So You Call Yourself a Man Read online

  A good six feet three inches tall, Brent had chiseled bronze features with a low military cut and a body that women lusted after. Even under his suit jacket, it was obvious to anyone within eyesight that he was ripped. The thing I liked about Brent was that unlike most pretty boys, he didn’t let his good looks go to his head. Oh, he’d had his share of women over the years—lots of women—but he never made a big deal about his looks or the attention women gave him. To be honest, he seemed to resent it at times. I guess that’s why he had so much trouble keeping a steady relationship. He wanted someone who was attracted to the man inside, someone who shared his interests and wasn’t just looking for an arm ornament she could show off to her girlfriends. I know it almost sounds like what a woman looks for in a man, but you’d be surprised how hard a good woman is to find, and Brent had been searching for his Mrs. Right for quite a while. That’s why James and I were so happy when he met Alison. She’s a little big for my taste, but she’s the perfect woman for Brent, especially with her being a Sunday school teacher and him recently being saved and wanting to go into the clergy.

  “Sonny! Man, it’s good to see you.” Brent wrapped his arms around me and gave me a brotherly hug. “I missed you, man. Dag-gone, I wish you’d move back to New York.”

  I smiled as I hugged him back. “I missed you too, bro. And believe it or not, I might be moving back to New York sooner than you think if James can get me a job as a driver working at UPS.”

  Brent straightened his back, cynicism written across his face. I was too embarrassed to tell him I’d been out of work the past three months and that James was my only hope for employment. “And Jessica is cool with that? She’s actually going to let you be a driver?”

  I let out an aggravated sigh. Brent and James didn’t like my wife because they thought she was too high-maintenance and controlling. They were under the impression that Jessica had me henpecked. They believed she moved me to Seattle three years ago so that I would be away from their influence.

  I looked him straight in the eyes. “It was her idea. She knows how much I miss you guys and New York. Contrary to popular belief, she wants me to be happy, Brent.”

  “I hear you, man. God does say, let those without sin cast the first stone.” Brent released me and picked up one of my bags. “Maybe I misjudged her, Sonny.”

  “There ain’t no maybe to it, bro. You and James been misjudging my wife since day one. She’s a good woman, Brent, the best, and I don’t know what I’d do without her. I’ve only been away from her half a day and I already feel lost. I just wish you guys could understand that.”

  “I hear you, man, and I’m glad you’re happy.” His voice was less enthusiastic than his words.

  “Excuse me.” I glanced toward the voice to see this fine, brown-skinned flight attendant staring directly into Brent’s face like he was a rock star or something, but it wasn’t just her face I was looking at, ’cause the girl had an ass like Jennifer Lopez. Brent turned his head to acknowledge her presence, but his eyes never acknowledged her beauty or her phenomenal ass.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  She smiled seductively, her eyes locked on his. “Maybe we can help each other. My name’s Yvonne. I’m from Atlanta, but my crew is on an eighteen-hour layover. I’m staying over at the airport Ramada and wanted to know if you’d like to join me for a drink.” She removed a small business card from her bag, and without even waiting for Brent’s answer, she offered it to him. He accepted it with his free hand. “Here’s my card. My cell phone number is on the back. You can call me anytime.” She winked, this time waiting for his answer.

  The way she was looking at him screamed, I’m gonna rock your world, and made me wanna say, “Damn, can he bring a friend? All I wanna do is watch.”

  Brent glanced at the card then at me. “Yvonne, is it?”

  “Yes.” She nodded, her smile growing wide, like a fisherman who’d just caught the big one. Only this fish was the one that got away, because Brent pushed the card back in her hand.

  “What are you doing?” Her smile had disappeared.

  “I’m flattered. Believe me, I’m flattered.” He answered. “But I’m engaged, and I’m sure my fiancée wouldn’t be too happy with me taking you out for a drink or calling you, no mater what time it is.” He wasn’t being rude, but there was a definite seriousness to his voice.

