LaVonda had been gulping down so many alcoholic drinks on the casino floor that the beverage waitresses were changing shifts. A fan of a particular penny-slot game at her favorite casino, she was trying to hold out for the next big-bonus round. On a previous trip, a mere $50 investment translated into a $275 win, but the allure of the casino wasn't the chance of winning a jackpot; it was the escape from mindless conformity in corporate America.
Ex-boyfriends had coined her "penny slut" yet held onto her cell number for booty calls. Depending on their occupations and adventurousness, she carried on with them at not-so-dimly lighted restaurants, on highway shoulders, on airplanes, at construction sites, in the fitting rooms of high-end men's stores, in trailers at on-location filming, in railway station restrooms, in parking lots, and at cemeteries -- anywhere but in a bed in her apartment or in a hotel. These activities kept her physically fit but bereft of love, and she knew that it was her own fault.
A slew of failed romances left her feeling lonely as Valentine's Day approached. Bad enough that Mondays were dismal; she didn't want to endure a workday filled with hand-delivered bouquets of all-stemmed roses and boxes of chocolate-dipped strawberries. She couldn't allow herself to imagine the mind-blowing sex that many of her co-workers would be experiencing on the weekend leading up to Valentine's Monday, so she planned a quick getaway via Amtrak from New York City to Atlantic City. With all the frequent-rider points she had accumulated over the past two years, her round-trip travel would be free. Loyalty in her life turned out to be ironic. She was loyal not only to Amtrak and her favorite casino, but to the men who had drifted in and out of her life. However, no man -- including the long-ago husband whom no one but her Gullah Grandmama Yorindah had known about -- had ever been loyal to her.
Seated before her cherished slot game, tens of thousands of pennies later, she drank in the surrounding bells and sirens that were not noise to her ears. Just as seductive as the electronic sounds were the overhead music and the drowned-out flirtations of men spying on her booty filling out the high-back, leather-upholstered stool. She started out sipping a Bailey's on the rocks, went through an uncounted number of Manhattans, and eventually worked her way to Cuba with mojitos so strong that the buzz had her conjuring up Desi Arnaz. The conga drumming of her budding hangover had her shouting "Babalooooo!"
Despite the pounding in her head, she smiled at her hallucination with lips thick and wide like Jennifer Hudson's. When she heard a man's voice whisper, "Hey, lady, you all right?" she hiccupped and said, "Sí, sí, Ricky." However, the concerned voice wasn't that of Arnaz's spirit; rather, that of a Latino slot attendant, who, with the exception of several streaks of silvery gray, looked nothing like the muy guapo Arnaz circa 1951.
LaVonda's lips had sipped so many beverages on Valentine's Day eve that all the matte color had rubbed off her lips, leaving them their natural berry-brown, and her pussy had left its intimate mark on the stool's leather cushion. There wasn't a clock to be found on the casino's walls, and not only had she had lost her Ann Klein knockoff watch, but also her cell phone's battery had run down. Still, she knew what time it was when her supply of twenty-dollar bills turned into ones as if through David Blaine's prestidigitation.
In spite of her intoxication, she also knew that it was her cue to leave when the soundtrack booming throughout the casino reached from the aughties all the way back to the 1980s. She loved Eldra DeBarge like many a sista, but she didn't give a damn who was holding "Donna" now. She bid goodbye to the synthesized rhythms of the night as well as the one-armed bandit seated to her right. Smirking at him with her blurry peripheral vision, she thought how he resembled El, except that he was a hundred pounds heavier and loads of testosterone hairier. What she didn't realize was that the beefy El DeBarge look-alike had been taking such advantage of her inebriated state that his left hand had been through her vintage black velvet clutch, which was positioned between their slot machines. That same mobile hand also had disheveled her thong several times just through the decade of nineties songs alone. His first entry was easy, as LaVonda was circling her hips like a seated burlesque dancer to R. Kelly's "Bump n' Grind."
Several hours later as she stood up, tugging down her micromini denim skirt, she slurred "Bye" to her slot neighbor. He, in turn, waved a hand bathed in her intimate slime with a sleazy smile on his face. His right palm didn't miss a spin of the reels via the "Maximum Bet" button. He tried to start up a conversation, but pre-empted it, saying: "Deuces." She stumbled away, nearly forgetting her clutch.
The man's eyes followed her dark legs closely, like a slot player watching "7's" line up on a reel. His stare was so insistent that it seemed to have the power to burn away her fishnets like a hot iron on silk. His head seesawed from side to side as his temporary target strutted toward a casino exit to the funky chorus of Finis Henderson's "Skip to My Lou." Everyone at the slots and tables over the age of forty knew the chorus of the 1980s tune by heart: "Skip to my Lou, my darling. I'm comin' for you. I wanna be your knight in shining armor. Ohhh-oh. Skip to my Lou, my darling. I'm waitin' for you. ... "
By the time LaVonda reached the glass elevator to the hotel's west wing, her damp thong was twisted so tightly that it stung her swollen slit as a strained guitar string stings the musician's thumb. Stretched from her generous vulva to her deep ebony cheeks, the thong wrung itself of her juices with every minimal movement of her thighs. She was barely aware of a twentysomething hetero couple entering the car at the last minute.
The woman glanced up at LaVonda and then smiled down at the blinding rock of her wedding ring. She pushed the button to the twelfth floor and then shot a glance at her husband, who was craning his neck to eye LaVonda's rear. The petite woman moved quickly to stand closer to her husband, her breasts pressing into his rib cage. However, her defensive move didn't make a dent but, to her disgust, her husband's growing erection made one in the junction of his jeans.
At the twelfth floor, the wife started exiting, urging her man with, "C'mon, honey," but her reluctant half was preoccupied in a different realm. His wife's eyes narrowed watching his glued to LaVonda's natural lube, which was creeping its way down beneath her micromini denim skirt to her thighs and glistening through the diamonds of her distressed black crotchless fishnets. His wife tugged at his shirt sleeve only to find him missing from the end of it as the elevator doors shut.
As the elevator ascended to a jazzy Muzak selection, "Kiss You All Over," the husband was bended on dungareed knees ripping away LaVonda's fishnets with semi-rotten teeth. She was too fired up to be repulsed by his hygiene, and her walls responded involuntarily to his lust by producing copious lube. She moaned "Ohhhhh, ohhhhh, ohhhhh," pressing one hand against a side glass window. He cupped her buttcheeks -- whatever he could hold -- with both hands while she bunched his stringy, dirty-blond hair like a mess of yarn with the other hand.
"Damn, baby, you got that brown I like," he rattled in the Southern Jersey drawl of the poor whites whose homes straddle the railroad tracks through towns such as Little Egg Harbor.
"Yeah, boy, you ain't never had a taste of dark honey like this," she teased, breathing hard and enjoying the tingling of her ass getting squeezed by strange palms. "Whatchu gonna tell ol' girl once you get your white ass back downstairs, hunh?"
