Sweet Black Cock

Leaning against the sturdy mailbox, I cracked erect scanning the nearby porches for the creaking rocking chair with its endless taunts of suddenly stopping and starting and the elusive draw that went with it. It had to be very nearby, that much I was sure of. It couldn’t have been heard so well otherwise. I decided not to answer. Given the part of the neighborhood I was in, I wasn’t the only white boy around. Perhaps, the only one visible in the street, yes; but by far, not the only in the vicinity given gentrification—even though they were most likely behind closed doors sound asleep in bed. I guess Rocking Chair Man was on the same accord. He wasn’t going to ask anything more until he inspected “white boy” himself. Because, soon enough, heavy footsteps trounced abound down a set of stairs, evened out, and then again thumping down another set of fliers. The footsteps trailed off into nothing after that. Somehow keenly aware I was too damaged and too tender to make an honest sprint for it.

I was about to pull my hand out of my pants and hobble home the best I could, like the sound and the voice was nothing more than a figment of my imagination, when I was startled by the embers of a foul-smelling cigarillo staring me down.

“No need to do me any special favors. Why in the hell are you playing with your booty hole out in the middle of the street?” This tall dark man in my ear asked.

Before I could find the nerve to answer his deep dark tone, trying my best to distinguish his features in the shadows, a shout poured from one of the porches behind me followed by the familiar creak of a rocking chair. “Looks from here like white boy is digging up his ass for some shit! Ain’t about to stop either until he strikes that brown gold!”

The tall dark man with his shiny, inky-black wavy hair let out a wide laugh with the white of his eyeballs glimmering there with the straightest whitest teeth I’d ever seen on any man. “I don’t think so, Drew. If he was, I’d think he’d have a little more sense than to keep his pants on, don’t you think?”

His bold eyes pierced through me.

I should’ve been scared shitless given what I’d just walked away from minutes earlier, but I wasn’t for some reason. Even though he was supposed to be intimidating, his demeanor and smoke-charred voice was rather soothing.

“What’s he saying, Nino?” The guy on the porch shouted down.

Nino.

“Let me find out, will ya?” Nino growled back at his pestering friend, and then turned to me. “Need some Preparation H or something, motherfucker? What’re you doing out here like you’re doing what’re you’re doing?”

I thought of a lie to spin, like trying to adjust my underwear when the absolute truth came barreling out of me. “I just got fucked, man.”

His eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Eh, Drew,” Nino shouted back up to the porch. “This white dude just told me he just got fucked!”

“He’s playing with his ass and bragging about some of the ass he just got. I told you the motherfucker was down for leaving a turd in Mrs. Jenkins front yard!”

“No, you idiot,” Nino shouted back. “I think the dude is telling me the reason he’s playing in his booty is because he’s a little sore after getting it fucked!”

“What!” Drew popped out of his rocking chair. He zoomed down the double set of stairs at such warp speed I was still pulling my hand out from behind my waistband when he made himself known standing there checking me out. The shorter light-skinned friend with the hazel eyes and thick wide rings of curls atop his head checked me from top to bottom several times over, from various angles no less, and brilliantly concluded. “Man ain’t no fucking fag. He probably got up in some nasty ho and now got some crabs Crip-walking around the back of his nut sack. If I was you, I’d get that shit checked out first thing tomorrow down at the free clinic before those crabs start digging into your oyster shell.”

I was bemused. I wasn’t sure if I should take his ready dismissal of me being a gay man as a compliment or not given that I was out in the middle of the street playing with my asshole after it’s just been ploughed.

“You’re stupid. You know that?” Nino slapped his friend up side the head.

“Eh, motherfucker! Quit it!” Drew snapped back.

“Remember that big Cornbread-looking dude that followed you from the gas station home a few months back trying to run up in your ass? There was nothing about him that said he was a booty bandit other than looking like he just came straight out of the slammer.”

Drew sucked his teeth. “Yeah, you’re right. I don’t see this dude dancing around half naked on some float in some gay pride parade, though. Now that other dude seemed about that life with those bright-ass pink sneaks. And let’s be clear, before you give our friend here the wrong impression, dude wasn’t a booty bandit he was a dick hound.”