  Yvonne obviously didn’t want to accept defeat. “Well, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, will it?” She took a step closer and tried to push the card back into his hand. “And I sure as hell ain’t gonna tell her, so you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about.”

  “I didn’t have anything to worry about in the first place because I’m not meeting you,” Brent told her with finality. He turned to me. “You ready to go, Sonny?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Good, ’cause James is waiting in the car, and for some reason he’s got a stick up his butt.” He reached down and picked up my other bag. “Oh, and Ms. Yvonne, you have a blessed day, and remember, keep Jesus first.”

  I looked at the woman, who looked like she was picking her ego up off the ground. “Don’t feel bad. He does that to all the pretty girls.”

  As we walked away, I glanced at Brent. He seemed unfazed by what had just transpired. Damn, now that’s what I call devoted. And they call me whipped. I didn’t know what Alison had between her legs, but that shit must have been the bomb.

  Brent

  After eating twenty-four-ounce steaks, drinking German beer, and smoking twenty-dollar imported cigars with Sonny and James as we reminisced about the good old days, I finally arrived back home about 8:00 that evening. First thing I did when I hit the door was grab my Bible from the coffee table and get down on my knees to pray. My mind had been consumed with lustful thoughts ever since we left the airport. It didn’t help when, after his third beer, James finally lightened up from the funk he was in and started talking about the bachelor party he was planning on throwing me. Even down on my knees about to pray, I still couldn’t shake the thought of all that beautiful brown flesh they were going to parade in front of me. I loved those guys, but they had a way of bringing out the devil in me.

  “Dear Lord,” I said, lowering my head in prayer. “Please forgive me my lustful, heathenous thoughts that have consumed me. Father, please help me to be a better Christian who is not obsessed with the flesh but with Your glory….”

  I prayed for almost thirty minutes, finishing up my prayer with a hearty, “Amen.” It was echoed by a female voice behind me.

  “Alison,” I stammered in surprise. I looked up at my bride-to-be, who was dressed in a flowered church dress and matching hat. She must have let herself in with the key I’d given her. “How long have you been there?”

  “Long enough to know that we need to talk.”

  She sat down on the sofa solemnly. I swallowed hard, studying her face as I pushed myself up from the floor. I wasn’t sure how much of my prayer she’d heard, but there was no doubt she’d heard enough for me to be concerned. Alison was a good woman and we shared many interests, but because of her size and weight she was insecure about my love for her. The last thing I wanted her to hear was me testifying to the Lord about lusting after flesh.

  “Talk about what?”

  “About us,” she said flatly, patting the cushion beside her. “Now sit.”

  Hesitantly, I walked over to the sofa and did as I was told. I placed my hand on her thigh then stared in her pudgy but cute face, hoping to soften the mood with my eyes. Alison was a large woman, probably a size 20 or more, but her size didn’t matter to me, because she had a heart of gold. I’d never met any woman who could make me laugh the way she did. We were both into watching sports, and we could talk about almost anything. Even more importantly, she was just as devoted to the Lord, if not more than I was. In my eyes, she was the perfect woman, and the only woman I’d ever even considered taking as my wife.

  “You’ve been thinking about sex again, haven’t
you?” Her voice was calm but demanded an answer. I lowered my head in shame, unable to give her a reply. Alison, like me, was not a virgin, but had taken a premarital vow of celibacy when she accepted Christ into her life.

  “Brent,” she said, putting a finger under my chin and lifting my head. I avoided eye contact, even though this time when she spoke her voice was softer. “Brent, please, baby, look at me. I know it’s hard, and I understand. I have the same urges and feelings that you have. I love you, Brent.”

  I turned my eyes toward her. Without a word, she placed her hand on mine and leaned forward. She kissed my lips gently, and instinctively, I kissed her back. I was shocked when her tongue parted my lips. Alison and I didn’t French-kiss because we both agreed that it was lustful and would probably lead us down the road to breaking our premarital vows. I broke the kiss in protest, but she grabbed my head and forced her lips back on mine, sucking the air from my lungs as her tongue explored my mouth. For a few seconds, I savored the kiss and my hands roamed her large, soft body, but then I broke it abruptly. What we were doing was wrong.

