Back to my personal research. I have narrowed my options to three types of women – a three-hundred-pound whore of any race; a white girl and black girl in the same bed for what I call a ‘switcheroo session’; and anonymous. In French – l’anonymat. I prefer the French because it leaves a tinge of expectation, the weighted lift of an early exit sits on my tongue with unmet expectation when I say it in French – l’anonymat.
I have a list of ‘must haves’ for my subjects. All the girls have to be anatomical females. They have to be straight, meaning zipper straight, meaning strictly straight. By strictly zipper straight, I mean they must have no curiosity or experience with the same sex, ever. So, say she’s jogging one night down a poorly lit path sheltered by trees, cushioned by falling leaves, lined with shadow and bright, and say she notices a squirrel and thinks, ‘how cute.’ If she suspects that fuzzy, cute squirrel is butch, she should run in the opposite direction; an urgency to wash her hands if a cashier accidentally grazes her palm during an exchange; or nauseating terror in a lesbian bar. Strictly zipper straight.
Luckily I know a three hundred pound whore at Joe’s, the corner bar down the street. She likes me. I’m not bragging, she told me once when she was drunk that I’m her type. I was flattered so I returned the favour by taking a good look at her. Sweet rump with ankles styled after the neck of a beer bottle. Attractive, long liquor guzzling neck. Small waist leading to childbearing hips. Like a tight hallway spilling into a big room. Not bad at all. But how do I ask for some ass? In the movies I notice this is often a point of conflict or heightened tension. The scene slows down for clipped but serious dialogue when a straight guy asks a straight girl for some ass. He rests his arm along the couch, all cool, sipping his beer. They do a close-up on his eyes for added intrigue as he stares into space before he pops the big question. What should I do? Ply her with more drinks? Be polite? Hint, and then hope she takes the lead? It’s not like the stakes are high – a whore doesn’t say ‘no’ too often – but the point of my research is procedure, knowing how to act straight when I transition to a man.
‘Do you want…?’
‘Sure, Hon, let’s fuck after the next round of beers.’ In her voice I hear the texture of late nights with rowdy men stitched together in smoke-filled rooms. An absentee father stumbles home. He takes, demands, expects and never asks. She doesn’t look at me.
We drink some, I pay plus tip, and then we struggle up the staircase with a six-pack ‘til we reach my pathetic room at the boarding house. My charming dump complete with cigarette stubs, empty bottles, laundry tossed to the floor.
‘I have to use the bathroom.’
‘Sure, sweetie, you go do that while I make myself comfortable.’
There are tools. There are tactics. There is terror. Life’s mysteries get no deeper than three hundred pounds of leg wide open for a fuck, believe me. I can take a sixteen-inch, custom-made (dildo) from the shelf and plough away all night in the dark with the lights off, refusing to take off my clothes. Or tongue and finger it with lesbian magic, then go for the kill with the twelve-inch in the suitcase under my bed, take her by surprise when she’s resting. Or we can talk into the night, only I can’t say a word, not one. I can’t say I’m scared, but I have to sleep with her to make myself a man like Daddy was, a man the only way I know how. And I can’t say the honest truth: does a man need a penis?
More drinks, more silence, I’m working it, wondering if she’ll break wind while I’m in between licking away. It crosses my mind that this is more work than I expected, that she’s getting more pleasure from it than I am. Head back, eyes closed, moaning with poetic force while I’m working it, digging deep like a miner for coal. With her eyes shut, I wonder if she’s thinking of me or someone else when she finally orgasms, then the bed falls thump to the floor and my neighbour downstairs comes up the rickety staircase, pounds on my door, says he’ll call the cops if I don’t stop with “the stupid late-night antics, Asshole.”
We don’t look at each other. We just dress, stare at the styrofoam cups now and again between gulps. I make mental notes while she rolls up her stockings.
You did the do, Man! Congrats.
Lesbian technique works really, really well on her. Licking, finger fucking, tongue tip, plastics, etc. Big asset.
Must use L technique on straight chicks when I transition into a straight man.
Question: penis does or does not equal manhood? Issue still lingers, though less doubtful.
Maybe, just maybe, there’s a lesbian in every relationship. Or maybe every relationship needs a lesbian. Maybe every man needs to learn how to love a woman the way a woman loves a woman. Maybe the best relationships, maybe the best couples are made of three – a man, a woman and someone else, someone who isn’t a man or a woman.
‘Hey, where’s my wallet?’
I notice while straightening up that money is missing.
‘How should I know where you put your wallet?’
‘You little bitch, you’ – I got an excellent education in talking to women from listening to my dad talk to my mom – ‘You little bitch you. When’d you steal it? While I was on top of you, then you hid my money in your fat, creamy cunt, you whore.’
She bolts down the stairs. I lift the mattress off the floor where I see a wad of bills and spilled coins. I feel awful, so awful I sink to the ground. Me and my big ugly mouth. She hadn’t taken a thing, not one red cent, not even her own pleasure in the end. With all my nasty talk, she went away quiet and clean. Sure, she isn’t much, but she is a human being, maybe all the more human because her weakness is so pure, so free, vulnerable. I’d call after her, but she’s far away by now. Plus, I don’t know her name. I go back to Joe’s, ask the bartender if he’s seen her. He says he’s seen her, sure.
‘But I can’t serve you,’ he says. ‘Not anymore. Please leave.’
Nick Mwaluko was born in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania but raised mostly in neighboring Kenya. Homelessness, shelter life, intense spiritual dislocation allowed Nick to renew efforts at writing. Nick hates pronouns.
