Joey Cloudy online

chapter 28

TRAMP Desiree Edith Baker-2001

“Where is my Marlboro Man?

Where is his shiny gun?

Where is my lonely ranger?

Where have all the cowboys gone?”

– Paula Cole

Desiree was starting to get a bit of a tan; she held color well for a girl with Norwegian ancestry, but at the moment was concerned as she, wearing yellow rubber gloves, cleaned the kitchen. She held a pack of Marlboro Lights 100s in the pocket of the pale lavender and fuchsia sleeveless plaid blouse.

Fadeelah, the big light brown Akita, wandered into the kitchen playing with a gigantic bone. Trotted over to the sink and bumped into her capri-panted leg as she continued wiping down the countertops with a damp green and yellow sponge. She sprayed Formula 409 on the black and white tiles and continued to scrub as she gathered her thoughts.

She absent-mindedly scratched the dog’s neck playfully with a bare foot as she pulled off the gloves and laid them in the stainless-steel sink to dry, then padded barefoot across the hardwood floors of the kitchen.

She had a lot on her mind, with all of the office politics coming to a head at work, and she felt uncomfortable having a man in the house who refused to sleep with her. She knew that it wasn’t the race thing; she had met his son from his last marriage it was obvious that his ex-wife was white. Besides, none of the poetry groupies that she had seen him with over the last few months had been black, so it couldn’t have been that. It was bugging the shit out of her that he had not screwed her when she offered herself to him the other night.

It just didn’t make any sense to her why he would screw around with teeny bopper hags like those punk sluts that he had over the other night for his housewarming party and not hook up with her. She was prettier, and it wasn’t as if he had a big tit fetish; some of the girls he partied with were as flat-chested as a twelve-year-old boy.

She was certain that he wanted to hook up with her, but now that they were living in the same house, he seemed indifferent to her. He seemed content treating her like one of the boys. Maybe some girls preferred not having their gender deferred to, but she didn’t like this; she didn’t like this at all.

Hell, if she wanted to be treated like this, she would have rented the room to a girl. His ignoring her when she went upstairs with only a towel and woke him only to ask if it was ok if she used the shower upstairs instead of taking a bath downstairs, confused her even more. She could see the bulge beneath the sheets from his erection at the sight of her on those occasions, but he just said OK, then rolled over, and went back to sleep.

She showered until there was no more hot water, hoping that he would join her. When that never happened, she held out hope that he would be lying there naked on top of the blankets waiting for her when she came out of the shower. But he was always either asleep or downstairs having coffee, sitting out on the deck smoking.

When she broke her foot one night after falling drunkenly down a couple of steps at the corner bar, he carried her from room to room piggyback. He helped her into and out of the bathtub, but he never did anything that you could construe as a sexual advance. His touch was nothing more than friendly and compassionate.

Aaron bores her with talk of obscure Greek and Roman fables that sound oddly familiar as he carries her from room to room piggyback; she had never heard of Ovid or Baucis and Philemon. She recognized the plot of the story from Methodist North Dakota bible school teachings of Sodom and Gomorrah, the tale of Lot and his wife. She couldn’t remember her name, only that she was turned into a statue of salt. Her drunken ramblings and accidents reminded him of his own drunken fathers.

Aaron had dated a lot of women, but he had never dated a drunk. Desiree was a full-blown high-functioning alcoholic. She liked him, and she could tell that he liked her too, but she just couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t go for it when she gave him the opportunity that most of the guys she knew dreamed about. Granted, Aaron could be a bit crude at times, but once you got used to his vocabulary, you quickly realized that he was, despite his hard-earned reputation as a libertine, a genuinely kind and gentle man.

They talked about their jobs, friends, childhoods, families, and lovers, and she felt herself falling in love with him. She told him that she wanted to adopt his son. Aaron just smiled and said Thank you. And she did something with him she had never done with any man before or since. She told him the truth about her preference for guys with big dicks and how disappointed she was when she had brought home a very tall, muscular, shaved-headed boy, she had met at the bar, who was now friends with her, when she got into bed, and he had such a small penis.

Aaron apologized Sorry, Baby girl; I would help you out if I could, but I don’t have anything spectacular going on in the size department, just the average seven inches.”