“His dick was hounding for that country booty of yours. If he could’ve gotten his pants off and yours, you’d been walking around her barefoot and pregnant birthing Cornbread babies!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Drew threw back his hand over at Nino without making contact, and then flat out asked me. “Are you a faggot?”

“Drew!” Nino stressed.

“Excuse me. My road dawg here wants me to be more politically correct to the sensitive needs of our changing neighborhood given the shift in demographics within the last twenty years leaving the black majority the black minority here in this community, as he doesn’t want us to offend or alienate those that might take up the KKK on their membership drive and try to terrorize us out of the neighborhood as if we don’t own our own AK-47s. So, do you mind me rephrasing the question? Are you gay?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

The two men accepted my answer maturely. This was a far cry from those days when I was purely bullied on the premise of.

Nino took over the line of questioning then. “So did you or did you not tell me you just got fucked or is my man right about you packing mud and popping up with claw-bitters?”

“The first one.” I admitted, fearful that their maturity might suddenly turn.

“You got fucked?” Nino asked for confirmation.

I confirmed. “Yeah, I got fucked.”

The three of us were at a loss. I’d just told two men I didn’t know that I just got fucked and the two men I told this two appeared stunned by my honesty.

“You gave up the butt cheeks?” Drew asked.

I bobbed.

“Cornbread-kind of dude? Got your gay-ass in the alley?”

Nino slapped Drew in the chest. “Drew!”

“Nino!” Drew stumbled back although by appearances he appeared to be stronger than Nino.

“He probably doesn’t even know what the hell we’re talking about.”

I answered him proudly. “Life. That Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence movie. That big ass guy sitting at the table asking Martin’s character if he was going to eat his cornbread…unless you’re talking about another cornbread scene like that or someone named Cornbread.”

“Oh, okay, I see we got a cool white dude in the mix. I can respect.” Drew perked up.

“I don’t know how cool I am, man, but I like comedies. That was probably the first movie I saw with an all-black cast.”

“It would be the one where we’re all locked up. Let me guess. You’re first black boyfriend took you to go see it.”

I shook my head. “I went to see it on my own. I tried to get some of my hoity-toity friends to come see it with me, but their sense of humor was quite dull at the time.”

“What happened? You helped them find a funny bone?”

“No. I found a new group of friends.” I laughed. “I don’t know if the guy was Cornbread or not, but he came with the force of someone built like him.”

“You ain’t lying. That motherfucker must’ve really come ready to put the screws to you if he got you in the dark, in the middle of the street playing with your asshole.”

“Yeah,” I chuckled, absent of the rolling bouts of lust surging through my nerves. “Good thing you kept running from Your Cornbread.”

Drew chuckled.

“The name’s Nino by the way,” the tall dark man officially addressed himself to me with his hand extended. “And this is my road dawg and roommate Drew.”

“Archie.” I shook both hands with my clean one.

After a pregnant pause, Nino hung his head down low and solemnly asked. “You want to put some ice back there or something. If you’re out here against a mailbox trying to soothe whatever was done back there, it must really hurt.”

“More irritated than anything else.” I brushed off, not wanting to tell two straight guys that after my puzzling ordeal that I was somehow ready for more. “I just got to get home and get some rest, you know.”

“Alright,” Nino agreed. “Where’s home from here? I’ve seen you walk up and down the street just about everyday, but I don’t have a clue as to where you’re coming from.”

“Two blocks up and three houses down from the end of the street. The ugly off-green one.”

“Oh, okay.”

Drew asked kindly. “You’re sure you’re going to be fine making it? I can’t fight Cornbread for you, if he’s still chasing after you, but I can probably throw a biscuit his way or something.”

I laughed, causing them to laugh. “I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. If you want, you can chill with us on the porch for awhile or sit out on the steps until you get yourself together or whatever gay dudes do after they get fucked.”

“Okay. Thanks. But I think I’ll be moseying on home now. Call it a night finally. That way when I stop, I can fall into the bed and don’t have to worry about getting up for a very long time!