  “Alison! What’s gotten into you?”

  She grinned wickedly as she removed her hat, closing the gap between us. I’d never seen her like this, and the insatiable look of lust on her face made me move a foot back on the sofa. “You’ve gotten into me, Brent. I love you, I want you, and we don’t have to wait anymore.” She took my hands and placed them over her breasts. When I realized what she was doing, I pulled them back and moved another foot away.

  “Alison, I can’t…we can’t…this is wrong. We made a vow to God. The Lord says…” I went to reach for my Bible, but she brought my hands back to her breasts.

  “I know what we promised God, Brent. But ours is a good God, a merciful God, a forgiving God, and I’m sure He’ll forgive us if we break our vow this one time. We only have a week before our wedding, and you need this. We both need this.”

  She reached into my lap, massaging my penis through the thin material of my pants before unzipping my fly and pulling it out. She stared for a moment, then looked up at me and smiled one last time before lowering her head. A warm wave of pleasure overcame me as the words, “Lord, please forgive us,” quietly escaped my lips.

  It was a little after 9:00 the next morning when the smell of bacon woke me. Not long after that, Alison walked into the bedroom carrying a plate in one hand and my favorite coffee cup in the other. She was naked except for the top sheet of my bed, which she had wrapped around her large torso, and a grin that told me she’d had the time of her life.

  “Good mornin’.”

  “Mornin’,” I replied as she stepped up to the side of the bed.

  “I made your favorite breakfast. I even made you homemade biscuits just the way you like them.” She lifted the plate.

  “I can see that.” I smiled, looking over the plate like a hungry wolf before taking it out of her hand. “What’s the occasion?”

  “I just wanted you to know how much I love you. How much I enjoyed myself last night. You know, I never had a man make love to me the way you did last night. It was as if you knew my body better than I did. Just thinking about it gets me warm and tingly all over.” She shuddered, then rubbed her arms, trying to rid herself of the goose bumps that appeared.

  I lowered my head, trying to conceal an ego-driven grin. I was happy Alison was pleased with my performance, but I wasn’t surprised. Ever since I first started having sex as a teenager, women had been pleased with my abilities in bed. Funny thing is, all I was doing to them was what I wanted to have done to me.

  “If I’d known it was going to be like that, I would have insisted we did it a long time ago.” She gave me that same wicked smile from the night before as she placed the coffee cup on the night table. I watched as she loosened the sheet, letting it fall to the ground. I stared at her soft, naked body, then shook my head as she reached for me.

  “Alison, we can’t do this again until we’re married. Now, I think you should get dressed. We both have some praying to do before we go to service.”

  James

  I pulled my UPS truck in front of Michelle’s mother’s house. I was nervous as hell about seeing her, so it took a good five minutes before I got out of the truck and knocked on the door. I’d asked to have my route changed after we stopped messing with each other, so it had been quite some time since I’d been here. Despite the obvious reason, I was also concerned that seeing her might bring back some old feelings like in that Fantasia song, “Truth Is.” We’d had some good times in that house, but I was hoping to keep those memories suppressed. Back in the day, Michelle could make me stand at attention just by looking at me, and the last thing I needed was to find myself sexually attracted to her after all these years.

  Thankfully, my concerns disappeared when she answered the door in her beat-up old sweats and hair rollers, like she had in the old days before we started fooling around. Seeing her in her less made-up state made me question why I’d ever messed around with her in the first place. She wasn’t ugly by any means, but for lack of a better word, the aura she used to have was gone. She couldn’t hold a candle to what I had at home. It’s amazing what a little loneliness will do to make a man think an average-looking woman is the woman of his dreams. Of course, at the time I wasn’t getting any at home, and well…let’s be honest: Michelle was willing to do anything and everything to make me happy at the time.

