I want you to see me do this.
Saturday night, near midnight. A storefront business in the ghetto. Music plays low from behind the counter, some eighties rap song. They're all looking at me. I look like a total whore. This is the intended effect, but I am embarrassed, and try to cover by acting aloof. This is stupid, counterproductive. This is why I'm standing in the fourth liquor store of the night. I keep losing my nerve, then acting too stuck-up to be approached. I
want
to do this. So why don't I just do it?
I am second in line, one of four people in this store, the only woman.
White girl.
The man in front of me is Puerto Rican, middle-aged, sleight. He wears the clothes of a laborer, maybe drywall. He is dusty all over, and wears a painter's cap that comes low on his forehead. He pays for his six pack and glances back toward me as he is handed his change. I can see him focus quickly on my hips, clad in a short, tight black rubber skirt. The rubber is stretchy. This skirt laces up each side from hem to waist, and the laces are wide enough to expose strips of skin nearly six inches wide. These fleshy strips bulge slightly at the black lashings that crisscross them. My lack of panties is obvious. I love this skirt. I made it. It is a very attention-grabbing sort of skirt.
I step up, aware that there is a young man behind me, almost certainly checking out my ass. The stretchiness of this skirt makes my ass look utterly obscene. It jiggles when I move just like it does when I'm naked. The cleft between my cheeks is clear through the rubber. I chose this material because it is shiny and stretchy and very thin. I want my ass to be accentuated. I hope the young man behind me, a tall, thin black boy dressed in an oversized t-shirt and baggy jeans, I hope he is looking at my accentuated rubber-clad ass and licking his lips. His big black juicy lips. That's one of the reasons I drove out to the west side to do this. I want a black boy. Or a man. Whatever. I'm not being political here, I just want to get laid. As I step up, I think I should just turn around and proposition him in some way. Surely he wants to fuck me. But I'm still acting aloof. Stupid. What did you get all dressed up and come out here for?
I step up. Point. Tequila. No, the fifth. I point again, and the old man behind the counter, another Rican, nudges the bottle from the shelf and taps a few fingers on the cash register. Did he see my tit? I'm wearing a little bolero jacket, it matches the skirt. Under this jacket, which is open, my tits are covered, mashed down, by black nylon, thin as a stocking. I've got great big fat tits. I could just tell you that they're big, but that doesn't give as clear a picture. Great big fat tits. They're still set up high now, but they'll sag when I get older. I've seen my grandma, and I inherited these DDD monsters from her, right down to the deep pink areolas big as the bottom of a beer can, and the nipples, ridiculously small. They are conical, like traffic cones. When I pointed to the bottle, the front of the jacket gaped and swung open. Did he see my tit? I want to rake up my stocking top and smash them together for him. But I just hand him a twenty.
He hands me my change. Its too bright in here. That's what it is, I need some shadow to start this thing. I consider dropping some of the change, an excuse to bend over, an excuse to show my cunt to somebody. My cunt is bald as a cue ball, and my skirt is short enough that I wouldn't even have to bend all the way over to give a good full view. I could drop the change, but I don't. Its too bright in here.
I'm walking out now, haphazardly stuffing the change in my little purse while I clutch the bottle in my other hand. I'm mentally kicking myself. Another lost opportunity. My own stupidity. I am going to do this. How many more liquor stores are there on the west side of Chicago? How many more bottles of tequila will I have to buy before I get over being such a goddamn chicken? As I approach the door, as I put my hand on the glass and push, actually, I tell myself
that's it, no more screwing around.
I tell myself, the next guy. The very next guy.
Because I don't care who it is. All I care is that I'm slumming it. I'm here on the west side, trying to get up the nerve to fuck some random black guy. Black
guys
, maybe. Nice, ordinary suburban girl like me. I just have to get over being such a stupid chicken. The very next guy.
And here he is. I know he will speak to me the second my eyes rest on him. I'm hardly through the exit door of the liquor store when our eyes meet, but his do not stop at my face, of course. Look at my outfit. I look like a total whore. I've cleared the door and am stepping off the strip of sidewalk that runs next to the building, stepping onto the black tar of the parking lot, when this older man, old enough to be my father, and milk chocolate-colored, speaks. I think,
he looks like Scatman Crothers.
I am so very conscious of twisting on the ball of my foot to look at him again as he speaks, twisting my foot in the sexy black patent mule that matches the skirt and the jacket. I fling my hip to the side as I turn. As I turn he speaks in a gravelly drawl that sounds like Alabama, or Mississippi.
He says, "Damn, girl. You sho' 'nuff lookin' tight tonight!"
