already. It’s all the same stuff. Guys are just guys, so get used to it.”

  Celena would not let the situation die. She expected Sharron to respond to her. She expected her to respond like she always did, and then they would fall into another long discussion about how love should be but was not. And how love never quite reached a steady plateau. Or at least for a billion women. Guys, on the other hand, never seemed to want love. They seemed to want only the flesh, and the control of the heart. They wanted you to give yourself, while they would rarely give themselves.

  So Sharron was speechless, knowing it all, and having control over absolutely none of it. While Celena just went with the flow, exactly how most guys liked it. And by going with the flow, she seemed to condone the nonsense, as if broken hearts and years of inner tears were meant to be normal.

  It was not that way at all for some women. Some women were loved, happily married, and unbelievably satisfied. So what is it with me? The question is asked at one time or another. Why do I have to suffer so much? What did I do? What could I have possibly done to deserve so much despair?

  Whenever Sharron became depressed, she thought about her mother and her two siblings in heaven. Then she thought about herself, and about her father, who had taken up seeing a new woman less than a year after his only wife’s death. Sharron often asked herself as a younger woman, How could he? Unless he never loved my mother as much as I thought he did. Or as much as he led me to believe. But now, when she thought about her own gutter balls in the bowling lane of love, she finally understood what her father must have felt, and how he had to move on and love again with youth no longer on his side.

  That sudden reevaluation of her father made her feel warm inside. It made her feel more mature. At the tender age of twenty-three, and approaching twenty-four, she realized that she had all the time in the world. She just hoped that it wouldn’t equate to more time sitting in the meat market window without a sale.

  Energized with purpose, she bolted from her room to retrieve the phone and pull it inside her room with her for privacy.

  “Who are you calling?” Celena asked, stretched across the livingroom sofa watching a video and eating hot popcorn.

  “My father.”

  Good answer. Fathers were men whom Celena still respected, mainly because her own father had always been on the job. Maybe that was why she was never pressed or set on complaining about a man. Because when push came to shove, she understood that she could always get one. She simply wasn’t ready to settle down and give up her adventurous freedom like her mother and younger sister had as teenagers.

  “Hey, Daddy. How’s everything been going?” Sharron asked in her room.

  “Sharron! Hey, girl. How have you been making out up there? You need anything?”

  “Yes and no,” she answered with a smile.

  “Yes and no?” he repeated. “What are you trying to tell me? Either you need something or you don’t.” No matter how old you get, fathers will always make you feel like a young son or daughter.

  He was ready to lead her away from the subject, so she redirected things.

  “Actually, I was calling you to apologize and to tell you that I finally understand. You know, how you felt after Mom died.”

  Total silence.

  “Ahh … thank you, sweetie. Thank you.” He didn’t know what else to say. It was obviously an awkward moment for him. His daughter continued:

  “I mean, it was real selfish of me not to see that you still had a life to live.”

  “Yeah, I just wish you could tell your aunts and first cousins that,” he said with a chuckle. It had been eating him up inside for years.

  Sharron took a deep breath and asked, “Is Lucille around?”

  Silence again.

  “Ahh … yeah.”

  Sharron had never been disrespectful to Lucille, but she had never been too cordial to her either. “Well, tell her I said hi, and thanks for sharing herself with my father.” She could have told Lucille on her own, yet she figured it would carry more weight by saying it to her father, because Daddy was the one with whom she felt the most guilt.

  It worked, too. She could feel her father’s warmth smothering her straight through the phone, as if his shackles had finally been cut off, and he had been freed again to run in the sunshine.

  “I sure will tell her, baby. I sure will.”

  Sharron laughed, imagining what her father must have looked and sounded like when he first met and fell in love with her mother years ago.

  “Well, I don’t want to hold you up from your movie. I just called to say that I was sorry, and that I’m happy for you.”

  “How did you know we were watching a movie?” he asked his daughter. He seemed surprised by it.

  Sharron shook her head and smiled again. They always watched movies together. Movies or sports. Because they didn’t like most of the new shows that came on regular TV, aside from The X-Files, which they both loved. Americans born in the forties and fifties would probably always have a thing for extraterrestrials and conspiracy theories. Just like those born in the eighties and nineties would have a particularly strong affection for music videos and computer graphics.

  “I just know, Dad,” she told him. “I just know.”

  And when she hung up, she envied them. She envied how grownup men and women could just spend time watching movies and holding hands. They would go grocery
shopping together and for long walks, totally satisfied with each other’s company. When she was younger, Sharron couldn’t wait to be older, like most humans. But now that she was older, she couldn’t wait until she was a complete elder, to experience patient and giving love, from both sides. But first she had to find someone worthy enough to grow old with. That was the problem. Worthiness. How in the world do we measure it? And how long does it last?

  Speaking of worthiness, how does a man in a free society determine which women are worthy enough to chase? Is it a body? Is it a face? Is it good hair and a keen nose? A good home-cooked meal and plenty of submissiveness? Or is it some kind of special mating ritual that we have somehow forgotten? One thing is for sure: men have the hardest time in the world trying to narrow the numbers down to just one. Many of them don’t. And wouldn’t. Not in an entire lifetime, whether their women accepted that reality or not. Because every new face, new scent, new outfit, and new curve made a man feel ten, twenty, thirty years younger. Like a brand-new baby boy in love with his momma and her nurturing milk all over again.

  “How much would it cost me to get this thing fixed?” a confident woman’s voice was asking Ant’s boss, Paul Mancini, at his Fix It Shop. Paul had come up with his shop name just for people like her, who didn’t know the first thing about cars and just wanted the thing fixed.

  Paul was an Italian man in his midforties with strong presence and a six-foot frame. He looked over at the woman’s dark green BMW. It had been smashed on the left front end, not enough to stop it from running, but definitely enough to need fixing.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he started with a grin, “I’d be able to tell you something a lot nicer if it wasn’t a BMW.” He shook his head, dark-haired with streaks of gray, and pitied the woman. “That there is gonna cost you a couple of quarters no matter where you take it. You start crashing BMWs, and you’re not talking pennies anymore. What did your insurance people say?”

  “I’m not using my insurance for this. And I didn’t crash the car.”

  The confident woman was getting testy. Ant, who was working on new brakes for a Toyota, became curious to see what she looked like. Because she sounded like a brown sister. He could hear it in her voice tone.