Aaron, I’ve seen your cock before, and let me assure you that you are more than adequately equipped to satisfy my needs.

When have you seen my dick?

You were asleep, and David was in the bathroom downstairs, so I came upstairs to use yours. I wasn’t trying to peek, I swear. Desiree swept a stray blonde hair out of her reddening face and tucked it behind her ear. Closed her narrow Thalo-blue eyes and exhaled. I’m not a pervert, but it was just sticking way out there. I don’t know what you were dreaming about, but you had one hellified boner.

I’m so embarrassed.

You have nothing to be embarrassed about; you have a very nice body.

Maybe he was intimidated because she had told him all about her last serious relationship before she moved to Texas, and she had talked about how well hung her ex-boyfriend was.

He might even be one of those asshole guys who thinks it’s cool to have a variety of sexual partners if you are a guy, but if you’re a girl, then you’re nothing but a whore. Nah. It wasn’t that all of the women he screwed around with were well-known sluts, and that didn’t seem to bother him at all. Then she thought about her age; she was almost thirty, and she had never seen him with a girl much over twenty. As a matter of fact, the fact that his current girlfriends were under the legal drinking age of twenty-one was sort of irksome to her.

She had asked him why he was dating women who were so obviously not in his league, and he seemed to genuinely not understand what she was talking about. Desiree explained to Aaron that she’d had a bit of a weight problem in high school, and she understood how his girlfriend thought, and that she obviously had self-esteem issues, and that he was taking advantage of that fact.

Aaron told her that his best friend, Tavah, and his other best friend girl Mona, had both said the same thing. And he assured them both that he would take their counsel under serious consideration, but that since neither of them wanted to fuck him at the moment and Laurel and her friends did, then he really didn’t see how they were really being much help to him or looking out for Laurel’s best interest. It’s just so obvious that she is really in love, and you are not into her the same way she’s into you. It’s not fair to her, is all I’m saying.

So, what you are really saying is that because she is not as attractive as you guys are, then she shouldn’t be with a guy like me, even though none of you want to be my girlfriend, but you don’t think that she’s good enough to be my girlfriend.

Well yeah. I wouldn’t have put it that way, but I guess that’s one way of saying it.

So, it’s not really Laurel that you’re concerned about, and none of you actually want me for anything other than a friend, but you don’t want her to have me for a lover. Right?

When you say it, you make it sound so petty and ugly on our part, but you won’t even acknowledge that we might as women know something about where her head is at right now in her life.

Tavah said the exact same shit, even down to the whole being the fat chick in high school. And even Mona, who I haven’t slept with since she converted to Islam, asked me why I was dating her with the same tone of disgust in her voice as you have now.

I just think you can do a lot better than her.

You introduce me to this mystery woman who wants to date a broke-ass black, thirty-eight-year-old, snaggle-tooth poet, and I’ll take her out, but personally, I don’t think she exists. I think this is just like when me and my last wife broke up and we kept having sex for years afterward. She was living with a guy, and she assured me that it was going to be over soon and that we would get back together. We would fuck every weekend when she dropped the kid off at my place and again when she came to pick him up, and for years, I believed her.

Then one day, I decided that I wasn’t going to fuck her anymore. A few years later we were both working in the Los Colinas area, she was married by then and had had two more kids and we were civil to each other by then if not friendly, I asked her why she kept me on a string for so long when she knew that she didn’t really want me anymore and do you know what she said?

No. What did she say?

She said that she knew that I loved her and that I was really a good guy, and she just liked knowing that I was available just in case.

Just in case what?

Just in case things didn’t work out with the guy with the horse dick, she knew that she could always call me.

That’s not what I meant. It’s not like that at all.

Yes, it is! It’s exactly like that! All of you figure that you can keep me around sniffing your panties, while you go out there and look for mister right. The all-American with all the money, the car, the house in the ‘burbs, and all of that shit you want. But, while you’re all out there chasing the American girl dream, you want guys like me to sit around with our dicks in our hands just in case things don’t work out with you and Mister all the right stuff.

I’m in a fuck boy phase of my existence, I’m ok with that, been married twice, got all of that romantic bullshit outta my system, I’m loving my life and looking for something to write about. You’re a good kid, not the kinda girl you take to a roll party and dose with type at all. You would be ruined after being with me. I am unapologetically hedonistic.

