Romance on The Iron Horse

I was twenty-two when I met Quinnet.  It was April in New York but felt like July. As the sizzling sun heated the streets and birds chirped their love songs, I traded sweaters and rubber boots for flip-flops and sunglasses. These not only shielded me from the sun but camouflaged the fact that my eyes were usually bloodshot from the rum that was killing me because I had diabetes. This disease camped out in my family like an honored guest. Grandma had it. Dad had it. Mom had it. One of my brothers had it. When I was diagnosed, the doctor asked if I drank and how much.

“Only a little,” I said.

 I expect my mother was disappointed when I left my previous assistant teacher job. After all, she inspired me to become a teacher in the first place. As a youngster, I often went with her to the elementary school where she worked as an assistant teacher and watched her help kids with math, reading, and homework. Two nights a week, she took classes at Kingsborough Community College to earn her teaching degree. But eventually, the demands of married life and four children, one of whom was asthmatic, eroded her teaching dreams. After high school, I followed her career path. But over time, I found that, as a Special Ed teacher’s assistant, I spent most of my tour as a disciplinarian, all while earning less than the teachers who arrived in the classroom with leather briefcases, earth shoes, and college degrees.

        So, I left and went to work for School Safety. But it wasn’t long before I realized this wasn’t what I imagined either. When I was in the elementary classroom, little kids would cry and run to an assistant teacher before a fight started. But in the high schools, most teens would rather risk getting beaten bloody than suffer the indignity of being called “chicken.” Security guards, like me, were expected to break up the brawls that followed. Worse, since I was drinking almost a fifth of rum during the week and polishing off two gallons of the sauce on weekends, I was often late for work, hung over and dehydrated when I got there. When the booze left me too sick to work, I started killing off my kin, lying to administrators about a death in the family so I could take time off.  Shit, I slew Grandma twice, figuring that she wouldn’t mind since she was already in the bone yard.

The security job kept the bills paid, and put food and booze on the counter, but it wasn’t enough to support my relentless demand for pills, marijuana, and acid.

           So, I took hostages.

      The hostages were simple-minded people I met at social events or around my Flatbush neighborhood. I controlled them like robots. Valery a cute, well-stacked Spanish girl, was my first. We met at a dance that ended early because the DJ blew his amplifier. So, we went back to my place and continued to party, drink, and smoke dope until dawn, and I hadn't been able to get rid of her since.

            Later, Valery introduced me to Pam, who introduced me to Gwendolyn who introduced me to I can’t remember who. And, since I had what they all desperately needed--a place to stay, my hostages multiplied like ants. Some only passed through. Others hung around like a bad smell. But no matter their reasons for being with me, each knew that my time wasn’t free; they all had to put something on the table. Cash. Clothes. Jewelry.  It all went to feed my greed. In return, I kept the fridge maybe half full as we pleasured ourselves in sex games and pooled our resources to stay high. This gave me a sense of power; the feeling of being Queen and Pharaoh over them all.            

Of course, this was all before the afternoon that Jessie, an old high school buddy, stopped by. After we partied with the hostages, he suggested that, since we hadn't seen each other in a while, we go into Manhattan and hang out at CBGB’s, on Bleecker Street, to catch up on old times.

A year before we graduated, his five-foot-tall, one-hundred-pound, Native American mother came home early and found a bunch of us flopped all over her apartment, stoned on pot, booze, and acid. She took this in, walked over to Jessie, who was passed out on the carpet and snatched him, one-handed, clear off the floor, by the seat of his trousers. He was known as Cherokee ever since.

We got to CBGB at around nine. It was a notoriously dingy hole of a club, every inch of the stonework walls covered with photographs of popular bands like Blondie, the Ramones, and the B-52’s, all pasted cheek-to-chin with hundreds of lesser-knowns and unknowns, and all of it scribbled over with decades of graffiti messages; "Hanky loves Panky, Run like hell, Agents of the sun, and the Bar-bitch-u-ate." The stench of cigarettes and stale beer flooding my nostrils, we made our way to a rickety wooden table and sat down.

            As Jessie jumped up to get drinks, I heard the thrum of an acoustic guitar and turned towards the stage. A young, Asian-looking, black woman in tight stone-washed jeans stood under the hazy lights, sensually gyrating her hips and thighs and strumming away. Her arms were bare and finely sculpted; the biceps swelling and receding with the cadence of the music, a blend of blues, classical rock, and soulful funk. She was skillfully jazzing the air, a jewel gleaming in her navel. Her nipples, like pebbles, straining against the fabric of her T-shirt.

I felt the table wobble when Jessie returned with our drinks.  I reached for my mine without looking; my eyes glued to the stage.

            “Man-oh-man, Cherokee,” I blurted. “She’s good.

            Who?” Jessie giggled. “Ya mean Quinn?”

            My eyes went wide. “Oh my God, Cherokee! Ya know her?”