Now
I know
. I know that men like him speak to women like me all the time. And us women, white women, middle class women, ignore them. He is much older than I had imagined the man I'd pick would be. But age isn't an issue. Or looks or class or any of that stuff. I want a black man, and I want it to be a stranger.
My heart crashing in my chest, I turn on the ball of my sexy foot, thrust out a hip and give him a smile, a dazzling smile. I'm a pretty girl and I know it. I give him my hundred-watt prom picture smile, total innocence and delight. "Hey, thanks!"
He looks mildly surprised. Then he smiles back. "You welcome! You just the sweetest little thing I done seen in a long time!" His smile reveals a missing eyetooth, a gold canine.
With the same smile, the same tone, I say again, "Thanks! That's so nice!" I raise the bottle. "You wanna have a drink with me?" As if the idea has just occurred to me.
Now he looks really surprised. Women like me don't speak to men like him, much less offer to have a drink with them. I cock my head to the side at his hesitation, smile still on my face. He realizes the opportunity.
"Sho' thing! Where you wanna go, baby girl?" I raise the bottle further, gesture to the van, my uncle's van, borrowed for the night. Its parked in the far corner of the parking lot, in the shadows. I had told my uncle I needed to move a desk.
This man raises his eyebrows, looks around at the darkened, empty lot, and faintly shrugs as he starts off toward the van. I know he does not expect to actually drink with me. Women like me don't drink with men like him. I am twenty-six, but I have a child's face. I am nearly always carded at bars and clubs. None of the liquor stores I visited this evening carded me, but I think my skirt was a distraction.
I look young, and well-kept. This man, he is probably near fifty. He is black. He is poor. He wears an army jacket, not the kind with camouflage. Just solid green. It is ragged. His pants are jeans, and his feet are clad in cheap, scuffed work boots. He is tall and broad and his bald head shines in the street light. His whole head is shaved bald. Like my pussy.
He walks next to me, not looking at me, just glancing from the ground in front of us to the van we are approaching. As we walk, he say to the ground, "Yup. That's quite a little ol' outfit you wearin' there."
I stop. We are forty or so feet from the store, less than twenty from the van. It is near midnight. An occasional car rolls by, but it is quiet in the street. I turn to face him, my prom smile still in effect. "You think so? I made it. You really like it?"
He has stopped too, and I can tell he is still unsure of whether he will actually make it to the van. He expects me to change my mind, come to my senses. A nice young white girl like me. We don't get into vans with men like him.
"I picked the fabric and hammered in the grommets for the laces and everything," I'm saying. He is listening, looking at me. I get an idea. "Here." I thrust the bottle at him.
"It doesn't even go like this," I say as I wiggle my hips and twist the low-slung waist. There is the thinnest layer of cotton flocking on the inside of the rubber, so it slides against my skin easily enough. I twist the skirt until the laces are no longer exposing my hips. I twist the skirt until the laces are centered in front and back. The laces are far enough apart that a good six inches of skin is exposed. My naked pussy is framed dead center between a diamond of laces. My heart catches in my throat.
I'm doing it!
I can feel my ass pushing against the other string of laces. "It really goes like this, but I can't go into a store like this." Still smiling. This man in front of me is doing a very good poker face. Maybe he thinks if he hides his shock, I won't realize what I'm doing. I shrug my jacket off so he can see my smashed-down, big fat titties. My enormous nylon-covered boobs. My tiny nipples tent in the breeze. I cock my hip in a "what do you think" gesture.
Finally he just shakes his head, his eyes glued to my cunt. My bald, split, pink white girl cunt. He says, "My god, my god." I suddenly feel like Miss America. I'm smiling like her.
I start walking again, dragging my jacket behind me. "C'mon. Lets get in the van." I get in front of him so that he can see my ass cheeks mooshing together under the laces as I walk. I'll bet my ass looks good. I'll bet he can't believe his good fortune. He can't even begin to imagine what's going to happen.
We have reached the van, which my uncle thinks I have borrowed to move a desk. I'm supposed to return it tomorrow afternoon. I reach for the handle to the side door, the one that will slide open to reveal the futon I wrestled into place just hours ago. I say, "I'm Daisy. Do you want to tell me your name?" My name isn't Daisy, but I like the sound of it. I don't care what his name is, either. Its just something to say.
He says, "My name is Rutherford Cole, ma'am." Here, as I slide open the door, he looks directly into my eyes, his expression open and curious. "You sho' you wanna get in this van with me? You ain't scared?"
I look right back at him, exuding all the confidence I can muster. I am still smiling. "You sure
you
want to get in here with