We’re not walking the same path. The truth is not a single one of you bitches gives a flying fuck about me or even want to be with me. But, if things don’t work out for you in your pathetic little lives, if you run out of desirable options to hook up with, then you’ll settle for fucking Token the nigg@r poet. Well fuck that.

Desiree denied it. But even as she spoke her words of denial, they tasted bitter and false. She left the room in tears, she knew he was right about all of them, herself included. She knew that she loved Aaron but she also knew that if she ever married a black man she would be disowned by her family, Desiree knew that the only reason that Tavah hadn’t hooked up with Aaron yet was because he was black and it was the same with Mona except she would at least fuck him before she got religion but she would never have married him.

Their mothers, sisters and the girls at work had talked from time to time about interracial dating and marriage and while all agreed that there was nothing more beautiful than a biracial child they all believed that black guys would fuck a white girl but they would never take one seriously or marry one it had been said on more than one occasion that when a Black man gets ready to marry he will leave the white girl friend for the nearest black woman.

But the unstated but obvious truth is that they all thought that the black man was the bottom of the barrel and that the only white women who settled for black men were the ones who couldn’t get a white one. None of them wanted to deal with the life of bigotry and racial hatred that was embedded in the psyche of every white American. No one wanted to settle for marrying a nigg@r. So, they projected their pettiness onto them and ascribed their motives to the black man so that they could feel good about themselves and not like the narrow-minded bigots that they were, and he saw through all of it and didn’t seem to care.

Desiree threw the sponge into the sink, grabbed a bottle of Shiner out of the fridge, twisted off the cap, and stood in the kitchen nursing her beer. Aaron was in a hopeless situation right now. The black women wouldn’t date him because he was broke and too fucking white talking, and the white women wouldn’t have him because he was black and the only thing worse than being a nigg@er was being a nigg@er lover.

Sure, she put up a good front as well as the rest, with progressive delusions they all pretended that the people and the culture had progressed beyond the primitive bigotry of their ancestors but if they were truly so goddamned civilized and progressive as they imagined themselves to be then she would not even be in a situation where she even had to think about these things.

What was wrong with not wanting to be looked down upon as a nigg@er lover? It was bad enough the way we treated all non-white people, but we saved our worst for the blacks. He couldn’t win; he didn’t really belong in either world. Here she was with a beautiful, gifted poet who was endowed with a genuine gift, and she couldn’t even get him to fuck her because he could see through her as if she were as transparent as a snot-soaked tissue and just as insubstantial. As far as he was concerned, she was beneath him, and she wished that it were not so.

Desiree sat down in one of the chairs on the cedar deck that overlooked the back yard, lit a Marlboro light 100, and sucked on her beer. She felt ugly and stupid. She hated feeling ugly; this was all his fault. If he weren’t such a freak, then everything would be fine.

Desiree hadn’t believed Aaron at first when he told her that he had never had sex with Tavah. They were so close, and they spent so much time together that she couldn’t believe that it hadn’t happened, even by accident, by now. But when Tavah had come by when she had asked Aaron to invite her over for her Memorial Day party, she had asked her when they were alone what her relationship about her relationship with Aaron was, and she had drunkenly confessed that while she did love Baby Boy, as she preferred to call him that they were just friends.

Desiree had pressed her for more details until finally Tavah confessed to her that while she, just like the rest of them, found him attractive, and she enjoyed his company because he was intellectually well endowed, he made him an excellent companion, but she would never consider having any sort of sexual relationship with him. Desiree didn’t even have to ask why. It was for the obvious reasons.

Desiree liked her new house here in East Dallas, and Aaron’s Israeli lawyer friend Tavah she rarely met women taller than her at 5’10”, but Tavah had her beat by 2 inches at 6 feet even. She intuited that, like the women that she worked with, Tavah was disgusted by her. Tavah seemed to have sized her up and decided that she wasn’t even worth getting to know any better. Tavah, like Aaron, was an intellectual snob, but unlike Aaron, Tavah wouldn’t give those whose intelligence she had no respect for the time of day, and she seemed to look down on her after they talked as if she knew how she had been getting promoted at work and was as disgusted by her as the women she worked with.