            “Yeah,” he said, with another chuckle. “I’ll introduce ya after her set.”

            Her set lasted for five songs, my eyes and ears hungrily devouring every second. When she finished, she thanked the audience and pulled her tulip-red guitar strap over her magnificent swash of hair. A mohawk-cut. Just like mine. Only hers was blessed with glorious, radiant curls that shimmered under the glow of stage lights. My knees betrayed me as I rose to my feet. I had to grab the table to steady myself before setting off for the bar at the back of the room. Before anything else, I needed another drink. It was all too much. That face! That body! That voice!

            And, especially, that awesome hair!

I took the drink from the bartender and made sure I got a good pull on it before heading back to where Cherokee and I were sitting. Just to think this lowly human being was about to meet this gorgeous woman, a musician no less was unimaginable.  As I was settling back in at our table, there was Quinn, making her way over to where we were. Our eyes locked as she neared and glided into the seat next to mine. So close, I could make out the beads of perspiration glistening in the curls of her mohawk and smell the China Musk she was wearing. Her upper lip was arched in an ambiguous one-sided half grin.

My heart pounded.

     “Quinn, meet Dee,” Cherokee blurted. “Dee, Quinn.”

 We shook hands. I hardly recognized my own voice when I squeaked, “I really enjoyed listening to your music.”

            “Thanks,” she said with a sweet smile now on her lips. “If you stick around for my next set, there’s a song I’d like to play, especially for you.”

 Goosebumps sprouted on my arms. I gave in to a sudden urge to look down at my shoes.  “Thank you,” I sputtered.

 “Damn Girl” Cherokee broke in, “your sound gets better every time I hear you!”

          “I hope so,” she smiled. “I’m at the studio so often I barely remember what my place looks like.”

            “Rumor has it that folks from Capital Records have been checking you out,” Cherokee said.

        “And until I get that record deal,” Quinn chuckled, glancing in my direction. "That’s all they are, friend- rumors.”

 I punctuated my timid silence with belts of my drink as the two old friends carried on like this for several more minutes: Cherokee pelting Quinn with flattery and Quinn fending it off with good-natured modesty. Yet, more often than not, her responses were delivered with solicitous side glances my way. Almost as if…But what on God’s green earth, I asked myself, could this goddess possibly see in the likes of me? With my puggy hips, thighs and facial hair I had to shave. As I said before, it was just too much. Too much to dare, too much to hope for, and too much to try not to. "Oh, ye of little faith." I imagined hearing my mother's voice as she heard me putting myself down. You’re leaping to conclusions. I cautioned myself. You need to get a grip. Step back. Get a little perspective. I excused myself, left the table, and headed for the bathroom.

 In the lady’s room, I stopped at the sink and dabbed water on my face to cool my rising fever.  Cupping my palms, I sipped water as images of the lady filled my mind; I couldn’t do anything but drink her in. Her jet-black mohawk curls, perfectly accentuating the almond shape of her eyes and enhancing her Afro-Asian features, gold G-clef earring swaying in her left ear, animating her amber skin with dancing refracted light. A goddess! And those bouncing tits…

            ZAPP!   My mind took a U-turn, and I was in sixth grade again.

            "Emergency!"

That’s how we used to say it at PS 138 when we had to go really bad. I can still picture Teresa shouting it out, that day back then; Tacky Teresa, as she was known, bringing everyone in the room to a halt, and ruining what was shaping up to be a pretty cool way of learning a new word.

            Miss Duncan had all thirty of us in a Conga line leading us in synch in a march around the classroom, chanting ono-mato-peiA ono-mato-peiA, ono-mato-peiA, thrusting out a foot on the last syllable, alternating between the right and left each time we repeated the word.  

            I was just getting into it when Teresa broke the line, claiming ’mergency! ’mergency! and we all had to stop. The rule was, none of us kids were allowed to go to the restroom unescorted. You had to get a classmate to go with you. Good luck with that, Theresa, I thought to myself, after ruining everyone’s fun.

            “Anyone?” Mrs. Duncan urged, surveying the room from eye to eye,

            Teresa stood there looking tacky as ever; her thick black hair needing a good combing, her pleated skirt two sizes too big, her frayed belt cinched around the waist to keep it from slipping to the floor. This was topped off with a dingy white blouse which--now that I was looking at it--emphasized something that, since she was new to our class, I hadn’t noticed until that moment. She certainly has more going on in the chest than Ronda, Debora, and Charmaine, three classmates with whom I had gotten to accompany to the bathroom already.

            I knew I liked girls more than I liked boys way before I was twelve, which was when I started playing the game I called Titty-Fruitie. The first time, I charmed Charmaine into the restroom with the promise of wax candy lips; Ronda loved jaw breakers, so I copped feels in the stall, as she sucked on a blue one.

