72 - The Initiator

     Kiki's house was surprisingly comfortable.  From the country road
that it's on you would expect a tiny, cluttered, home with too much
furniture and little room to move.  The porch gave no indication of
the space that waited inside.
     The porch was a time capsule marking the stages of transition
over the last three years of her life.  Texas, her protective black
lab, kept me from delving deep into her past and figuring out the
brilliant bright light that Paris always ran to when she felt lost.
     I had listened enough to know that she was the anomaly.  She was
the girl who actually had stripped her way through undergrad.  She
would entice them with her teasing then enthrall them with her
intellect.  It was horrifyingly beautiful listening to her tell of a
man who tipped her $100 because she destroyed Descartes mechanical
theory of human nature.
     This was years ago.  She was deep into her graduate studies now
and in the middle of an outline for her first book.  We would usually
debate politics and sex and the politics of sex while we waited for
whatever gourmet meal Paris was preparing.  I would always get lucky.
Just as the conversation turned to me and my current situation dinner
would be ready and I would be forgotten.  Tonight I was not so lucky.
     "I'm still trying to figure you out," she said scrolling through
the caller ID on her portable phone.  "You're attractive.  You
are obviously intelligent.  Why don't you have a girlfriend?"
     "Because it's a telephone," I countered hoping the deflection to
her concentration on the phone would end the conversation about me.
"And as much as you may cradle it and kiss it and hold it next to you
it's an inanimate object.  You can never truly get what you want from
it... unless it vibrates when it rings."
     "She was right.  You do shut down when it turns to you."  I was
fucked. 
     "Between working a twelve hour day with a solid hour drive each
way, I just don't have the necessary time to devote to finding, let
alone maintaining a steady long term relationship."  This was my
standard bullshit line.  It usually bought me a few hours of solace
from any more relationship questions.  I usually choked out some other
bullshit about how it wouldn't be fair to 'the girlfriend' for me to
be essentially carrying on a long distance relationship but I thought
that would be too much in this case.
     "Oh Bullshit!  Bullshit!  Bullshit!" she said laughing out loud.
"Do you honestly expect me to believe that?!?  Paris told me all about
the little waitress, Connie I think her name was?  Paris thinks you're
banging Linda at The Yard, too."
     My jaw hit the floor.  I pulled a spirit yellow out and slowly
lit it.  Kiki's house suddenly became a tiny, cluttered, home with
too much furniture and little room to move.

That Beautiful Black Man