  “What? You gonna just stare at me or are you coming in?” she asked as if I was holding her up from doing something important. Funny thing is, if I remember correctly, she was the one who wanted to speak to me. I didn’t reply, though. I just opened the screen door and walked into the living room.

  “Damn, James, you gettin’ fat,” she spat as I walked past her.

  I turned to see her staring at me with a less-than-desirous look on her face. I immediately sucked in my gut with a frown. Her smart-ass comment had not just hurt my ego, but my feelings as well. Yeah, I’d gained a few pounds since I’d seen her last—probably closer to ten or fifteen—but it wasn’t as if I was totally out of shape. In retaliation, I eyed her from head to toe, lashing out in a calm yet condescending demeanor. “Thanks, Michelle. You’re lookin’ good too. I see you did your hair just for me…. Oh, and is that a new outfit? ’Cause that gray in your sweatshirt matches your black rollers perfectly.”

  She touched her rollers self-consciously, obviously embarrassed by my remark, but that didn’t last long. “Was that supposed to be funny, James?”

  I smirked, but again I didn’t reply. Michelle rolled her eyes, then plopped down on the sofa with an attitude. “Well, tell me if you think this is funny.” She lifted a piece of paper from the coffee table and handed it to me. I looked at it and shrugged. All it had was some math problems scribbled on it.

  “What’s this?”

  “That is seventeen percent of the average UPS driver’s monthly salary, multiplied by thirty-six months. That’s what my social worker says I’ll get in back child support if I take your ass to court.”

  “Thirty thousand dollars? Are you insane?” I shouted. I looked down at the paper again as I eased myself into the love seat.

  “Children are expensive,” she replied nonchalantly. “Now, if you don’t like it, he’s in the bedroom taking a nap. You can take him home to your wife and you ain’t got to give me shit.”

  My stomach began to tighten up and beads of sweat started to roll down my forehead. I glared across the room at Michelle, whose smug grin was forming into a full-fledged smile. She was enjoying herself. She was enjoying herself a great deal, and my next thought was that I should get up out of my seat and knock that smile right off her face. Fortunately for her, I didn’t hit women, but I was starting to understand why some guys did.

  “Michelle, I don’t have thirty thousand dollars, and if I did…”

  She cut me off with a wave of her hand and an exaggerated snap of her fingers. “Relax, James. I don’t want you to give me thirty thousan
d dollars.” I let out a thankful sigh that was halted by her next comment. “But I do want eight hundred a month, plus child care.”

  She didn’t know it, or then again maybe she did, but the reality of the situation was that she might as well have been asking for the thirty thousand, ’cause there was no way I was giving her eight hundred a month. Shit, my ceiling was two hundred and fifty, and I was going to suggest two hundred until I could get a blood test. Once again, I could hear that little voice in the back of my head asking me why the hell I ever fucked with her in the first place, especially without a condom. I still didn’t have an answer, and once again I contemplated getting out of my seat and smacking the shit outta her.

  “I can’t give you eight hundred a month. I’m living paycheck-to-paycheck as it is.” I sat up defiantly. “Besides, I don’t even know if I’m the father of your son.”

  There, I’d said it, but now I wished I hadn’t, as Michelle’s honey complexion turned a crimson red. She looked like she was about two seconds from blowing a fuse.

  “First of all, his name is Marcus! And he’s not my son, he’s our son.”

  “So you say,” I replied, reaching over to the end table next to me and picking up a framed picture of a child I assumed was Marcus. He had the same chocolate-brown complexion as me, but other than that, I couldn’t see any resemblance.

  “Momma’s baby, Poppa’s maybe…is that what you trying to say?” She was rolling her head as she spoke, but I had gone there now, so I wasn’t about to back down.

  “Yeah, that about covers it.” I placed the picture back down on the end table. “He don’t look nothin’ like me.”

  “Are you crazy?” She stood up and pointed a finger. “That boy looks like you chewed him up and spit him out.”

  “That boy is not my son, Michelle. At least, not until we have a blood test.”