            Budding breasts I called strawberries. Perky tits were kiwis. The ones with bounce were plums. But Teresa, with those Mackintosh Apples on her chest, had outclassed them all. When Mrs. Duncan’s eyes met mine, I raised my hand. When I did there was a snicker. Then a giggle. Then, half the girls in the room tittered out loud. It took me a second to figure out what was going on, and when I did, my ears caught fire, and my face turned red. It was my “fruities” who were doing all the laughing. They knew precisely why I’d raised my hand. Each had been to the restroom with me before.

 Quinn, as sure as Jesus wore sandals, mesmerized me with the hope that our little tryst in CBGB’s would be the beginning of something more. But the rational, more doubting, less confident part of me had already accepted that a fine, black, Asian beauty like Quinn had only hooked up with an ugly goose like me for the convenience of the moment. I certainly never expected her to call me up just two days later and carry on about how much she had enjoyed it all and tell me she wanted to see me again the very next weekend. And I sure as hell never imagined she’d call again, just minutes after hanging up, to tell me she just couldn’t wait until next weekend and that she had to see me now.

She didn’t have to ask twice.

            It was a fine enough Sunday afternoon. We met in Prospect Park, where we casually strolled the grounds, engaging in the stop and go, sometimes awkward kind of conversation that people who have intimate feelings but know little about one another have. Quinn didn’t like talking about her early childhood. It wasn’t until weeks later that she let on that she was born in Vietnam, and that her father a black soldier who had been stationed there at the time – brought her to the US from Saigon to live with him, his American wife and their two children in Maryland. Yet, she ached and longed for her Vietnamese mother and had nightmares about their separation. She had since heard that her mother was now living somewhere in Manhattan’s Chinatown and had been on a relentless search for her ever since.

            I told her that I was at odds with my parents too. Being gay was not the problem at home. Getting high was. They worried for me and feared that my bad habits would have a negative influence on my younger brothers and sister. The one difference was that Quinn longed to live with her mother, I didn’t. I moved out when I was nineteen.

There was no booze this time, just the two of us enjoying each other’s company. As we stopped at Carvels, and took turns licking each other’s cones, and later we browsed a florist’s stand, where Quinn bought two roses and stuck one of them in each of our mohawks, I was still haunted by the feeling that I wasn’t good enough or pretty enough for her. Yet, this utterly romantic stroll had me falling quicker than I believed I should for this chick.

            But it was the ride home that really did it.

            The D train was crowded. We couldn’t sit together. So, Quinn took a seat directly opposite and across the aisle. As soon as we got comfortable, our eyes locked. I didn’t mean to stare, but I couldn’t stop looking at her. I was enchanted by one black curl, shaped like an upside-down question mark that drooped from her mohawk and encircled her eyebrow, and I was delighted by the G-clef in her right ear and guitar in her left, both swaying with the cadence of the train.

            She watched me.

            Satisfied that she had my attention, she relaxed her back against the seat as my eyes surveyed her plaid cotton shirt, where a few buttons had magically become undone, exposing her long pretty neck, abundant cleavage, and braless breasts, as the rocking train caused them to do a jig within.

            She watched me.

            As her eyes bore into mine, she drew a breath deep enough to make her cantaloupe-size bosoms leap from her shirt.

            My lips twitched.

            In the window beyond, the sun was going down, highlighting the twin peaks of her nipples in a fiery red orange.

            My pussy throbbed.

A fog seemed to descend over the train. The voices of passengers and snatches of song from a boombox drifted faintly to my ears, and the aroma of a marijuana cigarette perfumed the air. She watched me and crossed her legs, then, ever so-gently, she let them gap, sending into my view the full crotch of her jean slacks, beneath which all the pleasures of heaven lingered.

            I gasped.

            She gazed at me and precipitously smiled—her unique smile, half shy, and half assured. I fell back against my seat. Dizzy! On edge and on fire! I was experiencing something I hadn’t before. It was thrilling. Yet at the same time uncomfortable. It was powerful, yet it made me feel weak. I turned away.

            "The next stop is Parkside Avenue. Parkside is next," blared the loudspeaker.

            Without looking her way, and on shaky legs, I stood and moved towards the doors. I was grateful that the movement of the train and the horde of commuters camouflaged my unsteady sway, since we both knew that it was Quinn and not the train that had seriously rocked my boat.

            Quinn rose and I followed.

            As the train pulled into the station, she pushed up close behind me and pressed her cantaloupes into my back and planted one Timberland boot firmly on the right side of me, the other on my left and wrapped her arms about my waist.

            “Oh God,” I moaned.  Faith was beginning to replace my doubts. As my juices flowed, I was excited to see the magic that was about to unfold. And suddenly, I knew that my flaws were perfect for the woman who was sent to love me. 

———

Excerpt from Hairalujah, O’labumi’s forthcoming memoir. Contact O’la for publication information.
Photo courtesy of ©Tasha A.F. Lemley.