It was at the Memorial Day party she threw at her house that Aaron had totally crushed her ego. Desiree drunkenly sloshed into the kitchen, tall, slender, with wide hips swaying, straight blonde hair that hung down just past her shoulders. She seemed to be in a constant state of motion. Her head tilted slightly to the left, and she stupidly jumped into the conversation. Talking loudly, soft focus, blurry blue eyes, she had begun to slur her words slightly.

As she spoke, she leaned her tits against you as she talked to you with a sardonic smirk peeking at the corners of her mouth, close enough to taste her words. Was there a dare in her tone? A hint of ridicule tainted with derision in her demeanor? Aaron dressed in black jeans and a black long sleeved tee stood by the fridge his dread in a topknot of a pony tail distractedly playing with the magnetic poetry as he talked casually to Marshall the Vietnamese body builder about the type of woman, he found attractive as his left hand held a Newport 100 and his shiner, he pushed the words around with his right.

He spoke of his ideal woman’s appearance to the muscular man in the skin-tight red tee shirt, explaining how he preferred girls with dark hair, and he never dated blondes after his second wife divorced him. If Desiree were not so hammered, she would have seen the look of relief in Marshall’s eyes, or maybe she wouldn’t have been the neurotic, self-absorbed, uncultured twat that she was being.

Boy, I could have you anytime I want you. Desiree quipped arrogantly.

Not even in your wet dreams, Blondie, have you forgotten that you already tried to give me some of that stretched-out stuff of yours the other night and been denied.

She couldn’t believe he had humiliated her in her own house. Not only that, but Marshall was already jealous because he thought that they were having an affair, and she had convinced him that nothing was going on between them by telling him that Aaron, like most guys, had made a pass at her and she had gently but firmly turned him down. It was what he wanted to hear, so he believed her.

Marshall knew how Desiree kept getting promoted at work, and he also knew that he was one of at least half a dozen different guys that she had hooked up with at work. Those he understood, she wanted money, and she used those guys to get more of it from the company. She used him to do her job. He was one of the best programmers at O. C. S.

She had been promoted three times in the last two years, and each time she was promoted, she made sure Marshall was in the office next to hers. He did her work and his own work as well. She was using him, too, but he didn’t care. Desiree Edith Baker was the prettiest round-eyed girl that had ever let him put his scrawny pecker inside of her.

Marshall was one of those dull, uninteresting people who had spent his entire life playing video games on his PlayStation and watching Cartoon Network. He had played football in high school, but didn’t have the mass to play in college. He had done a brief stint in the National Guard before university, but other than computers, he never read anything; he was a barely literate, pot head, and juicer. He still used steroids and still worked out, but he couldn’t get any definition, no matter how much weight he could press. The guys at the gym called him Smoothie, and he hated it.

Desiree didn’t notice that he was dull and could only converse intelligently about cartoons, computers, and video games. Marshall Vauong made less money than she did, had a dreadfully small penis, and other than work, he didn’t interest her at all. She kept him around by going down on him occasionally and letting him eat her out when she was drunk, horny, and bored.

She was, by all the Western world’s contemporary standards, a reasonably attractive woman; tall, pale skin that tanned well, long straight blonde hair, nice, round breasts, full-breasted hips, wide Nordic mouth, ample lips, and long, flawlessly straight nose. So what, if she wasn’t very bright, was lazy in bed, and had a loose pussy.

As far as Marshall Hoang was concerned, she was perfect as Barbie. The kind of woman that would be worth all the shit you had to put up with in order to have a good-looking piece of ass like hers around. He planned on being there the day she looked around and considered her options. He was making himself indispensable to her.

Aaron was a real threat because he wasn’t a guy from work like the others that he had met before. He was a painter, a poet, a brainiac dope smoking bohemian bum. He was useless to her, and this caused him to perceive Aaron as a serious rival before their conversation today. But the way Marshall was looking at her now, Desiree knew that he realized that it had actually been that other way around. Desiree Edith Baker couldn’t handle the rejection and feelings of lack of control, the self-doubt and sense of inadequacy she felt around him any longer. Desiree decided then, to hell with a new car, Aaron Rainer Moore was going to have to go, and the sooner the better.

-about the author JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals: Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, TX.